Hanne Wilhelmsen - 01 - The Blind Goddess

by Anne Holt

  Billy T. spoke with a mixture of passion and disgust. He’d almost finished eating, a great pile of thick slices of dark-brown bread. The only items he’d treated himself to from the canteen counter were two half-litres of milk and a cup of coffee. It was all going down in record time.

  “As Galen said: ‘Slow eating is sensible eating.’”

  Billy T. stopped chewing for a moment and looked at her in amazement.

  “The Koran,” said Hanne.

  “Huh, the Koran…”

  He went on chewing obstinately at the same speed.

  Hanne hadn’t had time to have breakfast that morning, nor to make herself a packed lunch. A dry open sandwich of peeled prawns on white bread lay unfinished on the plate in front of her. “Not exactly suffering from overload,” Billy T. had remarked with a nod at the sparse topping. The mayonnaise was stale. But the worst of her hunger was appeased. The rest could wait.

  “Cocaine, on the other hand, usually comes from South America. There are entire regimes over there thriving on the fact that our society creates a need for drugs in so many people. The worldwide drugs trade is a multi-billion-dollar one. Even in this country the turnover must run into several billion kroner a year. We think. With seven thousand addicts feeding a habit that costs up to two thousand kroner a day, it amounts to quite a hefty sum. Of course we don’t know exactly how much. But big money? You bet it is. If it weren’t illegal, I’d have started up myself. No hesitation!”

  She didn’t doubt it; she was well aware of Billy’s burdensome maintenance contributions. But a man of his appearance would be a rather obvious target at border crossings. He would certainly be the first one she would have stopped.

  The canteen was beginning to fill up. It was getting on towards the lunch hour. Since a number of people were showing signs of heading in their direction, Hanne decided it was time to get back to work. Before she went, Billy T. solemnly promised to search for the missing boot.

  “We’re all keeping our eyes peeled,” he grinned. “I’ve distributed a picture of the item in question to all units. The big boot hunt is on!”

  He gave her an even broader grin and a Scout salute with two fingers up to his bald pate.

  Hanne smiled in return. There wasn’t really much of a policeman about the guy.

  * * *

  The room was guaranteed bug-free. Needless to say. It was right at the end of a corridor deep inside no. 16 Platou Gata on the second floor. The building looked thoroughly uninteresting and anonymous on the outside, an impression reinforced in the minds of the few who were granted access. It had been the headquarters of the Intelligence Services since 1965. It was small and cramped, but served its purpose. Discreetly enough.

  The office itself wasn’t very big either. It was bare, apart from a square laminated table in the centre with four tubular steel chairs along each side. There was also a telephone on the floor in one corner. The walls were unadorned and dirty yellow, adding quite an echo to the voices of the three men around the table.

  “Is there even the remotest possibility of you two taking over the case?”

  The man asking the question, blond and in his forties, was an employee of the Service. So was the dark-haired man in sweater and jeans. The third, older than the other two and wearing a grey flannel suit, was attached to the Police Special Branch. He was sitting with his elbows on the table, tapping his fingertips rhythmically together.

  “Too late,” he stated tersely. “We could perhaps have done it a month ago, before it took on such wide ramifications. Now it’s definitely too late. It would arouse far too much attention.”

  “Is there anything that can be done at all?”

  “Hardly. As long as we ourselves aren’t sure of the full extent of the case, I can only recommend that you maintain contact with Peter Strup, keep an eye on our friend, and in general try to stay one step ahead of everybody else. But don’t ask me how.”

  There was no more to be said. The chair legs made a screech of protest on the floor as the three men rose simultaneously. Before they headed towards the door, the visitor shook the hands of his two hosts as if they’d all been attending a funeral.

  “This isn’t good. Not good at all. I pray to God that you’re wrong. Best of luck.”

  Ten minutes later he was back on the inaccessible top floor of police headquarters. His boss listened to him for half an hour; then gazed at his experienced colleague for over a minute without saying a word.

  “What a bloody mess,” he said. Vehemently.

  * * *

  The commissioner felt slightly aggrieved that the parliamentary under secretary wouldn’t succumb. On the other hand, perhaps he was actually just using the case as a pretext for contacting her. It was a flattering notion. She looked in the mirror, and turned up her mouth in an unbecoming grimace at what she saw. Disheartening. The slimmer she got, the older she looked. Over recent months she’d been getting steadily more nervous as she approached her next period, each a little less reliable than the last. They were slightly late, unpredictable, and had diminished from a four-day flood to a two-day trickle. The pains had decreased too, and she missed them. She was horrified to notice instead the onset of hot flashes. She saw in the mirror a woman whom nature was mercilessly consigning to the status of grandmother. With a daughter of twenty-three it was far from merely theoretical. She gave an involuntary shiver at the thought. Well, she would just have to keep trying.

  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 ins
tinct 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 felony 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 ex
tra 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.