Anne Holt - The Blind Goddess

“It must hurt a lot,” her partner said, smiling as she took hold of the hand that wasn’t attached to the tube.

“I was very frightened when I found you,” she continued. “But everything’s all right. I’ve seen your X-rays myself, and there’s no fracture. You’ve had a severe concussion. The wounds looked rather ugly, but they’ve been stitched and they’ll soon heal up.”

Hanne began to cry.

“I don’t remember anything, Cecilie,” she whispered.

“Slight amnesia, that’s all. Loss of memory,” Cecilie added with a smile. “It’s quite normal. Don’t worry, you just lie here for two or three days, then you can have a lovely couple of weeks off sick. I’ll look after you.”

Hanne was still crying. Cecilie bent over her, carefully, very carefully, and rested her face against the bandaged head so that her mouth was level with Hanne’s ear.

“That scar on your forehead will be terribly sexy,” she murmured. “Terribly, terribly sexy.”

It’s not bloody good enough!”

Håkon Sand only swore when he was really furious.

“If we can’t damned well be safe even in the office! And on a flaming Sunday as well!”

He spat out the words, accusations of incompetence, without knowing who to blame. He stood in the middle of the room and stamped his foot in time with his own outbursts.

“What the hell’s the point of locked doors and security precautions when anyone can attack us whenever they like!”

The superintendent in charge of A 2.11, a stoical man in his fifties, listened to his ranting apparently unmoved. He said nothing until Håkon had calmed down.

“It’s impossible to try and pin this on a particular individual. We’re not a fortress, nor do we want to be. In a building with a staff of almost two thousand, anyone could have followed an employee through the staff entrance at the rear. It would simply be a matter of timing. You could just hide behind a tree near the church and walk in immediately after somebody who had a pass. You’ve probably held the door open yourself for someone following you, whether you’ve known them or not.”

Håkon didn’t reply, which the superintendent correctly took as an admission.

“And in principle anyone could easily hide in the building while it’s open, in the toilets or whatever. It’s easy to get back out again. Rather than trying to discover how, we should be asking ourselves why.”

“It’s bloody obvious why,” Håkon raged. “This case, for God’s sake. This case! The file’s disappeared from Hanne’s office. Not a disaster in itself, because we’ve got several copies, but someone’s definitely trying to find out how much we know.”

He cut himself short and looked at the clock. His outburst of rage was abating.

“I must dash. I’ve got to see the commissioner at nine. Do me a favour: ring the hospital and ask whether Hanne can receive visitors. Leave a note in my room as soon as you know.”

Lady Justitia was magnificent. She stood some thirty centimetres high on the huge desk, the oxidised bronze redolent of considerable age. The blindfold round the eyes was almost entirely green, the sword in her right hand a reddish colour. But the flat bases of the two weighing pans were completely shiny. Håkon could see they were real scales, swaying slightly in the current of air created by his entry into the room. He couldn’t restrain himself from touching the statue.

“Gorgeous, isn’t she?”

The uniformed woman behind the huge desk was stating a fact rather than asking a question.

“Had it from my father as a birthday present last week. It stood in his office all his working life. I’ve admired it ever since I was a little girl. It was bought in the USA, in the late 1890s. By my great-grandfather. It may be valuable. Very attractive anyway.”

She was Oslo’s first female police commissioner. Her predecessor in the post, a fine upstanding man from Bergen, had been controversial and perpetually at odds with his staff. But he’d had an integrity and energy that had been lacking in the history of the force when he’d taken on the job seven years previously. He’d bequeathed a much better organisation than the one he’d inherited, but it had cost him dearly. Both he and his family were relieved when he retired, a little early, but with his honour intact.

The forty-five-year-old woman who now sat in the commissioner’s chair was of a different calibre altogether. Håkon couldn’t bear her. She was an arty-farty northerner from Trøndelag, more devious than anyone he’d ever met. She’d been manoeuvering herself towards the top position throughout her police career: keeping in with all the right people, going to all the right parties, and sipping drinks with the right colleagues at prosecution service meetings. Her husband worked in the Ministry of Justice. That had done her no harm either.

But she was undoubtedly very capable. If the old commissioner hadn’t elected to retire as soon as he could, she would have taken up an intermediate post, that of public prosecutor. Håkon didn’t know which would have been worse.

He made his report as factually as he could, but not in every detail. After a few seconds’ thought he decided it would be wrong not to tell his most senior boss about the unofficial connection they’d made between the two murders. But he kept it brief. To his annoyance she grasped everything immediately, put a few pertinent questions, nodded at his conclusions, and finally gave her approval to the work he’d done so far. She asked to be kept fully informed, preferably in writing. Then she added:

“Don’t speculate too much, Håkon. Get one murder out of the way at a time. The Sandersen case is in the bag. The technical evidence will support a conviction. Don’t look for phantoms where there aren’t any. You can regard that as an order.”

“Strictly speaking it’s really the public prosecutor who’s my boss on investigatory matters,” he parried.

In response, he was simply dismissed. As he was about to get up, he asked:

“Why does she have a blindfold over her eyes?”

He inclined his head towards the Goddess of Justice standing on her empty desk, attended only by two telephones.

“She mustn’t let herself be influenced by either side. She has to exercise blind justice, impartially,” the commissioner explained.

“But it’s difficult to see when you’re blindfolded,” said Håkon, without eliciting a reply. The king, however, hanging with his wife in a gold frame behind the commissioner’s shoulder, seemed to agree with him. Håkon chose to interpret His Majesty’s inscrutable smile as support for his own observations, and got up and left the sixth-floor office. He felt even more bad-tempered than when he’d arrived.

Hanne was glad to see him. Even with the bandage above her eye and her hair shorn on one side, he couldn’t help noticing how beautiful she was. Her pallor accentuated her large eyes, and for the first time since he’d learnt about the attack he recognised how worried he’d been. He didn’t dare give her a hug. Perhaps it was the bandages that frightened him off, but on thinking about it he realised that it wouldn’t have seemed natural anyway. Hanne had never invited intimacy beyond the professional loyalty she’d always shown him. But she was clearly pleased that he’d come. He wasn’t sure what he should do with the bouquet of flowers, and after a moment’s hesitation laid them on the floor. Her bedside table was over-full already. He drew up a tubular steel chair to the edge of the bed.

“I’m okay,” said Hanne before he’d had time to ask. “I’ll be back at work as soon as I can. If nothing else, this is proof positive that it’s something big we’ve stumbled on!”