The Blind Goddess

by Anne Holt

  She constantly endeavoured to keep her caseload within a maximum of ten under investigation at any one time, a goal she all too frequently failed to achieve. Green files of differing thicknesses were heaped up in dangerously high and mutually threatening stacks on one side of her desk. Even in the extremely busy period that was now behind her, she had made time to go through them at intervals and try to attach the little A5 sheet bearing the words “Recommend no further action” to the greatest possible number of cases. With feelings of inadequacy and an absolute certainty of the suspect’s guilt, she would go, weighed down with guilt herself, to get the necessary stamp from a police prosecution attorney, code 058, “Not proceeded with for lack of evidence.” So another criminal went free, she had one less case to spend her time on, and she just hoped that she had mostly got her priorities right. The burden was made worse by the fact that she never encountered any resistance from the attorneys. They relied on her and only skimmed through the documents out of a sense of duty before invariably following her recommendations. Hanne knew that the stacks of green files were nightmares for them, too.

  It was Sunday, and she had twenty-one files in front of her. She had sorted them according to the severity of the potential penalty. She felt paralysed for a while by an inability to act, but eventually managed to get herself going. None of the cases was a prime candidate for the archives. There were eleven Article 228/229s, assault and grievous bodily harm. Perhaps she should go for a fine on some of them, a legitimate and practical way of getting rid of them.

  Three hours later she had proposed fines in seven cases, all involving greater or lesser degrees of violence perpetrated by drunken restaurant customers and churlish doormen. With a certain amount of goodwill two cases could be regarded as adequately investigated, even if more witness statements would undoubtedly have been valuable. Hoping the courts would be able to recognise a criminal when they saw one, she made recommendations to prosecute.

  Sunday was a good day for working. No phones, no meetings, and only a few other colleagues to exchange smug words with in mutual admiration for being at work on their free day, without pay or recognition—only the knowledge that Monday would be that much easier.

  She heard voices at the rear of the building, and glanced out of the window. A considerable number of press photographers were clustered outside, and she remembered that the minister of justice was coming that day. “Why on a Sunday?” their superintendent had asked grumpily when the notice of the proposed visit arrived from the commissioner’s office. The only response he got was that it was not his concern. Hanne had a shrewd suspicion that the choice of day was not unrelated to the amount of space available in Monday newspapers, since all the major stories would have been hogged by the ubiquitous Sundays. The Monday papers had been getting thinner, and it was that much easier to get into print. The minister’s visit was the result of repeated headlines about the high incidence of unsolved crimes, and he was also going to take the opportunity to discuss with the commissioner the alarming increase in street violence, what the media were fond of calling “unprovoked attacks”—not an accurate description if one had access to the relevant files, which journalists usually did not. So they didn’t realise that the change was not the absence of provocation, but that it was now countered by knives and fists rather than by verbal abuse as in the old days.

  Now she had got it down to twelve unsolved cases. She was closer to her target, and felt in a better humour. She selected the thickest of the files.

  They weren’t any nearer to finding an answer as to why Ludvig Sandersen had had to be despatched so brutally to what some maintained was a better place. Hanne hoped for his sake that she was the one who was wrong, and that he was now attired in white and seated on a cloud, indulging himself to the fullest on the greyish-white powder that had made his life on earth such a misery.

  They had still not found any link between this case and Olsen’s murder. She had chewed over the idea with Håkon Sand on Friday, and she felt they had enough now to make the connection official. But he had opposed the suggestion, and opted to wait a bit longer. However, she thought the time had come to start examining the two cases together. She pushed the pile of papers away, took her feet off the desk, and let her boots thud to the floor as she rummaged in her bag for her keys, which also fitted the doors of all the other investigators’ offices. The file was with Heidi Rørvik, a few rooms further down the corridor.

  There was no sign of anyone in the corridor as she came out. Everything was quiet, as it should be on a Sunday afternoon. But just as she was about to unlock the door of Rørvik’s office, she felt rather than heard footsteps behind her. She swung round, a split second too late. The blow, with an object she couldn’t identify, struck her savagely on the temple. Her head exploded in a violent flash of light and she knew she was already bleeding profusely even before she hit the ground. She had no strength in her muscles, so there was nothing she could do to break her fall. The left side of her forehead smashed to the floor, but she wasn’t aware of it. She had already lost consciousness, momentarily experiencing only an intense feeling of life ebbing away, before she sank into a darkness that obliterated the pain. A gash like a broad, scornful sneer opened up on her brow.

  She was roused by a desperate urge to vomit. She was lying on her stomach with her head twisted at an excruciating angle; the need was so overpowering that it fleetingly outweighed the sensation that her head was going to burst open. She hurt all over. Cautiously exploring with her fingers she realised with a dull sense of surprise that two big bleeding cuts, one on her forehead and the other above her right ear, were no more painful than the deep sharp stab emanating from somewhere inside, deep in the centre of her skull. She lay there fighting against the nausea for several minutes, but finally had to give in. As if by instinct, she found the strength and presence of mind to drag herself up onto her hands and knees, like a baby watching TV, so that she could vomit without swallowing anything. It helped.

  She wiped her forehead, but couldn’t prevent the blood running into one eye and obscuring her vision. She made an effort to stand up, but the blue corridor spun round and round, and she had to perform the task in stages. Finally on her feet again, she sagged against the wall, and only then did she start trying to understand what had happened. She couldn’t remember a thing. She was seized by panic. She knew she must be at police headquarters, but had no idea why she was there. Where were the others? She staggered along to her own office and dialled her home number, smearing the telephone with blood in the process. She had to make numerous attempts; it was difficult to find the right buttons. The light from the window was unbearable, like being hit with a hammer behind the eyes.

  “Cecilie, come and fetch me. I’m ill.”

  She dropped the receiver, and collapsed back into unconsciousness.

  The darkness was comforting. Her head still ached, but where before there had been bleeding wounds, she could feel big soft bandages. The cuts weren’t really painful, and she presumed she must have been given a local anaesthetic. The bed was a metal one, and after touching the bandages she discovered that a saline drip had been inserted into her hand. Hanne was in hospital, and Cecilie was sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “It must hurt a lot,” her partner said, smiling as she took hold of the hand that wasn’t attached to the tube.

  “I was very frightened when I found you,” she continued. “But everything’s all right. I’ve seen your X-rays myself, and there’s no fracture. You’ve had a severe concussion. The wounds looked rather ugly, but they’ve been stitched and they’ll soon heal up.”

  Hanne began to cry.

  “I don’t remember anything, Cecilie,” she whispered.

  “Slight amnesia, that’s all. Loss of memory,” Cecilie added with a smile. “It’s quite normal. Don’t worry, you just lie here for two or three days, then you can have a lovely couple of weeks off sick. I’ll look after you.”

  Hanne was still crying. Cecilie be
nt over her, carefully, very carefully, and rested her face against the bandaged head so that her mouth was level with Hanne’s ear.

  “That scar on your forehead will be terribly sexy,” she murmured. “Terribly, terribly sexy.”

  MONDAY 12 OCTOBER

  It’s not bloody good enough!”

  Håkon Sand only swore when he was really furious.

  “If we can’t damned well be safe even in the office! And on a flaming Sunday as well!”

  He spat out the words, accusations of incompetence, without knowing who to blame. He stood in the middle of the room and stamped his foot in time with his own outbursts.

  “What the hell’s the point of locked doors and security precautions when anyone can attack us whenever they like!”

  The superintendent in charge of A 2.11, a stoical man in his fifties, listened to his ranting apparently unmoved. He said nothing until Håkon had calmed down.

  “It’s impossible to try and pin this on a particular individual. We’re not a fortress, nor do we want to be. In a building with a staff of almost two thousand, anyone could have followed an employee through the staff entrance at the rear. It would simply be a matter of timing. You could just hide behind a tree near the church and walk in immediately after somebody who had a pass. You’ve probably held the door open yourself for someone following you, whether you’ve known them or not.”

  Håkon didn’t reply, which the superintendent correctly took as an admission.

  “And in principle anyone could easily hide in the building while it’s open, in the toilets or whatever. It’s easy to get back out again. Rather than trying to discover how, we should be asking ourselves why.”

  “It’s bloody obvious why,” Håkon raged. “This case, for God’s sake. This case! The file’s disappeared from Hanne’s office. Not a disaster in itself, because we’ve got several copies, but someone’s definitely trying to find out how much we know.”

  He cut himself short and looked at the clock. His outburst of rage was abating.

  “I must dash. I’ve got to see the commissioner at nine. Do me a favour: ring the hospital and ask whether Hanne can receive visitors. Leave a note in my room as soon as you know.”

  Lady Justitia was magnificent. She stood some thirty centimetres high on the huge desk, the oxidised bronze redolent of considerable age. The blindfold round the eyes was almost entirely green, the sword in her right hand a reddish colour. But the flat bases of the two weighing pans were completely shiny. Håkon could see they were real scales, swaying slightly in the current of air created by his entry into the room. He couldn’t restrain himself from touching the statue.

  “Gorgeous, isn’t she?”

  The uniformed woman behind the huge desk was stating a fact rather than asking a question.

  “Had it from my father as a birthday present last week. It stood in his office all his working life. I’ve admired it ever since I was a little girl. It was bought in the USA, in the late 1890s. By my great-grandfather. It may be valuable. Very attractive anyway.”

  She was Oslo’s first female police commissioner. Her predecessor in the post, a fine upstanding man from Bergen, had been controversial and perpetually at odds with his staff. But he’d had an integrity and energy that had been lacking in the history of the force when he’d taken on the job seven years previously. He’d bequeathed a much better organisation than the one he’d inherited, but it had cost him dearly. Both he and his family were relieved when he retired, a little early, but with his honour intact.

  The forty-five-year-old woman who now sat in the commissioner’s chair was of a different calibre altogether. Håkon couldn’t bear her. She was an arty-farty northerner from Trøndelag, more devious than anyone he’d ever met. She’d been manoeuvering herself towards the top position throughout her police career: keeping in with all the right people, going to all the right parties, and sipping drinks with the right colleagues at prosecution service meetings. Her husband worked in the Ministry of Justice. That had done her no harm either.

  But she was undoubtedly very capable. If the old commissioner hadn’t elected to retire as soon as he could, she would have taken up an intermediate post, that of public prosecutor. Håkon didn’t know which would have been worse.

  He made his report as factually as he could, but not in every detail. After a few seconds’ thought he decided it would be wrong not to tell his most senior boss about the unofficial connection they’d made between the two murders. But he kept it brief. To his annoyance she grasped everything immediately, put a few pertinent questions, nodded at his conclusions, and finally gave her approval to the work he’d done so far. She asked to be kept fully informed, preferably in writing. Then she added:

  “Don’t speculate too much, Håkon. Get one murder out of the way at a time. The Sandersen case is in the bag. The technical evidence will support a conviction. Don’t look for phantoms where there aren’t any. You can regard that as an order.”

  “Strictly speaking it’s really the public prosecutor who’s my boss on investigatory matters,” he parried.

  In response, he was simply dismissed. As he was about to get up, he asked:

  “Why does she have a blindfold over her eyes?”

  He inclined his head towards the Goddess of Justice standing on her empty desk, attended only by two telephones.

  “She mustn’t let herself be influenced by either side. She has to exercise blind justice, impartially,” the commissioner explained.

  “But it’s difficult to see when you’re blindfolded,” said Håkon, without eliciting a reply. The king, however, hanging with his wife in a gold frame behind the commissioner’s shoulder, seemed to agree with him. Håkon chose to interpret His Majesty’s inscrutable smile as support for his own observations, and got up and left the sixth-floor office. He felt even more bad-tempered than when he’d arrived.

  Hanne was glad to see him. Even with the bandage above her eye and her hair shorn on one side, he couldn’t help noticing how beautiful she was. Her pallor accentuated her large eyes, and for the first time since he’d learnt about the attack he recognised how worried he’d been. He didn’t dare give her a hug. Perhaps it was the bandages that frightened him off, but on thinking about it he realised that it wouldn’t have seemed natural anyway. Hanne had never invited intimacy beyond the professional loyalty she’d always shown him. But she was clearly pleased that he’d come. He wasn’t sure what he should do with the bouquet of flowers, and after a moment’s hesitation laid them on the floor. Her bedside table was over-full already. He drew up a tubular steel chair to the edge of the bed.

  “I’m okay,” said Hanne before he’d had time to ask. “I’ll be back at work as soon as I can. If nothing else, this is proof positive that it’s something big we’ve stumbled on!”

  The gallows humour didn’t suit her, and he could see that it hurt when she tried to smile.

  “You’re not to come back till you’re completely well. That’s an order.”

  He started to grin, but checked himself. It would tempt her to do the same, despite the pain. Her entire jaw was turning a blueish yellow.

  “The original file has gone from your office. There wasn’t anything in it we didn’t have a copy of, was there?”

  The question was meant as a hopeful statement, but she disappointed him.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “I’d written a memo, just for myself really. I know what it said, so we haven’t actually lost anything in itself. But it’s a bit of a bugger that someone else will read it.”

  Håkon felt himself growing hot, and knew from experience that his cheeks would be turning a rather unbecoming pink.

  “I’m horribly afraid that I’ll have made Karen Borg an object of interest to the attacker. We’ve already discussed my view that she knows more than she’s letting on. I made a few written comments to that effect. I also jotted down one or two words about the links we’ve made.”

  She looked at him with a grimace, and put her hand ge
ntly to her head.

  “Not very good, is it?”

  Håkon agreed. It certainly wasn’t very good.

  Fredrick Myhreng was rather demanding. On the other hand, he was right when he insisted that he had kept to his side of the bargain. He sat now like an eager swot noting down everything Håkon could tell him. The thought of being the first to run the story that the police were confronted not with two random murders in the increasing series of apparently motiveless killings, but with a double homicide linked to the drugs trade and possibly to organised crime—this thought made him sweat so much that his pantomime glasses kept sliding down his nose, despite the practical frames hooked behind his ears. As before, ink was going everywhere as he wrote. Håkon thought to himself that the journalist ought to be wearing oilskins, the way he handled his writing implements. He offered him a pencil as a replacement for the ball-point pen he’d just wrecked.

  “How do you rate your chances of solving it?” Myhreng asked after listening to Håkon’s carefully censored but nevertheless quite fascinating account. The bridge of his nose had turned blue from his continual adjustments to his spectacles. Håkon wondered if he ought to draw the man’s attention to his odd appearance, but concluded that it would do him good to make a fool of himself, so restricted himself to the matter in hand.

  “We certainly believe we’ll solve it. But it may take some time. We’ve got a lot to follow up. You can quote me on that.”

  Which was all Fredrick Myhreng got out of Håkon Sand that day. But he was more than happy.

  TUESDAY 13 OCTOBER

  The headline was dramatic. The editorial desk had produced one of the pictures of Ludvig Sandersen’s corpse they had used before, and mounted it beside an old archive photograph of Hans Olsen. It must have been taken more than ten years earlier, rather fuzzy and presumably an enlargement from what had originally been a group photograph. The lawyer had a surprised expression on his face, and was on the point of blinking, which gave his eyes a tired and vacant look. The caption was in bright red ink and covered part of the photomontage.