Hanne Wilhelmsen - 01 - The Blind Goddess

by Anne Holt

  The tape was reusable, and he felt sure he’d got the key back in exactly the same place he’d found it. He put his jacket on, crawled out the way he’d come in, and fixed the window back on the inside without leaving any visible marks from the screwdriver. He brushed over the frame to get rid of possible splinters, and paused in the doorway of the waiting room to gather his breath for the big run. He counted down from ten, and on zero he shot like a rocket towards the entrance door, opened it, closed it behind him, and was halfway down the staircase before he heard the high-pitched shriek of the alarm. He was round the next block before anyone in the building had even got their slippers on.

  “That’ll give them something to think about,” he thought triumphantly. “No sign of a break-in, nothing taken, nothing touched. Just an unlocked entrance door.”

  Fredrick Myhreng was used to feeling pleased with himself. This surpassed almost everything. He was humming as he skipped along, like a child who had played a successful trick, and with a yell to the driver and a huge grin on his face he just managed to catch the last tram home.

  FRIDAY 6 NOVEMBER

  She had developed a routine of calling in on her unfortunate client every Friday afternoon. He said nothing, but it seemed as if in some strange way he valued these meetings. Huddled up and thin as a rake, he still had the empty look in his eyes, but she thought she could detect a trace of a smile each time he saw her. Even though Han van der Kerch had so tenaciously resisted being transferred there while he had the mental capacity to say what he wanted, he was now in Oslo Prison. Karen Borg had permission to visit him in his cell, since it was impractical to bring him out to an interview room. It was lighter here, and the warders seemed both fair-minded and considerate, insofar as their workloads allowed. The door was secured behind her during every visit, and she felt an odd comfort from being locked in, the same feeling that had driven her into the cupboard under the stairs at home in Bergen as a child whenever the world seemed against her. The prison visits had become a time for contemplation. She sat there with the silent man in front of her, and listened to the orderly in the corridor clattering by with his trolley, the echo of obscene shouts and laughter, and the heavy jangling of keys whenever a warder passed the door.

  He didn’t look quite so pale today. He kept his eyes on her all the way to the bed as she sat down beside him. When she took his hand, she felt him squeeze hers in response; almost imperceptibly, but she was sure she had discerned a slight pressure. With hesitant optimism she bent forward and brushed his hair away from his forehead. It was growing too long, and immediately fell back again. She continued stroking his brow, running her fingers through his hair. It was evidently soothing, because he closed his eyes and leant towards her. They remained sitting like that for several minutes.

  “Roger,” he murmured, his voice a husky croak after not having been used for such a length of time.

  Karen Borg didn’t react. She went on caressing him and asked no questions.

  “Roger,” said the Dutchman again, a little louder now. “The guy at Sagene with the second-hand cars. Roger.”

  Then he fell asleep. His breathing became more regular, and his weight against her body increased. She rose carefully to her feet, moved him into a more comfortable position, and couldn’t help kissing him gently on the forehead.

  “Roger at Sagene,” she repeated to herself, knocking softly on the door to be let out.

  * * *

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  Håkon Sand took hold of the thick file and banged it down on the desk. It slipped out of his grasp and papers spilled out all over the floor.

  “Damn!” he exclaimed, getting down to sort out the mess. Hanne joined in on all fours to help him. They stayed there on their knees looking at each other.

  “I’ll never get used to it. Never!”

  He spoke with sudden vehemence.

  “What?”

  “That so often we know there’s something crooked, that someone has committed a crime, we even know who’s done it and what they’ve done, we know so bloody much. But can we prove it? No, we sit here like eunuchs, impotent, with all the odds stacked against us. We know, we’re certain, but if we risked going to court with what we know, it would all be dissected by some defence lawyer devising a rational explanation for each single piece of evidence we produce. They pick and pick, and finally everything we knew becomes a mush of uncertain facts, quite enough to put it all in reasonable doubt. Hey presto, the bird has flown and the rule of law has been upheld. Whose? Not mine, anyway. The rule of law has just bloody turned into a useful tool for the guilty. It means putting as few as possible in prison. That’s not rule of law! What about all the people who’re murdered, raped, suffered child abuse, or are robbed or burgled? Hell, I should have been a sheriff in the Wild West. They took direct action when they knew who’d done it. Tied a rope to the nearest tree and hanged the criminal by the neck. A sheriff’s star and a Stetson would have been a bloody sight better rule of law than seven years at law school and ten stupid jury members. The Inquisition. Now that’s what I call a court. Judge, prosecutor, and defence counsel all rolled into one. There really was some action then, not a load of waffle about the rule of law for crooks and gangsters.”

  “You don’t mean all that, Håkon,” Hanne said soothingly, retrieving the last pieces of paper. She’d had to lie almost flat to reach an interview transcript that had lodged itself under the mobile shelving.

  “You don’t mean it,” she repeated, half muffled under the desk.

  “Well, not entirely. But almost.”

  They were both feeling frustrated. It was late on a Friday afternoon. There had been too many long days, working into the evenings, which she coped with better than he did. They sat and sorted the papers into their original sequence.

  “Brief me,” he demanded when they’d finished.

  It didn’t take long. He knew how little physical evidence they had, and their wider tactical investigations had ground to a halt. Forty-two witnesses had been questioned in all. Not one of them could throw any light on the case, not even a vague lead to follow up.

  “Has anything come of the watch being kept on Lavik?” said Håkon, putting the papers to one side. He took a warm bottle of beer out of a plastic supermarket bag and knocked the cap off against the edge of the desk. The wood splintered slightly and he brushed a sliver of glass off the neck.

  “It’s the weekend,” he said in excuse, raising the bottle to his lips. The foaming beer threatened to splash down his clothes, so he leant forward and shifted his legs. He wiped his mouth and waited for an answer.

  “No, with the resources we’ve got it’s impossible to mount twenty-four-hour surveillance on the guy. It’s as chancy as a game of roulette. No point in following him at all if it’s not effective. It just makes it more infuriating.”

  “What about the business side of his activities?”

  “It would be an enormous task to get to the bottom of it. He’s had some hotel projects in the Far East. Bangkok. Which isn’t that far from the heroin markets. But the investors he’s been working for are sound enough, and the hotels are already built. So there’s nothing suspicious about the business itself. If you could wangle the expenses, I’d be delighted to go to Thailand and investigate further.”

  She pulled a face that clearly indicated what she thought of the likelihood of such budgetary extravagance. It had turned dark outside, and the weariness they both felt, together with the faint aroma of beer, made the little office seem almost cosy.

  “Are we on duty now?”

  He knew what she meant, shook his head with a smile, and handed her a beer, opening it in the same way as the first. Once again the desk suffered, but this time the neck of the bottle remained intact. She took it from him, then set it down and disappeared without a word. She was back in a couple of minutes and struggling to make two candles stay upright on his desk. They did so eventually, having dripped wax everywhere, each tilted at a s
lightly different angle. She switched off the main ceiling light and Håkon turned the desk lamp to the wall so that it cast a diffused glow into the room.

  “If anyone comes now, the rumours will start flying.”

  He nodded in agreement.

  “But it could only be to my advantage,” he said facetiously.

  They clinked their bottles together, a bit too forcefully.

  “This was a good idea. Is it allowed?”

  “I’ll do what I like in my own office at half past six on a Friday evening. They’re not paying me for being here, and I’m taking the train home. And there’s nobody waiting for me there, either. What about you, is there anyone waiting for you?”

  He intended it as an amicable enquiry, just an impulsive and well-meaning attempt to exploit the unusual atmosphere. But she clearly interpreted it as overstepping the mark, stiffened in her chair, and put her bottle of beer down. He could have kicked himself as he noticed her change of attitude.

  “How about Peter Strup?” he said after an uneasy silence.

  “We haven’t seen much of him. Perhaps we should. But I just don’t know what there is we can put our finger on. I’m more interested in what Karen Borg must know.”

  Even in the flickering candlelight she could see him flush. He took off his glasses to distract her attention, and wiped the lenses on his cotton sweater.

  “She knows more than she’s saying, that much is obvious. Presumably about criminal offences other than the one we’ve got Van der Kerch for now. We’re holding him for murder. The forensic tests are complete, and enough to convict him. But if our theories are right, he may also be up to his neck in drug trafficking. It wouldn’t exactly be favourable to his sentence to have that on top of a murder. She’s got a duty of confidentiality, and she’s a woman of principle, believe me. I know her. Or used to, anyway.”

  “Well, at least it doesn’t look as if that memo of mine has caused any harm to come to her,” said Hanne. “She hasn’t been aware of anything unusual or worrying?”

  “No.”

  He wasn’t as confident as he sounded. He hadn’t spoken to her for a fortnight. Not that he hadn’t tried. Even though she’d kissed him to seal a promise that he wouldn’t phone her, he’d broken it after just a couple of days, after he’d fallen down a loft ladder very early the Saturday before last. He’d tried her office number on the Monday morning, but had been turned away by a friendly-sounding woman on the switchboard. Karen Borg was busy, but yes, she would pass on the message that he’d phoned. She’d passed on four more messages since then, but none had elicited a response. He’d accepted it with his old feeling of resignation, but even so felt bitter disappointment whenever the telephone rang and he leapt to answer it, only to find that she must be sticking to her resolution not to speak to him for at least a month. There were still two weeks to go.

  “No,” he reiterated, “she hasn’t noticed anything unusual.”

  The candles had made big circles of wax on the desk. Håkon put his hand protectively but unnecessarily behind the flames and blew them out, then stood up and turned on the ceiling light.

  “So much for the Vorspiel,” he said with artificial cheerfulness. “Now off to our respective weekends!”

  SATURDAY 7 NOVEMBER

  Even though winter had rattled its sabre, leaving the frostbitten grass as the first casualty, it had had to surrender to a normal dreary autumn. The debris of these latest preliminary skirmishes had lain for a few days as dirty white patches everywhere; now all were gone. The rain was two or three degrees too warm for snow, but felt much colder. The asphalt, which a short while before had glittered at night as if studded with millions of black diamonds, now lay like a flat slobbering monster swallowing every morsel of light the moment it hit the ground.

  Hanne and Cecilie were on their way home from an excellent party. Cecilie had drunk too much, and was flirtatiously endeavouring to hold Hanne’s hand. They walked arm in arm for a few metres, between two streetlights, but as they came into the glow of the lamp Hanne pulled away.

  “Coward,” Cecilie teased her.

  Hanne just smiled, and withdrew her hands into her sleeves, guarding them from further attempts at intimacy.

  “We’re nearly home,” she said.

  Their hair was already drenched, and Cecilie complained that she couldn’t see anything through her glasses.

  “Get yourself some contact lenses, then.”

  “Well, I can hardly get any at this very moment, can I? And it’s now I need them! So I’ll just have to take your arm. Either that or I’ll break my neck and you’ll be all alone in the world.”

  They walked on with their arms linked. Hanne didn’t want to be all alone in the world.

  The park ahead of them was very murky. They were both afraid of the dark, but it would save five minutes, so they decided to risk it.

  “You’re really witty sometimes, Hanne. You really are,” Cecilie chattered on, as if the sound of their voices would ward off any evil powers that might be lying in wait on an autumn night. “Your jokes make me die. Tell me the one about the National Theatre in Gryllefjord. It gets funnier every time. And it’s a nice long one. Go on!”

  Hanne began it willingly enough. But when she came to the bit about their second performance at Gryllefjord town hall, she suddenly stopped. She made a quick imperative gesture and dragged Cecilie behind a giant maple tree. Cecilie misunderstood, and offered her lips for a kiss.

  “Cut it out, Cecilie, keep quiet and control yourself!”

  She extracted herself from the unwanted embrace, pressed up close to the tree, and peered out.

  The two men had been incautious enough to position themselves under one of the few lamps in the entire poorly lit park. The women were thirty metres away and couldn’t hear what was being said. Hanne could only see the back of one man, standing with his hands in his pockets and banging his legs against one another to keep warm. That might mean they’d been there for some while. All four of them remained where they were for what seemed an eternity, the men conversing in low tones, the women silent behind the tree. Cecilie had eventually realised it was a serious matter and accepted that now was not the moment for an explanation.

  The man with his back to them was wearing ordinary everyday clothes. His jeans were tucked into a pair of down-at-heel snow boots. His jacket, also denim, had imitation fur on the lapels and collar. His hair was short, almost a crew cut.

  The man whose face Hanne could see was wearing a light beige overcoat and was also bare-headed. He wasn’t saying much, but appeared to be listening intently to the other’s flow of words. After a few minutes he took a small folder from the other man, possibly a slim file. He flicked rapidly through it and seemed to be asking questions about some of the contents. He pointed several times at the documents and held them out under the lamp for them both to see. Finally he folded them lengthwise and thrust them with some difficulty into an inside pocket.

  The light coming from directly above, like a weak sun at its zenith, turned his face into a caricature, looking almost diabolical. Even so, Hanne had recognised him immediately. As the men shook hands and went off in opposite directions Hanne let go of the tree and turned to her partner.

  “I know who that one is,” she said, in a tone of great satisfaction.

  The man in the overcoat was hurrying off, his shoulders hunched, towards the far side of the park where he’d left his car.

  “It’s Peter Strup,” she declared. “Peter Strup the lawyer.”

  MONDAY 9 NOVEMBER

  The paintings hung on the walls in dense profusion. It made for a pleasing impression, even though they did rather overpower one another. She recognised some of the signatures. Well-known artists. One rainy evening she had offered the proprietor a tidy sum for an almost metre-square picture of Olaf Ryes Plass. It was painted in watercolours, but was not like any watercolour she had ever seen: it looked as if it had been done on brown paper which had not absorbed the paint. It was ro
ugh and violent, full of urban life and vigour. In the background you could see the block where she lived. But the painting hadn’t been for sale.

  The tables were too close together, which was the only annoying aspect of the place. It was difficult to conduct a private conversation when the neighbouring table was in such close proximity. There weren’t many customers on a Monday; it was so quiet that they’d rejected the table to which they’d been ushered and insisted on one at the other side of the room. For the moment there were no fellow diners next to them.

  The black oilcloth that covered the table was in elegant contrast to the white damask napkins, and the wineglasses were perfect, with no fussy adornment. The wine itself was superb; she had to give him credit for his selection.

  “You don’t give up,” said Karen Borg with a smile after tasting it.

  “No, I’m not renowned for surrendering, at least not to beautiful women!”

  It would have been banal, even rather impertinent, coming from anyone else. But Peter Strup made it sound like a compliment, and she realised—not without a degree of self-reproach—that she felt gratified by it.

  “I couldn’t say no to a written invitation,” Karen replied. “It’s years since I last had such a thing.”

  * * *

  The invitation had been on top of her pile of mail that very day. An ochre-coloured card of quality paper from Alvøen, deckle-edged and headed in fine print: Peter Strup, High Court Barrister.

  The text itself was handwritten, in a manly but neat and legible hand. It was a humble request to meet him for dinner at a particular restaurant, considerately enough only two blocks away from where she lived. The time proposed was that same evening, and he had ended by writing: