The Thirst: Harry Hole 11

by Jo Nesbo

  The blackness that awaited the woman lying in the room whose number he had found out.

  The blackness that awaited the policeman with that look in his eyes when he found out what had happened.

  The blackness that awaits us all.

  Harry looked at the bottles on the shelves in front of the mirror, and the way the golden liquid inside them glowed warmly in the reflected light. Rakel was asleep. She was asleep now. Forty-five per cent. Her chance of survival and the alcohol content of those bottles were roughly the same. Sleep. He could be there with her. He looked away. At Mehmet’s mouth instead, the lips that were forming incomprehensible words. Harry had read somewhere that Turkish grammar was regarded as the third most difficult in the world. The phone he was holding belonged to Harry.

  ‘Sağ olun,’ Mehmet said, and handed the phone back to Harry. ‘He says he saw the cin face on the chest of a man at a Turkish bathhouse in Sagene, the Cagaloglu Hamam. He says he saw him there a few times, and that the last time was probably less than a year ago, just before he went back to Turkey. He says the man usually wore his bathrobe, even in the sauna. The only time he saw him without it was inside the hararet.’

  ‘Hara-what?’

  ‘The steam room. The door opened, clearing the steam for a second or two, and that’s when he caught a glimpse of him. He said you don’t forget a tattoo like that, that it was like seeing seytan himself trying to break free.’

  ‘And you asked him about any distinguishing features?’

  ‘Yes. He didn’t notice the scars under his chin that you mentioned, or anything else come to that.’

  Harry nodded thoughtfully while Mehmet went to pour them more coffee.

  ‘Stake out the bathhouse?’ Wyller asked from the bar stool next to Harry’s.

  Harry shook his head. ‘We have no idea when or if he’s going to show up, and if he does, we don’t even know what Valentin looks like these days. And he’s far too smart not to keep his tattoo covered.’

  Mehmet came back and put their cups down on the counter in front of them.

  ‘Thanks for your help, Mehmet,’ Harry said. ‘It would probably have taken us at least a day to get hold of an authorised Turkish interpreter.’

  Mehmet shrugged. ‘I feel I ought to help. After all, this was where Elise was before she got murdered.’

  ‘Hm.’ Harry looked down into his cup. ‘Anders?’

  ‘Yes?’ Anders Wyller seemed pleased, possibly because this was the first time he’d heard Harry use his first name.

  ‘Can you go and get the car, and drive up to the door?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s only—’

  ‘And I’ll meet you outside.’

  Once Wyller had left Harry took a sip of coffee. ‘This is none of my business, but are you in trouble, Mehmet?’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘You have no criminal record, I checked. But the guy who was here and then vanished the moment he saw us arrive does. And even if he didn’t stop to say hello, Danial Banks and I are old acquaintances. Has he got his claws into you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that you’ve just opened a bar, and your tax history shows that you aren’t sitting on a fortune. And Banks specialises in lending money to people like you.’

  ‘People like me?’

  ‘People the banks won’t touch. What he does is illegal, you know that? Usury, paragraph 295 of the Penal Code. You could report it, then you’d be free of him. Let me help you.’

  Mehmet looked at the blue-eyed policeman. Then he nodded. ‘You’re right, Harry …’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘… it’s none of your business. Sounds like your colleague’s waiting for you.’

  He shut the door of the hospital room behind him. The blinds were down, letting only a little light filter into the room. He put the bouquet of flowers on the nightstand at the top end of the bed. He looked down at the sleeping woman. She seemed so alone, lying there like that. He closed the curtains. Sat down on the chair beside the bed, took a syringe from his jacket pocket and pulled the cap off the needle. Took hold of her arm. Gazed at the skin. Real skin. He loved real skin. He felt like kissing it, but knew he had to restrain himself. The plan. Stick to the plan. Then he stuck the point of the needle into the woman’s arm. Felt it slip through the skin without any resistance.

  ‘There, now,’ he whispered. ‘Now I’m going to take you from him. You’re mine now. All mine.’

  He pushed the plunger and watched as the dark contents were forced out, injected into the woman. Filling her with blackness. And sleep.

  ‘Police HQ?’ Wyller said.

  Harry looked at his watch. Two o’clock. He had arranged to meet Oleg at the hospital in an hour.

  ‘Ullevål Hospital,’ he said.

  ‘Are you unwell?’

  ‘No.’

  Wyller waited, then when nothing more was forthcoming, he put the car into first gear and pulled away.

  Harry looked out through the window while he wondered why he hadn’t told anyone. He’d have to tell Katrine, for practical reasons. Anyone apart from her? No. Why should he?

  ‘I downloaded Father John Misty yesterday,’ Wyller said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Because you recommended it.’

  ‘Did I? Must be good, then.’

  Nothing more was said until they were stuck in traffic, slowly creeping up Ullevålsveien past Sankt Olav Cathedral and Nordal Bruns gate.

  ‘Stop at that bus stop,’ Harry said. ‘I can see someone I know.’

  Wyller braked and pulled in to the right, next to a shelter where some teenagers were waiting to catch the bus after school. Oslo Cathedral School, yes, that was the one she went to. She was standing slightly apart from the noisy crowd, with her hair hanging in front of her face. Without having any real idea what he was going to say, Harry lowered the window.

  ‘Aurora!’

  A twitch ran through the girl’s long-legged frame, and she took off like a nervous antelope.

  ‘Do you always have that effect on young girls?’ Wyller asked, as Harry told him to drive on.

  She’s running in the opposite direction to the car, Harry thought, watching her in the wing mirror. She didn’t even have to think. Because she’d thought this through in advance: that if you want to run from someone in a car, you run away from the direction the car is facing. But what that meant, he didn’t know. Some sort of teenage angst, perhaps. Or a phase, as Ståle had called it.

  The traffic grew lighter further along Ullevålsveien.

  ‘I’ll wait in the car,’ Anders said, after he pulled up in front of the entrance to Block 3 of the hospital.

  ‘It might take a while,’ Harry said. ‘You wouldn’t rather sit in the waiting room?’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘Bad memories of hospitals.’

  ‘Mm. Your mother?’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘Had to be someone you were very close to. I lost my own mother in a hospital when I was a boy.’

  ‘Was that the doctors’ fault as well?’

  ‘No, she couldn’t be saved. So I shouldered the guilt myself.’

  Wyller nodded wryly. ‘With my mother it was a self-appointed god in a white coat. That’s why I won’t set foot in there.’

  On his way in Harry noticed a man leaving, holding a bunch of flowers in front of his face, noticed because you expect to see people with flowers going into a hospital, not coming out. Oleg was sitting in the waiting area. They embraced as patients and visitors around them continued their subdued conversations and disengaged browsing through old magazines. Oleg was only a centimetre or so shorter than Harry. And Harry occasionally forgot that the lad had finally stopped growing now, and that he could have actually cashed in on their bet.

  ‘Have they said anything else?’ Oleg said. ‘About what it is, and whether it’s dangerous?’

  ‘No,’ Harry said. ‘But like I said, you shouldn’t worry too m
uch, they know what they’re doing. She’s been put in an induced coma, in a controlled way. OK?’

  Oleg opened his mouth. Closed it again and nodded. And Harry saw it. That Oleg realised Harry was protecting him from the truth. And that he let him do it.

  A nurse came over and told them they could go in and see her.

  Harry went in first.

  The blinds were down.

  He went over to the bed. Looked down at the pale face. She looked like she was far away.

  Far too far away.

  ‘Is … is she breathing?’

  Oleg. He was standing right behind Harry, the way he used to when he was little and they had to walk past one of Holmenkollen’s many large dogs.

  ‘Yes,’ Harry said, nodding towards the flashing machines.

  They sat down on either side of the bed. And glanced at the twitching green line on the screen when they didn’t think the other would notice.

  Katrine looked out across the forest of hands.

  The press conference had lasted barely fifteen minutes, and the impatience in the Parole Hall was already tangible. She wondered what had got them most worked up. The fact that there was nothing new on the police hunt for Valentin Gjertsen. Or that there was nothing new on Valentin Gjertsen’s hunt for fresh victims. It had been forty-six hours since the last attack.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s going to be the same answers to the same questions,’ she said. ‘So if there aren’t any new—’

  ‘What’s your reaction to the fact that you’re now working on three murders rather than two?’

  The question had been called out by a journalist at the back of the room.

  Katrine saw unease spread through the room like ripples on water. She glanced at Bjørn Holm who was sitting in the front row, but he just shrugged in response. She leaned into the microphones.

  ‘It’s possible that there is information that hasn’t reached me yet, so I’ll have to get back to you about that.’

  Another voice: ‘The hospital has just released a statement. Penelope Rasch is dead.’

  Katrine hoped her face didn’t betray the confusion she felt. Penelope Rasch’s survival hadn’t been in any doubt.

  ‘We’ll stop there and reconvene when we know more.’ Katrine gathered her papers and hurried away from the podium and out through the side door. ‘When we know more than you,’ she muttered to herself, and swore.

  She marched down the corridor. What the hell had happened? Had something gone wrong with her treatment? She hoped so. Hoped there was a medical explanation, unforeseen complications, a sudden attack of something, even a mistake on the hospital’s part. No, it wasn’t possible, they’d placed Penelope in a secret room that only those closest to her knew the number of.

  Bjørn came running up behind her. ‘I’ve just spoken to Ullevål. They say it was an unfamiliar poison, but which they wouldn’t have been able to do anything about anyway.’

  ‘Poison? From the bite, or did it happen in the hospital?’

  ‘Unclear – they say they’ll know more tomorrow.’

  Bloody chaos. Katrine hated chaos. And where was Harry? Fuck, fuck.

  ‘Take care not to stab those heels through the floor,’ Bjørn said quietly.

  Harry had told Oleg that the doctors didn’t know. About what was going to happen. About practical things that needed to be sorted out, even if there weren’t many of those. Apart from that, silence hung heavy between them.

  Harry looked at the time. Seven o’clock.

  ‘You should go home,’ he said. ‘Grab something to eat and get some sleep. You’ve got college tomorrow.’

  ‘Only if I know you’re going to be here,’ Oleg said. ‘We can’t let her be alone.’

  ‘I’m going to be here until I get thrown out, which will be soon.’

  ‘But you’ll stay until then? You’re not going to go to work?’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Yes. You’re staying here now, you’re not going on with … that case?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I know how you get when you’re working on a murder investigation.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I remember some of it. And Mum’s told me.’

  Harry sighed. ‘I’m staying here now. I promise. The world will go on without me, but …’ He fell silent, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging in the air between them: … not without her.

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  Oleg shrugged. ‘I’m scared. And it hurts.’

  ‘I know. Go now, and come back tomorrow after college. I’ll be here first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is it going to be better tomorrow?’

  Harry looked at him. The brown-eyed, black-haired boy didn’t have one drop of Harry’s blood in him, but it was still like looking in a mirror. ‘What do you think?’

  Oleg shook his head, and Harry could see he was fighting back tears.

  ‘Right,’ Harry said. ‘I sat here the way you are now with my mother when she was ill. Hour after hour, day in, day out. I was only a little boy, and it ate me up from inside.’

  Oleg wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffed. ‘Do you wish you hadn’t done it?’

  Harry shook his head. ‘That’s the weird thing. We couldn’t talk much, she was too ill. She just lay there with a weak smile, and faded away a little bit at a time, like the colour from a photograph left out in the sun. It’s simultaneously the worst and best memory from my childhood. Can you understand that?’

  Oleg nodded slowly. ‘I think so.’

  They hugged each other goodbye.

  ‘Dad …’ Oleg whispered, and Harry felt a warm tear against his neck.

  But he himself couldn’t cry. Didn’t want to cry. Forty-five per cent, forty-five wonderful percentage points.

  ‘I’m here, my boy,’ Harry said. In a steady voice. With a numb heart. He felt strong. He could manage this.

  19

  MONDAY EVENING

  MONA DAA HAD put her trainers on, but her footsteps still echoed between the containers. She had parked her little electric car by the gate and walked straight into the dark, empty container terminal, which was really a cemetery for defunct harbour equipment. The rows of containers were tombstones for dead and forgotten shipments, to recipients who had gone bankrupt or wouldn’t acknowledge the consignment, from senders who no longer existed and couldn’t accept returns. Now the goods were stuck in eternal transit here at Ormøya, in marked contrast to the redevelopment and gentrification of Bjørvika next to it. There, costly, luxurious buildings were rising up, one after the other, with the icy slopes of the Opera House as the jewel in the crown. Mona was convinced it would end up as a monument to the oil era, a Taj Mahal of social democracy.

  Mona used the torch she had brought with her to find the way, with the help of the numbers and letters painted on the tarmac. She was wearing black leggings and a black tracksuit top. In one pocket she had pepper spray and a padlock, in the other the pistol, a 9mm Walther she had borrowed without permission from her father, who had served one year in the sanitation department of the military after his medical studies and never returned his gun.

  And under the tracksuit top, beneath the transmitter belt, her heart was pounding faster and faster.

  H23 was located between two rows of containers stacked three high.

  And sure enough, there was a cage.

  Its size suggested it had been used to transport something big. An elephant, maybe a giraffe or a hippo. The whole of one end of the cage could be swung open, but it was locked with a huge padlock that was brown with rust. In the middle of one of the long sides, though, was a small, unlocked door that Mona assumed was used by the people feeding the animals and cleaning the cage.

  The hinges shrieked as she grabbed hold of the bars and pulled the door open. She looked around one last time. Presumably he was already here, hidden in the sh
adows or behind one of the containers, checking that she was alone, as agreed.

  But there was no longer time for doubt and hesitation. She did the same thing she did when she was about to lift weights in competition, told herself the decision had been taken, that it was simple: the time for thinking was behind her, and action was all that remained. She got inside, took the padlock she had brought with her out of her pocket, and fastened it round the edge of the door and one of the bars. She locked it and put the key in her pocket.

  The cage smelt of urine, but she couldn’t tell if it was animal or human. She went and stood in the middle of the cage.

  He could approach from right or left, towards one of the ends. She looked up. He could climb onto the stack of containers and talk to her from above. She switched on the recording function of her phone and put it down on the stinking iron floor. Then she pulled the left sleeve of her jacket up and saw that the time was 19.59. She did the same with the right sleeve. The pulse meter said 128.

  ‘Hi, Katrine, it’s me.’

  ‘Good. I’ve been trying to get hold of you – did you get my messages? Where are you?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘Penelope Rasch is dead.’

  ‘Complications. I saw it on VG’s website.’

  ‘And?’