Anne Holt - The Blind Goddess

“Yes, I know,” she replied dully. “I can’t help with that now. Obviously. But I might be able to get you moved over there today, if you tell me where you got those documents from.”

It was clearly tempting. She could see he was counting on imaginary fingers. If he could count at all.

“I found ’em. I can’t say no more than that. I think I know whose they were. They’re a dangerous lot, you see. They’ll catch up with you wherever you are. No, I reckon those papers are still a good insurance policy, I really do. I’d rather wait my turn out the back; I must be well up the list now, I’ve been there five days already.”

Detective Inspector Wilhelmsen didn’t have the strength to continue. She told him to drink up the rest of the Coca-Cola. He obeyed, drinking it all the way back down to the remand cells. He handed her the empty bottle outside the door of his own cell.

“I’ve heard of you, you know. Honest and straight, that’s what they say about you. Thanks for the Coke!”

The skinny man was transferred to prison the same day. Hanne was not too exhausted to pull a few strings before she went off duty. Even if she couldn’t conjure up extra space in the overcrowded prison, she could influence priorities. He was even more delighted when later that day, having settled into a cell with a window and something that bore a remarkable resemblance to a bed, he received a visit from his lawyer.

They sat in a room by themselves, the smartly dressed lawyer and the man with withdrawal symptoms. It was off a larger hall where the lucky ones were visited by their families and friends, a bleak, inhospitable space that tried in vain to create a good impression by having a play area for the youngest visitors in one corner.

The lawyer riffled through various documents. His briefcase lay on the table. It was open, and the lid stood like a shield between them. He himself seemed more nervous than the prisoner, a fact the addict’s state of health prevented him from noticing. The lawyer closed the lid and produced a handkerchief. He spread it out and proffered the contents.

There lay salvation, all the enfeebled man needed to get a few hours of well-deserved intoxication. He reached out for it, but the lawyer grabbed his hand as quick as a flash.

“What have you said?”

“Haven’t said a word! You know me! Never say more than I have to, not this lad.”

“Have you got anything in your flat that would give the police information? Anything at all?”

“No, no, nothing. Only some gear. Bloody bad luck, you know, they came just as I was gonna start my deliveries. Weren’t my fault, that.”

If the man’s brain hadn’t been so sluggish after twenty years’ abuse of artificial stimulants, he might have said something different. If the glimpse of salvation in the lawyer’s briefcase hadn’t eroded the small amount of judgement he could still muster, he might have said that he was in possession of compromising material, papers he’d found on the floor in another visiting room, after another arrest. If he’d had his wits about him he would probably have realised that for the documents to fulfil their purpose as insurance papers, he should admit to possession of them. Maybe he could even have pretended that all would be revealed to the police if anything happened to him. He could have got some benefit from it at least. Perhaps it would have saved his life; perhaps not. But his mind was too befuddled.

“Go on keeping your mouth shut,” the lawyer said, and let the prisoner help himself to the contents of the handkerchief. There was also a cylinder about the size of a cigar container, and with increasingly shaky hands the eager addict squeezed the supply into it. Unembarrassed, he pulled down his trousers and with a grimace pushed it up into his rectum.

“They search me before they put me back in the cell, but they’ll never check my arse after a visit from a lawyer.” He grinned happily.

Five hours later he was found dead in his cell. The overdose had sent him to his end with a beatific smile on his face. The remains of his fix were on the floor, a few tiny specks of heroin in a little piece of polythene. In the wet autumn grass two floors below the high barred window of the cell lay a little cigar-shaped case. No one was looking for it, and it would lie there through wind and rain until it was picked up by a security guard six months later.

The man’s ageing mother wasn’t told of his death until two days afterwards. She wept bitter tears and downed a whole bottle of aquavit for comfort. The boy’s unwanted arrival in the world had caused her sorrow, and she had cried herself through most of his life. Now she grieved that he was gone. Otherwise there was no one, absolutely no one, who would miss Jacob Frøstrup.

The older man may have seemed threatening the last time they met, but this time his face was absolutely distorted with suppressed anger. Meeting as before in a car park way up in Maridalen to the north of the city, the two men had left their respectable-looking cars at opposite ends, making them very conspicuous because there were only three other vehicles on the whole plot, all side by side. Each had walked off separately into the woods, the older one suitably attired, as on the previous occasion, the younger one freezing in a suit and black leather shoes.

“What the hell are you doing turning up dressed like that?” the older man spat out when they were a hundred metres or so in among the trees. “Are you deliberately trying to draw attention to yourself?”

“Relax, nobody saw me.”

His teeth were chattering. His dark hair was already wet, and the rain had soaked his shoulders. He looked like Dracula, a resemblance strengthened by his sharply pointed canine teeth, now quite distinct even when his mouth was closed, since his lips were tight with cold.

Not far off they heard the rumble of a tractor. They immediately hid themselves behind two tree trunks, a quite unnecessary precaution because they were at least a hundred metres from the track. The drone of the engine faded away into the distance.

“You know we never meet,” the irate man snapped. “Now I’ve had to meet you twice in quick succession. Have you completely lost your senses?”

The question was superfluous. He looked drenched and dejected. His dishevelled appearance stood out even more in contrast to his expensive suit and fashionable hairstyle, both of which were gradually disintegrating. He made no reply.

“Pull yourself together, man!”

Now absolutely livid, he seized his companion by the lapels and shook him. The younger man offered no resistance, his head flopping about like a rag doll’s.

“Now listen, listen to me.”

The older man changed his tactic. He released him, and spoke slowly and precisely, as if to a child.

“We’ll wind it up. We’ll drop the idea of the several months I was talking about. We’ll pack it in now. Do you hear? But you have to tell me where we stand. Does your jailbird know anything about us?”

“Yes. About me. Not about you, of course.”

The avuncular tone was gone in an instant as the older man screeched, “What the hell did you mean when you told me you hadn’t been as stupid as Hansy, then? You said you hadn’t had any contact with the runners!”

“I lied,” he said apathetically. “How the devil could I recruit them otherwise? I provided them with dope in prison. Not much, but enough to be able to control them. They run after dope like dogs after a bitch in heat.”

The older man raised his fist to strike him, but a bit too slowly for any element of surprise. The younger man took a frightened step back, slithered on the wet leaves, and landed in a heap on the ground. He didn’t get up. The older man kicked him contemptuously in the legs as he lay there.