The Blind Goddess

THURSDAY 15 OCTOBER

Once, a long, long time ago, she had flirted with him shamelessly. She was not commissioner then, but an inspector in the minor offences unit, and newly appointed to the prosecution service. They were travelling to Spain to gather evidence for an alcohol smuggling case, her very first foreign trip on official business. The man sitting in front of her now in the visitors’ chair had been there as defence counsel. Gathering the evidence had taken three hours. The visit had lasted three days. There had been lots of good food, and even more good wine. He had been everything she admired: significantly older than herself, rolling in money, considerate, and successful. Now he was parliamentary under secretary in the Ministry of Justice. Not bad. During their trip ten years previously things had gone no further than a kiss and a cuddle. Which had not been her choice. So she felt slightly bashful now.

“A cup of coffee? Tea?”

He accepted the former, and declined a cigarette.

“Given up,” he smiled, waving it away.

She could feel that her hands were damp, and regretted that she hadn’t got out a few documents or something else to occupy them. Instead, she sat there twiddling her thumbs and rocking nervously back and forth in her enormous chair.

“Congratulations on your appointment!” he exclaimed. “Not bad, eh?”

“It was completely unexpected,” she lied.

The fact was that she had been invited to apply. By the former commissioner. So it was no surprise to anyone when she got the job.

The under secretary looked at the clock, and came straight to the point.

“The minister is very concerned about this lawyer affair,” he explained. “Very concerned indeed. What’s it actually all about?”

She may have made blatant advances to the man many years ago, and still be very enamoured of him, a feeling in no way diminished by his rank, but she was a professional to her fingertips.

“It’s a difficult case, and still rather unclear,” she replied vaguely. “There’s not much I can say. Beyond what’s in the newspapers. Some of which is correct.”

He adjusted his silk tie. He cleared his throat meaningfully, as if to let her know that he, as the minister’s closest political subordinate, had a right to better information than appeared in the more or less (principally the former) unreliable tabloid press. But it was no use.

“Investigations are at a very early stage, and the police aren’t yet ready to issue any information. If anything emerges during the course of the investigations that we think the Ministry’s political office ought to know about, you’ll hear from me immediately of course. I promise.”

That was all he would get out of her. He was old enough to realise the fact. So he didn’t persist. As he left the office, she observed that the extra kilos made his backside a lot less appealing. When the door had closed, she smiled, very pleased with herself. The ample bottom apart, he was still attractive. There would be other opportunities. A grey hair drifted silently down onto the desk, and she hastily pounced on it. Then she rang her secretary’s number.

“Make an appointment for me at the hairdresser’s,” she said peremptorily. “As soon as possible, please.”

Han van der Kerch was beginning to lose track of time. The lights were switched off to let the remand prisoners know when it was night, and the unappetising plastic-packed food was served punctually, dividing their lives into segments that fitted together to make a day. But without a glimpse of sun or rain, wind or cloud, and with far too much time that could only be used for sleeping, the young Dutchman had sunk into an apathetic state of semiexistence. One night, when five hours’ sleep during the day resulted in unbearable nocturnal wakefulness, having to listen to painful sobbing from a young lad in the adjoining cell and piercing screams from a Moroccan with withdrawal symptoms further down the corridor, he thought he would soon go mad. He prayed to a God he hadn’t believed in since he used to go to Sunday school as a child, prayed for daybreak and the bright ceiling light. God had obviously forgotten him, just as Han van der Kerch had forgotten God, because morning never came. In his desperation he had flung his recently returned wristwatch against the wall and smashed it. Now he couldn’t even follow the passage of time on its painful and relentless march towards a blank future without content.

The sturdy, myopic woman who brought the trolley of prison food round would occasionally give him a piece of chocolate. It made it feel like Christmas. He broke it up into tiny fragments and let them melt on his tongue one after another. The chocolate hadn’t prevented him from losing weight; after three weeks’ incarceration he was seven kilos lighter. His clothes no longer fitted him, but that was of little significance in his present circumstances, where he sat sometimes in his underpants, sometimes stark naked.

He was also afraid. The fear that had taken hold of him like an expanding cactus in his stomach as he stood over Ludvig Sandersen’s disfigured body had spread to his limbs. His hands and arms were trembling and he was spilling all his drinks. At the beginning he’d managed to read the books he was allowed to borrow, but gradually his powers of concentration waned. The letters danced and leapt about on the page. He’d been given pills. That’s to say, the warders had been given the pills, and they were handed to him one by one according to the doctor’s instructions, with a plastic mug of tepid water. Tiny bright blue pills in the evening which helped him along the road to dreamland. Three times a day he had bigger white pills. They gave him a sort of breathing space as the cactus temporarily retracted its needles. But the certainty that they would return, stronger and sharper, was almost as bad. Han van der Kerch was starting to lose his grip on his own existence.

He thought it was day. He couldn’t be certain of it, but the light was on, and there were noises going on all around him. A meal had just been served, though he wasn’t sure whether it was meant to be lunch or dinner. Perhaps it was a late supper. No, it was too early, too much noise.

At first he couldn’t see what it was. When the piece of paper dropped in through the bars it took him a while to work it out. He followed its progress; it was small and almost weightless and took ages to reach the floor. It fluttered like a butterfly, from side to side, as it bobbed down towards the concrete. He smiled, the motion was pleasing, and he felt it had nothing to do with him.

There it lay. Han van der Kerch left it where it was and raised his eyes again to follow the shadows of movement from the corridor. He’d just taken one of the white pills, and felt better than he had an hour ago. He made a laborious effort to stand up. He was dizzy, and had been lying for so long in the same place that his limbs had gone to sleep. They tingled uncomfortably as he hobbled the few steps to the door. He bent and picked up the piece of paper without looking at it. It took several minutes to get himself into a normal sitting position, without his legs complaining too much.

It was the size of a postcard, folded twice. He opened it up on his lap.

The message was clearly intended for him. A few words written in capitals with a broad-nibbed pen: “Silence is golden, talk and you’re dead.” It was rather melodramatic, and he began to laugh. His laughter was shrill and so loud that he startled himself and fell silent. Then a sense of fear came upon him that was utterly overwhelming. If a piece of paper could find its way through the bars of the door, so could a bullet.

He started laughing again, just as loud and shrill as before. The laughter echoed around the walls, bounced to and fro, and did a little jig around its performer before disappearing out through the bars and taking with it the last remnants of sanity from the Dutchman’s mind.