The Thirst: Harry Hole 11

by Jo Nesbo

  Truls watched her as she waddled like a penguin towards the exit and the weirdly heavy metal door with its staring porthole.

  ‘The meeting starts in three minutes,’ Wyller said.

  Truls looked at his watch. The afternoon meeting of the investigative team. Crime Squad would have been great if it weren’t for the murders. Murders were shit. Murders meant long hours, writing reports, endless meetings and loads of stressed-out people. But at least they got free food from the cafeteria when they worked overtime. He sighed and turned to walk towards the airlock, but stiffened.

  There she was.

  Ulla.

  She was on her way out, and her eyes swept over him as she passed, without letting on that she had seen him. She did that sometimes. Possibly because it had occasionally been a bit awkward when the two of them met without Mikael being present. In truth, they probably both tried to avoid that, even when they were younger. Him because he would start to sweat and his heart would beat too quickly and because he would always torment himself afterwards with the stupid things he had said and the smart, genuine things he hadn’t said. Her because … well, probably because he would start to sweat, his heart would beat too quickly, and because he either didn’t speak or said stupid things.

  Even so, he almost called out her name in the atrium.

  But she had already reached the door. In a moment she would be outside and the sunshine would kiss her fine blonde hair.

  So he whispered her name silently to himself instead.

  Ulla.

  4

  THURSDAY, LATE AFTERNOON

  KATRINE BRATT LOOKED out across the conference room.

  Eight detectives, four analysts, one forensics expert. They were all at her disposal. And they were all watching her like hawks. The new, female lead detective. And Katrine knew that the biggest sceptics in the room were her female colleagues. She had often wondered if she was fundamentally different to other women. They had a testosterone level somewhere between five and ten per cent of their male colleagues, whereas hers was closer to twenty-five per cent. That hadn’t yet turned her into a hairy lump of muscle with a clitoris the size of a penis, but as far back as she could remember it had made her far hornier than any of her female friends had ever admitted to being. Or ‘angry horny’, as Bjørn used to say when things got really bad, and she would break off from work to drive out to Bryn just so he could fuck her in the deserted storeroom behind the laboratory, making the boxes of flasks and test tubes rattle.

  Katrine coughed, switched on the recording function of her phone, and began. ‘1600 hours on Thursday, 22 September, conference room 1 in the Crime Squad Unit, and this is the first meeting of the preliminary investigation into the murder of Elise Hermansen.’

  Katrine saw Truls Berntsen come lumbering in, and sit down at the back.

  She began explaining what most people in the room already knew: that Elise Hermansen had been found murdered that morning, that the probable cause of death was loss of blood as a result of injuries to her neck. That no witnesses had come forward so far. They had no suspect, and no conclusive physical evidence. The organic matter they had found in the flat, which might be human in origin, had been sent for DNA analysis, and they would hopefully be getting the results back within the space of a week. Other potential physical evidence was being examined by Forensics and the forensics officer. In other words: they had nothing.

  She saw a couple of them fold their arms and breathe out heavily, on the brink of yawning. And she knew what they were thinking: that this was all obvious, repetitive, there was nothing for them to sink their teeth into, not enough to make them drop everything else they were working on. She explained how she had deduced that the murderer was already in the flat by the time Elise got home, but could hear for herself that it just sounded boastful. A new boss’s plea for respect. She started to feel desperate, and thought about what Harry had said when she had called to ask for advice.

  ‘Catch the murderer,’ he had replied.

  ‘Harry, that’s not what I asked. I asked how to lead an investigative team that doesn’t trust you.’

  ‘And I gave you the answer.’

  ‘Catching the odd murderer won’t solve—’

  ‘It will solve everything.’

  ‘Everything? So exactly what has it solved for you, Harry? In purely personal terms?’

  ‘Nothing. But you asked about leadership.’

  Katrine looked out at the room, came to the end of yet another superfluous sentence, took a deep breath and noticed a hand drumming gently on the arm of a chair.

  ‘Unless Elise Hermansen let this individual into her flat earlier yesterday evening and left him there when she went out, we’re looking for someone she knows. So we’ve been examining her phone and computer. Tord?’

  Tord Gren got to his feet. He had been given the nickname Wader, presumably because he resembled a wading bird with his unusually long neck, narrow beak-like nose and a wingspan far greater than his height. His old-fashioned round glasses and curly hair hanging down on both sides of his thin face made him look like something from the 1970s.

  ‘We’ve got into her iPhone and have checked the lists of texts and calls made and received in the last three days,’ Tord said, without taking his eyes from his tablet, as if he wasn’t big on eye contact in general. ‘Nothing but work-related calls. Colleagues and clients.’

  ‘No friends?’ This from Magnus Skarre, a tactical analyst. ‘Parents?’

  ‘I believe that’s what I said,’ Tord replied. Not unfriendly, just precise. ‘The same applies to her emails. Work-related.’

  ‘The law firm has confirmed that Elise did a lot of overtime,’ Katrine added.

  ‘Single women tend to,’ Skarre said.

  Katrine looked in resignation at the thickset little detective, even though she knew the comment wasn’t directed at her. Skarre was neither malicious nor quick-witted enough for that.

  ‘Her PC wasn’t password-protected, but there wasn’t much to find on there,’ Tord went on. ‘The log shows that she mostly used it to watch the news or to google information. She visited a few porn sites, just the ordinary sort of thing, and there’s no sign that she ever contacted anyone via those websites. The only dodgy thing she seems to have done in the past two years is streaming The Notebook on Popcorn Time.’

  Given that Katrine didn’t know the IT expert well enough, she wasn’t sure if by ‘dodgy’ he meant the use of a pirate server or the choice of film. She would have said the latter if it was up to her. She missed Popcorn Time.

  ‘I tried a couple of obvious passwords for her Facebook account,’ Tord continued. ‘No joy, so I’ve sent a freeze request to Kripos.’

  ‘A freeze request?’ Anders Wyller asked from the front row.

  ‘An application to the court,’ Katrine said. ‘Any request to access a Facebook account has to go through Kripos and the courts, and even with their approval it has to go to a court in the USA, and only then to Facebook. At best it will take several weeks, but more likely months.’

  ‘That’s all,’ Tord Gren said.

  ‘Just one more question from a rookie,’ Wyller said. ‘How did you get into the phone? Fingerprints from the body?’

  Tord glanced up at Wyller, then looked away and shook his head.

  ‘How, then? Older iPhones have four-digit codes. That means 10,000 different—’

  ‘Microscope,’ Tord interrupted, typing something on his tablet

  Katrine was familiar with Tord’s method, but she waited. Tord Gren hadn’t trained to become a police officer. He hadn’t trained to become much at all, really. A few years in information technology in Denmark, but no qualifications. Even so, he had soon been pulled out of Police HQ’s IT department and given a job as an analyst, with a particular focus on anything relating to technological evidence. Purely because he was so much better than everyone else.

  ‘Even the toughest glass acquires microscopic indentations where it’s touched most often
by someone’s fingertips,’ Tord said. ‘I just have to find out where on the screen the deepest indentations are, and that’s the code. Well, the four digits give twenty-four possible combinations.’

  ‘The phone locks after three failed attempts, though,’ Anders said. ‘So you’d have to be lucky …’

  ‘I got the right code on the second attempt,’ Tord said with a smile, but Katrine couldn’t tell if he was smiling because of what he’d just said or something on his tablet.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Skarre said. ‘Talk about luck.’

  ‘On the contrary, I was unlucky not to get it on my first attempt. When the number contains the numerals 1 and 9, as in this instance, that usually means a year, and then there are only two possible combinations.’

  ‘Enough of that,’ Katrine said. ‘We’ve spoken to Elise’s sister, and she says she hadn’t had a regular boyfriend for years. And that she probably didn’t want one either.’

  ‘Tinder,’ Wyller said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Did she have the Tinder app on her phone?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tord said.

  ‘The guys who saw Elise in the archway said she looked a bit dressed up. So she wasn’t coming home from the gym, or work, and presumably not from seeing a female friend. And if she didn’t want a boyfriend.’

  ‘Good,’ Katrine said. ‘Tord?’

  ‘We did check the app, and there were plenty of matches, to put it mildly. But Tinder is linked to Facebook, so we can’t yet access any further information about people she may have had contact with on there.’

  ‘Tinder people meet in bars,’ a voice said.

  Katrine looked up in surprise. It was Truls Berntsen.

  ‘If she had her phone with her, it’s just a matter of checking the base stations, then going round the bars in the areas she was in.’

  ‘Thanks, Truls,’ Katrine said. ‘We’ve already checked the base stations. Stine?’

  One of the analysts sat up in her chair and cleared her throat. ‘According to the printout from Telenor’s operations centre, Elise Hermansen left work at Youngstorget sometime between 6.30 and 7 p.m. She went to an area in the vicinity of Bentsebrua. Then—’

  ‘Her sister told us Elise used the gym at Myrens Verksted,’ Katrine interrupted. ‘And they’ve confirmed that she checked in at 19.32, and left at 21.14, Sorry, Stine.’

  Stine gave her a brief, slightly stiff smile. ‘Then Elise moved to the area around her home address, where she – or at least her phone – remained until she was found. That’s to say, its signal was picked up by a few overlapping base stations, which confirms that she went out, but no further than a few hundred metres from her home in Grünerløkka.’

  ‘Great, so we get to go on a bar crawl,’ Katrine said.

  She was rewarded with a chuckle from Truls, a broad smile from Anders Wyller, but otherwise total silence.

  Could be worse, she thought.

  Her phone, which was on the table in front of her, began to move.

  She saw from the screen that it was Bjørn.

  It could be something about forensic evidence, in which case it would be good to hear it straight away. But, on the other hand, if that was the case he ought to have called his colleague from Forensics who was attending the meeting, not her. So it could be something personal.

  She was about to click ‘Reject call’ when she realised that Bjørn would be well aware that she was in a meeting. He was good at keeping track of that sort of thing.

  She raised the phone to her ear. ‘We’re in the middle of a meeting of the investigative team, Bjørn.’

  She regretted saying that the moment she felt all eyes on her.

  ‘I’m at the Forensic Medical Institute,’ Bjørn said. ‘We’ve just had the results of the preliminary tests on the shiny substance she had on her stomach. There’s no human DNA in it.’

  ‘Damn,’ Katrine blurted out. It had been in the back of her mind the whole time: that if the substance was semen, the case could probably be solved within the magical limit of the first forty-eight hours. All experience indicated that it would be harder after that.

  ‘But it could suggest that he had intercourse with her after all,’ Bjørn said.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘It was lubricating gel. Probably from a condom.’

  Katrine swore again. And she could tell from the way the others were looking at her that she hadn’t yet said anything to prove that this wasn’t just a private conversation. ‘So you’re saying the perpetrator used a condom?’ she said, loudly and clearly.

  ‘Him, or someone else she met yesterday evening.’

  ‘OK, thanks.’ She was keen to end the conversation, but heard Bjørn say her name before she had time to hang up.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘That wasn’t actually why I called.’

  She swallowed. ‘Bjørn, we’re in the middle—’

  ‘The murder weapon,’ he said. ‘I think I might have figured out what it was. Can you keep the group there for another twenty minutes?’

  He was lying in bed in the flat, reading on his phone. He’d been through all the newspapers now. It was disappointing, they’d left out all the details, they’d neglected to report everything that was of artistic value. Either because the lead detective, Katrine Bratt, didn’t want to reveal them, or because she simply lacked the capacity to see the beauty in it. But he, the policeman with murder in his eyes, he would have seen it. Maybe like Bratt he would have kept it to himself, but at least he would have appreciated it.

  He looked more closely at the picture of Katrine Bratt in the newspaper.

  She was beautiful.

  Wasn’t there some sort of regulation about them having to wear uniform for press conferences? If there was, she was breaking it. He liked her. Imagined her wearing her police uniform.

  Very beautiful.

  Sadly she wasn’t on the agenda.

  He put the newspaper down. Ran his hand across the tattoo. Sometimes it felt like it was real, that it was bursting, that the skin over his chest was stretched tight and about to split.

  To hell with regulations.

  He tensed his stomach muscles and used them to get up from the bed. Looked at his reflection in the mirror on the sliding door of the wardrobe. He had got into shape in prison. Not in the gym. Lying on benches and mats soaked in other people’s sweat was out of the question. No, in his cell. Not to get muscles, but to acquire real strength. Stamina. Tautness. Balance. The capacity to bear pain.

  His mother had been solidly built. A big backside. She’d let herself go towards the end. Weak. He must have got his body and metabolism from his father. And his strength.

  He pushed the wardrobe door aside.

  There was a uniform hanging there. He ran his hand over it. Soon it would come into use.

  He thought about Katrine Bratt. In her uniform.

  That evening he would go to a bar. A popular, busy bar, not like the Jealousy Bar. It was against the rules to go out among people for anything but food, the baths and the agenda, but he would glide about in tantalising anonymity and isolation. Because he needed to. Needed to, to stop himself going mad. He let out a quiet laugh. Mad. The counsellors said he needed to see a psychiatrist. And of course he knew what they meant by that: that he needed someone who could prescribe medication.

  He took a pair of freshly polished cowboy boots from the shoe rack, and looked for a moment at the woman at the back of the wardrobe. She was hung up on the pegs in the wall behind her, and her eyes stared out between the suits. She smelt faintly of the lavender perfume he had rubbed on her chest. He closed the door again.

  Mad? They were incompetent idiots, the whole lot of them. He had read the definition of personality disorder in a dictionary, that it was a mental illness that leads to ‘discomfort and difficulties for the individual concerned and those around them’. Fine. In his case that merely applied to those around him. He had just the personality he wanted. Because when y
ou have access to drink, what could be more pleasant, more rational and more normal than feeling thirsty?

  He looked at the time. In half an hour it would be dark enough outside.

  ‘This is what we found around the injuries to her neck,’ Bjørn Holm said, pointing to the image on the screen. ‘The three fragments on the left are rusted iron, and on the right, black paint.’

  Katrine had sat down with the others in the conference room. Bjørn had been out of breath when he arrived, and his pale cheeks were still glistening with sweat.

  He tapped on his laptop and a close-up of the neck appeared.

  ‘As you can see, the places where the skin has been punctured form a pattern, as if she’d been bitten by someone, but if that was the case, the teeth must have been razor-sharp.’

  ‘A satanist,’ Skarre said.

  ‘Katrine wondered if it was someone who had sharpened his teeth, but we’ve checked, and where the teeth have almost gone through the other side of the fold of skin, we can see that the teeth don’t actually meet, but have slotted in perfectly between the other set of teeth. So this could hardly be an ordinary human bite, where the lower and upper teeth are positioned so that they meet each other, tooth for tooth. The fact that we found rust therefore leads me to think that the perpetrator used some sort of iron dentures.’

  Bjørn tapped at the computer.

  Katrine felt a quiet gasp go through the room.

  The screen showed an object which at first put Katrine in mind of an old, rusty animal trap she had once seen at her grandfather’s in Bergen, something he called a bear trap. The sharp teeth formed a zigzag pattern, and the upper and lower jaws were fixed together by what looked to be a spring-loaded mechanism.

  ‘This picture is taken from a private collection in Caracas, and is said to date from the days of slavery, when they used to bet on slaves fighting each other. Two slaves would each be given a set of dentures, their hands would be tied behind their backs, and then they would be put in the ring. The one who survived went through to the next round. I assume. But to get back to the point—’