The Blind Goddess (22 page)

“How are you?” she enquired in a friendly manner, without expecting a reply. Nor did she receive one.

“Is there anything I can get you? A Coke, something to eat?”

“A bar of chocolate.”

His voice was frail and cracked. Presumably he’d hardly spoken for several weeks. She ordered three bars of chocolate over the intercom. And two cups of coffee. She hadn’t put any
paper in the typewriter. It wasn’t even plugged in.

“Is there anything at all you can tell me?”

“Chocolate,” he whispered.

They waited six minutes. Neither of them said a word. The chocolate and the coffee were served by one of the women from the office, slightly peeved at having to act as waitress. She was disarmed
by Hanne’s expressions of gratitude.

To watch the Dutchman eating chocolate was a remarkable sight. First he opened the chocolate carefully along the glued join, trying not to damage the wrapper. Then he broke the bar meticulously
into its manufactured segments, laid the wrapper on the desk, and moved them all an equal millimetre apart. He set about eating them in a pattern, like a children’s game, starting in one
corner, then taking the one diagonally above it and working his way in a zigzag to the top. Resuming from there, he ate his way down in a similar formation till all the chocolate was gone. It took
him five minutes. Finally he licked the wrapper clean, smoothed it out with his fingers, and folded it up to a precise design.

“I’ve already confessed,” he said eventually.

Hanne was startled; she had been totally absorbed by the eating ritual.

“No, strictly speaking you haven’t, not yet,” she said. Avoiding abrupt movements, she put into the typewriter the sheet of paper that she had already prepared with the
requisite personal details in the top right-hand corner.

“You don’t need to make a statement,” she said calmly. “And you also have a right to have your lawyer here.”

She was going by the book. She thought she saw the glimmer of a smile cross his face when she mentioned his lawyer. A positive smile.

“You like Karen Borg,” she remarked amiably.

“She’s nice.”

He had broached the second bar of chocolate, and was following the same procedure as the first.

“Would you like her here now, or is it okay if we have a chat on our own?”

“Okay.”

She wasn’t entirely sure whether he meant the former or the latter alternative, but she interpreted it in her own favour.

“So it was you who killed Ludvig Sandersen.”

“Yes,” he said, more concerned with the pattern of the chocolate. He had knocked a piece out of alignment and spoilt the layout, which obviously upset him.

Hanne sighed and thought to herself that this interview would be of less value than the paper it was recorded on. But it was worth making the attempt.

“Why did you do it, Han?”

He didn’t even look up at her.

“Won’t you tell me why?”

Still no answer. The chocolate was half eaten.

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

“Roger,” he said, loud and clear, with a steady gaze for a fraction of a second.

“Roger? Was it Roger who told you to kill him?”

“Roger.”

He had a faraway look in his eyes again, his voice reverting to that of an old man—or a child.

“Is he called more than Roger?”

But his communicativeness had come to an end. He seemed totally distant. Hanne called the two burly officers, forbade handcuffs, and gave the Dutchman the last bar of chocolate to take away with
him. He looked content, and left smiling serenely.

The slip of paper with a note of the telephone number was hanging on the cork noticeboard. She got a response straightaway, and introduced herself. Karen Borg sounded
friendly, if surprised. They talked for several minutes before Hanne came to the point.

“You don’t have to answer this, but I’ll ask anyway. Has Han van der Kerch mentioned the name Roger to you at any point?”

It was a hole-in-one. Karen was silent. Hanne said nothing either.

“All I know is that he may live in Sagene. Try there. I think you can look for a car dealer. I shouldn’t be saying this. I haven’t said it.”

Hanne promised her that she hadn’t heard it, thanked her profusely, cut the conversation short, and dialled a three-figure number on the internal phone.

“Is Billy T. there?”

“He’s off duty today, but I think he’ll be dropping by later.”

“Ask him to contact Hanne when he does.”

“Will do.”

The downpour was lashing the car windows obliquely, like furious scrawled invective from on high, the sleet adhering to the glass despite the valiant efforts of the wipers.
The autumn had been unusual, alternating between unseasonally severe cold with snow and rain, and temperatures rising to eight degrees. For several days the thermometer had stuck defiantly
somewhere in the middle, hovering on zero.

“You’re putting heavy demands on an old friendship, Hanne.”

He wasn’t annoyed with her, just rubbing it in.

“I work for the hit squad. Not as odd-job-boy to Her Royal Highness Hanne Wilhelmsen. And today was my free day. In other words, you owe me a day off. Write that down.”

He was having to lean his huge body right over the wheel to see anything at all. Had it not been for his size and his shaven head he could have been taken for one of those ladies in BMWs from
the posher part of town who had just acquired a driving licence in their forties.

“I shall be forever in your debt,” she assured him, jumping as he braked hard at a sudden shadow that turned out to be a reckless teenager.

“I can’t see a damned thing,” he said, trying to rub off the mist that kept coating the inside of the windscreen as fast as he wiped it dry.

Hanne adjusted the heater control, but with no discernible effect.

“Typical public service tat,” she muttered, making a mental note of the number of the vehicle so that she could avoid it next time she had to take a trip in the rain.

“I found only one Roger in the motor trade in Sagene, so we won’t have to hunt far, anyway,” she said, in an attempt to console him.

The car veered up onto the pavement, and Hanne was flung against the door, bruising her elbow on the window handle.

“Hey—are you trying to kill me?” she cried, before she realised they’d arrived.

Billy T. pulled up beside a grey concrete wall displaying a prominent “no parking” sign. He switched off the engine and sat with his hands in his lap.

“What are we actually going to do?”

“Just take a look. Get him a bit worried.”

“Am I a cop or a robber?”

“Customer, Billy, you’re a customer. Unless and until I say something different.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Whatever there is. Anything of interest considered.”

She got out and locked the door rather unnecessarily; Billy T. just slammed his shut without further ado.

“No one will nick that old wreck,” he said, turning up his collar to protect himself against the rain gusting straight at them round the corner of the building.

“Sagene Car Sales.” In English. She guessed the name even though some of the neon letters had evidently been out of action for a long time. In the crepuscular half-light she could
only see “Sa ene Ca S les.”

“International business, that’s for sure!”

A bell rang somewhere out the back as they went in the door. There was a smell of old Volvo Amazons, a suffocating perfume emanating from the largest selection of so-called air-purifiers that
Hanne had ever seen. Four cardboard Christmas trees, fifty to sixty centimetres high, stood side by side on a five-metre-long counter. The trees were decorated with smaller trees on glittering
threads and luscious comic-strip women inset with the same thread. An army of plastic tortoises exuding Magic Tree fragrance encircled the trunks of the trees like little Christmas presents, doing
their bit to ensure that the air in the vicinity of the cash register was the purest in the whole city. Their heads were mounted on springs, and they were all nodding a welcome in the draught from
the door.

The rest of the place was filled with every conceivable object connected with four-wheeled vehicles. There were exhaust systems and petrol caps, nylon leopard-skin seat covers, furry dice, and
spark plugs. Between the shelf units, where there was no room for any kind of rack, hung old calendar pin-ups of seminude women. Their breasts took up three-quarters of the picture and the actual
calendar dates were relegated to a superfluous narrow band at the foot.

A man emerged from the back rooms a few moments after the bell had rung. Hanne had to dig her fingernails into her palm to stop herself from giggling.

The guy looked an absolute stereotype. He was short and stocky, scarcely more than five foot six. He was wearing brown terylene trousers with a sewn-in crease. The seam had come undone at the
knee to present a really comical sight, a long sausage of a seam that vanished into a thin loose thread over the knees and then recommenced higher up. The trousers must have dated back to the
seventies; that was the last time she’d seen a sewn-in crease.

The shirt was what at school she would have called spotty, light blue with polka dots, and the tie, also light blue, was evidently chosen to complement it. On top of all this magnificence he was
wearing a black-and-white check suit jacket, missing a button—which didn’t matter, since it was much too tight to fasten anyway. His hair reminded her of a hedgehog.

“Can I help you, can I help you?” he asked in a loud and affable voice, looking with some misgiving at the figure with the earring. Hanne’s presence must have allayed his
qualms, because his face lit up as he turned to her and repeated his greeting.

“Yes, we’d like to look at some secondhand cars,” Hanne said, rather hesitantly, glancing over the little man’s shoulder through a door with a glass panel that
hadn’t been cleaned for at least a couple of years. She guessed it probably led to a showroom.

“Secondhand cars, well, you’ve certainly come to the right place,” the man said with a smile, even more amicable now, as if he’d thought at first that all they wanted was
a spark plug and now saw the chance of a more significant sale.

“Follow me, madam, sir! Just follow me!”

He led them out through the filthy door, and Billy T. noticed a similar door adjacent to it, opening into some kind of office.

The smell of oil was refreshing after all the Christmas trees; the proper smell of real cars. It was obviously a business with no aspiration to be a specialised dealership: there were Ladas,
Peugeots, Opels, and several four- or five-year-old Mercedes in apparently good condition.

“Look around and take your pick! May I ask what sort of price you had in mind?”

He smiled hopefully and glanced towards the nearest Mercedes.

“Three or four thousand kroner,” Billy T. muttered, and the man puckered his wet lips uncertainly.

“He’s joking,” Hanne reassured him. “We’ve got about seventy thousand. But we don’t have a fixed limit.

“My parents might chip in too,” she whispered confidentially into his ear.

The car salesman’s face brightened and he took her by the arm.

“Then you ought to cast your eyes over this Opel Kadett,” he said.

It looked in pretty good condition.

“Nineteen eighty-seven, only forty thousand kilometres on the clock,
guaranteed,
and only one owner. Well maintained. I can give you a keen price. A very keen price.”

“Lovely car.” Hanne nodded, giving her putative husband a meaningful glance. He took the hint and asked the chequered man if he could use the toilet.

“Just through there, just through there,” he replied in a benevolent tone, and Hanne began to wonder whether he had some kind of speech defect that made him repeat everything. A sort
of sophisticated stammer, perhaps. Billy T. went off.

“Nervous stomach,” she explained. “He’s got an interview for a new job later this afternoon. This is the fourth time, poor man.”

The salesman expressed his sympathy, and persuaded her to sit inside the car. It certainly was a nice model.

“I’m not familiar with this make,” she said. “Would you mind sitting in it with me and going over the controls?”

“No trouble at all. No trouble at all.” He turned on the ignition and demonstrated all the finer points.

“Beautiful motor,” he said emphatically. “Well maintained. Between you and me, the previous owner was a bit of a skinflint, but that means he looked after it all
right.”

He stroked the newly polished dashboard, flashed the lights, adjusted the seat-back, switched on the radio, put in a cassette of Rod Stewart, and spent an inordinately long time fastening the
seat belt round Hanne.

She turned towards him. “And the price?”

None of the cars had price labels on, which she found peculiar.

“The price . . . Yes, the price . . .”

He smacked his lips and sucked the air in through his teeth for a moment before giving her a smile she presumed was meant to seem friendly and confidence-inspiring.

“You’ve got seventy thousand and nice parents. For you I could say seventy-five. That includes the radio and new winter tyres.”

They’d been sitting there for more than five minutes now, and she was beginning to wish Billy T. would return. There was a limit to how long she could haggle over a car without suddenly
finding that she’d bought it. Another three minutes passed before he tapped on the window.

“We’d better go. We’ve got to fetch the kids,” he said.

“No, I’ll fetch them, you’ve got your interview,” she corrected him.

“I’ll ring you about this car,” she promised the man in Terylene, who could barely conceal his disappointment at losing what he’d thought was going to be an easy sale. He
recovered himself and gave her his card. It was as tasteless as its owner, dark blue artificial silk with his name on in gold, “Roger Strømsjord, Man. Dir.” Pretentious
title.

“I own the place,” he explained with a modest shrug of his shoulders. “Don’t take too long making up your mind! I have a fast turnover with cars like these. Very popular.
Very popular, I have to say.”