Anne Holt - The Blind Goddess

“No. I want you. Don’t make any phone calls.”

Suddenly it occurred to her that she was alone with a man who was presumably a murderer. The faceless corpse had been haunting her ever since she’d found it on Friday evening. Then she pulled herself together. No lawyer had ever been killed by a client here in Norway. Certainly not in a police station. She repeated this reassurance to herself three times and felt more relaxed. The cigarette helped too.

“Answer me then! What do you want from me?”

Still no response.

“You’ll be up in front of the judge this afternoon for remand in custody. I’ll have to refuse to meet you there unless I have some idea of what you’re going to say.”

Threats didn’t have any effect either. Nevertheless she thought she could detect a glimmer of concern in his eyes. She made one last attempt.

“Besides, I’m running out of time now.”

She glanced quickly at her Rolex. Her fear was giving way to irritation. Which was increasing. He evidently noticed it. He was rocking back and forth in the chair again.

“Stop that!”

The legs of the chair banged down on the floor a second time. She’d won a modest victory.

“I’m not necessarily asking for the complete truth.” Her voice was calmer now. “I just want to know what you’re going to say in court. And I have to know that right now.”

Karen Borg’s experience of criminals without white collars and silk ties was entirely limited to having yelled after a bicycle thief who was making off down Markveien with her new fifteen-gear bike. But-she had seen this on TV. Defence Counsel Matlock had said: “I don’t want to know the truth, I want to know what you’re going to say in court.” Somehow it didn’t sound quite as convincing coming from her own lips. More hesitant, perhaps. But it might be a way of eliciting something.

Several minutes passed. The suspect had stopped rocking the chair, but was scraping it on the linoleum instead. The noise was getting on her nerves.

“It was me that killed the man you found.”

Karen was more relieved than surprised. She’d known it was him. He’s telling the truth, she thought, and offered him a throat pastille. He’d acquired the habit of smoking with a pastille in his mouth, just as she had. She’d started many years ago in the vague belief that it prevented the smell of smoke on the breath. By the time she’d realised it didn’t, she’d already become hooked.

“I was the one who killed the guy.”

It was as if he wanted to convince someone. It wasn’t necessary.

“I don’t know who he is. Was, I mean. That is, I know his name, and what he looks like. Looked like. But I didn’t know him. Do you know any defence lawyers?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, with a smile of relief. He didn’t smile back. “Well, it depends what you mean by know. I’m not a personal friend of any, if that’s what you mean, but it’ll be easy to find a good defence counsel for you. I’m glad you realise what you need.”

“I’m not asking you to get me another lawyer. I’m just asking you whether you know any. Personally.”

“No. Well, a few of my fellow students went on to specialise in that field, but none of them is in the top league. Yet.”

“Do you often see them?”

“No, only when I meet them by chance.”

That was true. And a sore point. Karen Borg didn’t have many friends now. They had slipped out of her life one after another, or she out of theirs, on paths that had become overgrown, only crossing now and again as polite exchanges over a beer in a pavement café in the spring, or emerging from a cinema late on an autumn evening.

“Good. Then I want to have you. They can charge me with the murder, and I’ll be remanded in custody. But you must get the police to guarantee me one thing: to let me stay here in police headquarters. Anything to keep away from that bloody prison.”

The man was certainly full of surprises.

The disgraceful conditions in the cells at police headquarters had hit the headlines from time to time in the newspapers, and with reason. The cells were intended for twenty-four-hour remand. They were scarcely even adequate for that. Yet they were where this prisoner wanted to stay. For weeks.

“Why?”

The young man bent forward confidentially. She could smell his breath, now rancid after several days without a toothbrush, and leant back in her own chair.

“I can’t trust anyone. I have to think. We can talk again when I’ve worked some things out. You will come back?”

He was intense, verging on desperation, and for the first time she almost felt sorry for him.

She rang the number Håkon had written on a piece of paper.

“We’ve finished. You can come and fetch us.”

Karen Borg didn’t have to go to court, to her great relief. She had only once attended a court hearing. It was while she was still a student, and convinced she would use her law degree to help the needy. She had sat herself on the public benches in Room 17, behind a barrier which seemed to be there to protect innocent observers from the brutal reality in the room. People were being imprisoned at half-hourly intervals, and only one out of eleven had been able to persuade the judge that he couldn’t possibly be guilty. On that occasion she had found it difficult to see who was defending and who was prosecuting counsel, so matey were they, laughing and handing one another cigarettes and telling crass courtroom jokes, until the wretched accused had been put in the dock and they went off to their respective corners to begin the contest. The police won ten rounds. It was swift, effective, and merciless. Despite her youthful urge to defend all the accused, she had to confess that she didn’t particularly react against the judge’s verdicts. Those charged had seemed to her to be dangerous, unkempt, unsympathetic, and too aggressive in their assertions of innocence and their resentment of the law, some in tears and many cursing and swearing. Nevertheless she had felt indignant at the convivial atmosphere that returned to the room immediately after a prisoner was led away shaking his head, a policeman gripping each arm, down to the holding cells in the basement. Not only did the two opponents, who only moments before had been impugning each other’s honour, continue with their half-finished anecdotes, but even the judge craned forward to listen, smiled, nodded his head, and threw in an amusing comment, until the next poor devil was ready in the dock. Karen thought judges should remain aloof, and friendships be kept out of the courtroom. Even now she still had the same idealistic opinion. So she was glad that during her eight years in a law office she had never set foot in a courtroom, always managing to resolve matters before they got that far.

The custodial decision in respect of Han van der Kerch was a pure formality. He signed his written agreement to eight weeks, with a ban on visits and letters. The police had in some bewilderment granted his request to remain in the police headquarters cells. He was certainly an oddball.

So Karen Borg hadn’t been required in court, and was back in her office. The fifteen commercial lawyers had their offices in the modern development at Aker Brygge on the waterfront, with an equal number of secretaries and ten clerks. The exclusive men’s fashion boutique on the lower ground floor had gone bankrupt three times, and was eventually replaced by the larger fashion chain, Hennes & Mauritz, which was prospering. The cosy, expensive lunch bar had given way to a McDonald’s. On the whole the premises hadn’t lived up to their expectations at the time of purchase, but to sell now would involve a catastrophic loss. And it was a central location, after all.