Free Blessed Are Those Who Thirst by Anne Holt Page A

Iran, and the family had led a favored existence. They were poorly rewarded when the regime fell. Two of her brothers were killed in the prisons of the Ayatollah. She and her sister had managed all right until a year and a half ago. A fellow member of their cell had been captured, and after three days and nights of torture had been broken. The next day he was killed. And the day after that, soldiers stood at their door.
    She had already been tipped off and traveled across the border to Turkey with help from fellow partisans with better cover than she had. From Turkey she had flown to Norway and what she thought would be a life with her father. On arrival at the airport, the immigration police had informed her that her father had died of a heart attack three days earlier. An attorney assigned to her as soon as she was placed in Tanum Reception Center in Bærum had quickly discovered that she was the legal heir of her father’s small estate, comprising a fully paid apartment, five beautiful Persian rugs, a few articles of furniture, and a bank account containing forty thousand kroner. She had sold the rugs and furniture, netting more than a hundred thousand kroner, money she had sent to Iran, hoping her sister could derive somebenefit from it. She had received no reply, something not entirely unexpected. She could only hope for the best. The forty thousand in the bank account covered her own subsistence. In that way, she would not be a burden on Norwegian society.
    “I lucky. Not need live in Tanum. Live here. More good that, for me.”
    Her trip to Denmark had been illegal in the sense that, as an asylum seeker with no passport, she could not leave the country. However, with her atypical appearance, she was able to pass as Scandinavian to overworked customs officers. It had been unproblematic. But it also meant she could not provide him with any information he was actually looking for.
    He stood up.
    “Well, thanks for the chat. Good luck for the future.”
    In the doorway, he paused and extended his hand. “I hope the police are decent to you.”
    He couldn’t be certain, but he had an idea that a worried look flitted across her face.
    “I mean, I hope you are allowed to stay here in the country,” he said more precisely.
    “I hope too,” she replied.
    He was on his way upstairs when the door slammed shut. The rattling of the door chain as it was replaced followed him all the way to the next floor. He stood for a moment on the landing, with a peculiar feeling that something had escaped him. A few seconds later, he shook it off and rang the doorbell of the next apartment.
    *   *   *
    Four days had passed since the dreadful rape in Homansbyen, and she was not a single step closer to a solution. On the contrary. Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen had frighteningly little to report on her work in connection with the case. The scale of her frustration was absolute, unaccustomedly so.
    But what should she do? Most of the previous day had been spent interviewing witnesses in two of the assault cases. They were overdue, and angry lawyers’ letters chasing these offenses were shrieking at her from the top of her pile of case documents. She still had to conduct at least five interviews in one case, the most serious a knifing drama in which the knife had swept past the main artery in the victim’s thigh by only millimeters. When she would find the time for five outstanding witness interviews was something of a conundrum.
    The incest case was hanging over her like an unpaid bill, with the deadline long expired. The night before, she had been awakened by a bad conscience and terrible dreams. She had arranged to have the new judicial review earlier than originally planned. It would take a whole day. First there would be a home visit and a “getting-to-know-you” round. There would then be lemonade in the canteen and a drive in a police car and a “trust-the-police” round. She didn’t have a whole day. She didn’t