Anne Holt - The Blind Goddess

“Phone me at home if there are any developments,” he said, leaving his stoical colleague and most of his cup of tea.

“You win some, you lose some,” he heard her call out after him as he trudged off down the corridor.

The plainclothesmen following him, six in total, had realised that it would be a long evening and a cold night. One of them, a narrow-shouldered clever chap with sharp eyes, had checked round the back of the house. About three metres from the wall facing the sea the ground sloped down abruptly to a small cove with a sandy beach. It was only fifteen to twenty metres across, and bordered at each end by a barbed-wire fence with supports fixed into the bare rock. Private ownership of land was never so jealously guarded as at the seashore, the policeman thought, grinning to himself. On both sides of the wire there was a steep rock face five or six metres high. It would be possible to climb it, but only with difficulty. In any case Lavik would still have to come round onto the road by the house. The point was completely cut off by the road, which therefore had to be crossed in order to leave the area.

One man was stationed at either end of this stretch of road and one in the middle, and since it was only about a couple hundred metres, they had visual coverage of the entire length. Lavik couldn’t get past without being seen. The other three took up positions around the cottage.

Lavik was sitting inside amused at the thought that the men outside, however many there were, must be freezing their arses off. He was warm and comfortable and hyped up with excitement as he embarked on his plan. He had an old-fashioned alarm clock in front of him, with no glass over the hands. With a bit of fiddling he managed to attach a wooden peg to the small hand. He plugged in the fax machine, put a sheet of paper in the feed, and tried it out. He set the hand just before three, placed the extended hand over the start button of the machine, keyed in his own office number, and sat watching it. A quarter of an hour passed, and nothing happened. He waited a few more minutes and began to worry that the whole scheme would have to be aborted. But then, just as the little hand made its tiny movement to the three, everything functioned perfectly. The peg on the end of the hand just brushed the electronic start button, but it was sufficient. The fax machine obeyed, sucked in the sheet of paper, and transmitted the message.

Encouraged by this success, he went quickly through the house plugging in the time switches he’d brought from home. He used them to economise on electricity, turning the electric radiators off at midnight and on again at six, so that the house was warm when they got up. It was soon done-he was accustomed to setting them. But the difficult part was still to come. He had to create movement while he was away: lights going on and off wouldn’t be enough. He’d thought it all out beforehand, but hadn’t put the idea to the test. It was hard to tell how it would go in practice. Hidden from view by the drawn curtains, he arranged three thin cords across the living room, tying one end of each to the kitchen door handle, and the other ends to different points on the opposite side of the room. Then he attached a kitchen towel to the first, an old pair of swimming trunks to the second, and a napkin to the third. It took a while to set up the candles in the right place: each one had to be up against its string, close enough for the string to catch alight when the flame burnt down to the same level. He broke off the candles to unequal lengths and fixed them in a base of molten wax, standing them on saucers. The candle by the string with the napkin on was the shortest, only a fraction of an inch above the taut thread. He stood and watched in eager anticipation.

Success! In just a few minutes the flame had come low enough to lick at the string, which smoked and then burnt through, and the napkin descended to the floor, casting a moving shadow on the curtains in the window that faced the road. Perfect.

He put up a new string to replace the burnt one, and got out a longer candle. Then he set the clock with the little hand just past one. In slightly less than two hours’ time Jørgen Lavik would apparently send a fax to a lawyer in Tønsberg about an urgent matter which had been delayed by circumstances beyond his control; he apologised and hoped the delay had not caused any problems.

Then he changed into camouflage clothes, meant for hunting but ideal for his purpose. He lit the candles carefully and ensured once again that they were firmly in position. Then he went down to the cellar and slipped out through the door at the rear of the house.

Down on the beach he paused and waited for a moment. Hugging the wall of rock, he felt reasonably certain that he blended fully with the background. When he’d got his breath back he crept along to the spot where many summers ago he’d cut an opening in the wire to gain easier access to his neighbour’s property, in order to play with a boy of his own age.

He crawled towards the road. They probably had it under observation along its whole length. Near the edge of the wood he lay and listened. Nothing. But they must be there. He continued parallel with the road, five metres in and hidden by the trees. There it was. The big concrete pipe that carried a small stream to the other side of the road, creating a bridge instead of a ford. He’d slithered through the pipe on countless occasions in his youth, but he’d put on several kilos and twenty centimetres since then. But he’d calculated correctly that it would still be big enough to take him. He got a bit wet of course, but the stream was only a thin winter trickle; the little pond in the forest above was probably frozen. The pipe continued for three metres beyond the road, because they’d allowed for a long-promised widening which had never materialised. With his head protruding from the other end, he lay quiet again for a few minutes to listen. Still nothing. He was breathing heavily, and could feel how debilitated he’d become from his days in prison. Though much of his loss of strength was compensated for by a potent rush of adrenaline as he darted swiftly and soundlessly into the undergrowth on the opposite side of the roadway.

It wasn’t very far to run, and he was there in just over five minutes. He glanced at his watch. Half past seven. Perfect. The wood creaked a bit when he opened the door of the shack, but the police were at too great a distance to have any chance of hearing it. He slipped inside just as a car went past on the main road twenty metres away. Another one followed close behind, but by then he was already sitting in the dark green Lada and had found that even after being laid up for several months, the battery still had enough power in it to start the engine with a cough and a splutter. Although his uncle’s mind was gone and he barely recognised him on his visits to the hospital, it was obvious that he got some enjoyment from the occasional drives in the Lada that Jørgen treated him to. So as a gesture to his uncle, Jørgen had kept the car in good condition. Now it was he who was reaping the benefit. He revved the engine a couple of times, drove out of the garage, and headed off in the direction of Vestfold.

It was bitterly cold. The police officer had to flap his arms and stamp his feet while remaining silent and invisible. It wasn’t easy. He needed to remove his gloves to use his binoculars, which meant he wasn’t using them very often. He cursed and envied this bloody lawyer for being able to sit and enjoy the warmth in a place that necessitated outdoor surveillance. A moment ago a light had been switched off in one of the upstairs rooms: surely he wasn’t intending to go to bed so early. It was only eight o’clock. Hell, another four hours to the end of the shift. There was an icy blast on his wrist as he uncovered his watch, so he hurriedly pulled his sleeve down.