Blind Goddess [by] Anne Holt
New York; Scribner [2012]
978-1-4516-3476-1; $15.00
Hanne Wilhelmsen, the “star” of 1222, is back on the streets of Oslo, her regular stomping grounds. She is partnered with police attorney Håkon Sand for a very important case, as it turns out.
It all starts out when attorney Karen Borg is out for a walk with her dog, when she discovers the body of a man, shot three times and mutilated.
Then a young Dutchman is found sitting in the street, with blood all over him. He will not speak to the police when they take him in, but he will speak to Karen Borg, and only to her. He tells her that he killed the dead man. She tells him she can’t be his lawyer, because she doesn’t do criminal law, but he will only have her, because, since she found the body, she can’t have had anything to do with the man who died. A rich, powerful defense lawyer, Peter Strup, offers to defend him for her, but the young man will only have Borg.
Then Hans E. Olsen, a lawyer, is killed. Hanne tells Håkon that she believes the two murders are related. Ludvig Sandersen, the first man murdered, had had the second man murdered as his lawyer.
Karen Borg goes to the lock-up to talk to the Dutchman. Gradually he tells her that he was part of a syndicate. His contact was a used-car salesman in another town. He believes there are lawyers involved in the syndicate at a higher level than his.
Frederick Myhreng, a journalist, comes in at Håkon’s behest. He has intimated that he knows something about the case, but doesn’t really say much. Håkon reminds him not to blab to the public, but to keep a tight lip, and report what he discovers.
Håkon and Hanne visit Olsen’s office, where he was shot. They are looking for clues, not about the murder, but to see if they can find anything about his connection to a syndicate. They find porno films and a piece of paper which looks like a code. This last they stash in their evidence box. A retired cop specializing in codes tells them it is a code based on a book. They just have to find out which book and the code will solve itself.
Hanne comes in to work on a Sunday. She is bludgeoned over the head. No one saw anything. The Dutchman receives a threatening note, which causes him to go off the deep end, ending up in a locked hospital ward. And they get a bit of a clue: the initials J.U.L., which can only mean the lawyer Jørgen Ulf Lavik. Hanne and another cop do a stakeout to watch him. They end up chasing a man who climbs over a wall, leaving a large-sized boot behind. The cops pull Lavik in for questioning, but get nothing. Lavik leaves in ecstasy, because they don’t know anything.
Then Myhreng visits Lavik. Lavik puts him off with lawyerly rhetoric, but Myhreng sees a chance. He asks to go the restroom, and jimmies the window, so that he can return that night, which he does. He discovers a key, which he copies in beeswax and takes to a keymaker for duplication.
Karen Borg accepts a dinner invitation from Peter Strup. She is having a lovely time being wined and dined, when he begins to pressure her with questions about the Dutchman. Then he threatens her – he must take over the case. Karen defends her client’s right to have whom he wants to defend him, and then leaves the restaurant in a fury.
Hanne and the cop she was on stakeout with go to visit the used-car dealer who had been the Dutchman’s contact. They find the Dutchman’s phone number encoded in the fellow’s personal phone book. Meanwhile, they have to get a belt to keep the Dutchman’s trousers up, when he goes to court – he’d lost so much weight in custody. He’s taken back to his cell, where he uses the belt to hang himself.
Another man dies from an overdose while in custody. He is a client of Lavik’s. They find money under the floorboards in his apartment. Fingerprints taken from one of the banknotes matches what they lift from a coffee cup used by Lavik during one of his visits to Police HQ. Håkon and Hanne visit his office to arrest the outraged Lavik.
Karen Borg believes it is her best interest to get out of town. She badly needs a rest, and the case had been hard on her, especially with her client committing suicide. She goes to her country house, looking forward to being alone, in a peaceful place. But her statement is needed for the case – it’s the only thing that can really tie things all together, and the hearings are not going well without it. Håkon sends Hanne to get her statement.
She is exhausted when she brings the statement, which she typed up on a laptop while there, back to Håkon. She doesn’t photocopy it. Håkon is too tired to photocopy it, either. He goes home, leaving the original – and only copy – on his desk. An interloper sneaks in and takes it, looks for other copies, and, finding none, destroys the only copy there is.
Lavik is set free without Borg’s statement. Hanne and Håkon end up on a motorcycle riding through the snow to get a new statement. But all hell has broken loose at Borg’s cottage. It is on fire; her dog is dead; she is badly hurt; Hanne and Håkon are both hurt, trying to save her; both Lavik and Strup are there, as are a number of henchpersons of various kinds. Eventually, all is tied up, both there and back in the city. The journalist Myhreng gets his licks in finally, helping to prove the case for the police. A number of prominent people go down for their bad deeds, but not all. There will obviously be a lot of mopping up afterwards to do. A rollicking good time, with the tension mounting to the big climax and the even more fascinating dénouement. Highly recommended. ~ lss-r
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Library book.
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