Anne Holt - The Blind Goddess

“Karen isn’t in the cottage.”

Hanne stood at the door.

“Her car is there, and there’s a light in the kitchen, but no sign of the dog, nor anybody. She must be out for a walk.”

Out for a walk. His beloved Karen, the only straw he had left to clutch at. The woman who could rescue him from total humiliation, save the police from scandalous headlines, save the country from a drugs baron and murderer. She was out for a walk. Right now she was probably strolling along the shore at Ula, throwing sticks for the dog and breathing in the fresh sea air many miles and a hundred light-years away from a stuffy claustrophobic office at police headquarters with walls that had started to sway, constricting themselves and threatening to suffocate him. He could see her in his mind’s eye, in her old yellow raincoat, with wet hair and no makeup, the way she always looked on rainy days at the cottage. Out walking. Out for a bloody walk in the pissing rain.

“They can take a walk too, the local police! The bloody area isn’t that big!”

It was unfair to take it out on Hanne, and he regretted it instantly. He tried to moderate his outburst with a weak smile and a helpless movement of his head.

Hanne replied soothingly that she’d already asked them to do that. There was still time, and thus still hope. A swift glance at the clock prompted her to ask whether he’d given notice of the delay.

“I asked for a postponement till three o’clock; I got till two. There’s an hour to go. I’ll get longer if I can promise that she’s coming. If not, the hearing will start at two.”

Far, far away a yellow figure was walking along by the ravenously snatching winter sea and feeding it with stones. The boxer flung itself again and again into the rough waves, quivering with cold as only dogs do and yet not giving up, impelled by its canine instincts to pursue every object that was thrown. It had never had a chill, but it was shivering violently now. Karen Borg stopped and took an old jumper out of her rucksack and put it on the dog to keep it warm. It looked ridiculous with pink mohair wrapped round its front legs and flopping under its thin belly, but at least it ceased its trembling.

She had come to the end of the headland, and was hunting about for the nice sheltered spot where she so often sought refuge on days like this but always had difficulty locating again. There it was. She sat down on an insulated groundsheet she’d brought with her and took out a thermos flask. The hot chocolate had a distinct flavour of many years of ingrained coffee, but it didn’t matter. She sat there for a long time, deep in thought, her ears filled with the noise of the sea and the wind whistling round the big rock. The dog lay at her feet looking like a pink poodle. For some reason she felt troubled. She was desperate to find peace out here, but it remained unattainable. That was unusual; it had always come willingly to meet her here before. Perhaps it had found someone else and deserted her.

The police didn’t find her. She didn’t get to Oslo that day. She didn’t even know she was wanted there.

It was doomed to fail. Without the slightest shred of new evidence, there was nothing more to put forward. This time Christian Bloch-Hansen took twenty minutes to persuade the Court that continued custody was a clearly unjustifiable and disproportionate measure. Mr. Lavik’s legal practice was obviously suffering significantly from his detention. He was losing thirty thousand kroner a week. Nor was it just himself who was adversely affected: he had two employees whose very jobs were threatened by his absence. His professional and social standing made the present circumstances even more stressful, and the overwhelming media attention had not exactly improved the situation. In the unlikely event of the Court’s continuing to believe there were reasonable grounds for suspicion of criminal behaviour, it should take into consideration the extreme burden posed in this instance by remand in custody. The police ought to have been able to produce more substantial evidence in a week, but they hadn’t. Lavik must be released before irrevocable damage was done to his reputation. His health was also at risk: the Court could see for itself the condition he was in.

The Court could indeed. He’d looked a sorry sight last time, and there was no sign of any recovery yet. You didn’t need to be a doctor to see that he was in a bad way. His clothes had drooped in unison with their owner, and the previously elegant young lawyer now looked like a tramp dragged in off the street after a grim Christmas lunch at a soup kitchen.

The Court was unanimous. The decision was dictated then and there. Håkon’s profound depression was lifted somewhat when the judge reiterated that there was still reasonable cause for suspicion. But his heart sank again when he heard him express his condemnation of the police in fairly unequivocal terms for their failure to follow matters up, referring in particular to the lamentable lack of clarification of Karen Borg’s statement.

The danger of destruction of evidence was also obvious, but unfortunately it was equally apparent to the magistrate that custody would indeed be a disproportionate measure given all the circumstances. The defendant was to be released, but would have to report to the police every Friday.

Report to the police! A lot of help that would be. Håkon appealed against the decision on the spot and asked for a stay of execution. That would at least give them one more day. A day was a day. Even if Rome wasn’t built in such a short period, there were many other things that had come to fruition on the basis of a few extra stolen hours.

Håkon could hardly believe his ears when the judge stated that he could not grant that request either. He tried to protest, but met with a sharp rebuttal. The police had had their opportunity, which they had singularly failed to take advantage of. Now they would have to manage without the Court’s help. Håkon responded aggressively that there was no point in appealing at all, and tore up the application in anger. The judge pretended not to notice, and brought the hearing to a close with a sardonic observation:

“With luck you might escape a claim for damages. If so, you can count yourselves extremely fortunate.”

Jørgen Ulf Lavik was released that same evening. He immediately seemed to straighten up and fill his suit, growing several centimetres and putting on some of his lost kilos. As he left police headquarters he laughed-for the first time in ten days.

Which is more than Hanne Wilhelmsen or Håkon Sand did. Or anyone else in the great curved building on Grønlandsleiret, for that matter.

It had gone well. It really had gone well. The nightmare was over. They hadn’t found anything. If they had, he’d still have been inside. But what was there to find? As fate would have it, only two days before his arrest he’d removed the key from beneath the filing cabinet and found a safer place for it. Perhaps the old man was right and the angels were on their side. Only the gods themselves could know why.

But there was one thing he didn’t entirely understand. When he’d selected Christian Bloch-Hansen as his lawyer, it was because he was the best. The guilty need the best; the innocent can get by with anybody. Bloch-Hansen had come up to expectations, and that was fine. He himself would hardly have thought of the breach of confidentiality angle in respect of Karen Borg. He’d done a splendid job as defence counsel, and had been perfectly correct and polite to him. But with no warmth or empathy or kindness. He had seemed indifferent, doing his job, doing it efficiently, but there had been something in his penetrating eyes that looked like a glint of animosity, even contempt. Did he believe him to be guilty? Was he refusing to believe in his convincing story, so convincing that he’d almost begun to believe it himself?