The Thirst: Harry Hole 11 Read online

  Contents

  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

  About the Book

  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.

  About the Author

  Jo Nesbo played 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.

  Also by Jo Nesbo

  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

  Jo Nesbo

  THE THIRST

  Translated from the Norwegian

  by Neil Smith

  PROLOGUE

  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.

  PART ONE

  1

  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.

  ‘Well, I haven’t been on that many Tinder dates,’ Geir said, putting his glass of white wine back down on the bar. ‘But I’ve worked out that there’s a lot of strange people out there.’

  ‘Have you?’ the woman said, stifling a yawn. She had short fair hair. Slim. Mid-thirties, Mehmet thought. Quick, slightly stressed movements. Tired eyes. Works too hard and goes to the gym in the hope that it will give her the advantage she’s never had. Mehmet watched Geir raise his glass with three fingers round the stem, the same way as the woman. On his countless Tinder hook-ups he had always ordered the same thing as his dates, regardless of whether it was whiskey or green tea. Keen to signal that they were a match on that point too.

  Geir coughed. Six minutes had passed since she had walked into the bar, and Mehmet knew that this was when he would make his move.

  ‘You’re more beautiful than your profile picture, Elise,’ Geir said.

  ‘So you said, but thanks again.’

  Mehmet polished a glass and pretended not to listen.

  ‘So tell me, Elise, what do you want from life?’

  She gave a rather resigned little smile. ‘A man who doesn’t just judge by appearances.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more, Elise, it’s what’s inside that counts.’

  ‘That was a joke. I look better in my profile picture, and, to be honest, so do you, Geir.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ Geir said, and stared down into his wine glass, slightly deflated. ‘I suppose most people pick a flattering picture. So you’re looking for a man. What sort of man?’

  ‘One who’d like to stay at home with three kids.’ She glanced at the time.

  ‘Ha ha.’ Sweat hadn’t just broken out on Geir’s forehead, but all over his large, close-shaven head. And soon rings of sweat would appear under the arms of his black slim-fit shirt, an odd choice given that Geir was neither slim nor fit. He toyed with his glass. ‘That’s exactly my kind of humour, Elise. A dog is family enough for me for the time being. Do you like animals?’

  Tanrim, Mehmet thought. Why doesn’t he just give up?

  ‘If I meet the right person, I can feel it, here … and here.’ He grinned, lowered his voice and pointed towards his crotch. ‘But obviously you have to find out if that’s right. What do you say, Elise?’

  Mehmet shuddered. Geir had gone all-in, and his self-esteem was about to take another beating.

  The woman pushed her wine glass aside, leaned forward slightly, and Mehmet had to strain to hear. ‘Can you promise me something, Geir?’

  ‘Of course.’ His voice and the look in his eyes were as eager as a dog’s.

  ‘That when I walk out of here in a moment, you’ll never try to contact me again?’

  Mehmet had to admire Geir for managing to summon up a smile. ‘Of course.’

  The woman leaned back again. ‘It’s not that you seem like a stalker, Geir, but I’ve had a couple of bad experiences. One guy started following me. He threatened the people I was with as well. I hope you can understand my being a bit cautious.’

  ‘I understand.’ Geir raised his glass and emptied it. ‘Like I said, there’s a lot of strange people out there. But don’t worry, you’re pretty safe. Statistically speaking, the chances of getting murdered are four times greater for a man than a woman.’

  ‘Thanks for the wine, Geir.’

  ‘If one of the three of us –’

  Mehmet hurried to look away when Geir pointed to him.

  ‘– was going to get murdered tonight, the likelihood of it being you is one in eight. No, hang on, you have to divide that by …’

  She stood up. ‘I hope you figure it out. Have a good life.’

  Geir stared at her wine glass for a while after she left, nodded in time to ‘Fix You’, as if to convince Mehmet and anyone else watching that he had already shaken the experience off, she had been nothing more than a three-minute-long pop song, and just as forgettable. Then he stood up and left. Mehmet looked round. The cowboy boots and the guy who had been dragging out his beer were both gone too. He was alone. And the oxygen was back. He used his mobile phone to change the playlist. To his playlist. Bad Company. Given that the group contained members of Free, Mott the Hoople and King Crimson, there was no way it was ever going to be bad. And with Paul Rodgers on vocals, there was no way it could fail. Mehmet turned the volume up until the glasses behind the bar started to rattle against each other.

  Elise walked down Thorvald Meyers gate, past plain four-storey buildings that had once housed the working classes in a poor part of a poor city, but where one square metre now cost as much as in London or Stockholm. September in Oslo. The darkness was back at last, and the drawn-out, annoyingly light summer nights were long gone, with all the hysterical, cheerful, stupid self-expression of summer. In September Oslo reverted to its true self: melancholic, reserved, efficient. A solid facade, but not without its dark corners and secrets. Much like her, apparently. She quickened her pace; there was rain in the air, mist, the spray when God sneezed, as one of her dates had put it in an attempt to be poetic. She was going to give up Tinder. Tomorrow. Enough was enough. Enough randy men whose way of looking at her made her feel like a whore when she met them in bars. Enough crazy psychopaths and stalkers who stuck like mud, sucking time, energy and security from her. Enough pathetic losers who made her feel like she was one of them.

  They said Internet dating was the cool way to meet new people, that it was nothing to be ashamed of any more, that everyone was doing it. But that wasn’t true. People met each other at work, in classrooms, through friends, at the gym, in cafes, on planes, buses, trains. They met each other the way they were supposed to meet each other, when they were relaxed, no pressure, and afterwards they could cling to the romantic illusion of innocence, purity and quirks of fate. She wanted that illusion. She was going to delete her profile. She’d told herself that before, but this time it was definitely going to happen, that very night.

  She crossed Sofienberggata and fished out the key to unlock the gate next to the greengrocer’s. She pushed the gate open and stepped into the darkness of the archway. And stopped dead.

  There were two of them.

  It took a moment or two for her eyes to get used to the darkness, and for her to see what they were holding in their hands. Both men had undone their trousers and had their cocks out.

  She jerked back. Didn’t look round, just prayed that there was no one standing behind her.

  ‘Fucksorry.’ The combination of oath and apology was uttered by a young voice. Nineteen, twenty, Elise guessed. Not sober.

  ‘Duh,’ the other one said, ‘you’re pissing all over my shoes!’

  ‘I was startled!’

  Elise pulled her coat more tightly around her and walked past the young men, who had turned back to face the wall again. ‘This isn’t a public toilet,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry, we were desperate. It won’t happen again.’

  Geir h
urried over Schleppegrells gate. Thinking hard. It was wrong that two men and one woman gave the woman a one in eight chance of being murdered, the calculation was much more complicated than that. Everything was always much more complicated.

  He had just passed Romsdalsgata when something made him turn round. There was a man walking fifty metres behind him. He wasn’t sure, but wasn’t it the same guy who had been standing on the other side of the street looking at a window display when Geir emerged from the Jealousy Bar? Geir sped up, heading east, towards Dælenenga and the chocolate factory; there was no one out on the streets here, just a bus which was evidently running ahead of schedule and was waiting at a bus stop. Geir glanced back. The man was still there, still the same distance. Geir was frightened of dark-skinned people, always had been, but he couldn’t see this guy properly. They were on their way out of the white, gentrified neighbourhood, heading towards an area with far more social housing and immigrants. Geir could see the door of his own apartment block one hundred metres away. But when he looked back he saw that the guy had started running, and the thought that he had a Somali, thoroughly traumatised from Mogadishu, on his heels made him break into a run. Geir hadn’t run for years, and each time his heels hit the tarmac a jolt ran through his brain and jogged his sight. He reached the door, got the key in the lock at the first attempt, threw himself inside and slammed the heavy wooden door behind him. He leaned against the damp wood and stared out through the glass in the top part of the door. He couldn’t see anyone out in the street. Perhaps it wasn’t a Somali. Geir couldn’t help laughing. It was ridiculous how jumpy you got just because you’d been talking about murder. And what had Elise said about that stalker?

  Geir was still out of breath when he unlocked the door to his flat. He got a beer from the fridge, noticed that the kitchen window facing the street was open, and closed it. Then he went into the study and switched the lamp on.

  He pressed one of the keys of the PC in front of him, and the twenty-inch screen lit up.