The Blind Goddess

WEDNESDAY 11 NOVEMBER

He was thoroughly peeved and fed up. His case, the Big Case, had run into the ground of late. He hadn’t been able to wheedle anything out of the police. The probable reason was that the police were stuck. So was he. His editor was displeased, and had ordered him back to normal duties. It bored him to have to go to the magistrate’s court and prise trivial details out of a taciturn police constable about stories that would hardly make a single column.

With his feet up on the desk he looked as sulky as an obstinate three-year-old. The coffee was bitter and only lukewarm. Even his cigarette tasted disgusting. And his notebook was empty.

He stood up so suddenly that he knocked the coffee cup over. Its dark contents quickly spread over newspapers, notes, and a paperback that was lying facedown to keep his place. Fredrick Myhreng stared at the mess for a few seconds before deciding to do absolutely nothing about it. He grabbed his coat and hurried off through the editorial offices before anyone had a chance to stop him.

The little shop was run by an old friend from his primary school. Myhreng called in now and then, to have an extra set of keys cut for his latest woman-they never returned them-or to have new heels put on his boots. What shoe repairs had to do with key-cutting was incomprehensible to him, but his school friend wasn’t the only one in the city running the same combination of business.

It was always “Hi” and “Great to see you” and “Take five.” Fredrick Myhreng had an uneasy feeling that the shopkeeper felt proud of knowing a journalist on a national paper, but went along with the ritual. The tiny premises were empty, and the owner was busy with a black and very worn winter boot.

“Another new woman, Fredrick! There’ll soon be a hundred sets of keys for that apartment of yours floating around town!”

He was grinning broadly.

“No, same woman as last time. I’ve come to ask for your help with something special.”

He produced a little metal box from his capacious pocket. Opening it, he carefully drew out the two Plasticine moulds. As far as he could see, the casts were undamaged. He held them out to his friend.

“So, you’ve started indulging in illegal activities?”

There was a hint of seriousness in his voice, and he went on:

“Is it a registered key? I don’t make copies of numbered keys. Not even for you, old chum.”

“No, it’s not numbered. You can see that from the cast.”

“The cast is no guarantee. For all I know, you might have smoothed off the impression of the number. But I’ll take your word for it.”

“Does that mean you can make a copy?”

“Yes, but it’ll take time. I haven’t got the equipment here. I use manufactured blanks, the same as most of the others do. Cut and grind them with this fancy little piece of computer-controlled machinery here.”

He gave an affectionate pat to a monster of a machine covered in buttons and switches.

“Come by in about a week’s time. Should be ready then.”

Fredrick Myhreng thanked him for being his saviour and was on his way out of the door when he turned and asked:

“Can you tell what sort of key it is?”

The key-cutter pondered for a moment.

“It’s small. Hardly for a big door. A cupboard, perhaps? Or maybe a locker. I’ll think about it!”

Myhreng sauntered back to the newspaper office, feeling rather more cheerful.

Perhaps the guy in the twilight zone would welcome some fresh air. Hanne Wilhelmsen was inclined to have another try, anyway. Reports from the prison seemed to indicate that the Dutchman had improved a bit. Though that wasn’t saying very much.

“Take the handcuffs off him,” she ordered, wondering silently whether young policemen were actually capable of thinking for themselves. The apathetic, skeletally thin figure before her wouldn’t be able to do much against two strong constables. It was doubtful whether he could actually run at all. His shirt hung loose on him, his protruding neck reminiscent of a Bosnian in Serb custody. His trousers must have fitted him once; now they were held up by a belt drawn tight into an extra hole that had been pierced in it, several centimetres beyond the other ones. The hole was off-centre, so the end of the belt projected upwards and then dangled down again under its own weight, like a failed erection. He wasn’t wearing any socks. He was pale, unkempt, and looked about ten years older than when she’d last seen him. She offered him a cigarette and a throat pastille. She had heard of his habit from Karen, and he gave her a weak smile.

“How are you?” she enquired in a friendly manner, without expecting a reply. Nor did she receive one.

“Is there anything I can get you? A Coke, something to eat?”

“A bar of chocolate.”

His voice was frail and cracked. Presumably he’d hardly spoken for several weeks. She ordered three bars of chocolate over the intercom. And two cups of coffee. She hadn’t put any paper in the typewriter. It wasn’t even plugged in.

“Is there anything at all you can tell me?”

“Chocolate,” he whispered.

They waited six minutes. Neither of them said a word. The chocolate and the coffee were served by one of the women from the office, slightly peeved at having to act as waitress. She was disarmed by Hanne’s expressions of gratitude.

To watch the Dutchman eating chocolate was a remarkable sight. First he opened the chocolate carefully along the glued join, trying not to damage the wrapper. Then he broke the bar meticulously into its manufactured segments, laid the wrapper on the desk, and moved them all an equal millimetre apart. He set about eating them in a pattern, like a children’s game, starting in one corner, then taking the one diagonally above it and working his way in a zigzag to the top. Resuming from there, he ate his way down in a similar formation till all the chocolate was gone. It took him five minutes. Finally he licked the wrapper clean, smoothed it out with his fingers, and folded it up to a precise design.

“I’ve already confessed,” he said eventually.

Hanne was startled; she had been totally absorbed by the eating ritual.

“No, strictly speaking you haven’t, not yet,” she said. Avoiding abrupt movements, she put into the typewriter the sheet of paper that she had already prepared with the requisite personal details in the top right-hand corner.

“You don’t need to make a statement,” she said calmly. “And you also have a right to have your lawyer here.”

She was going by the book. She thought she saw the glimmer of a smile cross his face when she mentioned his lawyer. A positive smile.

“You like Karen Borg,” she remarked amiably.

“She’s nice.”

He had broached the second bar of chocolate, and was following the same procedure as the first.

“Would you like her here now, or is it okay if we have a chat on our own?”

“Okay.”

She wasn’t entirely sure whether he meant the former or the latter alternative, but she interpreted it in her own favour.

“So it was you who killed Ludvig Sandersen.”

“Yes,” he said, more concerned with the pattern of the chocolate. He had knocked a piece out of alignment and spoilt the layout, which obviously upset him.

Hanne sighed and thought to herself that this interview would be of less value than the paper it was recorded on. But it was worth making the attempt.

“Why did you do it, Han?”

He didn’t even look up at her.

“Won’t you tell me why?”

Still no answer. The chocolate was half eaten.

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

“Roger,” he said, loud and clear, with a steady gaze for a fraction of a second.

“Roger? Was it Roger who told you to kill him?”

“Roger.”

He had a faraway look in his eyes again, his voice reverting to that of an old man-or a child.

“Is he called more than Roger?”

But his communicativeness had come to an end. He seemed totally distant. Hanne called the two burly officers, forbade handcuffs, and gave the Dutchman the last bar of chocolate to take away with him. He looked content, and left smiling serenely.

The slip of paper with a note of the telephone number was hanging on the cork noticeboard. She got a response straightaway, and introduced herself. Karen Borg sounded friendly, if surprised. They talked for several minutes before Hanne came to the point.

“You don’t have to answer this, but I’ll ask anyway. Has Han van der Kerch mentioned the name Roger to you at any point?”

It was a hole-in-one. Karen was silent. Hanne said nothing either.

“All I know is that he may live in Sagene. Try there. I think you can look for a car dealer. I shouldn’t be saying this. I haven’t said it.”

Hanne promised her that she hadn’t heard it, thanked her profusely, cut the conversation short, and dialled a three-figure number on the internal phone.

“Is Billy T. there?”

“He’s off duty today, but I think he’ll be dropping by later.”

“Ask him to contact Hanne when he does.”

“Will do.”

The downpour was lashing the car windows obliquely, like furious scrawled invective from on high, the sleet adhering to the glass despite the valiant efforts of the wipers. The autumn had been unusual, alternating between unseasonally severe cold with snow and rain, and temperatures rising to eight degrees. For several days the thermometer had stuck defiantly somewhere in the middle, hovering on zero.

“You’re putting heavy demands on an old friendship, Hanne.”

He wasn’t annoyed with her, just rubbing it in.

“I work for the hit squad. Not as odd-job-boy to Her Royal Highness Hanne Wilhelmsen. And today was my free day. In other words, you owe me a day off. Write that down.”

He was having to lean his huge body right over the wheel to see anything at all. Had it not been for his size and his shaven head he could have been taken for one of those ladies in BMWs from the posher part of town who had just acquired a driving licence in their forties.

“I shall be forever in your debt,” she assured him, jumping as he braked hard at a sudden shadow that turned out to be a reckless teenager.

“I can’t see a damned thing,” he said, trying to rub off the mist that kept coating the inside of the windscreen as fast as he wiped it dry.

Hanne adjusted the heater control, but with no discernible effect.

“Typical public service tat,” she muttered, making a mental note of the number of the vehicle so that she could avoid it next time she had to take a trip in the rain.

“I found only one Roger in the motor trade in Sagene, so we won’t have to hunt far, anyway,” she said, in an attempt to console him.

The car veered up onto the pavement, and Hanne was flung against the door, bruising her elbow on the window handle.

“Hey-are you trying to kill me?” she cried, before she realised they’d arrived.

Billy T. pulled up beside a grey concrete wall displaying a prominent “no parking” sign. He switched off the engine and sat with his hands in his lap.

“What are we actually going to do?”

“Just take a look. Get him a bit worried.”

“Am I a cop or a robber?”

“Customer, Billy, you’re a customer. Unless and until I say something different.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Whatever there is. Anything of interest considered.”

She got out and locked the door rather unnecessarily; Billy T. just slammed his shut without further ado.

“No one will nick that old wreck,” he said, turning up his collar to protect himself against the rain gusting straight at them round the corner of the building.

“Sagene Car Sales.” In English. She guessed the name even though some of the neon letters had evidently been out of action for a long time. In the crepuscular half-light she could only see “Sa ene Ca S les.”

“International business, that’s for sure!”

A bell rang somewhere out the back as they went in the door. There was a smell of old Volvo Amazons, a suffocating perfume emanating from the largest selection of so-called air-purifiers that Hanne had ever seen. Four cardboard Christmas trees, fifty to sixty centimetres high, stood side by side on a five-metre-long counter. The trees were decorated with smaller trees on glittering threads and luscious comic-strip women inset with the same thread. An army of plastic tortoises exuding Magic Tree fragrance encircled the trunks of the trees like little Christmas presents, doing their bit to ensure that the air in the vicinity of the cash register was the purest in the whole city. Their heads were mounted on springs, and they were all nodding a welcome in the draught from the door.

The rest of the place was filled with every conceivable object connected with four-wheeled vehicles. There were exhaust systems and petrol caps, nylon leopard-skin seat covers, furry dice, and spark plugs. Between the shelf units, where there was no room for any kind of rack, hung old calendar pin-ups of seminude women. Their breasts took up three-quarters of the picture and the actual calendar dates were relegated to a superfluous narrow band at the foot.

A man emerged from the back rooms a few moments after the bell had rung. Hanne had to dig her fingernails into her palm to stop herself from giggling.

The guy looked an absolute stereotype. He was short and stocky, scarcely more than five foot six. He was wearing brown terylene trousers with a sewn-in crease. The seam had come undone at the knee to present a really comical sight, a long sausage of a seam that vanished into a thin loose thread over the knees and then recommenced higher up. The trousers must have dated back to the seventies; that was the last time she’d seen a sewn-in crease.

The shirt was what at school she would have called spotty, light blue with polka dots, and the tie, also light blue, was evidently chosen to complement it. On top of all this magnificence he was wearing a black-and-white check suit jacket, missing a button-which didn’t matter, since it was much too tight to fasten anyway. His hair reminded her of a hedgehog.

“Can I help you, can I help you?” he asked in a loud and affable voice, looking with some misgiving at the figure with the earring. Hanne’s presence must have allayed his qualms, because his face lit up as he turned to her and repeated his greeting.

“Yes, we’d like to look at some secondhand cars,” Hanne said, rather hesitantly, glancing over the little man’s shoulder through a door with a glass panel that hadn’t been cleaned for at least a couple of years. She guessed it probably led to a showroom.

“Secondhand cars, well, you’ve certainly come to the right place,” the man said with a smile, even more amicable now, as if he’d thought at first that all they wanted was a spark plug and now saw the chance of a more significant sale.

“Follow me, madam, sir! Just follow me!”

He led them out through the filthy door, and Billy T. noticed a similar door adjacent to it, opening into some kind of office.

The smell of oil was refreshing after all the Christmas trees; the proper smell of real cars. It was obviously a business with no aspiration to be a specialised dealership: there were Ladas, Peugeots, Opels, and several four- or five-year-old Mercedes in apparently good condition.

“Look around and take your pick! May I ask what sort of price you had in mind?”

He smiled hopefully and glanced towards the nearest Mercedes.

“Three or four thousand kroner,” Billy T. muttered, and the man puckered his wet lips uncertainly.

“He’s joking,” Hanne reassured him. “We’ve got about seventy thousand. But we don’t have a fixed limit.

“My parents might chip in too,” she whispered confidentially into his ear.

The car salesman’s face brightened and he took her by the arm.

“Then you ought to cast your eyes over this Opel Kadett,” he said.

It looked in pretty good condition.

“Nineteen eighty-seven, only forty thousand kilometres on the clock, guaranteed, and only one owner. Well maintained. I can give you a keen price. A very keen price.”

“Lovely car.” Hanne nodded, giving her putative husband a meaningful glance. He took the hint and asked the chequered man if he could use the toilet.

“Just through there, just through there,” he replied in a benevolent tone, and Hanne began to wonder whether he had some kind of speech defect that made him repeat everything. A sort of sophisticated stammer, perhaps. Billy T. went off.

“Nervous stomach,” she explained. “He’s got an interview for a new job later this afternoon. This is the fourth time, poor man.”

The salesman expressed his sympathy, and persuaded her to sit inside the car. It certainly was a nice model.

“I’m not familiar with this make,” she said. “Would you mind sitting in it with me and going over the controls?”

“No trouble at all. No trouble at all.” He turned on the ignition and demonstrated all the finer points.

“Beautiful motor,” he said emphatically. “Well maintained. Between you and me, the previous owner was a bit of a skinflint, but that means he looked after it all right.”

He stroked the newly polished dashboard, flashed the lights, adjusted the seat-back, switched on the radio, put in a cassette of Rod Stewart, and spent an inordinately long time fastening the seat belt round Hanne.

She turned towards him. “And the price?”

None of the cars had price labels on, which she found peculiar.

“The price… Yes, the price…”

He smacked his lips and sucked the air in through his teeth for a moment before giving her a smile she presumed was meant to seem friendly and confidence-inspiring.

“You’ve got seventy thousand and nice parents. For you I could say seventy-five. That includes the radio and new winter tyres.”

They’d been sitting there for more than five minutes now, and she was beginning to wish Billy T. would return. There was a limit to how long she could haggle over a car without suddenly finding that she’d bought it. Another three minutes passed before he tapped on the window.

“We’d better go. We’ve got to fetch the kids,” he said.

“No, I’ll fetch them, you’ve got your interview,” she corrected him.

“I’ll ring you about this car,” she promised the man in Terylene, who could barely conceal his disappointment at losing what he’d thought was going to be an easy sale. He recovered himself and gave her his card. It was as tasteless as its owner, dark blue artificial silk with his name on in gold, “Roger Strømsjord, Man. Dir.” Pretentious title.

“I own the place,” he explained with a modest shrug of his shoulders. “Don’t take too long making up your mind! I have a fast turnover with cars like these. Very popular. Very popular, I have to say.”

Rounding the corner, this time with the wind behind them, they returned to their own car and collapsed in shrieks of laughter.

When Hanne had dried her tears, she asked, “Did you find anything?”

He leant forward at an angle to fish out a notebook from his back pocket, and slapped it into her palm.

“The only thing there of any interest at all. It was in his windcheater pocket.”

Hanne was no longer laughing.

“You idiot, Billy! That’s not what we learnt at police college. And it’s bloody stupid if it does have something important in it and we can’t use it in evidence. Unlawful seizure! How will you explain that?”

“Oh, leave off. This little book isn’t going to put anyone behind bars. But it might help you along the way. Perhaps. I don’t know what’s in it, I only had a brief glance. Phone numbers. Be a bit grateful, please.”

Curiosity had dispelled her anger. She began looking through it. Naturally enough it smelt of Magic Tree. And it did indeed contain masses of telephone numbers, the majority entered after a name, in alphabetical order for the first five or six pages and then absolutely random. The ones at the end had no names, a few had initials, most of them just small incomprehensible signs.

Hanne was taken aback. Some of the numbers started with figures that didn’t exist as first digits in Oslo, and there were no area codes given. Turning the pages, she came to a halt at four initials.

“H. v. d. K.,” she exclaimed. “Han van der Kerch! But I don’t recognise the number…”

“Check in the phone book,” said Billy T., but snatched it from the parcel shelf before Hanne could get to it. “What’s Van der Kerch under, Van or Kerch?”

“No idea, try both.”

He found it under Kerch. It was quite different from the one in the notebook. Hanne was disappointed, but thought there was something about the two numbers that she couldn’t quite perceive. Some relationship, almost, even though they were completely different. It took her thirty seconds to work it out.

“Got it! The phone book number is the notebook number minus the next number in sequence, including negative numbers but ignoring the minus!”

Billy T. didn’t get it.

“What the hell are you on about?”

“Haven’t you ever played those party games with numerals? You’re given a sequence of numbers, and you have to work out the pattern and supply the last one. A kind of IQ test, some would call it, but I think it’s more of a party trick myself. Look: the number in the notebook is 93 24 35. So 9 minus 3 equals 6; 3 minus 2 is 1; 2 minus 4 is minus 2, but forget about the minus; 4 minus 3 is 1; and 3 minus 5 is minus 2. From 5 take away the first figure, 9, and that makes minus 4. The number in the phone book must be 61 21 24.”

“That’s right!”

He was really impressed.

“Where on earth did you learn how to do that?”

“Huh, I once contemplated studying maths. Numbers are fascinating. This can’t just be chance. Look up Lavik’s number.”

She used the same method, with complete success. The number was in code on page eight of the notebook. Billy T. started the car with as triumphant a roar as it was possible to get out of a tired Opel Corsa and sped off into the grey afternoon.

“Either Jørgen Lavik buys lots of secondhand cars, or this is the most promising lead we’ve got so far,” said Hanne with new confidence.

“You’re a genius, Hanne,” said Billy T., grinning from ear to ear. “A bloody genius!”

They drove for a while in silence.

“I actually quite fancied that Kadett,” Hanne murmured wistfully as they juddered into the garage beneath police headquarters.