Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Jo Nesbo

Map

Title Page

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1: Wednesday Evening

Chapter 2: Thursday Morning

Chapter 3: Thursday Afternoon

Chapter 4: Thursday, Late Afternoon

Chapter 5: Thursday Evening and Night

Chapter 6: Friday Morning

Chapter 7: Friday Morning

Chapter 8: Friday Afternoon

Chapter 9: Friday Afternoon

Chapter 10: Saturday Morning

Chapter 11: Saturday Evening

Chapter 12: Saturday Night

Chapter 13: Saturday Night

Chapter 14: Sunday Morning

Chapter 15: Sunday Evening

Chapter 16: Sunday Night

Chapter 17: Monday Morning

Chapter 18: Monday Afternoon

Chapter 19: Monday Evening

Chapter 20: Monday Night, Tuesday Morning

Part Two

Chapter 21: Tuesday Morning

Chapter 22: Tuesday Afternoon

Chapter 23: Tuesday, Late Afternoon

Chapter 24: Tuesday Evening

Chapter 25: Tuesday Night

Chapter 26: Tuesday Night

Chapter 27: Wednesday Morning

Chapter 28: Wednesday Afternoon

Chapter 29: Wednesday Evening

Chapter 30: Wednesday Night

Chapter 31: Wednesday Night

Chapter 32: Wednesday Night

Chapter 33: Thursday Morning

Part Three

Chapter 34: Saturday Daytime

Chapter 35: Sunday Morning

Chapter 36: Sunday Evening

Chapter 37: Wednesday Afternoon

Chapter 38: Thursday Morning

Chapter 39: Thursday Night

Chapter 40: Friday Morning

Chapter 41: Friday Afternoon

Epilogue

Copyright

THERE’S A NEW KILLER ON THE STREETS…

A woman is found murdered after an internet date. The marks left on her body show the police that they are dealing with a particularly vicious killer.

HE’S IN YOUR HOUSE… HE’S IN YOUR ROOM

Under pressure from the media to find the murderer, the force know there’s only one man for the job. But Harry Hole is reluctant to return to the place that almost took everything from him. Until he starts to suspect a connection between this killing and his one failed case.

HE’S OUT FOR BLOOD

When another victim is found, Harry realises he will need to put everything on the line if he’s to finally catch the one who got away.

Jo Nesboplayed football for Norway’s premier league team Molde, but his dream of playing professionally for Spurs was dashed when he tore ligaments in his knee at the age of eighteen. After three years military service he attended business school and formed the band Di derre (‘Them There’). Their second album topped the charts in Norway, but he continued working as a financial analyst, crunching numbers during the day and gigging at night. When commissioned by a publisher to write a memoir about life on the road with his band, he instead came up with the plot for his first Harry Hole crime novel, The Bat . He is regarded as one of the world’s leading crime writers, with The Leopard, Phantom, Police and The Son all topping the UK bestseller charts, and his novels are published in 50 languages.

THE HARRY HOLE SERIES

The Bat

Cockroaches

The Redbreast

Nemesis

The Devil’s Star

The Redeemer

The Snowman

The Leopard

Phantom

Police

STANDALONE CRIME

Headhunters

The Son

Blood on Snow

Midnight Sun

THE THIRST

Translated from the Norwegian

by Neil Smith

HE STARED INTO the white nothingness.

The way he had done for almost three years.

No one saw him, and he saw no one. Apart from each time the door opened and enough steam was sucked out for him to be able to glimpse a naked man for a brief moment before the door closed and everything was shrouded in fog.

The baths would be closing soon. He was alone.

He wrapped the white towelling bathrobe more tightly around him, got up from the wooden bench and walked out, past the empty swimming pool and into the changing room.

No trickling showers, no conversations in Turkish, no bare feet padding across the tiled floor. He looked at himself in the mirror. Ran a finger along the scar that was still visible after the last operation. It had taken him time to get used to his new face. His finger carried on down his throat, across his chest, and came to a halt at the start of the tattoo.

He removed the padlock from his locker, pulled on his trousers and put his coat on over the still damp bathrobe. Tied his shoelaces. He made sure he was definitely alone before going over to a locker with a coded padlock, one with a splash of blue paint on it. He turned the lock until it read 0999. Removed the lock and opened the door. Took a moment to admire the big, beautiful revolver that lay inside before taking hold of the red hilt and putting it in his coat pocket. Then he removed the envelope and opened it. A key. An address, and some more detailed information.

There was one more thing in the locker.

Painted black, made of iron.

He held it up against the light with one hand, looking at the wrought ironwork with fascination.

He would have to clean it, scrub it, but he already felt aroused at the thought of using it.

Three years. Three years in a white nothingness, in a desert of empty days.

Now it was time. Time he drank from the well of life again.

Time he returned.

Harry woke with a start. Stared out at the semi-darkness of the bedroom. It was him again, he was back, he was here.

‘Nightmare, darling?’ The whispered voice by his side was warm and soothing.

He turned towards her. Her brown eyes studied his. And the apparition faded and disappeared.

‘I’m here,’ Rakel said.

‘And here I am,’ he said.

‘Who was it this time?’

‘No one,’ he lied, and touched her cheek. ‘Go back to sleep.’

Harry closed his eyes. Waited until he was sure she had closed hers before opening his again. He studied her face. He had seen him in a forest this time. Moorland, wreathed in white fog that swirled around them. He had raised his hand and pointed something towards Harry. He could just make out the demonic, tattooed face on his naked chest. Then the fog had grown thicker, and he was gone. Gone again.

‘And here I am,’ Harry Hole whispered.

WEDNESDAY EVENING

THE JEALOUSY BAR was almost empty, but even so it was hard to breathe.

Mehmet Kalak looked at the man and woman standing at the bar as he poured wine into their glasses. Four customers. The third was a guy sitting on his own at a table, taking tiny little sips of beer, and the fourth was just a pair of cowboy boots sticking out from one of the booths, where the darkness occasionally gave way to the glow from the screen of a phone. Four customers at half past eleven on a September evening in the best bar district in Grünerløkka. Terrible, and it couldn’t go on like this. Sometimes he asked himself why he’d left his job as bar manager at the hippest hotel in the city to go it alone and take over this rundown bar with its pissed-up clientele. Possibly because he thought that by jacking up the prices he could replace the old customers with the ones everyone wanted: the neighbourhood’s affluent, trouble-free young adults. Possibly because he needed somewhere to work himself to death after breaking up with his girlfriend. Possibly because the offer from loan shark Danial Banks had looked favourable after the bank rejected his application. Or possibly just because at the Jealousy Bar he was the one who picked the music, not some damn hotel manager who only knew one tune: the ringing of the cash register. Getting rid of the old clientele had been easy – they had long since settled in at a cheap bar three blocks away. But it turned out to be a whole lot harder to attract new customers. Maybe he would have to reconsider the whole concept. Maybe one big television screen on which he showed Turkish football wasn’t enough to merit the description ‘sports bar’. And maybe he’d have to change the music and go for reliable classics like U2 and Springsteen for the guys, Coldplay for the girls.