The Blind Goddess

SUNDAY 29 NOVEMBER

You’re shaking like a piece of wet cod-a jelly, a leaf, whatever-you’re shaking so damned much that unless you can cough up a doctor’s certificate to say you’ve got an advanced stage of Parkinson’s, I’ll have to assume you’re pissing yourself in fear.”

She shouldn’t have said that. A pool had appeared soundlessly beneath his chair, slowly increasing in size till it reached all four legs. She sighed aloud, opened the window, and decided to let him sit in wet trousers for a while. He was crying now too. A pitiful wretched weeping that didn’t elicit any kind of sympathy, but actually irritated her enormously.

“Cut out the snivelling. I’m not going to kill you.”

The assurance didn’t help; he went on whimpering, tearlessly and infuriatingly, like a fretful, defiant toddler.

“I’ve got extensive powers,” she lied, “very extensive powers. You’re in deep trouble. Things will be a lot easier for you if we get some cooperation. A bit of give and take. Some information. Just tell me what your connection is with Jørgen Lavik, the lawyer.”

It was the twelfth time she’d asked. She got no response this time either. Beginning to feel a sense of defeat, she handed over to Kaldbakken, who up till then had been sitting silently in a corner. Perhaps he’d get something out of the guy. Though she didn’t really think so.

Håkon was depressed when she reported to him, as might be expected. It seemed as if the man from Røa would prefer the tortures of hell to reprisals from Lavik and his organisation. If so, the police hadn’t made the breakthrough that Hanne and Billy T. had so exultantly assumed the previous night. But the battle wasn’t yet lost.

Five hours later it was. Kaldbakken put his foot down. He left the whining suspect to his own devices and took Hanne out into the corridor.

“We can’t go on with this any longer,” he said in a whisper, one hand on the doorknob as if to make sure no one would steal it. “He’s dog-tired. We ought to let him rest. And we ought to get a doctor to take a look at him: that trembling can’t be normal. We’ll try again in the morning.”

“Tomorrow may be too late!”

Hanne was getting absolutely desperate. But it was no good: Kaldbakken had made up his mind and was not to be persuaded otherwise.

It was Hanne who had to convey the bad news to Håkon. He received it without a word. Hanne sat there momentarily undecided, but then thought it best to leave him alone.

“By the way, I’ve put Karen Borg’s statement in your case file,” she said before she went. “I didn’t have time to make copies Friday evening. Can you do it before you go? I’m off. It’s Advent Sunday.”

This last was meant as an excuse, rather unnecessarily. He waved her out of the room. When the door closed behind her, he laid his head in his arms on the desk.

He was worn out. He was ready to go home.

The annoying thing was that he forgot to take a copy of the statement. He thought of it when he was halfway home in the car. Ah well, it could wait till the morning.

Although he was nearing pension age, he moved with the litheness of an athlete. It was four o’clock in the early hours of Monday morning, the time when ninety-five percent of the population are asleep. A huge, newly lit Christmas tree was blinking its illuminations to keep itself awake down in the entrance hall. There was also a pale blue light shining through the glass walls of the night duty room. Otherwise everywhere was in darkness. His rubber soles made no sound as he moved swiftly along the corridor. He clutched his impressive bunch of keys very tightly to prevent them jingling. When he reached the office with Håkon Sand’s nameplate on, he found the correct key almost immediately. Closing the door behind him, he drew out a heavy rubber torch. It had an extremely powerful beam, which momentarily dazzled him.

It was almost too easy. The file was right in front of him on the desk, and the statement he was seeking was on the very top. He hastily flicked through the rest of the file, but there appeared to be no further copies of it. Not in this file, at least. He ran the beam of the torch up and down the sheet. This was the original! He folded it hurriedly and stuffed it into the deep inner pocket of his capacious tweed jacket. He glanced round to make sure that everything looked as it had when he’d come in, went to the door, switched off his torch, and slipped out into the corridor, locking up behind him. Further along the corridor he opened another door, again with a key. On this desk too the case file was out, open in two untidy piles, as if it had outgrown its strength and fallen into an exhausted slumber. It took longer to check through this one. The statement wasn’t where it should have been according to the arrangement of the file. He carried on searching, but when he couldn’t find the eight-page document anywhere, he began a systematic inspection of the rest of the room.

He gave up after a quarter of an hour. There wasn’t a copy. This was a cheering assumption, and not without logic. According to reports, Hanne Wilhelmsen hadn’t got back to the office until about half past seven on Friday. She might not have felt much like waiting the twenty minutes or so it took for a copier to warm up.

His theory was reinforced when he’d searched the third and final office, Kaldbakken’s little den. If neither Wilhelmsen nor the chief inspector had copies, there was every likelihood that the document only existed in the original. Which was now in his possession.

A few minutes later it existed no more. First it had passed through a shredder until it resembled a desiccated and malformed tangle of spaghetti, and then it lay in a dish for just as long as was needed for the flames to destroy it completely. Finally the remains were collected up in a sheet of toilet paper and flushed down the lavatory, which was at the far end of the corridor on the most invisible floor of the police headquarters building. Using an old lavatory brush, the man from the Special Branch removed the final particles of ash from the WC, and with that Hanne Wilhelmsen’s rainy trip to the county of Vestfold was totally wasted.

Back in his office the man picked up a mobile phone and rang the number of one of the men he’d met in Platou Gata a few days previously.

“I’ve done as much as I’m prepared to do,” he said in a low voice, as if out of respect for the somnolent building. “Karen Borg’s statement has been removed from the file. It’s bloody awful doing things like this to colleagues. You’ll have to look after yourselves from now on.”

He terminated the call without waiting for a reply. Instead he went to the window and stood staring out over Oslo. The city lay heavy and tired beneath him, like a drowsy whale glistening with the phosphorescence of the sea. He felt old and tired himself. Older than for many years. After a while his eyes began to feel gritty, and he had to screw them up to steady the dancing specks of light far, far below. He sighed and lay down on a small and very uncomfortable sofa to await the start of the working day. Before he fell asleep the full import struck him again of what he had done to his colleagues.