Hanne Wilhelmsen - 01 - The Blind Goddess

by Anne Holt

  Her mouth formed itself into a pallid smile again and her delight at the praise brought roses to her cheeks. She bobbed at the knees flirtatiously, but refrained from turning it into a curtsy. Of course she would hold the fort, and he should have a good holiday. He deserved it!

  He thought so too. But before he left he went into the toilet to use the mobile phone he’d grabbed from his colleague’s pigeonhole. He knew the number by heart.

  “I’m out. You can relax.”

  His whisper was scarcely audible against the embarrassing gurgle from the defective cistern.

  “Don’t ring me, and especially not now,” the other man hissed, but without hanging up.

  “It’s perfectly safe. You can relax,” he repeated, to no avail.

  “It’s easy to say that!”

  “Karen Borg is in her cottage at Ula. She won’t be there long. You’ll be quite safe. Only she can bring me down, and only I can bring you down. If I’m all right, you’re all right.”

  He didn’t hear the older man’s protests; he had already hung up. Jørgen Ulf Lavik had a pee, washed his hands, and went back to his invisible stalkers.

  * * *

  He would soon have to have something done about his heart. The medication he’d been taking didn’t work anymore. Not very effectively, anyway. He’d twice felt the hand of death, like the frightening and near-fatal blow that had prostrated him less than three years ago. Systematic exercise and a fat-free diet had certainly helped up to now, but his condition over the last few weeks couldn’t be remedied by jogging or carrots.

  They were onto him. In a way he’d been expecting it, ever since the snowball began to roll. It could only be a question of time. Even though the description in the Dagbladet of the presumed ringleader had been rather general, and could have fitted several hundred people, it was a bit too exact for the guys in Platou Gata. He’d been walking home from work one afternoon and suddenly they were standing there, as anonymous as the job they were doing, two identical men, the same height, the same clothes. They’d forced him into the car in a friendly, but very firm, manner. The drive lasted half an hour, and ended in front of his own house. He had denied everything. They hadn’t believed him. But they knew that he knew that it was in the interests of all of them that he should be in the clear. Which put his mind at rest to some extent. If it came out how the money was actually spent, they’d all be finished. Admittedly he was the only one who knew where it came from, but the others had accepted it—and used it. Without ever asking, without ever checking, without ever investigating anything. Which made their position extremely delicate.

  The real headache was Lavik. Had he gone out of his mind? It was pretty obvious he intended to kill Karen Borg. As if that would solve anything! He would be the prime suspect. Immediately. Besides, who knew whether she’d told others, or written something down that hadn’t yet found its way into the hands of the police? Killing Karen Borg would solve nothing.

  Killing Jørgen Lavik, on the other hand, would solve most things. The moment the thought was formed, it seemed his only recourse. The successful murder of Hans Olsen had effectively halted all problems in that branch of the syndicate. Lavik had just made matters worse and worse for both of them. He had to be stopped.

  The idea didn’t frighten him. On the contrary, it had a calming effect. His pulse was beating steadily and evenly again, for the first time in days. His brain felt alert and he could feel his concentration improving.

  The best thing would be to eliminate him before he had time to send Karen Borg to whatever heaven was reserved for lawyers. The murder of a young and beautiful, and in this respect innocent, female lawyer would have far too many repercussions. A desperate male lawyer on drugs charges wouldn’t die without causing a few ripples either, but still… One murder was better than two. But how to go about it?

  Jørgen Lavik had talked about Ula. A cottage. That must mean he was thinking of going there. How he would evade the plainclothesmen who doubtless had him under constant observation, he had no idea. But that was Lavik’s problem. His own was to find Lavik, find him without being seen by those same officers, and preferably before he got to Karen Borg. He didn’t need an alibi: he wasn’t in the police spotlight, nor would he be. If all went well.

  It would take him less than an hour to find the precise address of Karen Borg’s cottage. He could ring her office, or perhaps the local council; they could check in the land register. But that was too risky. A few minutes later he’d made up his mind. As far as he could recall, there was only one way down to Ula, a little track off the coast road between Sandefjord and Larvik. He would simply lie in wait there.

  Relieved at having come to a decision, he immersed himself in the day’s most pressing tasks. His hands were steady and his heart was beating regularly again. Perhaps he didn’t need any new medication after all.

  * * *

  It was a bit more than a summer cottage—a substantial red-painted old wooden house from the thirties, completely renovated, and even in the gloom of December you could appreciate the idyllic character of the location. It was quite well protected against the elements, and though there was some snow on the approach to it, the rocky ground behind was scoured clean by the incessant wind off the sea. A fir tree swayed obstinately just a few metres from the west wall. The wind had managed to bend the trunk but not to kill the tree. It stood leaning away from the shore, as if it were longing to join its family further inland but couldn’t tear itself loose. You could make out the contours of summer flowerbeds between the humps of snow on the lee side of the house. It was all neatly tended. It didn’t belong to Lavik, but to his senile and childless uncle. Jørgen had been his favourite nephew when last his uncle had been able to feel anything of that nature. He had turned up faithfully every summer when he was a boy, and they had gone fishing together, caulked boats, and eaten fried bacon and beans. Jørgen was the son he’d never had, and he would inherit the beautiful summer cottage when Alzheimer’s eventually, and probably in the not-so-distant future, met its only match—death.

  Jørgen Lavik had spent quite a lot of money on the place. His uncle wasn’t a poor man, and had paid for the essential maintenance himself. But it was Jørgen who’d installed a bathroom with a Jacuzzi, and a mini-sauna and a telephone. He’d also given his uncle a nippy little boat as a seventieth birthday present, in the certain knowledge that it would effectively remain his own.

  On the journey down to the far end of the Hurum peninsula, he’d not once caught sight of his pursuers. There had been cars behind him all the way, but none of them had tailed him long enough to be likely candidates. Nevertheless, he knew they must be there, and was pleased about it. He didn’t hurry himself parking the car, and demonstrated his intention of staying for a significant period by carrying in his luggage in several instalments. He wandered from room to room gradually switching on all the lights, and lit the paraffin stove in the living room to supplement the electric heater.

  In the afternoon he went for a short walk. He strolled over the familiar terrain, but even now couldn’t see or hear anything suspicious. He felt uneasy. Weren’t they here? Had they abandoned him? They couldn’t do that! His heart was thumping fast and nervously. No, they must be somewhere nearby. They had to be. He forced himself to be calm. Perhaps they were just very skilful. That was probably it.

  There were a few things to fix. He must start without delay. He took his time on the doorstep, stretching himself and knocking the snow off his trousers at unnecessary length. Then he went in to make his preparations.

  * * *

  The worst of it was that everyone was so cheering. He was slapped on the back with a cry of “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” and given congratulatory smiles and other friendly expressions of support. Even the commissioner had taken the trouble to phone down to him to convey her satisfaction with what he’d achieved, despite the unfortunate outcome. Håkon mentioned the possibility of a claim for damages to her, but she just snorted. She did
n’t believe for a moment that Lavik would dare; after all, he was guilty. He was probably just happy to be free again and anxious to put the whole affair as far behind him as he could. Håkon could rest assured about that; in fact the officers tailing Lavik had reported that he was now out at a cottage on the Hurum peninsula.

  The support didn’t do much to boost his morale. He felt as if he’d been put into an automatic washing machine, subjected to the centrifugal force of a complete washing cycle, and shrunk. There were other cases lying on his desk with imminent deadlines, but he was totally incapable of action and decided to let everything wait till the next morning.

  Only Hanne recognised how he actually felt. She came by in the afternoon with two cups of hot tea. He coughed and spluttered when he tasted the contents, having assumed it was coffee.

  “What shall we do now, Mr. Prosecutor?” she asked, putting her feet up on the desk. Nice legs, he thought, not for the first time.

  “Don’t ask me.”

  He sipped the tea again, a little more cautiously this time. Actually it wasn’t bad.

  “We won’t give up, anyway. We’ll nail him. He hasn’t won the battle yet, just a little skirmish.”

  It was incomprehensible that she could be so positive. It almost sounded as if she meant what she said. Of course, it might just be the difference between an active police officer and an official of the Prosecution Service. There were many avenues of retreat for him; he could find another job at any time. Assistant secretary in the Department of Fisheries, for instance, he thought glumly. Hanne, on the other hand, was trained as a police officer. There was only one possible employer for her: the police force. So she could never give up.

  “Now you listen to me,” she said, putting her feet back down on the floor. “We’ve got a lot more to go on! You can’t lose your fighting spirit now! It’s in adversity we have the chance to show what we’re made of.”

  Banal. But probably true. In that case he was a wimp. He definitely couldn’t tackle it. He was going home. Perhaps he might be man enough to cope with a few household chores….

  “Phone me at home if there are any developments,” he said, leaving his stoical colleague and most of his cup of tea.

  “You win some, you lose some,” he heard her call out after him as he trudged off down the corridor.

  * * *

  The plainclothesmen following him, six in total, had realised that it would be a long evening and a cold night. One of them, a narrow-shouldered clever chap with sharp eyes, had checked round the back of the house. About three metres from the wall facing the sea the ground sloped down abruptly to a small cove with a sandy beach. It was only fifteen to twenty metres across, and bordered at each end by a barbed-wire fence with supports fixed into the bare rock. Private ownership of land was never so jealously guarded as at the seashore, the policeman thought, grinning to himself. On both sides of the wire there was a steep rock face five or six metres high. It would be possible to climb it, but only with difficulty. In any case Lavik would still have to come round onto the road by the house. The point was completely cut off by the road, which therefore had to be crossed in order to leave the area.

  One man was stationed at either end of this stretch of road and one in the middle, and since it was only about a couple hundred metres, they had visual coverage of the entire length. Lavik couldn’t get past without being seen. The other three took up positions around the cottage.

  * * *

  Lavik was sitting inside amused at the thought that the men outside, however many there were, must be freezing their arses off. He was warm and comfortable and hyped up with excitement as he embarked on his plan. He had an old-fashioned alarm clock in front of him, with no glass over the hands. With a bit of fiddling he managed to attach a wooden peg to the small hand. He plugged in the fax machine, put a sheet of paper in the feed, and tried it out. He set the hand just before three, placed the extended hand over the start button of the machine, keyed in his own office number, and sat watching it. A quarter of an hour passed, and nothing happened. He waited a few more minutes and began to worry that the whole scheme would have to be aborted. But then, just as the little hand made its tiny movement to the three, everything functioned perfectly. The peg on the end of the hand just brushed the electronic start button, but it was sufficient. The fax machine obeyed, sucked in the sheet of paper, and transmitted the message.

  Encouraged by this success, he went quickly through the house plugging in the time switches he’d brought from home. He used them to economise on electricity, turning the electric radiators off at midnight and on again at six, so that the house was warm when they got up. It was soon done—he was accustomed to setting them. But the difficult part was still to come. He had to create movement while he was away: lights going on and off wouldn’t be enough. He’d thought it all out beforehand, but hadn’t put the idea to the test. It was hard to tell how it would go in practice. Hidden from view by the drawn curtains, he arranged three thin cords across the living room, tying one end of each to the kitchen door handle, and the other ends to different points on the opposite side of the room. Then he attached a kitchen towel to the first, an old pair of swimming trunks to the second, and a napkin to the third. It took a while to set up the candles in the right place: each one had to be up against its string, close enough for the string to catch alight when the flame burnt down to the same level. He broke off the candles to unequal lengths and fixed them in a base of molten wax, standing them on saucers. The candle by the string with the napkin on was the shortest, only a fraction of an inch above the taut thread. He stood and watched in eager anticipation.

  Success! In just a few minutes the flame had come low enough to lick at the string, which smoked and then burnt through, and the napkin descended to the floor, casting a moving shadow on the curtains in the window that faced the road. Perfect.

  He put up a new string to replace the burnt one, and got out a longer candle. Then he set the clock with the little hand just past one. In slightly less than two hours’ time Jørgen Lavik would apparently send a fax to a lawyer in Tønsberg about an urgent matter which had been delayed by circumstances beyond his control; he apologised and hoped the delay had not caused any problems.

  Then he changed into camouflage clothes, meant for hunting but ideal for his purpose. He lit the candles carefully and ensured once again that they were firmly in position. Then he went down to the cellar and slipped out through the door at the rear of the house.

  Down on the beach he paused and waited for a moment. Hugging the wall of rock, he felt reasonably certain that he blended fully with the background. When he’d got his breath back he crept along to the spot where many summers ago he’d cut an opening in the wire to gain easier access to his neighbour’s property, in order to play with a boy of his own age.

  He crawled towards the road. They probably had it under observation along its whole length. Near the edge of the wood he lay and listened. Nothing. But they must be there. He continued parallel with the road, five metres in and hidden by the trees. There it was. The big concrete pipe that carried a small stream to the other side of the road, creating a bridge instead of a ford. He’d slithered through the pipe on countless occasions in his youth, but he’d put on several kilos and twenty centimetres since then. But he’d calculated correctly that it would still be big enough to take him. He got a bit wet of course, but the stream was only a thin winter trickle; the little pond in the forest above was probably frozen. The pipe continued for three metres beyond the road, because they’d allowed for a long-promised widening which had never materialised. With his head protruding from the other end, he lay quiet again for a few minutes to listen. Still nothing. He was breathing heavily, and could feel how debilitated he’d become from his days in prison. Though much of his loss of strength was compensated for by a potent rush of adrenaline as he darted swiftly and soundlessly into the undergrowth on the opposite side of the roadway.

  It wasn’t very far to run, and he
was there in just over five minutes. He glanced at his watch. Half past seven. Perfect. The wood creaked a bit when he opened the door of the shack, but the police were at too great a distance to have any chance of hearing it. He slipped inside just as a car went past on the main road twenty metres away. Another one followed close behind, but by then he was already sitting in the dark green Lada and had found that even after being laid up for several months, the battery still had enough power in it to start the engine with a cough and a splutter. Although his uncle’s mind was gone and he barely recognised him on his visits to the hospital, it was obvious that he got some enjoyment from the occasional drives in the Lada that Jørgen treated him to. So as a gesture to his uncle, Jørgen had kept the car in good condition. Now it was he who was reaping the benefit. He revved the engine a couple of times, drove out of the garage, and headed off in the direction of Vestfold.

  * * *

  It was bitterly cold. The police officer had to flap his arms and stamp his feet while remaining silent and invisible. It wasn’t easy. He needed to remove his gloves to use his binoculars, which meant he wasn’t using them very often. He cursed and envied this bloody lawyer for being able to sit and enjoy the warmth in a place that necessitated outdoor surveillance. A moment ago a light had been switched off in one of the upstairs rooms: surely he wasn’t intending to go to bed so early. It was only eight o’clock. Hell, another four hours to the end of the shift. There was an icy blast on his wrist as he uncovered his watch, so he hurriedly pulled his sleeve down.

  He could try the binoculars with his gloves on. There wasn’t much to see. Lavik had obviously drawn all the curtains, which was understandable, since he wouldn’t be so stupid as not to realise he was under observation. From that point of view it seemed rather foolish that they were making such efforts to remain invisible. He sighed. What a tedious job. Lavik was certain to hole up for several days, bearing in mind that he’d lugged in bag after bag of food, plus a laptop computer and a fax.