Anne Holt - The Blind Goddess

Hanne Wilhelmsen could hear loud conversation and boisterous laughter from the squad’s staff room well before she reached the door. She had to knock hard several times before someone finally opened up. The door was held ajar and a freckled man with greasy hair and a huge quid of chewing tobacco behind his upper lip gave her a crooked smile, revealing the tobacco trickling between his teeth on the left-hand side.

“Hi, Hanne, what can we do for you?”

He exuded affability, despite his surly body language and the fact that he was holding the door only just ajar.

Hanne smiled back, and nudged the door open wider. He let it go unwillingly.

Half-eaten remains of food, general detritus, and masses of paper, magazines, and soft porn lay scattered around the room. Reclining in a corner was a man with a shaven head, an inverted crucifix adorning one ear, heavy boots on his feet, and a thick Icelandic woollen sweater which looked as if it could stand up by itself. He went by the name of Billy T. He’d been at police training college with Hanne, and was regarded as one of the most effective and intelligent in the whole squad. Billy T. was a kindly soul, as gentle as a lamb, and had to live with an appetite for women which, combined with an enviable fertility, had given him no fewer than four children by an equal number of mothers. He’d never lived with any of them, but he loved his children, all boys, two of them near enough the same age. He coughed up his enforced maintenance contributions with no more than a muted curse every payday.

It was Billy T. who Hanne was in search of. She stepped over the mountains of clothes and papers in her path. He lowered the motorcycle magazine he was reading and looked up at her in mild astonishment.

“Could you spare me a minute in my office?”

An expressive gesture of her arm and head indicated what she thought of the possibility of any confidential conversation in these surroundings.

Billy T. nodded, abandoned his magazine, which was eagerly snapped up by the next reader, and followed her to the second floor.

Hanne Wilhelmsen pulled down a typewritten list from above her desk, letting a drawing pin fall to the floor. She didn’t bother to retrieve it, just placed the list in front of Billy T.

“These are all the full-time defence lawyers here in the city, plus some others who don’t specialise but take on quite a few criminal cases. There are thirty. More or less.”

Billy T. shook his bullet-shaped head and scrutinised the list with interest. He had to squint slightly, because the type was small in order to fit on one sheet.

“What do you think of them?” Hanne asked.

“Think of them? What do you mean?”

He ran his finger down the page.

“He’s all right, he’s okay, he’s a shit, she’s very okay,” he began. “Is that what you want to know?”

“Well, not exactly,” she murmured, hesitating a little.

“Which of them has the most drugs cases?” she asked after a moment or two.

Billy T. took up a pen and put a cross by six of the names. He handed the sheet back to her and she studied it. Then she put it down and gazed out of the window before she spoke again.

“Have you ever heard rumours about any of these lawyers themselves being involved in the drugs trade?”

Billy T. didn’t seem surprised at this. He nibbled his thumb.

“That’s a serious question, I take it. We hear so damned much, and only believe half of it. But what you’re asking is whether I personally have ever had my suspicions, right?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“Put it like this: we’ve had reason to keep people under observation now and again. The last couple of years there’ve been some odd fluctuations in the market. Maybe three years, in fact. Nothing concrete, nothing we can pinpoint. For example, the perennial problem of drugs creeping into the prisons. We don’t know what to do. The checks get more rigorous all the time, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. And things change on the street too. Prices fall. Which means oversupply. Pure free-market economy, that is. Yes, we hear rumours. But vague and conflicting. So if you’re asking whether I have suspicions about any of these lawyers, on the basis of what I know, my answer has to be negative.”

“But if I ask about your innermost thoughts and instincts, and you don’t have to give me any reasons, what would you say then?”

Billy T. from the hit squad rubbed his smooth head, picked up the paper, and placed a dirty index finger under one of the names. Then ran it down the page and stopped at another.

“If I knew something was going on, those two would be the first I would look into,” he said. “Maybe because there’s been talk, or maybe because I don’t like them. Take that for what it is. And don’t quote me on it, okay?”

Hanne Wilhelmsen reassured her colleague.

“You’ve never said it, and we’ve just been chatting about old times.”

Billy T. nodded and grinned, rose to his full height of over six and a half feet, and ambled off back to the staff room on the fourth floor.

Karen Borg received several telephone calls as a result of her latest and highly unwelcome commission. That morning a journalist rang. He worked for the Oslo Dagbladet, and sounded far too aggressively charming and intrusive.

She was totally unused to journalists, and reacted with uncharacteristic caution, replying by and large in monosyllables. First there was a preliminary skirmish in which he appeared to be trying to impress her with everything he already knew about the case, which did indeed seem quite a lot. Then he started asking questions.

“Has he said anything about why he killed Sandersen?”

“No.”

“Has he said anything about how they knew one another?”

“No.”

“Do the police have any theory about the case?”

“Don’t know.”

“Is it true that the Dutchman refuses to have any lawyer but you?”

“So far.”

“Did you know Hans Olsen, the murdered lawyer?”

She declined to assist him further, thanked him politely for calling, and replaced the receiver.

Hans Olsen? Why that question? She’d read the bloodcurdling details in the daily papers, but had put it to the back of her mind, since it didn’t concern her and she had no idea who the man was. It hadn’t occurred to her that the case might have anything to do with her client. Of course it didn’t mean there was any connection anyway; it might just have been a journalistic shot in the dark. She let it rest at that, though with a slight feeling of annoyance. She saw from the screen in front of her that nine people had tried to get in touch today, and from the names she could tell that she would have to spend the rest of the day on her most important client, Norwegian Oil. She pulled out two of the relevant files, bearing the bright red N.O. logo. Fetching herself a cup of coffee, she started making her calls. If she was finished in time she might manage a trip to the police station in the evening. It was Friday, and she had a bad conscience for not having visited her incarcerated client since that initial meeting. She definitely had to follow it up before the weekend.

Despite nearly a week in custody Han van der Kerch wasn’t any more talkative. He’d been provided with a urine-stained mattress and a blanket. In one corner of the bunk-like platform he’d piled up a number of cheap paperbacks. They were allowing him one shower a day, and he was beginning to get acclimatised to the warmth, stripping off as soon as he came into the cell, and usually just sitting around in his underpants. Only when he was given the occasional opportunity for exercise, or a further attempt was made at questioning him, did he bother to dress. A patrol car had been out to his room in the student residences in Kringsjå to fetch him a change of underpants, some toilet things, and, rather excessively, his small portable CD player.