Hanne Wilhelmsen - 01 - The Blind Goddess

by Anne Holt

  “He wrapped his hands round the whole cup,” she said gleefully. “It pays to keep the office rather on the chilly side. He must have wanted to warm his poor little fingers.”

  The cup went into the bag, and the handkerchief back into the drawer.

  “Something bothering you?”

  “You don’t deserve your reputation. That’s not the way we take fingerprints.”

  “Article 160 of the Penal Code,” she retorted off pat. “No court order needed for taking fingerprints if he’s suspected of criminal activities. I suspect him. You do too. So we’ve complied with the law.”

  Håkon shook his head.

  “That’s the most literal interpretation of the law I’ve ever heard. The guy has a right to know that we’ve taken his fingerprints. He’s even got a right to have them destroyed if the suspicion proves unfounded!”

  “That’ll never happen,” she asserted unequivocally. “Back to work!”

  * * *

  They’d forgotten his belt. He wasn’t supposed to keep anything. Why had they forgotten the belt? When he was about to go to be interviewed by the policewoman with the chocolate, his trousers had fallen down as he stood up. He’d tried holding them together at the front, but when they put the handcuffs on him, the trousers kept on slipping. The two blond men had sent the corridor attendant to fetch his belt, and had pierced an extra hole in it with a pair of scissors. That was thoughtful of them. But why hadn’t they taken it away from him afterwards? That must be an oversight. So he removed it and hid it under his mattress. He woke several times during the night to make sure it was still there and he hadn’t dreamt it.

  It became a little treasure hoard for him. The secret belt made the Dutchman quite elated for more than twenty-four hours. It was something the others didn’t know about, something he’d got which he shouldn’t have. He felt as if he had the upper hand. Twice in the course of the day, immediately after the check by the warder through the door, he’d tried it on very quickly, skipping some of the loops in the waistband because he was in a hurry, and leaping around the room with his trousers firmly held in place and a broad grin on his face. But only for a few minutes, then off with it again and under the mattress.

  He tried browsing through the magazines he’d been given. Men Today. He felt more on top of things, though unable to concentrate, his mind fixed only on what he was going to do. But first he had to write a letter. It took a long time. Perhaps she would be pleased? She was nice, and had kind hands. The last two times she’d been there he’d smiled as he slept. It was lovely being stroked on the back, so good to be touched.

  The letter was finished. He moved the stool by the little desk over to the window high in the wall. Stretching up as far as he could, he was just able to pass the belt round the bars. He tied a knot in it and hoped it would hold. He’d put one end through the buckle first, so that it made a noose. A fine stiff noose, easy to get over his head.

  His last thought was of his mother in Holland. For a split second he regretted his decision, but by then it was too late. The stool was already toppling beneath him, and the belt tightened in a flash. There were five seconds in which he had time to realise he hadn’t broken his neck. Then everything went black as the blood flowing into his head through the carotid arteries was prevented from returning to the heart by the crushing loop of the belt. Within minutes his tongue, purple and engorged, was protruding from his mouth, and his eyes bulged like a stranded fish’s. Han van der Kerch was dead, at the tender age of twenty-three.

  FRIDAY 13 NOVEMBER

  Billy T. had called the place an apartment. The term was quite unmerited. The block could be categorically described as being in one of the worst locations in Oslo. Built in the 1890s, long before anyone could have imagined the monstrous volume of traffic that would later eat into its surroundings, it was wedged between Mosseveien and Ekebergveien, looking like something spat out as inedible, but still standing there, clinging on in a state totally unacceptable to all except the local inhabitants of park benches, for whom the alternative would have been a container on the quayside.

  It smelt stuffy and oppressive. There was a bucket just inside the door containing what looked like the remains of ancient vomit and something else undefinable but presumably organic. Hanne Wilhelmsen ordered the snub-nosed redheaded constable to the kitchen window. He shoved and heaved at it, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “This window hasn’t been opened for years,” he panted, getting a little nod by way of response. He took that as permission to abandon the attempt.

  “What a dump this place is,” he exclaimed, fearful of moving lest he come into contact with lethal and unknown germs. Too young, thought Hanne, who had seen all too many of these dreadful holes that somebody called home. A pair of rubber gloves flew through the air.

  “Here, put these on,” she said, pulling some on herself.

  The kitchen was immediately to the left after the narrow entrance hall. There were dirty dishes everywhere, weeks old. A couple of black rubbish bags stood on the floor and Hanne had to use the toe of her shoe to clear enough space to get by. The stench wafted out into the room, making the constable retch.

  “Sorry,” he choked, “excuse me.”

  He rushed past her and made for the door. She grinned and went into the living room.

  It was hardly more than fifteen square metres, and part of it was taken up by a makeshift construction serving as a sleeping alcove. There was a post right in the centre from floor to ceiling, and a curtain of cheap brown cloth drawn back against one wall and attached with nails to a bar on the ceiling, itself erected so crookedly that it might have been the work of a drunk.

  Behind the curtain was a homemade bed, as broad as it was long. The bedclothes couldn’t have been washed for years. She lifted the quilt with her gloved fingers. The sheet was like a paint palette, shades of brown interspersed with red splodges. A half bottle of aquavit lay at the foot. Empty.

  There was also a narrow shelf behind the curtain. Astonishingly enough it had books on it, but closer inspection revealed them to be Danish pornographic paperbacks. Part of the shelf was taken up by empty or half-empty bottles, a few souvenirs from Sweden, and a small, rather indistinct photograph of a boy of about ten. She picked it up and studied it carefully. Did Jacob Frøstrup have a son? Was there a little boy somewhere who would have been fond of the wretched heroin addict who’d ended his days in Oslo Prison from an overdose? Absentmindedly wiping the dust off the glass with her sleeve, she made a bit more space for it and put it back.

  The only window in the room was between the alcove and the living area. And it opened. In the courtyard, three floors below, she could see the young constable leaning on one arm against the wall with his face pointing towards the ground. He still had his rubber gloves on.

  “How’s it going?”

  She didn’t get an answer, but he straightened up and gave her a reassuring wave. A few moments later he was standing in the doorway again. Pale, but recovered.

  “I’ve had to go through this five or six times,” she said, with a consoling smile. “You get used to it. Breathe through your mouth and think of raspberries. It helps.”

  It didn’t take more than fifteen minutes to search the flat. They turned up nothing of interest. Hanne wasn’t surprised: Billy T. had told her he’d searched thoroughly and there was nothing there. Well, nothing visible, anyway. They would have to start looking for the invisible. She sent the young man out to the car for tools. He seemed grateful for another opportunity to get some fresh air. He was back in two or three minutes.

  “Bere shall be start?”

  “You don’t need to breathe through your mouth when you talk; you don’t breathe in as you speak, do you?”

  “I’ll be sick if I do’t ho’d by dose all de time, ebed bed I talk.”

  They began with the panel that seemed newest, the wall behind the sofa. The young lad got a good grip on it with the jemmy and worked up a bit of a sweat, but it actually ca
me off fairly easily. Nothing there. He hammered it in place again and pushed the sofa back.

  “The carpet,” Hanne ordered, bending down in one corner. It might once have been green, but now it was encrusted with dirt and grime. The two police officers had to avert their faces from all the flying dust. But they managed to roll it up right across to the sofa. The floorboards underneath looked positively antique, and could probably be nicely restored with a good sanding down.

  “Dook, dat one’s dot so b’ack,” exclaimed the constable, pointing to a short floorboard projecting about twenty centimetres from the wall.

  He was right. The board was noticeably lighter in colour than the rest of the filthy floor. And the solid muck between the boards that gave the floor a level surface was completely missing in the gaps here. Hanne took out a screwdriver and began to prise the board loose. She lifted it up carefully to reveal a small compartment, entirely filled with something packed in a plastic bag. The redheaded constable got so excited that he forgot to breathe through his mouth.

  “It’s money, Inspector Wilhelmsen, look, it’s money! And what a hell of a lot!”

  Hanne stood up, took off her soiled gloves, threw them in a corner, and put on a new pair. Then she squatted down and fished out the package. He was right. It was money. A fat bundle of thousand-kroner notes. At a quick guess she estimated it to be at least fifty thousand kroner. The constable had taken out a polythene bag from his inside pocket and held it open for her. It was just about big enough.

  “Well done, Henriksen. You’ll make a good Sherlock Holmes.”

  Hanne’s praise heartened the youngster, and in his delight at the prospect of getting out of the fetid place he cleared everything up himself and locked the door behind them, leaping down the stairs after his superior like a puppy with its tail wagging.

  THURSDAY 19 NOVEMBER

  None of them had expected the result they got. To tell the truth, no one but Hanne Wilhelmsen had expected any result at all. Håkon Sand had dismissed Lavik’s coffee cup with a shrug of his shoulders the previous Thursday. Han van der Kerch’s death had overshadowed everything. There had been a hell of a fuss about the belt—rather unnecessarily, since the chap could have used either his shirt or his trousers for the same purpose. Experience showed that it was impossible to stop a determined suicide once he’d made up his mind. And Han van der Kerch certainly had.

  “Yes!”

  She bent forward at the waist, clenched her fist, and brought down her arm as if she were pulling an imaginary steam whistle.

  “Yes!”

  She repeated the movement. The others in the incident room watched her in silence, somewhat embarrassed.

  Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen flung a document on the desk in front of the lanky chief inspector. Kaldbakken picked it up calmly, in mute reproof of her unseemly outburst of emotion. He took his time. When he put it down there was the faintest trace of a smile on his rather equine face.

  “This is quite gratifying,” he said, clearing his throat, “quite gratifying.”

  “Aw, come on! What an understatement!”

  Hanne would have welcomed a more enthusiastic response. Jørgen Lavik’s fingerprints, clearly delineated on a coffee cup from the police canteen, were identical to a beautiful complete print on a thousand-kroner note found under a floorboard in the nauseating flat of a deceased drug addict on Mosseveien. The report from Forensics was unambiguous and unassailable.

  “It can’t be true!”

  Håkon Sand snatched the report so fast that it ripped down the middle. It was true.

  “Now we’ve got the bugger,” the ginger-haired constable cried out, bursting with pride at his contribution to the discovery. “All we’ve got to do is bring him in!”

  Far from it, of course. The fingerprints proved nothing. But they were a damned good indication of something. The problem was that Lavik would almost certainly be able to concoct a whole host of explanations. His link to Frøstrup had been legitimate enough. The prints weren’t adequate on their own. Everyone in the room, with the single exception perhaps of the over-eager young constable, was agreed on that. Hanne set up a flip chart in front of the group and picked up a red and a blue marker. Neither worked.

  “Here you are,” said her young colleague, tossing a new black spirit marker across the room.

  “Let’s list what we’ve got,” said Hanne, starting to write. “First of all: Han van der Kerch’s explanation to his lawyer.”

  “Has she told us what he said?”

  Kaldbakken was genuinely taken aback.

  “Yes. You’ll find it in Doc. 11.12. The Dutchman left a letter, a sort of suicide note. A farewell message for Karen Borg. She was able to report what he’d told her—we interviewed her all day yesterday. It was exactly as we thought, but it was wonderful to get it corroborated! And the main thing is that we now have it in writing.”

  Without further comment she turned to the board and wrote:

  1. H.v.d.K.’s statement (Karen B.)

  2. Link Lavik—Roger Car Salesm. (phone no. in bk)

  3. Lavik’s fingerpr. on banknote at Frøstrup’s (!!!)

  4. Code list found at J.F.’s same as one at Hans Olsen’s

  5. Lavik’s visit to cells on day H.v.d.K. lost his mind

  6. Lavik’s visit to prison on day of Frøstrup’s overdose

  “Han van der Kerch’s statement is important,” she said, using a broken ruler as a pointer to tap the first item on the chart. “The only, and perhaps rather ticklish, drawback is that we don’t have it from the man himself. Hearsay evidence. On the other hand: Karen Borg is an extra-credible witness. She can verify that Kerch had been involved for several years. He also confessed to his association with Roger the car salesman, and he’d heard rumours about lawyers lurking in the background. Rumours are a rather insubstantial basis for arrest, but all the trouble he went to in his choice of lawyer seems to imply that he had fairly reliable information. Anyway, Karen Borg’s statement means we’ve got Roger in the bag.”

  She exchanged the ruler for a marker pen and underlined Roger’s name heavily.

  “And we’re getting closer to our friend Jørgen.”

  Heavy underlining beneath Lavik’s name.

  “The connection here is wafer thin, even if we’ve established that they knew one another. Lavik has admitted it once, and will doubtless do so again. He’ll say it was more meetings with clients, but there’s still the incontestable fact that it’s rather odd to keep phone numbers in code. A lot of trouble, and not undertaken without good reason.

  “Also,” she added emphatically, putting a thick ring round item three on the list to reinforce her words, “also, we’ve discovered Lavik’s fingerprints on Jacob Frøstrup’s banknotes. The fact that he was a drug-runner has been proved sixteen times over. In court. Besides, I always thought it was lawyers who received money from their clients, not the other way about. Lavik would definitely find that hard to explain away. Our strongest card, if you ask me.”

  She waited as if to allow for objections. None came, so she resumed.

  “Item four takes us further into the unknown. This is very significant for the wider context, and I’m convinced that these codes could tell us quite a lot if only we could crack the damned things. But since we don’t intend to charge Lavik with murder, I’m not sure we should put too much weight on them now. We might need an ace up our sleeves at a later stage. As for Lavik’s presence at critical moments in the lives of Van der Kerch and Frøstrup, that too is slightly more peripheral and can be put on hold. For the time being. So we’re back to items one to three as the basis for a possible arrest.”

  She paused again.

  “Would that be sufficient, Håkon?”

  He looked at her, and knew that she knew. It was nowhere near enough.

  “Arrest for what? For murder? No. For drug dealing? Not really. We’ve got no grounds at all when it comes down to it.”

  “Well, yes we have,” Kaldbakken obj
ected. “The find at Frøstrup’s wasn’t totally lacking in significance.”

  “Use your imagination, then, Håkon,” Hanne appealed with a wry smile. “You could make something out of it, couldn’t you? The charges you come up with are often inaccurate and riddled with holes, yet you seem to get custody orders in their hundreds.”

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” said Håkon. “You’re forgetting that this man is a lawyer himself. No court will ignore that. This wouldn’t be a twenty-minute conviction. If we try to bring the bastard in, we’ve got to be sure it will stick. There’ll be a huge outcry anyway. If he’s released, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  Despite Håkon’s scepticism, Kaldbakken was convinced. And none of the others could argue with the irascible authoritarian chief inspector on matters of professional police work. The seven officers went through the case again as it stood, item by item, sifted out the untenable, made a list of what more was needed, and at the end had the outline of a charge.

  “Drugs,” said the chief inspector in conclusion. “It’s drugs we’ll have to take him on. We don’t need to wade in too heavily in the first instance, perhaps we should make do with the twenty-four grams we seized at Frøstrup’s place.”

  “No, we’d have to broaden it out beyond that. If we only go for that amount, we’re denying ourselves the opportunity to use things not specifically connected with it. If we’re to have any chance at all here, we have to throw in everything we’ve got. There’s so much on the list which is pretty worthless that we have to be able to put it before the Court all together.”

  Håkon seemed more confident now. His heart was thumping like a helicopter rotor at the thought that they were finally on the verge of a breakthrough.