Anne Holt - The Blind Goddess

She was greeted by applause when she went into the combined lunch and meeting room, and felt extremely self-conscious. But she smiled and shook all the extended hands. There were a few comments about her hairstyle; she parried the friendly teasing with self-irony, and everyone laughed. She was still wearing sticking plasters, and the lower part of her face was displaying various shades of yellow and green. That protected her from hugs, until the superintendent entered the room, threw his arms round her shoulders, and gave her an exuberant embrace.

“What a girl!” he bellowed into her ear. “My God, Hanne, you gave us all a fright!”

Hanne had to reiterate her insistence that she was fine, and promised to deliver the report he was expecting. They agreed on a time and place, and Chief Inspector Kaldbakken concurred.

Suddenly Billy T. was standing in the doorway. At six foot eight plus boots, his shaved head touched the lintel. Despite his broad grin, he was an intimidating sight.

“KO’d in the first round, Hanne? Thought you’d have been able to look after yourself better than that,” he said, in a tone of mock disappointment. He had trained Hanne in self-defence himself.

“Are you going to sit there all day letting them sing your praises, or have you got a few minutes for some real work?”

She had indeed. Her desk was dominated by a huge bouquet of flowers. It was beautiful, but the vase rather spoilt the effect. It wasn’t big enough either, and when she lifted it carefully to carry it to the windowsill the whole lot toppled over. The vase slipped out of her grasp and crashed to the floor. Flowers and water went everywhere. Billy T. roared with laughter.

“You see what happens when we show a bit of appreciation here in the office,” he said.

He pushed Hanne aside, scooped up the flowers in one gigantic hand, and tried to sweep the water to the wall with his boots. Ineffectually. He sat down, tossing the flowers into a corner.

“I think I’ve got something for you,” he declared, pulling out two pieces of paper from his back pocket. They were curved to the shape of his buttocks, like a man’s wallet. They’d obviously been there some time.

“Seized last week,” he said, as Detective Inspector Wilhelmsen unfolded them. “When we raided an apartment. Second time lucky. Twenty grams of heroin, four grams of cocaine. But it really was a stroke of luck, we’d only nabbed him for minor offences before. Now he’s down below gnashing his teeth.” He waved his arm with a flourish towards the window, indicating the rear of the building.

“And he’ll be staying there till the main hearing, you can be sure of that-which may take a while,” he added in a tone of great satisfaction.

The two sheets were very similar to the piece of paper from Olsen’s porn video. Nothing but rows of figures, in groups of three numbers. Both were handwritten, and headed respectively “Borneo” and “Africa.”

“He’s singing like a lark, but he’s sticking to his story that he doesn’t know what these signify. We’ve been pushing him pretty hard, and he’s given us a whole lot of useful information. More than necessary, in fact. Which makes me wonder whether maybe he’s telling the truth when he says he’s got no idea what the numbers mean.”

They sat staring at the pieces of paper as if the secret would suddenly jump out and hit them right between the eyes if they concentrated hard enough.

“Did he say anything about how he’d got hold of them?”

“Yes, he maintains that he came across them accidentally, and that he kept them as a kind of insurance. We couldn’t get any more out of him, not even what he meant when he said ‘accidentally.’”

Hanne noted the strange texture of the paper. It had a powdery coating, with a few scattered fingerprints faintly delineated in pale mauve.

“I’ve already had them tested for prints. Nothing of any use there,” Billy T. volunteered.

He took the sheets from her and left the room, returning a couple of minutes later and handing her a copy of each, still warm.

“I’ll keep the originals. You can have them if you need them.”

“Thanks, Billy.”

Her gratitude was genuine, despite her weary smile.

First she assured him that he was a witness, not a suspect. That scarcely made any difference to him, since he was already charged on another matter anyway. Then he was given a Coca-Cola, which he’d requested. He’d been allowed to have a shower before coming up. Hanne Wilhelmsen was friendly and open, and managed to indicate obliquely that a suspect in one case would benefit from being a good witness in another. He was not noticeably impressed. They made small talk. The break from the boredom of his cell was welcome; he looked as if he was actually enjoying himself. Hanne was not. Her headache was bad, and when she winced at the pain the stitches in her wounds pulled and made it worse.

“I realise I’ll get several years for this.”

He seemed more confident than Billy T. had implied.

“I might as well admit it to you: I’m not very interested in your own case. That can stay yours. I want to talk to you about the documents that were found on you.”

“Documents? They weren’t documents. They were bits of paper with numbers. Documents have rubber stamps and signatures and things.”

He’d already drunk one bottle of Coke, and asked for another. Hanne pressed the buttons on the intercom and ordered it.

“Room service! Marvellous! Nothing like that where I am, you know.”

“These documents, or sheets of paper,” she tried again, but was interrupted.

“No idea. It’s the truth. Found them somewhere. Kept them just as a sort of insurance policy. You can’t be too careful in my line of business, you know.”

“Insurance against what?”

“Just insurance, not for anything special. Have you been beaten up, or what?”

“No, I was born like this.”

After three hours’ work she was beginning to understand why the doctor had been so adamant that she should continue her sick leave. Cecilie had warned her about the headaches and the nausea, had outlined frightful scenarios of how everything could become permanent if she didn’t take it easy. Hanne was beginning to think her partner might be right. She gently massaged the temple that wasn’t plastered up.

“Can’t say anything, you see.”

He suddenly seemed a little more amenable. His bony frame was trembling, and he spilt some Coke as he tried to drink from the new bottle that had arrived within minutes.

“Withdrawal symptoms, you see. Ought to get me over to the prison. Plenty of dope there, you know. Couldn’t you organise something for me?”

Hanne Wilhelmsen looked at him. Pitifully thin and pale as a ghost. His scanty beard wasn’t sufficient to conceal all his spots; he had abnormally bad skin for a man over thirty. He must have been handsome once. She could imagine him as a five-year-old, dressed up for a photograph in a sailor suit and gleaming curls-a sweet child. She’d heard the lawyers at police headquarters complaining contemptuously about all the nonsense put forward by defence counsel. Wretched childhood, let down by society, drunkard fathers, mothers who drank a bit less to keep themselves just sober enough to prevent the child being taken into care, until by the age of thirteen it was totally uncontrollable and beyond all assistance from the child care authorities or any other well-meaning souls. They didn’t stand a chance. Hanne knew the defence lawyers were right. She’d long realised that with ten years of frustration behind you, there was more than enough reason to turn bad. They’d all had a hell of a life. This guy too, presumably.

Like a thought-reader he started to whine in a quavering voice, “I’ve had a hell of a time, you know.”