The Blind Goddess (39 page)

“Fetch those three sheets of code. Meet me at the Central Library as soon as you possibly can.”

With that he hobbled off across the asphalt on his crutches at impressive speed.

“I can drive you,” she shouted after him, but he seemed not to catch it. He was already halfway there.

It was very worn, but the picture on the cover was still clear. A handsome young European pilot lay helpless on the ground in his blue flying suit and old-fashioned leather
helmet, being attacked by a savage horde of hostile black Africans. The book was entitled
Biggles Flies South
. He passed it to Hanne, who was still out of breath. She realised at once.

“South,” she said, dropping her voice, “the code heading on the piece of paper we found in Hansy Olsen’s flat. Oh, my God!”

She leant over his shoulder. In front of him was the complete set of the adventures of the British flying ace. She picked up
Biggles in Africa
and
Biggles in Borneo
.

“Africa and Borneo. Jacob Frøstrup’s insurance documents. How did you suddenly come upon it?”

“We can be grateful for all the laborious routine work that’s been done. In the long list of the contents of Lavik’s office, I happened to notice that the Biggles series was
among his books. It amused me, because I used to devour them myself as a boy. If the individual titles had been listed, I would have probably seen it then. But it just said ‘Biggles
books.’ ”

He ran his hand over the frayed, light-blue spine. His leg wasn’t hurting anymore. Karen Borg was only a faint and distant image in the back of his mind. He was the one who had discovered
the key to the code. For ten weeks he’d been jogging along behind Hanne Wilhelmsen. Now it was his turn.

“The under secretary had the same books. The whole set complete.”

It was like a bombshell. There it was in front of them, in the form of three well-thumbed books for boys. Books that for some reason were on the shelves of an under secretary and in the office
of a corrupt, deceased lawyer. It couldn’t be coincidence.

In forty minutes they had broken the code. Three incomprehensible pages of rows of numbers were transformed into three seven-line messages. They were quite informative—confirming some of
their suspicions. The amounts involved were huge. Three deliveries of a hundred grams each. Heroin. As expected. The letters, written in a hasty backhand—both of them were
left-handed—gradually revealed all the collection points and delivery instructions. Price, quantity, and quality were stated, each message ending with a note of the courier’s
payoff.

But not a single damned name. Nor address. The places mentioned were obviously specific, but they were in code. The three collection points were given as B-c, A-r, and S-x. The destinations were
FM, LS, and FT. Meaningless. For the police. But obviously not for the people for whom the instructions were intended.

They were alone in the big room. Books towered above them in impersonal silence on all four sides, damping the acoustics and muffling the transmission of sound in the venerable building. Not
even a class of schoolchildren in the next room could disturb the scholarly peace that resided within those walls.

Hanne struck her fist on her forehead in exaggerated recognition of her own stupidity, and then banged her head on the table for emphasis.

“He was in police headquarters the day I was knocked out. Don’t you remember? The minister was having a sightseeing tour of the custody suite and was going to discuss unprovoked
violence! The under secretary was with him! I remember hearing them out at the back.”

“But how could he have got away from the group? There were so many journalists in tow.”

“Lavatory key. He could have borrowed a bunch of keys to go to the lavatory. Or got one for some other reason. I don’t know. But he was there. It can’t have been a coincidence,
it just can’t.”

They folded up the deciphered codes, handed in the Biggles books to the woman at the issue desk, and went out onto the steps. Håkon was fumbling with his chewing tobacco and getting into
the swing of it again after a couple of prods with his tongue.

“We can’t arrest a guy because he’s got books on his shelves.”

They looked at one another and burst into gales of laughter. It sounded raucous and disrespectful between the tall pillars, which seemed to shrink back towards the wall in outrage. Their breath
formed puffs of mist in the freezing air before evaporating.

“It’s incredible. We know there’s a third man. We know who he is. A scandal of significant proportions, and yet we can’t do anything. Not a damned thing.”

There was really nothing to be amused about. But they were grinning all the way to the car, which Hanne had rather cheekily left on the pavement outside. She’d put a police sign behind the
windscreen to lend legality to her inconsiderate parking.

“Well, we were right, anyway, Håkon,” she said. “Which is rather nice. There was a third man. Exactly as we said.”

She laughed again. More despondently this time.

His flat was still there. It looked quite alien despite its familiarity. The change must be in himself. After three hours’ cleaning, finishing off with a thorough round
of the carpets with the vacuum cleaner, he felt more relaxed. The activity didn’t do his leg any favours. But it was good for his soul.

Perhaps it was foolish not to say anything to the others. But Hanne had taken over again now. They were sitting on something that could bring down a government. Or fizzle out like a damp squib.
In either case there would be one hell of a stink. No one could blame them for waiting a while, biding their time. The under secretary wasn’t going to disappear.

He’d phoned Karen Borg’s number on three occasions and had always got Nils. Quite idiotic, he knew she was still in hospital.

The doorbell rang. He looked at the clock. Who would come visiting at half past nine on a Tuesday evening? For a moment he considered not answering. It would probably be someone making him a
fantastic offer of a cut-price subscription. Or wanting to save his immortal soul. On the other hand, it could be Karen. Of course it couldn’t be, but it might perhaps, just perhaps be her.
He closed his eyes tight, said a silent prayer, and went to the entry phone.

It was Fredrick Myhreng.

“I’ve brought some wine,” his cheery voice announced, and although Håkon had no great desire to spend an evening with the irritating journalist, he pressed the button and
admitted him. Moments later Myhreng was standing in the doorway with a lukewarm pizza in one hand and a bottle of sweet Italian white wine in the other.

“Pizza and white wine!”

Håkon made a face.

“I like pizza, and I like white wine. Why not both together?” said Fredrick, undeterred. “Damn good. Get a couple of glasses and a corkscrew. I’ve got some
napkins.”

A beer was more tempting, and there were two slim half-litre cans in the fridge. Fredrick declined, and began knocking back the sugary wine as if it were fruit juice.

It was quite some time before Håkon found out what he had come for—when he eventually moved on from his own self-aggrandisement.

“Look, Håkon,” he said, wiping his mouth punctiliously with a red napkin, “if someone did something that wasn’t entirely aboveboard, nothing serious, mind, just not
quite acceptable, and then he discovered something that was a lot worse, something that someone else had done, or for instance he found something that, for instance, the police might be able to use
. . . For instance. In a case that was much worse than what this bloke had done. What would you do? Would you turn a blind eye to something that wasn’t really kosher, but not as wrong as what
others had done, which he might be able to help clear up?”

It went so quiet that Håkon could hear the faint hiss of the candles in the room. He leant over the table, pushing away the cardboard box in which now only a few scraps of mushroom
remained.

“What exactly have you done, Fredrick? And what the hell have you discovered?”

The journalist lowered his eyes guiltily. Håkon banged his fist down on the table.

“Fredrick! What is it you’ve been withholding?”

The national newspaper journalist had vanished, to be replaced by a puny little boy who was about to confess his misdemeanours to an enraged adult. Shamefaced, he put his hand into his trouser
pocket and produced a small shiny key.

“This belonged to Jørgen Lavik,” he said meekly. “It was taped to the underside of his safe. Or filing cabinet, I can’t really remember which.”

“You can’t really remember.”

Håkon’s nostrils were white with fury.

“You can’t really remember. You’ve removed important evidence from the premises of a suspect in a criminal case, and you can’t really remember whereabouts it was. Well,
well.”

The whiteness had now spread into a circle round his whole nose, giving his face the appearance of a Japanese flag in reverse.

“Dare I ask when you ‘found’ this key?”

“Quite recently,” he replied evasively. “And it’s not the original, by the way. It’s a copy. I took an impression of it and then replaced it.”

Håkon Sand was breathing in and out through his nose very rapidly, like a rutting stag.

“You haven’t heard the last of this, Fredrick. Believe me. Right now you can take your bottle of dishwater and go.”

He shoved the cork violently back into the half-empty bottle, and the
Dagbladet
’s emissary was ejected into the unpleasant frosty air of the December night. Outside the door he
stopped and placed his foot on the threshold to prevent their conversation being so abruptly terminated.

“But Håkon,” he ventured, “I hope I’ll get something in return for this? Can I have an exclusive?”

All he got for an answer was a very sore toe.

THURSDAY 10 DECEMBER

H
aving worked on it for less than a couple of days, they had reduced the possible locations to a very encompassable number: two. One was a
respectable and serious gym in the centre of town, the other a less respectable, more expensive, and more multifarious health club in St. Hanshaugen. Both venues were devoted to physical pursuits,
but while the former was legitimate, the latter’s activities functioned with specially imported ladies from Thailand. It had taken a while to discover the manufacturers of the key, but once
they found them, they succeeded in narrowing it down in just a few hours to the cupboard it might fit. In view of Lavik’s shattered reputation they were all convinced that the specific one
would be found in the brothel. But they were wrong. Lavik had pumped iron twice a week, as on checking the file they realised they already knew.

The locker was so small that the attaché case had only been squeezed in with difficulty. It now lay unopened, its combination lock still unassailed, on Kaldbakken’s desk on the
second floor, blue zone. Håkon Sand and Hanne Wilhelmsen were anticipating an early Christmas present and could hardly bear to wait for the leather-covered metal case to be broached.

The combination was no match for Kaldbakken’s screwdriver. They’d fiddled about with the six numbered wheels just to satisfy themselves, but had soon given up. After all, the owner
had no use for it anymore, even though it was still new.

None of them could understand why he’d done it. It was incomprehensible for the man to have taken such a risk. The only logical explanation was that he’d hoped to drag others down
with him if he fell. He would have been unlikely to need such a thick bundle of documentation while he was alive. It must have been a real security headache for him. In a fitness centre, where he
could never be sure that the owner wouldn’t make an inquisitive round of his affluent members’ lockers after closing time, he had stashed away a complete and detailed account of a
syndicate none of the three readers had ever imagined they would come across, except perhaps in a crime novel.

“He doesn’t mention the attack on me,” said Hanne, “which must mean that I was right. It must have been the under secretary.”

Kaldbakken and Sand were totally uninterested. If it had turned out to be the Pope himself who’d travelled north to commit violence on a defenceless woman, they wouldn’t have batted
an eyelid.

They spent a couple of hours going right through it. Some of the papers they pored over together, some they took turns to read. Occasional exclamations prompted them to lean over one
another’s shoulders. After a while they were no longer surprised at anything.

“This will have to go straight to the top,” said Hanne when they’d finished reading and had put it all back into the damaged leather case.

She pointed her finger at the ceiling. And she didn’t mean God.

The minister of justice insisted on a press conference that very evening. The Special Branch and the Intelligence Service had protested vociferously, but in vain. The scandal
would be enormous if the media found out that they had kept the matter under wraps for more than a few hours. It was significant enough as it was.

The minister’s striking appearance had taken a severe buffeting in the course of the day. His skin was more pallid and his hair less golden. He could hear the baying of the newshounds
outside the door. For various reasons he had decided that the conference should be held in police headquarters.

“It’s only you lot who’ll come out of this affair with any glory,” he’d declared sarcastically when the commissioner had expressed the opinion that they should
receive the journalists in the government building. “We’ll have the press conference under police auspices.”

What he forbore to mention was that there was a virtual state of emergency in and around all the government buildings. The prime minister had ordered a tripling of security arrangements and had
become increasingly paranoid about the media as the day wore on. Police headquarters would thus afford a welcome diversion.

Taking a few deep breaths he strode into the big lecture hall. It was fortunate that he had some reserves of oxygen, because the crush inside the double doors nearly suffocated him.