The Blind Goddess

MONDAY 30 NOVEMBER

It’s not surprising this gang has managed to keep it all going so long. They have a hold over their people that I’ve never seen the like of. Not in the drugs world. Very strange. Is he still not coming clean?”

Kaldbakken was genuinely amazed. He’d done six years in the drugs squad and knew what he was talking about.

“Well, we can’t exactly throw the book at him,” said Hanne Wilhelmsen miserably. “Threats against public servants, even the police, don’t qualify for more than a brief vacation in a pleasant little cell. From that point of view he has a lot to gain by keeping his mouth shut. He may appear to be scared out of his wits, but he’s still got enough left to keep a cool head. He’s even clever enough to admit he was the one who aimed a gun at Billy T. We’ll have to let him go today; we’ve got no reason to detain him. No risk of losing evidence if he’s admitted it.”

Of course they could keep him under observation for a few days. But for how long? Twenty-four-hour surveillance of Roger from Sagene was already taking up a large part of their capacity. If Lavik were released today, they’d really have a problem with resources. It could be solved in the short term, but these guys were hardly going to do anything stupid in the next few days or weeks. It would probably be months before they resumed any interesting activities. The police would miss it, not willingly, but because budgets wouldn’t allow such extravagance. Not even for a case with these ramifications. It was a raw deal. As usual.

Håkon hadn’t said anything. Apathy had set in. He was anxious, fed up, and deeply disappointed. His grey temples had gone greyer, his acid stomach more acidic, his clammy hands clammier. Now all he had was Karen’s statement. It was doubtful whether it would be enough. He got up dispiritedly and left the meeting without a word. An oppressive silence followed his departure.

The statement wasn’t where he’d put it. He tried a couple of drawers absentmindedly. Could he have tucked it away somewhere? No, all he found were a few insignificant items he’d hidden out of sight of his guilty conscience. Now was not the time to confront previous procrastination.

The statement wasn’t in his office at all. Odd-he was convinced he’d placed it right there, on top of the big pile. With a deeply furrowed brow he cast his mind back to the previous day. He’d been going to make copies; then he’d forgotten to. Or had he gone to the copying room? He went to check now.

The machine was running at full tilt, and a stocky woman in her sixties confirmed that there’d been nothing there when she arrived. To make absolutely certain they looked behind the machine and underneath it, but there was no sign of the statement anywhere.

Hanne hadn’t taken it. Kaldbakken had already asked for a copy, and shrugged his shoulders dolefully, swearing he’d never seen it.

Håkon was getting seriously worried now. The document was the only hope they had of obtaining an extension of custody. Before going home the night before he’d scanned it as well as his red-rimmed eyes would allow. It was exactly what he’d wanted. Thorough and incisive. Convincing and well expressed. But what the hell had happened to it?

The time had come to raise the alarm. It was half past nine, and the application for an extension had to be ready to take to the Court by noon. The hearing should actually have been held at half past eight in the morning, but on Friday Christian Bloch-Hansen had asked for a few hours’ postponement, which had suited the police admirably. He had a trial to attend in the morning, and would if necessary send an assistant to the important custody hearing. There were two and a half hours to go, which actually gave Håkon just about long enough to get the custody application dictated and typed, with no time to embark on a general search. But no statement, no custody order.

They abandoned the effort at about half past ten. The statement had totally disappeared. Hanne was upset, and took all the blame on herself; she should have done the copies straightaway. Her unreserved declaration of responsibility didn’t really help Håkon at all. Everyone knew that he was the last to have had the papers.

Karen could come and repeat the statement. He could get a postponement of an hour, which would just about enable her to make it back from the cottage. She would have to make it.

But she didn’t answer the phone. Håkon rang five times. In vain. Hell. Panic was setting in, clawing its way up his spine. It was an extremely unpleasant sensation. He shook his head violently as if that would somehow help.

“Ring Sandefjord or Larvik. Get them to fetch her. Immediately.”

The commanding tone couldn’t conceal his anxiety, though it hardly mattered-Hanne was equally fearful. Having spoken to the police at Larvik, under the mistaken impression that they were the nearest, she hurried back to Håkon’s office. He was morose and unapproachable, and busy trying to construct something which might give an appearance of solidity. It wasn’t easy with the third-rate and imperfect material they had.

That bloody boot man. Håkon was tempted to run down to the cells and offer him a hundred thousand to blab. If that didn’t work, he could beat him up. Or maybe kill him. In pure and simple rage. On the other hand, both Frøstrup and Van der Kerch had bought their own tickets to the other side, so who knew, perhaps the police would soon have another suicide on their hands. God forbid. Anyway, they’d have to let him go in the course of the day. They’d wait as long as they could.

An hour later there was nothing more to be done. The secretary took twelve minutes to type what he’d dictated. He read it through with a despondency that increased with every line. She gave him a sympathetic look, but said nothing. Which was probably best.

“Karen isn’t in the cottage.”

Hanne stood at the door.

“Her car is there, and there’s a light in the kitchen, but no sign of the dog, nor anybody. She must be out for a walk.”

Out for a walk. His beloved Karen, the only straw he had left to clutch at. The woman who could rescue him from total humiliation, save the police from scandalous headlines, save the country from a drugs baron and murderer. She was out for a walk. Right now she was probably strolling along the shore at Ula, throwing sticks for the dog and breathing in the fresh sea air many miles and a hundred light-years away from a stuffy claustrophobic office at police headquarters with walls that had started to sway, constricting themselves and threatening to suffocate him. He could see her in his mind’s eye, in her old yellow raincoat, with wet hair and no makeup, the way she always looked on rainy days at the cottage. Out walking. Out for a bloody walk in the pissing rain.

“They can take a walk too, the local police! The bloody area isn’t that big!”

It was unfair to take it out on Hanne, and he regretted it instantly. He tried to moderate his outburst with a weak smile and a helpless movement of his head.

Hanne replied soothingly that she’d already asked them to do that. There was still time, and thus still hope. A swift glance at the clock prompted her to ask whether he’d given notice of the delay.

“I asked for a postponement till three o’clock; I got till two. There’s an hour to go. I’ll get longer if I can promise that she’s coming. If not, the hearing will start at two.”

Far, far away a yellow figure was walking along by the ravenously snatching winter sea and feeding it with stones. The boxer flung itself again and again into the rough waves, quivering with cold as only dogs do and yet not giving up, impelled by its canine instincts to pursue every object that was thrown. It had never had a chill, but it was shivering violently now. Karen Borg stopped and took an old jumper out of her rucksack and put it on the dog to keep it warm. It looked ridiculous with pink mohair wrapped round its front legs and flopping under its thin belly, but at least it ceased its trembling.

She had come to the end of the headland, and was hunting about for the nice sheltered spot where she so often sought refuge on days like this but always had difficulty locating again. There it was. She sat down on an insulated groundsheet she’d brought with her and took out a thermos flask. The hot chocolate had a distinct flavour of many years of ingrained coffee, but it didn’t matter. She sat there for a long time, deep in thought, her ears filled with the noise of the sea and the wind whistling round the big rock. The dog lay at her feet looking like a pink poodle. For some reason she felt troubled. She was desperate to find peace out here, but it remained unattainable. That was unusual; it had always come willingly to meet her here before. Perhaps it had found someone else and deserted her.

The police didn’t find her. She didn’t get to Oslo that day. She didn’t even know she was wanted there.

It was doomed to fail. Without the slightest shred of new evidence, there was nothing more to put forward. This time Christian Bloch-Hansen took twenty minutes to persuade the Court that continued custody was a clearly unjustifiable and disproportionate measure. Mr. Lavik’s legal practice was obviously suffering significantly from his detention. He was losing thirty thousand kroner a week. Nor was it just himself who was adversely affected: he had two employees whose very jobs were threatened by his absence. His professional and social standing made the present circumstances even more stressful, and the overwhelming media attention had not exactly improved the situation. In the unlikely event of the Court’s continuing to believe there were reasonable grounds for suspicion of criminal behaviour, it should take into consideration the extreme burden posed in this instance by remand in custody. The police ought to have been able to produce more substantial evidence in a week, but they hadn’t. Lavik must be released before irrevocable damage was done to his reputation. His health was also at risk: the Court could see for itself the condition he was in.

The Court could indeed. He’d looked a sorry sight last time, and there was no sign of any recovery yet. You didn’t need to be a doctor to see that he was in a bad way. His clothes had drooped in unison with their owner, and the previously elegant young lawyer now looked like a tramp dragged in off the street after a grim Christmas lunch at a soup kitchen.

The Court was unanimous. The decision was dictated then and there. Håkon’s profound depression was lifted somewhat when the judge reiterated that there was still reasonable cause for suspicion. But his heart sank again when he heard him express his condemnation of the police in fairly unequivocal terms for their failure to follow matters up, referring in particular to the lamentable lack of clarification of Karen Borg’s statement.

The danger of destruction of evidence was also obvious, but unfortunately it was equally apparent to the magistrate that custody would indeed be a disproportionate measure given all the circumstances. The defendant was to be released, but would have to report to the police every Friday.

Report to the police! A lot of help that would be. Håkon appealed against the decision on the spot and asked for a stay of execution. That would at least give them one more day. A day was a day. Even if Rome wasn’t built in such a short period, there were many other things that had come to fruition on the basis of a few extra stolen hours.

Håkon could hardly believe his ears when the judge stated that he could not grant that request either. He tried to protest, but met with a sharp rebuttal. The police had had their opportunity, which they had singularly failed to take advantage of. Now they would have to manage without the Court’s help. Håkon responded aggressively that there was no point in appealing at all, and tore up the application in anger. The judge pretended not to notice, and brought the hearing to a close with a sardonic observation:

“With luck you might escape a claim for damages. If so, you can count yourselves extremely fortunate.”

Jørgen Ulf Lavik was released that same evening. He immediately seemed to straighten up and fill his suit, growing several centimetres and putting on some of his lost kilos. As he left police headquarters he laughed-for the first time in ten days.

Which is more than Hanne Wilhelmsen or Håkon Sand did. Or anyone else in the great curved building on Grønlandsleiret, for that matter.

It had gone well. It really had gone well. The nightmare was over. They hadn’t found anything. If they had, he’d still have been inside. But what was there to find? As fate would have it, only two days before his arrest he’d removed the key from beneath the filing cabinet and found a safer place for it. Perhaps the old man was right and the angels were on their side. Only the gods themselves could know why.

But there was one thing he didn’t entirely understand. When he’d selected Christian Bloch-Hansen as his lawyer, it was because he was the best. The guilty need the best; the innocent can get by with anybody. Bloch-Hansen had come up to expectations, and that was fine. He himself would hardly have thought of the breach of confidentiality angle in respect of Karen Borg. He’d done a splendid job as defence counsel, and had been perfectly correct and polite to him. But with no warmth or empathy or kindness. He had seemed indifferent, doing his job, doing it efficiently, but there had been something in his penetrating eyes that looked like a glint of animosity, even contempt. Did he believe him to be guilty? Was he refusing to believe in his convincing story, so convincing that he’d almost begun to believe it himself?

Lavik dismissed the thought. It wasn’t important anymore. He was a free man, and had no doubt now that the case against him would soon be dropped. He would ask Bloch-Hansen to make sure it was. A real blunder, that thousand-kroner note, but as far as he knew it was the only mistake he’d ever made. Never, never would he put himself in that position again. There was just one task left, but he’d had plenty of time to plan it. Several days. But it still needed some fine-tuning, and it had come as a real gift when Håkon Sand had attributed the lack of further elucidation of Karen Borg’s witness statement to her absence on holiday. The magistrate had been exasperated by the fact that the police had had problems contacting somebody in the next county, as if it were the other side of the world. Of course it wasn’t. He knew exactly where it was. Nine years ago they’d organised a trip for the student representatives on the faculty committee, of all political persuasions. He’d had a feeling at the time that the woman might have been a little in love with him, though the political gulf between them would have made any greater familiarity impossible. But there was talk of restrictions on student numbers, and they’d all set aside their political differences to make common cause against the planned admission reductions. Karen had offered to host the historic meeting. It had been more wine than politics, but as far as he remembered it had been an enjoyable weekend.

He would have to act fast, and it would be problematical getting rid of the troublesome mosquitoes he knew would be buzzing around him for a long time to come. But he’d manage it. He had to. If he could dispose of Karen Borg, they’d never get him. She was the last hurdle between himself and ultimate freedom.

The dark-blue Volvo came to a halt in front of the garage, skidding slightly on the slippery drive but finding its way home like an old horse returning to its stable after a hard day’s work. Lavik bent over his pale wife behind the steering wheel, kissed her tenderly, and thanked her for her support.

“Everything will be fine now, darling,” he said.

It didn’t entirely seem as if she believed it.

Should he phone, or not? Should he go down there, or should he leave her alone? He wandered restlessly round his small apartment, which had the air of having for some time been a place he just passed through to get clean clothes and some sleep. Now there weren’t any clean clothes, and he couldn’t find sleep anywhere either.

Giddiness overcame him and he had to clutch at the bookcase to keep his balance. Luckily there was a dusty bottle of red wine at the back of the kitchen cupboard. Half an hour later it was empty.

The case was lost. Karen too, probably. There was no point in getting in touch with her. It was all over.

He felt dreadful, and broached a half-bottle of aquavit that had been in the fridge since the previous Christmas. The alcohol finally had the desired effect: he fell asleep. An evil and malicious sleep, with nightmares of being pursued by devilish gigantic lawyers, and a tiny little yellow figure calling to him from a cloud on the horizon. He tried to run towards her, but his legs were like lead and he got no closer. In the end she disappeared altogether: the yellow figure flew off, leaving him lying on the ground, a tiny little police attorney surrounded by cloaked vultures pecking out his eyes.