The Blind Goddess

TUESDAY 29 SEPTEMBER

Karen Borg had had a restless night. Not in itself an unusual occurrence. She was always tired in the evenings, and fell asleep within minutes of going to bed. The problem was that she always woke up again. Mostly at about five o’clock in the morning. She would still be tired and heavy with sleep, but incapable of drifting back into the world of dreams. Her problems seemed immense at night, even the ones that by day were little more than fleeting shadows. Things that were so easy to play down in the light of day as mundane, unthreatening, or mere irritations, became in this transition period before dawn pervasive menacing spectres looming over her. All too often she would lie there twisting and turning until half past six or so, and then drop into a deep unconscious sleep until the alarm clock jerked her out of it only half an hour later.

Last night she’d woken at two, drenched in sweat. She’d been sitting in an aeroplane with no floor, and the passengers were having to balance without safety belts on little projections attached to the aircraft walls. After clinging on tight until she was faint from exhaustion, she felt the plane go into a sudden steep descent towards the ground. She woke as it crashed into a hill. Dreams about plane crashes were supposed to be a sign of lack of control over one’s life. But she didn’t feel that could apply to her.

It was a bright autumn day for once. It had been pouring with rain all week, but last night the temperature had risen to fifteen degrees Celsius, and the sun was making a final effort to remind everyone that it was not so very long since summer after all. The trees on Olaf Ryes Plass were already turning reddish yellow, and the light was so strong that even the Pakistani shopkeepers looked pale as they set up their wares on the street outside their kiosks and grocery shops. There was a roar of traffic from Toftes Gata, but the air smelt surprisingly fresh and clean.

When Karen had become the youngest-and only female-partner in Greverud & Co. five years previously, she and Nils had seriously discussed leaving the Grünerløkka area. They could easily afford to, and Grünerløkka hadn’t developed the way everyone was anticipating at the time she acquired a flat in a block then under threat of demolition but reprieved by the Oslo City Renovation Project. The rescue had been a halfhearted attempt at restoration, at an insane cost, and resulted in a fifteen-fold rent increase in three years. The least well-off had to move out, and had it not been for the fact that the creditors had nothing to gain by forcing the whole property company into liquidation, it might have been disastrous. But Karen had sold the flat at the right time, just before the big property crash in 1987, and had emerged with a reasonable sum for her new abode, a loft apartment in the adjoining block, which had miraculously escaped the Renovation Project because the residents had themselves undertaken to carry out the City Council’s area conservation plans.

Karen and Nils had really set their hearts on moving. But late one extraordinary Saturday night a year or so ago they had sat down and analysed their motives. They compiled a list of pros and cons, as if preparing an answer to an examination question. They ultimately concluded that they should use the money to extend their little flat instead. They strengthened the housing association’s finances by purchasing the remainder of the loft, almost 200 square metres. It was very luxurious by the time it was completed and had risen enormously in value. They had never regretted it. When they’d both come to accept with remarkable equanimity that they would not have children, a tacit admission that had developed between them by the time they had been abstaining from contraception for four or five years without it leading to anything, they had started to forget all their friends’ arguments about the pollution in Oslo city centre. They had a terrace with a Jacuzzi and barbecue, no gardening to do, and could walk to the nearest cinema without too much exertion. Even though they had a car, a Ford Sierra bought secondhand in view of the inadvisability of investing too heavily in a vehicle that would be parked in the street, they mostly used the tram or went on foot.

Karen had grown up in the pleasant residential district of Kalfaret in Bergen. It had been a childhood spent under the surveillance of the sophisticated local intelligence services, with agents peering out from behind curtains, always fully informed of everyone’s slightest misdemeanours, from unwashed floors to extra-marital affairs. After a weekend visit home a couple of times a year Karen would be seized by a feeling of unbearable claustrophobia that she couldn’t entirely account for, especially as she herself had never had anything to hide.

So Grünerløkka for her was a place of refuge. She and Nils had stayed put, and now had no intention of ever moving.

She paused in front of the little kiosk opposite the tram stop. The tabloid newspapers were piled high in their respective stands.

“Brutal drugs murder shakes police.” The headline leapt out at her. She picked up a copy, went in reading it, and put the money on the counter with hardly a glance at the man behind the counter. The tram arrived as she came out. She stamped her ticket and sat down on a folding seat. The front page referred her to page five. Beneath a photograph of the corpse that she herself had found only four days ago, the text stated that “The police believe the brutal murder of an as-yet-unidentified man in his thirties to be a revenge killing in the drugs world.”

No sources were given. The story was uncannily close to what Håkon Sand had told her.

She was infuriated. Håkon had emphasised that what had been said between them was not to go any further. The caution had been completely superfluous; there was no one Karen had less time for than journalists. She was all the more annoyed by the police’s own bungling.

She wondered about her client. Would he get newspapers in his cell? No, he’d accepted a ban on letters and visits, and she seemed to recall that it also included a ban on newspapers, TV, and radio. But she wasn’t sure.

“This will make him even more afraid,” she thought, and turned her attention to the rest of the newspaper as the modern tram rolled and hummed along through the city streets with a smoothness so unlike the clatter of its predecessors.

In another part of the city a man was in abject fear of imminent death.

Hans E. Olsen was as ordinary as his name. Too much alcohol over too many years had left its mark on his face. His flesh was flabby and grey, with prominent pores, and always sweaty. But his permanently sour expression stemmed more from an innate bitterness than from his excessive consumption of alcohol. Right now he was sweating more than ever, and looked older than his forty-two years.

Hans E. Olsen was a lawyer. He had shown some promise in his early years as a student, and had attracted a number of friends. But his upbringing in a pious environment in southwest Norway had put a leaden weight on any vigour and joie de vivre he might have had. His childhood faith had been jettisoned after a few months in the capital, leaving the young man with nothing to put in its place. The concept of a vengeful and implacable God had never really lost its hold on him, and torn between his former self and the dream of the student life of wine, women, and academic achievement, he had all too soon sought his consolation in the temptations of the big city. Even in those days his fellow students used to joke that Hans Olsen never used his cock for anything but peeing. But this was an assertion in need of qualification: he had discovered at an early stage that sex could be bought. His lack of charm and self-confidence had soon led him to the resentful realisation that women were not interested in him. He had become a frequent visitor to the red-light district around the city hall, and had thus accumulated a lot more experience than his fellow students gave him credit for.

His alcohol consumption, which increased so rapidly that by the age of twenty-five he was being referred to as an alcoholic-though from a medical point of view this was not strictly accurate-prevented him from passing his law examinations with a result commensurate with his original talents. He gained a mediocre degree, and took a job at the Ministry of Agriculture. He stayed there for four years before setting up on his own, after two years’ practical work as an assistant judge in northern Norway, a period he now regarded with horror, but which had been a necessary evil to achieve his lawyer’s licence and the freedom he felt he had always been seeking.

He had found a practice of three lawyers with a vacancy for a partner. They soon realised that he was an awkward character with an unpredictable temper. But they accepted him as he was, not least because, unlike others, he was always, without exception, up-to-date with the rent and his share of the joint expenses. They assumed this had more to do with his own modest expenditure than with any great earning capacity. Hans Olsen was, in a word, miserly. He had a predilection for grey suits. He had three-two of them more than six years old, and it showed. None of his colleagues had ever seen him in anything else. He spent his money on just one thing: alcohol.

For a brief period he had blossomed out, to everyone’s amazement. The surprising turn in his life manifested itself in his more frequent hair washing, his use of an exclusive aftershave that for a short while overpowered the musty, slovenly body odour that permeated his office, and in the fact that he turned up one morning wearing a pair of new Italian, and, in his secretary’s opinion, extremely suave, shoes. The cause of the transformation was a woman who was actually willing to marry him-after only three weeks’ acquaintance, which in reality meant about fifty pints in the Old Christiania pub.

The woman was as ugly as sin, but those who knew her said she was warm, kind, and intelligent. She was a deaconess. That hadn’t been a hindrance on the short path to their separation and divorce.

But Hans Olsen had one definite strength: criminals loved him. He stood up for his clients as few others did. Because he felt so strongly in their favour, he hated the police. He hated them without reservation, and never tried to conceal it. His ranting and raging had provoked countless prosecutors over the years, and usually resulted in his clients receiving sentences far in excess of the norm. Olsen hated the police, and the police hated him. Naturally enough this had an effect on the suspects he represented.

But now Hans Olsen was in fear for his life. The man standing in front of him was pointing a pistol at him of a type which he, with his limited knowledge of firearms, couldn’t place. But it looked dangerous, and he’d seen enough films to be able to recognise a silencer when he met one.

“That was bloody stupid of you, Hansy,” said the man with the gun.

Hans E. Olsen loathed the nickname Hansy, even if it was a natural consequence of his always including his middle initial when he introduced himself.

“I just wanted to talk to you about it,” he croaked from the armchair he’d been ordered into.

“We had an agreement, Hansy,” said the other man in an exaggeratedly restrained voice. “No one pulls out. No one squeals. We have to know that the operation is totally watertight. Remember it’s not just us who’re involved. You know what’s at stake. You’ve never come up with objections before. What you said on the phone yesterday was a threat, Hansy. We can’t tolerate threats. If one goes down, we all do. We can’t afford that, Hansy. You know that.”

“I’ve got documents!”

It was a last, desperate attempt to cling on to life. The room was suddenly filled with the unmistakable odour of excrement and urine.

“No, you haven’t, Hansy. We both know that. Anyway, it’s a chance I’ll have to take.”

The shot sounded like a small half-suppressed cough. The bullet struck Hans E. Olsen in the middle of the nose, which was completely shattered as the projectile bored right on through his skull and blasted out a crater the size of a turnip at the back of his head. Red and grey spurted over the little crocheted antimacassar on the chair, and splattered onto the wall behind it.

The man with the gun adjusted the tight rubber glove on his right hand, walked over to the door, and left.