The Blind Goddess

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, Hakon,” 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.”

Hakon 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, Hakon 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 Hakon at least.

“Don’t give up on me, Hakon,” 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 Hakon 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. Hakon’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 Frostrup’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