The Blind Goddess Read Free Page A

The few that were paid were charged to the Social Services. A merry-go-round of public money that
made a contribution to employment of some sort, but could hardly be regarded as particularly rational.
    One set of arrest forms remained. It had no name on it.
    “What’s this?”
    He turned to the custody officer, an overweight man in his fifties who would never achieve more than the three stripes he had on his shoulders, stripes no one could deny him: they were awarded
for age rather than merit. Håkon had realised long ago that the man was a dimwit.
    “A nutter. He was in here when I came on duty. Bastard. Refused to give his name and address.”
    “What’s he done?”
    “Nothing. Found sitting in the road somewhere or other. Covered in blood. You can fine the sod for not giving his name. And for breach of the peace. And for being a scumbag.”
    After five years in the force Sand had learnt to count to ten. He counted to twenty this time. He didn’t want to have a row just because of an imbecile in uniform who couldn’t see
that taking a person’s liberty involved a certain responsibility.
    Cell number four. He took a warder with him. The man with no name was awake. He stared at them with a despondent face, and was obviously in some doubt about their intentions. He sat up on the
bed stiffly and spoke his first words in police custody.
    “Could I have a drink?”
    The language he spoke was Norwegian and yet at the same time not Norwegian. Håkon couldn’t put his finger on it; it sounded accurate, but there was something not quite right. Could
he be a Swede trying to speak Norwegian?
    He was given a drink, of course. Cola, bought by Håkon Sand with his own money. He even got a shower. And a clean T-shirt and trousers. From Sand’s own cupboard in the office. The
custody officer’s grumbling at the special treatment grew louder with every item. But Håkon Sand ordered the bloodstained clothes to be put in a bag, explaining as he locked the heavy
metal doors behind him:
    “These articles could be important evidence!”
    The young man was certainly taciturn. A searing thirst after many hours in an overheated cell may have loosened his tongue, but it soon became clear that his need to
communicate was extremely temporary. Having quenched his thirst, he reverted to silence.
    He was sitting on a hard spindleback chair. Strictly speaking there was only space for two chairs in the eight-square-metre room, which also housed a solid and rather stately double filing
cabinet, three rows of ugly painted-steel bookshelves full of ring-binders arranged by colour, and a desk. This was fixed to the wall with metal brackets, so that the desktop was on a slant.
That’s how it had been ever since the medical officer had had the idea of subjecting the staff to an ergonomics therapist. Sloping work desks were supposed to be good for the back. No one
understood why, and most of them had found that their spinal problems were exacerbated by all the groping around on the floor for the things that slid off the desk. With an extra chair in the room
it was hardly possible to move about without shifting the furniture.
    The office belonged to Hanne Wilhelmsen. She was strikingly attractive, and newly promoted to Inspector. After coming out top of her year from police college, she had spent ten years at Oslo
police headquarters marking herself out as a policewoman perfectly designed for an advertising campaign. Everyone spoke well of Hanne Wilhelmsen, a unique achievement in a workplace where ten
percent of the day was spent running down your colleagues. She deferred to superiors without being branded an arse-licker, yet was not afraid to voice her opinions. She was loyal to the system, but
would put forward suggestions for improvement that were usually sound enough to be implemented. Hanne Wilhelmsen had the intuition that only one in a hundred police officers has, the fingertip
sensitivity that tells you when to coax and trick