The Blind Goddess

by Anne Holt

  “Who was it who sat all alone night after night in that godforsaken place in Nordfjord when you were on duty? Who had limitless patience for four years with your evening and night duties at Ullevål Hospital?”

  “You,” said Cecilie reluctantly, but with a conciliatory smile. And she let herself be hugged after all.

  “He’s as unblemished as a newborn babe. Not even a bloody traffic offence.”

  He was drumming his grubby fingers on the sheet of paper, which could have been the criminal record of the prime minister. Absolutely blank.

  “And now,” said Billy T., a grin spreading over his face, “with this clean sheet, let’s see how convincing a story he can damn well come up with to explain why he brandishes a gun at the police on the street and why he’s sitting there quivering like a piece of wet cod.”

  Good point. A lot could be gleaned from reactions on arrest. The innocent were frightened of course, but it was always a controllable fear, an emotion that could be held in check by reminding themselves that since it was all a misunderstanding it would soon be cleared up. It never took more than a quarter of an hour to calm the innocent. According to Billy T. this miscreant was still scared to death even after two hours.

  There was no sense in starting an interrogation that night. She herself wasn’t sober, and the wait would do the suspect no harm. He’d been charged with threatening the police, which was quite enough to hold him till Monday.

  “How did you find him?”

  “It wasn’t me, it was Leif and Ole. Talk about luck. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Try me!”

  “There’s this bloke we’ve had under surveillance for some time. Never got anything on him. He’s a medical student, very well behaved. Lives a nice and respectable life in Røa, in nice respectable low-rise housing. Drives a car that’s a bit too nice and respectable, and surrounds himself with anything but respectable ladies. But nice. The surveillance team were pretty sure he had an interesting little consignment in his apartment, so our boys decided to take a look. Jackpot. They found four grams, plus a decent bit of hash. Ole realised he’d be home later than he’d told his wife, because a full search of the apartment would take men and time. The guy had no phone, amazingly enough, so Ole went to the next-door neighbour, a chap of about thirty. Born 1961, to be precise.”

  His fingers were drumming again on the printout from the police database.

  “Well, it may be disconcerting to have the police ringing your doorbell at half past nine on a Saturday evening, but not so devastating that you’re paralysed with terror and slam the door in the officer’s face.”

  Hanne thought privately it wasn’t in the least surprising that someone should slam the door in Ole Andresen’s face. He had hair down to his waist, which he boasted he washed once a fortnight, “even if it wasn’t dirty.” It was parted in the middle, like an ageing hippie, and between the curtains of hair projected an unbelievably large and pimply nose above a beard which would have been the envy of Karl Marx. Not unreasonable to be afraid, she thought, but maintained a diplomatic silence.

  “It was the stupidest thing he could have done. Ole rang the bell a second time, and the poor bloke had to open up. It was a pity he gained a few minutes to himself in the flat, but the amazing thing was that when he eventually opened the door . . .”

  Billy T. was roaring with laughter, becoming increasingly hysterical, until Hanne began to chuckle herself, even without yet being able to share the joke. Billy T. pulled himself together.

  “When he eventually opened up, he had his hands in the air!”

  He collapsed with laughter again. This time Hanne joined in.

  “He had his hands in the air, like in a film, and before Ole could say anything at all—he’d only held up his police ID—the guy was standing with his feet apart and his hands against the wall. Ole had no idea what was going on, but has been in the business long enough to realise it was something suspicious. And there in the shoe rack was the missing boot. Ole pulled out my stencil and compared it. It was a direct hit. The guy just stood against the wall with his palms glued to the wallpaper.”

  They both choked with mirth till the tears ran.

  “And Ole simply wanted to use the telephone!”

  Perhaps it wasn’t as funny as all that, but it was the middle of the night, and they were relieved. Bloody relieved.

  “Here’s what they found in his flat,” said Billy, bending his ungainly body to pick up a bag at his feet.

  A small-calibre pistol fell onto the table, followed by a well-worn boot, size ten.

  “Well, it’s not really enough to reduce him to such a complete state of the jitters,” said Hanne with satisfaction. “He must have something else for us.”

  “Give him a Hanne Wilhelmsen special. In the morning. Let’s get you back home now so you can carry on enjoying yourself.”

  Which was exactly what she did.

  SUNDAY 29 NOVEMBER

  You’re shaking like a piece of wet cod—a jelly, a leaf, whatever—you’re shaking so damned much that unless you can cough up a doctor’s certificate to say you’ve got an advanced stage of Parkinson’s, I’ll have to assume you’re pissing yourself in fear.”

  She shouldn’t have said that. A pool had appeared soundlessly beneath his chair, slowly increasing in size till it reached all four legs. She sighed aloud, opened the window, and decided to let him sit in wet trousers for a while. He was crying now too. A pitiful wretched weeping that didn’t elicit any kind of sympathy, but actually irritated her enormously.

  “Cut out the snivelling. I’m not going to kill you.”

  The assurance didn’t help; he went on whimpering, tearlessly and infuriatingly, like a fretful, defiant toddler.

  “I’ve got extensive powers,” she lied, “very extensive powers. You’re in deep trouble. Things will be a lot easier for you if we get some cooperation. A bit of give and take. Some information. Just tell me what your connection is with Jørgen Lavik, the lawyer.”

  It was the twelfth time she’d asked. She got no response this time either. Beginning to feel a sense of defeat, she handed over to Kaldbakken, who up till then had been sitting silently in a corner. Perhaps he’d get something out of the guy. Though she didn’t really think so.

  Håkon was depressed when she reported to him, as might be expected. It seemed as if the man from Røa would prefer the tortures of hell to reprisals from Lavik and his organisation. If so, the police hadn’t made the breakthrough that Hanne and Billy T. had so exultantly assumed the previous night. But the battle wasn’t yet lost.

  Five hours later it was. Kaldbakken put his foot down. He left the whining suspect to his own devices and took Hanne out into the corridor.

  “We can’t go on with this any longer,” he said in a whisper, one hand on the doorknob as if to make sure no one would steal it. “He’s dog-tired. We ought to let him rest. And we ought to get a doctor to take a look at him: that trembling can’t be normal. We’ll try again in the morning.”

  “Tomorrow may be too late!”

  Hanne was getting absolutely desperate. But it was no good: Kaldbakken had made up his mind and was not to be persuaded otherwise.

  It was Hanne who had to convey the bad news to Håkon. He received it without a word. Hanne sat there momentarily undecided, but then thought it best to leave him alone.

  “By the way, I’ve put Karen Borg’s statement in your case file,” she said before she went. “I didn’t have time to make copies Friday evening. Can you do it before you go? I’m off. It’s Advent Sunday.”

  This last was meant as an excuse, rather unnecessarily. He waved her out of the room. When the door closed behind her, he laid his head in his arms on the desk.

  He was worn out. He was ready to go home.

  The annoying thing was that he forgot to take a copy of the statement. He thought of it when he was halfway home in the car. Ah well, it could wait till the morning.

  Although he was nearing pension age
, he moved with the litheness of an athlete. It was four o’clock in the early hours of Monday morning, the time when ninety-five percent of the population are asleep. A huge, newly lit Christmas tree was blinking its illuminations to keep itself awake down in the entrance hall. There was also a pale blue light shining through the glass walls of the night duty room. Otherwise everywhere was in darkness. His rubber soles made no sound as he moved swiftly along the corridor. He clutched his impressive bunch of keys very tightly to prevent them jingling. When he reached the office with Håkon Sand’s nameplate on, he found the correct key almost immediately. Closing the door behind him, he drew out a heavy rubber torch. It had an extremely powerful beam, which momentarily dazzled him.

  It was almost too easy. The file was right in front of him on the desk, and the statement he was seeking was on the very top. He hastily flicked through the rest of the file, but there appeared to be no further copies of it. Not in this file, at least. He ran the beam of the torch up and down the sheet. This was the original! He folded it hurriedly and stuffed it into the deep inner pocket of his capacious tweed jacket. He glanced round to make sure that everything looked as it had when he’d come in, went to the door, switched off his torch, and slipped out into the corridor, locking up behind him. Further along the corridor he opened another door, again with a key. On this desk too the case file was out, open in two untidy piles, as if it had outgrown its strength and fallen into an exhausted slumber. It took longer to check through this one. The statement wasn’t where it should have been according to the arrangement of the file. He carried on searching, but when he couldn’t find the eight-page document anywhere, he began a systematic inspection of the rest of the room.

  He gave up after a quarter of an hour. There wasn’t a copy. This was a cheering assumption, and not without logic. According to reports, Hanne Wilhelmsen hadn’t got back to the office until about half past seven on Friday. She might not have felt much like waiting the twenty minutes or so it took for a copier to warm up.

  His theory was reinforced when he’d searched the third and final office, Kaldbakken’s little den. If neither Wilhelmsen nor the chief inspector had copies, there was every likelihood that the document only existed in the original. Which was now in his possession.

  A few minutes later it existed no more. First it had passed through a shredder until it resembled a desiccated and malformed tangle of spaghetti, and then it lay in a dish for just as long as was needed for the flames to destroy it completely. Finally the remains were collected up in a sheet of toilet paper and flushed down the lavatory, which was at the far end of the corridor on the most invisible floor of the police headquarters building. Using an old lavatory brush, the man from the Special Branch removed the final particles of ash from the WC, and with that Hanne Wilhelmsen’s rainy trip to the county of Vestfold was totally wasted.

  Back in his office the man picked up a mobile phone and rang the number of one of the men he’d met in Platou Gata a few days previously.

  “I’ve done as much as I’m prepared to do,” he said in a low voice, as if out of respect for the somnolent building. “Karen Borg’s statement has been removed from the file. It’s bloody awful doing things like this to colleagues. You’ll have to look after yourselves from now on.”

  He terminated the call without waiting for a reply. Instead he went to the window and stood staring out over Oslo. The city lay heavy and tired beneath him, like a drowsy whale glistening with the phosphorescence of the sea. He felt old and tired himself. Older than for many years. After a while his eyes began to feel gritty, and he had to screw them up to steady the dancing specks of light far, far below. He sighed and lay down on a small and very uncomfortable sofa to await the start of the working day. Before he fell asleep the full import struck him again of what he had done to his colleagues.

  MONDAY 30 NOVEMBER

  It’s not surprising this gang has managed to keep it all going so long. They have a hold over their people that I’ve never seen the like of. Not in the drugs world. Very strange. Is he still not coming clean?”

  Kaldbakken was genuinely amazed. He’d done six years in the drugs squad and knew what he was talking about.

  “Well, we can’t exactly throw the book at him,” said Hanne Wilhelmsen miserably. “Threats against public servants, even the police, don’t qualify for more than a brief vacation in a pleasant little cell. From that point of view he has a lot to gain by keeping his mouth shut. He may appear to be scared out of his wits, but he’s still got enough left to keep a cool head. He’s even clever enough to admit he was the one who aimed a gun at Billy T. We’ll have to let him go today; we’ve got no reason to detain him. No risk of losing evidence if he’s admitted it.”

  Of course they could keep him under observation for a few days. But for how long? Twenty-four-hour surveillance of Roger from Sagene was already taking up a large part of their capacity. If Lavik were released today, they’d really have a problem with resources. It could be solved in the short term, but these guys were hardly going to do anything stupid in the next few days or weeks. It would probably be months before they resumed any interesting activities. The police would miss it, not willingly, but because budgets wouldn’t allow such extravagance. Not even for a case with these ramifications. It was a raw deal. As usual.

  Håkon hadn’t said anything. Apathy had set in. He was anxious, fed up, and deeply disappointed. His grey temples had gone greyer, his acid stomach more acidic, his clammy hands clammier. Now all he had was Karen’s statement. It was doubtful whether it would be enough. He got up dispiritedly and left the meeting without a word. An oppressive silence followed his departure.

  The statement wasn’t where he’d put it. He tried a couple of drawers absentmindedly. Could he have tucked it away somewhere? No, all he found were a few insignificant items he’d hidden out of sight of his guilty conscience. Now was not the time to confront previous procrastination.

  The statement wasn’t in his office at all. Odd—he was convinced he’d placed it right there, on top of the big pile. With a deeply furrowed brow he cast his mind back to the previous day. He’d been going to make copies; then he’d forgotten to. Or had he gone to the copying room? He went to check now.

  The machine was running at full tilt, and a stocky woman in her sixties confirmed that there’d been nothing there when she arrived. To make absolutely certain they looked behind the machine and underneath it, but there was no sign of the statement anywhere.

  Hanne hadn’t taken it. Kaldbakken had already asked for a copy, and shrugged his shoulders dolefully, swearing he’d never seen it.

  Håkon was getting seriously worried now. The document was the only hope they had of obtaining an extension of custody. Before going home the night before he’d scanned it as well as his red-rimmed eyes would allow. It was exactly what he’d wanted. Thorough and incisive. Convincing and well expressed. But what the hell had happened to it?

  The time had come to raise the alarm. It was half past nine, and the application for an extension had to be ready to take to the Court by noon. The hearing should actually have been held at half past eight in the morning, but on Friday Christian Bloch-Hansen had asked for a few hours’ postponement, which had suited the police admirably. He had a trial to attend in the morning, and would if necessary send an assistant to the important custody hearing. There were two and a half hours to go, which actually gave Håkon just about long enough to get the custody application dictated and typed, with no time to embark on a general search. But no statement, no custody order.

  They abandoned the effort at about half past ten. The statement had totally disappeared. Hanne was upset, and took all the blame on herself; she should have done the copies straightaway. Her unreserved declaration of responsibility didn’t really help Håkon at all. Everyone knew that he was the last to have had the papers.

  Karen could come and repeat the statement. He could get a postponement of an hour, which would just about enable her to make it back from t
he cottage. She would have to make it.

  But she didn’t answer the phone. Håkon rang five times. In vain. Hell. Panic was setting in, clawing its way up his spine. It was an extremely unpleasant sensation. He shook his head violently as if that would somehow help.

  “Ring Sandefjord or Larvik. Get them to fetch her. Immediately.”

  The commanding tone couldn’t conceal his anxiety, though it hardly mattered—Hanne was equally fearful. Having spoken to the police at Larvik, under the mistaken impression that they were the nearest, she hurried back to Håkon’s office. He was morose and unapproachable, and busy trying to construct something which might give an appearance of solidity. It wasn’t easy with the third-rate and imperfect material they had.

  That bloody boot man. Håkon was tempted to run down to the cells and offer him a hundred thousand to blab. If that didn’t work, he could beat him up. Or maybe kill him. In pure and simple rage. On the other hand, both Frøstrup and Van der Kerch had bought their own tickets to the other side, so who knew, perhaps the police would soon have another suicide on their hands. God forbid. Anyway, they’d have to let him go in the course of the day. They’d wait as long as they could.

  An hour later there was nothing more to be done. The secretary took twelve minutes to type what he’d dictated. He read it through with a despondency that increased with every line. She gave him a sympathetic look, but said nothing. Which was probably best.

  “Karen isn’t in the cottage.”

  Hanne stood at the door.

  “Her car is there, and there’s a light in the kitchen, but no sign of the dog, nor anybody. She must be out for a walk.”

  Out for a walk. His beloved Karen, the only straw he had left to clutch at. The woman who could rescue him from total humiliation, save the police from scandalous headlines, save the country from a drugs baron and murderer. She was out for a walk. Right now she was probably strolling along the shore at Ula, throwing sticks for the dog and breathing in the fresh sea air many miles and a hundred light-years away from a stuffy claustrophobic office at police headquarters with walls that had started to sway, constricting themselves and threatening to suffocate him. He could see her in his mind’s eye, in her old yellow raincoat, with wet hair and no makeup, the way she always looked on rainy days at the cottage. Out walking. Out for a bloody walk in the pissing rain.