Anne Holt - No Echo

More from this Series
Beyond the Truth Book 7	Book 8
Odd Numbers Book 9	In Dust and Ashes Book 10
Blind Goddess Book 1	Blessed Are Those Who Book 2

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Also by Anne Holt

The Hanne Wilhelmsen Series

Blind Goddess

Blessed Are Those Who Thirst

Death of the Demon

The Lions Mouth

Dead Joker

No Echo

Beyond the Truth

1222

Odd Numbers

In Dust and Ashes

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PHOTOGRAPH BY JO MICHAEL

Anne Holt has worked as a journalist and a news anchor, and she spent two years working for the Oslo Police Department before founding her own law firm and serving as Norways minister for justice from 1996 to 1997. Since her first book in 1993, Holts work has been published in thirty languages and sold more than seven million copies. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Riverton Prize and the Norwegian Booksellers Prize, and she was short-listed for an Edgar Award in 2012. She was also short-listed for the 2012 Shamus Award and the 2012 Macavity Award. In October 2012, Anne Holt was awarded the Great Calibre Award of Honor in Poland for her entire authorship. She lives in Oslo with her family.

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H airy Mary could hardly remember her real name. She came into the world in the back of a truck in January 1945. Her mother was a sixteen-year-old orphan. Nine months earlier, she had sold herself to a German soldier for two packs of cigarettes and a bar of chocolate. Now she was on her way to Troms. Finnmark was ablaze. They had left in below-zero temperatures, the baby swaddled in a moth-eaten blanket and then turned over to a married couple from Kirkenes. They were walking along the road holding a five-year-old child by the hand and barely had a chance to gather their wits before the truck with the sixteen-year-old was gone. The baby girl, two hours old, got no more from her biological mother than her name. Mary.

Incredibly enough, the family from Kirkenes managed to keep the infant alive. They held on to her for eighteen months. Before Mary was ten years old, she had put four new foster families behind her. She was quick-witted, remarkably lacking in the beauty stakes, and, whats more, had sustained an injury to one leg during her birth. She walked with a limp. Her body twisted halfway around every time she set down her right foot, as if scared that someone might be following her. If she had problems moving about, she was all the faster at shooting her mouth off. After two combative years at a childrens home in Fredrikstad, Mary headed for Oslo to take care of herself. She was then twelve years old.

Hairy Mary certainly did take care of herself.

Now she was the oldest street hooker in Oslo.

She was an exceptional woman in more ways than one. Maybe it was an obstinate gene that had helped her survive almost half a century in the trade. It might just as easily have been downright defiance. For the first fifteen years, alcohol had kept her going. In 1972 she became addicted to heroin. Since Hairy Mary was so old, she was one of the very first people in Norway to be offered methadone.

Its too late, Hairy Mary said, and limped off.

At the start of the seventies, she had her first and last dealings with the social welfare office. She needed money for food after starving for sixteen days. Only a few kroner; she was fainting all the time. It wasnt good for business. A humiliating ordeal of being sent from one social worker to another, which ended up with an offer of three days detox, ensured that she never set foot in a social welfare office again. Even when she was granted disability benefits in 1992, everything was organized through the doctor. The physician was a decent guy, the same age as she was, and had never let a single unkind word fall from his lips when she came to him with swollen knees and chilblains. There had also been the odd sexually transmitted disease down through the years without his smile growing any less sincere each time she limped into his warm office on Schous plass. The disability benefit managed to cover rent, electricity, and cable television. The money from street work went for drugs. Hairy Mary had never had a budget for food. When things became chaotic, she forgot about the bills. The debt collectors came to the door. She was never at home and never protested. Then the door was sealed and her belongings removed. Finding a new place to live could be difficult. Then it was a hostel for one or two winters.

She was worn out now, completely worn out. The night was bitterly cold. Hairy Mary was wearing a thigh-length pink skirt, fishnet stockings riddled with runs, and a long silver lam jacket. She tried to wrap her clothes more snugly around herself, but that wasnt much help. She had to get inside somewhere. The City Missions night shelter would be the best option after all. Admittedly, admission was refused to anyone under the influence, but Hairy Mary had been high on drugs for so many years that no one could tell whether she was clean or not.

She took a right turn beside police headquarters.

The park surrounding the curved building at Grnlandsleiret 44 was Hairy Marys place of refuge. Conventional citizens gave it a wide berth. An occasional dark-skinned immigrant with a wife and countless children sometimes sat there in the afternoons while the kids kicked a ball about and sniggered in terror at Hairy Marys approach. The winos were the trustworthy sort. The cops didnt bother her either; it was ages since they had stopped harassing an honest whore.