The Thirst: Harry Hole 11

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘True?’

  ‘It wasn’t just something she was saying to keep you away?’

  ‘Ha, right. You tell me. Presumably she had her own methods of getting rid of frogs.’ Geir Sølle’s attempt at a smile turned into a grimace. ‘Like me.’

  ‘And do you think she’d had to kiss a lot of frogs?’

  ‘Tinder can be disappointing, but you never give up hope, do you?’

  ‘This stalker, did you get the impression he was just a passing nutter, or someone she’d had a relationship with?’

  ‘No.’ Geir pulled the zip of his gilet all the way up to his chin, even though it was mild outside. ‘I’m going now.’

  ‘A man she’d had a relationship with?’ the bartender said, giving him his change. ‘I thought these murders were just about drinking blood. And sex.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Harry said. ‘But it’s usually about jealousy.’

  ‘And if it isn’t?’

  ‘Then it might be about what you said.’

  ‘Blood and sex?’

  ‘About winning.’ Harry looked down into the glass. Beer had always made him feel bloated and tired. He used to like the first few sips, but after that it just tasted dull. ‘Talking of winning. Looks like Galatasaray are going to lose, so would you mind turning over to The Sunday Magazine on NRK1 instead?’

  ‘What if I’m a Beşiktaş fan?’

  Harry nodded to the corner of the top shelf in front of the mirror. ‘Then you probably wouldn’t have a Galatasaray banner up there next to that bottle of Jim Beam, Mehmet.’

  The bartender looked at Harry. Then he grinned, shook his head and pressed the remote.

  ‘We can’t say with one hundred per cent certainty that the man who attacked the woman in Hovseter yesterday is the same person who killed Elise Hermansen and Ewa Dolmen,’ Katrine said, and it struck her how quiet the studio was, as if everything around them was listening. ‘But what I can say is that we have physical evidence and witness statements linking a specific individual to the attack. And because this person is already a wanted man, an escaped prisoner who was convicted of sex offences, we’ve decided to go public with his name.’

  ‘And this is the first time you’ve done that, here on The Sunday Magazine?’

  ‘That’s right. His real name is Valentin Gjertsen, but he’s probably using a different name.’

  She saw that the presenter looked a bit disappointed because she’d said the name so quickly, without any build-up. He would clearly have liked to have had time to do a verbal drum roll beforehand.

  ‘And this is an artist’s impression that shows what he looked like three years ago,’ she said. ‘He’s probably had extensive plastic surgery since then, but it does at least give an idea.’ Katrine held up the picture towards the rows of seats containing the audience of some fifty or so people who, according to the director, were there to give the programme more ‘edge’. Katrine waited, saw the red light of the camera in front of her come on, and let the picture sink in with the people watching at home in their living rooms. The presenter was gazing at her with a look of satisfaction.

  ‘We would ask anyone with any information to call our hotline,’ she said. ‘This picture, his name and known aliases, as well as our phone number, can all be found on the Oslo Police District website.’

  ‘And of course it’s urgent,’ the presenter said, addressing the camera. ‘Because there’s a risk that he might strike again as early as this evening.’ He turned to Katrine. ‘At this very moment, even. That’s a possibility, isn’t it?’

  Katrine saw that he wanted her help to implant the image of a vampire drinking fresh blood right now.

  ‘We don’t want to rule anything out,’ she said. That was the phrase Bellman had drummed into her, word for word. He had explained that, unlike ‘we can’t rule anything out’, ‘we don’t want to’ gave the impression that the Oslo Police had a good enough overview of the situation to be able to rule things out, but nonetheless chose not to. ‘But I have received reports suggesting that in the time between the most recent attack and the results of the analysis which has now identified him, Valentin Gjertsen may have left the country. It’s highly plausible that he has a hiding place outside Norway, a place he has been using since his escape from prison four years ago.’

  Bellman hadn’t needed to explain this choice of words to her, she was a fast learner. ‘I have received reports’ prompted thoughts of surveillance, secret informants and thorough police work, and the fact that she was talking about a timescale when there would have been plenty of options for flights, trains and ferries didn’t necessarily mean that she was lying. The claim that it was plausible that he had been out of the country was defensible, as long as it wasn’t directly improbable. It also had the advantage of discreetly nudging responsibility for the fact that Valentin Gjertsen hadn’t been caught in the past four years onto ‘outside Norway’.

  ‘So how do you go about catching a vampirist?’ the presenter said, turning towards the second chair. ‘We’ve brought in Hallstein Smith, a professor of psychology and author of a series of articles about vampirism. Can you answer that for us, Professor Smith?’

  Katrine looked at Smith, who had sat down on the third chair off-camera. He was wearing large glasses and a fancy, colourful jacket that looked as if it was home-made. It was in stark contrast to the sombreness of Katrine’s black leather trousers, fitted black jacket and glossy, slicked-back hair. She knew she looked good, and that there would be comments and invitations on their website when she checked later that evening. But she didn’t care, Bellman hadn’t said anything about how to dress. She just hoped that Lien bitch was watching.

  ‘Er,’ Smith said, smiling dumbly.

  Katrine could see that the presenter was worried that the psychologist had frozen and was about to jump in.

  ‘To start with, I’m not a professor, I’m still working on my PhD. But if I pass, I’ll let you know.’

  Laughter.

  ‘And the articles I’ve written haven’t been published in professional journals, just in dubious magazines dedicated to the more obscure corners of psychology. One of them was called Psycho, after the film. That probably marks the low point of my academic career.’

  More laughter.

  ‘But I am a psychologist,’ he said, turning to the audience. ‘A graduate of Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius, with grades well above average. And I have got the sort of couch where you can lie and look up at the ceiling for fifteen hundred kroner an hour while I pretend to take notes.’

  For a moment it looked like the amused audience and presenter had forgotten the seriousness of the subject. Until Smith brought them back.

  ‘But I don’t know how to catch vampirists.’

  Silence.

  ‘At least not in general terms. Vampirists are rare, and they come up to the surface even more rarely than that. Let me just point out, to start with, that we need to differentiate between two types of vampirist. One is relatively harmless – people who feel attracted by the myth of the immortal, bloodsucking demigod upon which modern vampire stories such as Dracula are based. This type of vampirism has clear erotic undertones and even drew comment from dear old Sigmund Freud himself. They rarely kill anyone. Then there are people who suffer from what we call clinical vampirism, or Renfield’s syndrome, which means that they’re obsessed with drinking blood. Most of the articles on this subject have been published in journals of forensic psychiatry, because they generally deal with extremely violent crimes. But vampirism as a phenomenon has never been acknowledged within established psychology, it gets rejected as sensationalist, an arena for charlatans. In fact it isn’t even mentioned in psychiatric reference books. Those of us researching vampirism have been accused of inventing a type of human being that doesn’t exist. And for the past three days I have wished that they were right. Unfortunately, they are wrong. Vampires don’t exist, but vampirists do.’

  ‘How does someone become a vampirist, herr Smith?’<
br />
  ‘Obviously there’s no simple answer to that, but the classic case would start with an incident in childhood in which the subject sees themselves or someone else bleed heavily. Or with them drinking blood. And finding this exciting. That was the case with vampirist and serial killer John George Haigh, for instance, when he was beaten with a hairbrush as punishment by his fanatically religious mother, and licked up the blood afterwards. Later, in puberty, blood becomes a source of sexual excitement. Then the nascent vampirist starts experimenting with blood, often by so-called auto-vampirism, cutting themselves and drinking their own blood. Then at some point they take the decisive step and drink someone else’s blood. It’s also common that after they have drunk a person’s blood, they kill them. By this point they are full-blown vampirists.’

  ‘And rape, where does that come into it? Elise Hermansen was sexually assaulted, after all.’

  ‘Well, the experience of power and control speaks very strongly to the adult vampirist. John George Haigh was, for instance, very interested in sex, and said he felt forced to drink his victims’ blood. He used to use a glass, by the way. But I’m fairly certain that for our vampirist here in Oslo, the blood is more important than the sexual assault.’

  ‘Detective Inspector Bratt?’

  ‘Er, yes?’

  ‘Do you agree? Does it seem as if blood is more important than sex for this vampirist?’

  ‘I have no comment to make about that.’

  Katrine saw the presenter take a quick decision and turn back to Smith. Presumably he thought there were richer pickings there.

  ‘Herr Smith, do vampirists believe that they’re vampires? In other words, that they’re immortal as long as they avoid sunlight, that they can convert others by biting them, and so on?’

  ‘Not the clinical vampirist with Renfield’s syndrome. It’s actually rather unfortunate that the syndrome is named after Renfield, who of course was Count Dracula’s servant in Bram Stoker’s novel. It should be called Noll’s syndrome, after the psychiatrist who first identified it. On the other hand, Noll didn’t take vampirism seriously either: the article in which he wrote about the syndrome was intended as a parody.’

  ‘Is it out of the question that this individual might not actually be sick, but taking a drug that makes them thirst for human blood, in the same way that MDPV, so-called “bath salts”, made its users attack other people and eat them in Miami and New York in 2012?’

  ‘No. When people who take MDPV become cannibalistic they are extremely psychotic, unable to think rationally or plan, the police can catch them red-handed – pardon the pun – because they make no attempt to hide. Now, the typical vampirist is so driven by a thirst for blood that escape isn’t the first thing they think of, but in this case the planning is so thorough that he or she hasn’t left any evidence behind, if we’re to believe VG.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘I, er, was just trying to be politically correct. Vampirists are almost always men, especially when the attacks are violent, as in this instance. Female vampirists usually make do with auto-vampirism, seek out like-minded souls to swap blood with, get blood from slaughterhouses, or hang around near blood banks. I did have a female patient in Lithuania who actually ate her mother’s canaries while they were still alive …’

  Katrine noticed the first yawn of the evening in the audience, and a solitary laugh that quickly fell silent.

  ‘At first my colleagues and I thought we were dealing with what is known as species dysphoria, which is when a patient believes they were born the wrong species and is actually something else: in this instance, a cat. That was until we realised we were looking at a case of vampirism. Unfortunately Psychology Today didn’t agree, so if you want to read the article about the case you’ll have to go to hallstein.psychologist.com.’

  ‘Detective Inspector Bratt, can we say that this is a serial killer?’

  Katrine thought for a couple of seconds. ‘No.’

  ‘But VG is saying that Harry Hole, who of course isn’t exactly unknown as a specialist in serial murders, has been brought onto the case. Doesn’t that suggest that—?’

  ‘We sometimes consult firemen even when there isn’t a fire.’

  Smith was the only person who laughed. ‘Good answer! Psychiatrists and psychologists would starve to death if we only saw patients when there was actually something wrong with them.’

  That got a lot of laughs, and the presenter smiled gratefully at Smith. Katrine had a feeling that Smith was the more likely out of the pair of them to be asked back.

  ‘Serial killer or not, do you both consider that the vampirist is going to strike again? Or will he wait until the next full moon?’

  ‘I don’t want to speculate about that,’ Katrine said, and caught a glimpse of irritation in the presenter’s eyes. What the hell, did he really expect her to join in with his tabloid parlour games?

  ‘I’m not going to speculate either,’ Hallstein Smith said. ‘I don’t need to, because I know. A paraphile – what we rather imprecisely call a sexually perverted person – who doesn’t get treatment very rarely stops of his own accord. And a vampirist never does. But I think the fact that the most recent attempted murder took place at a full moon is a complete coincidence, and was enjoyed more by you in the media than the vampirist.’

  It didn’t look like the presenter felt put out by Smith’s barb. He asked with a serious frown: ‘Herr Smith, would you say we should be critical of the police for not warning the public earlier that a vampirist was on the loose, like you yourself did in VG?’

  ‘Mm.’ Smith grimaced and looked up at one of the spotlights. ‘That becomes a question about what one ought to have known, doesn’t it? Like I said, vampirism is tucked away in one of the less familiar corners of psychology, rarely troubled by the light. So, no. I’d say it was unfortunate, but they shouldn’t be criticised for it.’

  ‘But now the police do know. So what should they do?’

  ‘Find out more about the subject.’

  ‘And finally: how many vampirists have you met?’

  Smith puffed his cheeks out and exhaled. ‘Genuine ones?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘How do you personally react to blood?’

  ‘It makes me feel queasy.’

  ‘Yet you still research and write about it.’

  Smith smiled wryly. ‘Perhaps that’s why. We’re all a bit crazy.’

  ‘Does that apply to you as well, Detective Inspector Bratt?’

  Katrine started. For a moment she’d forgotten she wasn’t just watching but was actually on television.

  ‘Er, sorry?’

  ‘A bit crazy?’

  Katrine searched for an answer. Something quick-witted and genial, like Harry had advised. She knew she’d think of something when she got into bed later that night. Which couldn’t come soon enough, seeing as she could feel her tiredness seeping through now that the adrenalin rush of being on television was starting to fade. ‘I …’ she began, then gave up and plumped for a ‘Well, who knows?’

  ‘Crazy enough that you could envisage meeting a vampirist? Not a murderer, as in this tragic case, but one who might just bite you a little bit?’

  Katrine suspected that was a joke, possibly one alluding to her vaguely S&M-inspired outfit.

  ‘A little bit?’ she repeated, and raised one black, made-up eyebrow. ‘Yes, why not?’

  And without actually trying, she too was rewarded with laughter this time.

  ‘Good luck with catching him, Detective Inspector Bratt. The last word to you, herr Smith. You didn’t answer the question about how to find vampirists. Any advice for Detective Inspector Bratt here?’

  ‘Vampirism is such an extreme paraphilia that it often occurs in conjunction with other psychiatric diagnoses. So I would encourage all psychologists and psychiatrists to help the police by going through their lists to see if they have patients who demonstrate behaviour that might fit the criteria for clinical vam
pirism. I think we can agree that a case like this has to take precedence over our oath of confidentiality.’

  ‘And with that, this edition of The Sunday Magazine …’

  The television screen behind the counter went dark.

  ‘Nasty stuff,’ Mehmet said. ‘But your colleague looked good.’

  ‘Hm. Is it always this empty here?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Mehmet looked around the bar. Cleared his throat. ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘Do you? You haven’t touched your beer. Look at it, going flat there.’

  ‘Good,’ the policeman said.

  ‘I could give you something with a bit more life in it.’ Mehmet nodded towards the Galatasaray banner.

  Katrine was hurrying along one of the empty, labyrinthine corridors in Television Centre when she heard heavy footsteps and breathing behind her. She glanced back without stopping. It was Hallstein Smith. Katrine noted a running style that was as unorthodox as his research, unless he was just unusually knock-kneed.

  ‘Bratt,’ Smith called.

  Katrine stopped and waited.

  ‘I’d like to start by apologising,’ Smith said as he caught up with her, gasping for breath.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For talking far too much. I get a bit high from the attention, my wife’s always telling me. But much more importantly, that picture …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I couldn’t say anything in there, but I think I might have had him as a patient.’

  ‘Valentin Gjertsen?’

  ‘I’m not sure, it must be at least two years ago, and it was only a couple of hours of therapy at the office I used to rent in the city. There’s not really that much of a similarity, but I thought of this particular patient when you mentioned plastic surgery. Because, if I remember rightly, he had a scar left by stitches under his chin.’

  ‘Was he a vampirist?’

  ‘What do I know? He didn’t mention it, and if he had I’d have included him in my research.’

  ‘Maybe he came to see you because he was curious, if he knew that you were conducting research into his … what was that word?’