Anne Holt - The Blind Goddess

“South,” she said, dropping her voice, “the code heading on the piece of paper we found in Hansy Olsen’s flat. Oh, my God!”

She leant over his shoulder. In front of him was the complete set of the adventures of the British flying ace. She picked up Biggles in Africa and Biggles in Borneo .

“Africa and Borneo. Jacob Frøstrup’s insurance documents. How did you suddenly come upon it?”

“We can be grateful for all the laborious routine work that’s been done. In the long list of the contents of Lavik’s office, I happened to notice that the Biggles series was among his books. It amused me, because I used to devour them myself as a boy. If the individual titles had been listed, I would have probably seen it then. But it just said ‘Biggles books.’”

He ran his hand over the frayed, light-blue spine. His leg wasn’t hurting anymore. Karen Borg was only a faint and distant image in the back of his mind. He was the one who had discovered the key to the code. For ten weeks he’d been jogging along behind Hanne Wilhelmsen. Now it was his turn.

“The under secretary had the same books. The whole set complete.”

It was like a bombshell. There it was in front of them, in the form of three well-thumbed books for boys. Books that for some reason were on the shelves of an under secretary and in the office of a corrupt, deceased lawyer. It couldn’t be coincidence.

In forty minutes they had broken the code. Three incomprehensible pages of rows of numbers were transformed into three seven-line messages. They were quite informative-confirming some of their suspicions. The amounts involved were huge. Three deliveries of a hundred grams each. Heroin. As expected. The letters, written in a hasty backhand-both of them were left-handed-gradually revealed all the collection points and delivery instructions. Price, quantity, and quality were stated, each message ending with a note of the courier’s payoff.

But not a single damned name. Nor address. The places mentioned were obviously specific, but they were in code. The three collection points were given as B-c, A-r, and S-x. The destinations were FM, LS, and FT. Meaningless. For the police. But obviously not for the people for whom the instructions were intended.

They were alone in the big room. Books towered above them in impersonal silence on all four sides, damping the acoustics and muffling the transmission of sound in the venerable building. Not even a class of schoolchildren in the next room could disturb the scholarly peace that resided within those walls.

Hanne struck her fist on her forehead in exaggerated recognition of her own stupidity, and then banged her head on the table for emphasis.

“He was in police headquarters the day I was knocked out. Don’t you remember? The minister was having a sightseeing tour of the custody suite and was going to discuss unprovoked violence! The under secretary was with him! I remember hearing them out at the back.”

“But how could he have got away from the group? There were so many journalists in tow.”

“Lavatory key. He could have borrowed a bunch of keys to go to the lavatory. Or got one for some other reason. I don’t know. But he was there. It can’t have been a coincidence, it just can’t.”

They folded up the deciphered codes, handed in the Biggles books to the woman at the issue desk, and went out onto the steps. Håkon was fumbling with his chewing tobacco and getting into the swing of it again after a couple of prods with his tongue.

“We can’t arrest a guy because he’s got books on his shelves.”

They looked at one another and burst into gales of laughter. It sounded raucous and disrespectful between the tall pillars, which seemed to shrink back towards the wall in outrage. Their breath formed puffs of mist in the freezing air before evaporating.

“It’s incredible. We know there’s a third man. We know who he is. A scandal of significant proportions, and yet we can’t do anything. Not a damned thing.”

There was really nothing to be amused about. But they were grinning all the way to the car, which Hanne had rather cheekily left on the pavement outside. She’d put a police sign behind the windscreen to lend legality to her inconsiderate parking.

“Well, we were right, anyway, Håkon,” she said. “Which is rather nice. There was a third man. Exactly as we said.”

She laughed again. More despondently this time.

His flat was still there. It looked quite alien despite its familiarity. The change must be in himself. After three hours’ cleaning, finishing off with a thorough round of the carpets with the vacuum cleaner, he felt more relaxed. The activity didn’t do his leg any favours. But it was good for his soul.

Perhaps it was foolish not to say anything to the others. But Hanne had taken over again now. They were sitting on something that could bring down a government. Or fizzle out like a damp squib. In either case there would be one hell of a stink. No one could blame them for waiting a while, biding their time. The under secretary wasn’t going to disappear.

He’d phoned Karen Borg’s number on three occasions and had always got Nils. Quite idiotic, he knew she was still in hospital.

The doorbell rang. He looked at the clock. Who would come visiting at half past nine on a Tuesday evening? For a moment he considered not answering. It would probably be someone making him a fantastic offer of a cut-price subscription. Or wanting to save his immortal soul. On the other hand, it could be Karen. Of course it couldn’t be, but it might perhaps, just perhaps be her. He closed his eyes tight, said a silent prayer, and went to the entry phone.

It was Fredrick Myhreng.

“I’ve brought some wine,” his cheery voice announced, and although Håkon had no great desire to spend an evening with the irritating journalist, he pressed the button and admitted him. Moments later Myhreng was standing in the doorway with a lukewarm pizza in one hand and a bottle of sweet Italian white wine in the other.

“Pizza and white wine!”

Håkon made a face.

“I like pizza, and I like white wine. Why not both together?” said Fredrick, undeterred. “Damn good. Get a couple of glasses and a corkscrew. I’ve got some napkins.”

A beer was more tempting, and there were two slim half-litre cans in the fridge. Fredrick declined, and began knocking back the sugary wine as if it were fruit juice.

It was quite some time before Håkon found out what he had come for-when he eventually moved on from his own self-aggrandisement.

“Look, Håkon,” he said, wiping his mouth punctiliously with a red napkin, “if someone did something that wasn’t entirely aboveboard, nothing serious, mind, just not quite acceptable, and then he discovered something that was a lot worse, something that someone else had done, or for instance he found something that, for instance, the police might be able to use… For instance. In a case that was much worse than what this bloke had done. What would you do? Would you turn a blind eye to something that wasn’t really kosher, but not as wrong as what others had done, which he might be able to help clear up?”

It went so quiet that Håkon could hear the faint hiss of the candles in the room. He leant over the table, pushing away the cardboard box in which now only a few scraps of mushroom remained.

“What exactly have you done, Fredrick? And what the hell have you discovered?”

The journalist lowered his eyes guiltily. Håkon banged his fist down on the table.

“Fredrick! What is it you’ve been withholding?”

The national newspaper journalist had vanished, to be replaced by a puny little boy who was about to confess his misdemeanours to an enraged adult. Shamefaced, he put his hand into his trouser pocket and produced a small shiny key.