The Blind Goddess

by Anne Holt

  From her desk drawer she took out a jar of moisturiser, “Visible Difference.” “Invisible difference” had been her husband’s sarcastic comment one morning a few weeks ago, his mouth flexed beneath his razor. She’d given him such a vicious punch that he’d cut his upper lip.

  She returned to the mirror and massaged the cream slowly into her skin. It was singularly ineffectual.

  The under secretary must still be married of course. The weekly magazines hadn’t given any indication to the contrary, anyway. However, she wouldn’t leap to conclusions. Back in her seat she glanced again at the fax before she rang. It was signed by the minister himself, though she was requested to phone the under secretary.

  His voice was deep and attractive. He was from Oslo, but had a very distinctive pronunciation of individual words, a feature that made him sound special and easily recognisable, almost musical.

  He didn’t suggest dinner. Not even a miserable lunch. He was curt and impersonal, and excused himself for having to trouble her. He was being nagged by the minister of justice. Would a briefing be possible? The media were starting to badger the minister. A meeting would be a useful idea. With the commissioner herself, or the appropriate departmental head. But no lunch.

  Right. If the under secretary was going to be so offhand, she could be too.

  “I’ll send you a fax of the indictment.” That was all.

  “Fine,” he replied, and to her disappointment didn’t even exert himself to argue. “Personally I’m not bothered. But don’t come to me for help when the minister himself weighs in on you. I wash my hands of it. Good-bye.”

  She sat in silence looking at the receiver, feeling utterly rejected. He’d get no information at all. Not one single bloody word.

  WEDNESDAY 25 NOVEMBER

  The sound of the bell was so unexpected that she almost fell out of bed in sheer confusion. She was still sitting up reading, even though it was getting on for two in the morning. Not because the book was so especially enthralling, but because she had slept heavily for three hours after dinner. On her bedside table, which she had made herself many years before, were a candle and a glass of red wine. The bottle next to it was almost empty. Karen Borg was half drunk.

  She clambered out of bed, bumping her head on the sloping ceiling. It didn’t hurt. Her mobile was recharging in the socket over by the door. She brought it back under the covers before pressing the talk button.

  “Hello, Håkon,” she said, even before she knew who it was. It was taking quite a risk, since it was more likely to be Nils. But her instinct hadn’t failed her.

  “Hello,” said a meek voice at the other end. “How are you?”

  “How are you?” she countered. “How’s the appeal gone?”

  So she knew about it.

  “The result didn’t come out today. Or rather, yesterday. There’s still hope. Only a few hours to go to the start of the working day, and then the decision will be announced pretty quickly. I just can’t get to sleep.”

  It took half an hour to explain to her what had happened. He didn’t spare himself with regard to his own woeful effort.

  “It can’t have been that bad,” she said, not very convincingly. “After all, you won the Court over to your side in obtaining custody for the principal suspect.”

  “Well, for a limited period,” he replied grumpily. “We’ll lose tomorrow, almost certainly. What we’ll do then, I haven’t a clue. And I’ve managed to drag you into it for committing an indictable offence: breach of client confidentiality.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” she said, dismissing it lightly. “I did think about the problem in advance and aired it at some length with my wisest and most experienced colleague.”

  Håkon was tempted to remark that the magistrate in the case wasn’t exactly inexperienced, nor was Christian Bloch-Hansen a novice in criminal law. He was much more doubtful about the competence of Greverud & Co. in this sphere, but he held his tongue. If she wasn’t worried, it was better to leave it like that.

  “Why didn’t you get in touch before you left?” he asked suddenly and accusingly.

  No reply was forthcoming. She didn’t really know why—why she hadn’t let him know, nor why she couldn’t answer now. So she said nothing.

  “What do you actually want of me?” he continued, annoyed by her silence. “I feel like a yo-yo. You make rules for what I should and shouldn’t do, and I try to stick by them to the best of my ability. But you don’t even do so yourself! What am I to think?”

  There was no simple answer. She stared at a little print above the bed, as if the solution to the conundrum might be concealed in the blue-grey landscape. But it wasn’t. It was all suddenly too much. She couldn’t talk to him. Instead of telling him that, she put one slender finger on the cut-off button. When she lifted it, all the accusations had gone. There was only a faint, soothing buzz from the receiver and little grunts from the dog curled up on the rug.

  The telephone announced itself again in a melancholy tone. It rang more than ten times before she picked it up.

  “Okay,” the voice said, from far, far away, “we needn’t talk about us anymore. Just let me know when you want to. Whenever you like.”

  His sarcasm didn’t penetrate the thin protective layer of alcohol that enveloped her.

  “The point is that we have to have another interview. Can you come back into town for a while?”

  “No, I’d rather not. I can’t. I mean . . . I just can’t face it. I’ve got a fortnight’s holiday now, and intended not to see anyone except the old man in the local shop. Please, get me out of it if you can.”

  The mournful sigh wasn’t lost across the ether. Karen had no desire to react to that, either. She’d done more than they could expect for this dreadful case. She wanted to forget the whole thing now, forget the poor young Dutchman, forget the horribly disfigured corpse, forget drugs, murder, and all the ills of the world, and just think about herself and her own life. That was more than enough. Much more than enough.

  Having pondered for a moment, Håkon came up with an alternative.

  “Then I’ll send Hanne Wilhelmsen down to you. On Friday. Will that suit you?”

  Friday wouldn’t suit her at all. But neither would Thursday or Saturday. If the alternative was to go into Oslo, she’d have to accept it.

  “Okay then,” she agreed. “You know the way. Tell her I’ll mark the turning with a Norwegian flag, so she doesn’t miss it.”

  Indeed he did know the way. He’d been there four or five times, along with various boyfriends of Karen’s. More than once he’d had to resort to earplugs at night to avoid the torture of the noises from her room, the gasps of passion and the creak of bedsprings. He’d curled himself up as patiently as a dog in the narrow bunk and rammed the wax plugs so far into his ears that he’d had trouble removing them the next morning. He’d never slept very well in Karen’s parents’ cottage. And he’d often breakfasted there alone.

  “I’ll tell her to get there about twelve, then. I hope you continue to have a good night.”

  It wasn’t a good night, so it could hardly continue being one. But her closing words made it a little better for Håkon at least.

  “Don’t give up on me, Håkon,” she said softly. “Good night.”

  FRIDAY 27 NOVEMBER

  It was no use trying to get reimbursement for the trip. A hundred and forty miles in a wretched official car with no radio or heater was so unenticing that she had decided to take her own. A mileage claim would have to go through endless administrative channels and would probably end up with a negative result.

  Tina Turner was singing, rather too loudly, “We don’t need another hero.” That was fine: she didn’t feel particularly heroic. The case was at a standstill. The Court Appeals Committee had rubber-stamped the release of Roger, and reduced Lavik’s time in custody to a single week. Their initial elation on hearing that the Appeals Committee were also of the opinion that there was reasonable cause to suspect Lavik of fel
ony evaporated within a few hours. Pessimism had soon wiped the grins off their faces and dampened their spirits again. From that point of view it was wonderful to get away for a day. A hungry man is an angry man, and in the department they were all feeling starved of progress and taking it out on their colleagues. The Monday deadline loomed like a brick wall in front of them, and no one felt strong enough to surmount it. At the morning meeting, which Hanne had attended before setting off, it had only been Kaldbakken and Håkon who had evinced any faith at all in their still having a chance. As far as Kaldbakken was concerned the feeling was probably genuine; he was not one to give up until the whistle had blown. Håkon’s touch of bravado was more likely playing to the gallery, she thought. His face was lined and his eyes red from lack of sleep, and he might have lost some weight. That aspect at least was a distinct improvement.

  In all there were fourteen investigators on the case now, five of them from the drugs squad. Even if they’d had a hundred, the clock would be ticking just as inexorably towards Monday, the cruelly short time the three old fogies on the Appeals Committee had foisted on them. The decision had been a harsh one. If the police couldn’t come up with more than they’d mustered so far, Lavik would be a free man again. Lab reports, postmortem reports, lists of foreign trips, an old boot, unintelligible codes, analyses of Frøstrup’s drugs—everything lay piled up in the incident room like scraps of a reality with a pattern they recognised but couldn’t assemble in a way that would convince anyone else. A graphological analysis of Van der Kerch’s fateful death threat hadn’t elicited any clear answers either. They had a few notes from Lavik’s office as a basis for comparison, and a piece of paper on which they had made him write the same message. He had provided the sample without protest, pale but apparently uncomprehending. The graphologist had been noncommittal. He thought there might be a few similarities here and there, but had ultimately concluded that no definite resemblance could be established. At the same time he stressed that it didn’t preclude the possibility that it was Lavik who had penned the ominous note. He might have been playing safe by disguising his handwriting. A hook at the top of the T and a quaint curl on the U could be an indication of that. But as evidence, it was of no value at all.

  She left the main trunk road at Sandefjord. The little holiday town looked less than appealing in the November mist. It was so quiet it seemed to be hibernating, with only a few hardy souls in winter clothes bracing themselves against the wind and rain gusting in almost horizontally from the sea. The gale was so strong that she had to grip the steering wheel extra tight several times as the squalls buffeted the car and threatened to blow it into the ditch.

  A quarter of an hour later, on a winding, vertiginous country road, she saw the little flag. It was flapping ardently in red, white, and blue as if in stubborn homage to its native land, against a tree trunk apparently impervious to its agitation. That was no doubt one way to mark a forest track, but somehow she felt it was almost a desecration of the national flag to expose it like that to the forces of nature, so she stopped off to take it with her into the warm.

  She had no difficulty finding her way. There was an inviting glow from the windows, in welcoming contrast to the desolate shuttered cottages nearby.

  She hardly recognised her. Karen Borg was dressed in a shabby old tracksuit which made Hanne smile when she saw it. It was blue, with white shoulder inserts that met in a vee on the chest. She’d had one very similar herself as a child; it had served as playsuit, tracksuit, and even pyjamas before it finally wore out and proved impossible to replace.

  On her feet Karen had a pair of threadbare woollen slippers with holes in both heels. Her hair was uncombed and she wore no makeup. The smart, well-dressed lawyer had gone to ground, and Hanne had to stop herself scanning the room in search of her.

  “Sorry about my clothes,” said Karen with a smile, “but part of the freedom of being here is looking like this.”

  Hanne was offered coffee, but declined. A glass of fruit juice would be nice, though. They sat for half an hour just chatting, then Hanne was shown round the cottage and duly expressed her admiration of it. She herself had never had any links with a place in the country; her parents had preferred to holiday abroad. The other children in the street had been envious, but she would much rather have had a couple of months in the country with a grandmother instead. She only had one grandmother, anyway, an alcoholic failed actress who lived in Copenhagen.

  Finally they sat down at the kitchen table. Hanne took out the portable typewriter from its case and prepared to take the statement. They spent four hours on it. In the first three pages Karen described her client’s mental state, his relationship to his lawyer, and her own interpretation of what he would really have wished. Then followed a five-page account which was in outline the same as her first one. The papers were neatly signed in the bottom corner of each page and at the foot of the last.

  It was well into the afternoon, and Hanne glanced at her watch before hesitantly accepting the offer of a meal. She was ravenous, and calculated that she would have time to eat and be back in town before eight o’clock.

  The food wasn’t very sophisticated: canned reindeer-meatballs in gravy with potatoes and a cucumber salad. The cucumber didn’t go with it, Hanne thought to herself, but it filled her up.

  Karen put on an enormous yellow raincoat and high green rubber boots to accompany Hanne to the car. They talked about the surroundings for a moment before Karen impulsively gave Hanne a hug and wished her good luck. Hanne grinned and in return wished her an enjoyable holiday.

  She started the car, put on the heater and Bruce Springsteen at full blast, and bumped off down the rough track. Karen stood and waved, and Hanne could see the yellow figure getting steadily smaller in the mirror, until it disappeared out of sight as she rounded a bend. That, she thought to herself with a broad smile, that is Håkon’s great love. She felt certain of it.

  SATURDAY 28 NOVEMBER

  Have you heard the one about the bloke who went to the brothel without any money?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the others groaned, and the joker subsided mutely into his chair and sulkily finished off his red wine. It was the fourth dirty joke he’d tried, with minimal response. His silence didn’t last long. He poured himself another drink, puffed out his chest, and tried again.

  “Do you know what girls say when they have a really great . . .”

  “Yes, we do,” the other five cried in chorus, and again the comedian was forced to shut up.

  Hanne leant across the table and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Can’t you give these jokes a rest, Gunnar? They’re really not that funny when you’ve heard them before.”

  She smiled and ruffled his hair. They’d known each other for thirteen years. He was as mild as milk, thicker than a hunk of bread, and the most considerate guy she knew. In the company of Hanne and Cecilie’s other friends he could never hold his own, but he seemed to belong, his hostesses loved him, and he almost counted as part of the furniture. He was the nearest thing they had to a good, old-fashioned friend of the family. He had the apartment next to theirs, and it always looked a tip. He had no taste, didn’t bother much about cleaning, and found it a lot more agreeable to luxuriate in one of his neighbours’ soft armchairs than to spend an evening in his own scruffy pad. He called in at least twice a week, and was literally a self-invited guest at all their dinner parties.

  Despite the tiresome Gunnar and his jokes, it had turned into a splendid evening. For the first time since the discovery of the mutilated faceless corpse by the River Aker that wet September evening, Hanne felt relaxed. It was half past eleven now, and the case had been a pale forgotten spectre for the last two hours. It might have been the alcohol that had such a benevolent effect. After nearly two months of total abstinence five glasses of red wine was enough to make her pleasantly light-headed and seductively charming. Cecilie’s persistent leg contact under the table had tempted her to try to break up the party, but she ha
dn’t succeeded. Anyway, she was enjoying herself. Then the telephone rang.

  “It’s for you, Hanne,” Cecilie called from the corridor.

  Hanne tripped over her own feet as she got up from the table, giggled, and went to see who was daring to call at nearly midnight on a Saturday night. She closed the living-room door behind her and was sober enough to recognise the dejected expression on her partner’s face. Cecilie put her left hand over the mouthpiece.

  “It’s work. I’ll be bloody mad if you go out now.”

  With a look of anticipatory reproach she passed Hanne the phone.

  “Would you believe we’ve caught the bugger, Hanne?!”

  It was Billy T. She rubbed the bridge of her nose in an attempt to clear her head, but without discernible effect.

  “What bugger? Who’ve you caught?”

  “The boot man, of course! Bull’s-eye! Shit scared, plain as a pikestaff. That’s how it looks to us.”

  It couldn’t be true. It was difficult to believe. The case hadn’t just gone down the pan, it was flushed away and into the sewers. And now this. The breakthrough perhaps. A living person, actually involved, and under arrest. Someone who could give them some real information. Someone they could grab by the balls. Someone who could bring Lavik down into the same sludge the police had been wallowing in. An informant. Exactly what they needed.

  She shook her head and asked if he could come and fetch her. Driving herself was out of the question.

  “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Make it a quarter of an hour. I’ll have to have a quick shower first.”

  Fourteen minutes later she kissed her friends good-bye and asked them to keep the party going until she got back. Cecilie went with her to the door, and was offered a parting hug, but drew back.

  “I sometimes hate this job of yours,” she said in a serious voice. “Not often, but sometimes.”