The Blind Goddess

SATURDAY 21 NOVEMBER

A shrill diabolical sound penetrated his consciousness. At first he couldn’t make out what it was, and rolled over in confusion to squint at the alarm clock. He had an old-fashioned clockwork one that ticked, with a face of ordinary numerals and a key on the back that reminded him of the screw-on ice skates of his childhood. It had to be wound up tight every evening until it groaned if it wasn’t to stop by about four in the morning. It was ten to seven, and he lashed out at the big bell on the top. It made no difference. He sat up in bed to clear his mind and realised it was the telephone ringing. Groping clumsily for the receiver he knocked the whole instrument to the floor with a clatter. He finally succeeded in getting hold of it and blurrily announced himself.

“Håkon Sand. Who’s calling?”

“Hello, Sand. It’s Myhreng here. Sorry to…”

“Sorry?! What the hell do you mean by ringing me at seven in the morning-no, before seven on a Saturday morning? Who do you think you are?”

Crash! He couldn’t make the receiver stay on its rest, so in a savage temper he got up and wrenched the contact out of the wall. Then he fell back into bed bristling with indignation until sleep overcame him as heavily as before. For an hour and a half. Then there was a furious and determined ringing at the door.

Half past eight was an acceptable hour to wake up. Nevertheless he didn’t hurry himself, in the hope that whoever was there would lose patience before he got to the door. As he was cleaning his teeth it rang again. Even more aggressively. But Håkon took his time washing his face, and felt a sense of relaxed and demonstrative freedom as he wrapped his dressing gown round him and put on the kettle before going to the entry phone.

“Yes?”

“Hello, it’s Myhreng here. Can I talk to you?”

This bloke didn’t give up. But nor did Håkon Sand.

“No,” he said, replacing the receiver firmly.

But a second later the raucous noise was reverberating again through the flat like an enraged hornet. Håkon pondered for a moment before picking up the entry phone again.

“Go and buy some fresh rolls from the 7-Eleven round the corner. And fruit juice. The sort with real fruit in. And newspapers. All three.”

He meant Aftenposten, Dagbladet, and VG. Myhreng brought Arbeiderbladet and the latter two. He also forgot the bit about the real fruit.

“Damn fine flat,” he declared, taking a long look into the bedroom.

As inquisitive as a policeman, thought Håkon, closing the door.

He ushered Myhreng into the living room, and went to the bathroom and put out an extra toothbrush and a very feminine bottle of perfume left behind after a relationship a year ago. It was as well not to appear too pathetic.

Fredrick Myhreng hadn’t come just for a chat. The coffee hadn’t even brewed before he was in full flood.

“Have you brought him in, or what? I can’t find him anywhere. The woman in his office tells me he’s out of the country, but at home there’s just a young boy who says his father can’t come to the telephone. Nor his mother. Wondered whether I should ring the child care people when I got nothing but a five-year-old or whatever on the line half a dozen times.”

Håkon shook his head, fetched the coffee, and sat down.

“Are you some kind of child abuser? If it occurred to you that we’d arrested Lavik, shouldn’t it have dawned on you that it wasn’t particularly pleasant for the boy or the rest of the family to be harrassed by you on the telephone?”

“Journalists can’t afford to be too considerate,” Myhreng retorted, seizing an unopened can of mackerel in tomato sauce.

“Yes, fine, you can open it,” said Håkon sarcastically, after half the contents of the can were already on Myhreng’s roll.

“Mackerel burger! Brilliant!”

With his mouth full of food and tomato sauce dripping onto the white tablecloth he babbled on.

“Admit it, you’ve brought him in. I can see it in your face. Thought there was something funny about that guy all along. I’ve worked out quite a lot, you know.”

The look in his eyes above his ridiculously small glasses was challenging but not entirely confident. Håkon allowed himself a smile, and didn’t hurry with the margarine.

“Give me one good reason why I should tell you anything at all.”

“I can give you several. For a start, good information is the best protection against misinformation. Secondly, the newspapers will be full of it tomorrow anyway. And you can be bloody sure that the other papers won’t let the arrest of a lawyer go unnoticed for more than a day. And thirdly…”

He interrupted himself, wiped the tomato off his chin with his fingers, and leant across the table ingratiatingly.

“And thirdly, we’ve worked well together in the past. It would be to our mutual advantage to carry on.”

Håkon Sand gave the impression that he’d been persuaded. Fredrick Myhreng took more credit for this than was his due. Fired by the promise of exciting information, he sat waiting as obediently as a schoolboy, while Håkon took a long and invigorating shower. The file that he’d sat up with until late into the night went with him to the bathroom.

The shower took almost a quarter of an hour, and in that time Håkon had sketched out in his mind a newspaper story that would instil terror in the person or persons out there in the November gloom nervously biting their fingernails. For he was convinced there was someone. It was simply a question of luring-or rather, frightening-them out.