Blessed Are Those Who Thirst by Anne Holt Read Free Book Online Page B

round face. My eyes aren’t so close together either. And besides, I’ve got more hair.”
    The newspaper was crumpled ferociously and thrown into the bin.
    “If this is the way you’re conducting this investigation, I can well understand why no one has any hope of solving it,” he declared, still somewhat miffed. “Honestly . . .”
    She didn’t give up. She retrieved the crushed newspaper, smoothing it flat with a long-fingered, slender hand, nails lacquered with clear enamel.
    “Look at this likeness. Couldn’t it be anyone at all? These drawings really shouldn’t be publicized. Either the victim fixates on some particular blemish, so the man is given a nose that’s far too large and we get no tip-offs. Or else they look like this. Like a man. A Norwegian man.”
    They stared for a long time at the picture of the anonymous Norwegian man with the insignificant face.
    “Do we actually know he’s Norwegian?”
    “Not with absolute certainty, but he spoke fluently and looked Norwegian. We have to assume he is.”
    “But he was supposedly quite tanned . . .”
    “Now you really must give over, Håkon. There are enough racists here in the force without you persuading yourself to believe a blond man speaking in Oslo dialect is a Moroccan.”
    “But they commit rape far mo—”
    “Cut it out, Håkon.”
    Her tone was almost aggressive now. It was true that North Africans were overrepresented in the rape statistics. It was true the rapes of which they were found guilty were often unusually vicious. It was also true she found her own prejudices surfacing occasionally, as a result of too many encounters with curly-haired, handsome scumbags who lied to your face even when they’d been caught literally with their trousers down and every single Norwegian man in the same situation would have said something else: yes, true enough, we were fucking, but it was of her own free will. She knew all that, but it was quite another thing to say it out loud.
    “What do you think are the hidden statistics for ‘Norwegian’ rapes?”
    She waved two fingers of each hand in the air when she used the word “Norwegian.”
    “Those rapes that happen after a night on the town, at office parties, by husbands . . . you name it! That’s where you’ll find the hidden statistics. Every girl knows they’re hopeless to prosecute. While the more ‘straightforward’ rapes . . .”
    Her fingers waved in the air again.
    “. . . the nasty assaults, the dreadful dark-skinned attackers, the ones who aren’t from here, the ones everybody knows the police are out to get . . . they’re the ones that are reported.”
    Silence. Feeling offended, Håkon smiled, shame-faced and defensive.
    “I didn’t mean it like that.”
    “No, I realize that. But you really shouldn’t say such things. Not even as a joke. Of one thing I’m absolutely sure.”
    Sweaty and dispirited, she stood up, leaned across toward the window, and endeavored to open it wider. The new curtains fluttered slightly, more from her own movements than any draft from outside.
    “God Almighty, it’s scorching.”
    It was no use. The window slid back to a gap of ten centimeters, no good at all. It had to be thirty degrees Celsius in here.
    “Of one thing I’m absolutely sure,” she repeated. “If all the rapes actually committed in this country were reported, we would all be horrified by two things.”
    Håkon Sand wasn’t sure why she stopped. Perhaps to afford him the opportunity to guess what two things would horrify everyone. Instead of taking the chance of saying something stupid yet again, he waited for the upshot of her silence.
    “First of all: how many rapes take place. Second: foreigners would feature in the statistics to almost exactly the same extent as their proportion of the population would suggest. Neither more nor less.”
    She moaned again about the heat.
    “If these sweltering temperatures don’t come to an end soon, I’ll go crazy.