Consorts of Death

by Gunnar Staalesen

  ‘Not any more. There have been too many unpleasant surprises over the last few years for that, of the kind you’re suggesting now. Even the accused has had to concede that the door was always locked at night.’

  ‘The accused?’

  ‘Yes, he will be – officially now as well.’

  I stole a glance at Frydenberg. ‘And you? Are you behind this decision? Are you happy with the outcome?’

  ‘Happy is not an expression we in KRIPOS are given to using, Veum. We collect facts and evidence, then it’s up to the police lawyers to consider prosecution. But I can confirm that until anything else is proven, all the facts in this case point in one direction.’

  ‘Veum,’ Standal said gently. ‘We fully respect your commitment to this case. We know of your social services background, and we know that Jan Egil Skarnes is an ex-client of yours, but …’ He took a large, greyish-green box file that had been lying in the middle of his desk the whole time. ‘I’ve been conferring with my colleague here, and even though this is not our usual practice we’ve agreed that we will show you these …’

  He opened the file and pulled out a handful of large colour photographs. Then he selected a couple of them before placing four pictures beside each other on the desk. He beckoned me over to look closer. ‘These are the crime scene photos, Veum. And I ought perhaps to warn you. It’s pretty strong stuff.’

  I slowly dragged my chair closer and leaned over.

  I had never seen them alive, but I immediately knew who they were. On a large full-view photo we saw them both: Klaus Libakk lying in bed in a pool of blood with a limp jaw and staring eyes, and Kari, his wife, in a strangely distorted position with her back to the photographer, her face jerked to the side, her upper body bent backward, a clear bullet wound in the back of her head and a big, dark bloodstain on the rear of her nightdress.

  The next photo zoomed in on Klaus, from the chest upwards. The bullet or bullets had gone right through the duvet, and he was staring up at the ceiling with glassy eyes, unable to communicate anything other than the impression of an abandoned body, the mark of death in his forehead.

  The two last photographs showed Kari. She was well-built, a dark blonde with streaks of grey in her hair. In contrast to Klaus, she had a clear expression on her face, one of infinite fear and despair, a death mask set for eternity and fixed to this glossy paper for all to see. The unnatural position told its own story. She had been hit in the back and hurled against the wall, then she had slumped to the floor, which movement had been halted by a bedpost. Afterwards she had stayed like this, half bent backward, with the lower half of her nightdress ruffled up around her waist and her broad white thighs visible above the edge of the bed.

  These were pictures of a slaughterhouse not of a bedroom. I felt a peculiar mixture of fury and horror grow in me, a fury against whoever had perpetrated such a brutal act as this, and at the same time a horror that the person who had done this was unknown but someone I had myself spoken to on one of the recent days.

  ‘We have a clear idea of the sequence of events,’ Frydenberg said with intonation suggestive of a football match commentary. ‘The first shot hit Klaus Libakk in the chest. He was killed instantaneously. His wife woke up and in total panic tried to escape, making for the window. There she was struck by two bullets, both in the back, both life-threatening injuries, but she did not die immediately. Then another shot was fired into the chest of Klaus Libakk, who was already dead, before the murderer gave Kari what we have to call the coup de grâce to the head when he noticed she was still alive.’

  ‘My God!’ I burst out.

  ‘You can certainly say that, but … he was probably looking in a different direction at this point,’ Frydenberg said drily.

  I looked at Standal. ‘Why are you showing me these?’

  ‘So that you understand how serious this crime is. So that you have no doubt that we will do everything in our power to have this crime solved. And we’re of the opinion that we are well on the way to doing so. I’m a hundred per cent sure that we have the right man behind bars, Veum.’

  ‘A hundred per cent? Not even a smidgeon of doubt?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  I looked at Tor Frydenberg. His face was expressionless, as though to demonstrate that with him there was no room for faith or doubt. With him only dry facts counted.

  Sitting and listening to the submissions made at the review meeting later in the day, with Hans Haavik in the chair next to mine, I almost allowed myself to be convinced.

  Point by point, the police lawyer outlined the case for the prosecution, leaning heavily on the interim results from the forensic examination. The most telling evidence was of course Jan’s fingerprints on the murder weapon, the gunpowder residue on his clothes and skin, the boot pattern on the prints at the crime scene and the spores of blood under his boots.

  ‘Two days afterwards?’ Jens Langeland commented sarcastically without gaining any more than a patronising look in return.

  There were additonal references to Silje’s confession, which had been retracted now, but which nonetheless gave Jan Egil a very strong motive for the alleged act. A brief and, as far as it went, very superficial character analysis of Jan Egil was given, based on reports from the school medical service and social services, which also drew on his traumatic childhood experiences when he was six.

  The conclusion was unequivocal. The prosecuting authority asked the court to approve their submission that Jan Egil Skarnes should be charged with the double murder of his foster parents, Kari and Klaus Libakk, as well as intent to cause actual bodily harm to a civil servant while firing a shot at the police officer who visited Libakk Farm two days later. They recommended that the period of remand should be extended until the investigation was concluded, with Jan kept incommunicado for the first four weeks.

  Jens Langeland opposed these allegations with vigour. He showed that the fingerprints on the weapon, the bootprints at the crime scene and the blood spores under his boots could be explained by Jan Egil discovering what had happened when he came home from school on Monday. In shock he had grabbed the rifle, reloaded it and then hidden in the sitting room out of fear that the perpetrators would return. When the police officer turned up on Tuesday he might have believed him to be one of the murderers, or he could have reacted hastily because he feared he would be blamed for something he had not done.

  Langeland accepted the claim that Jan Egil had fired a shot at the policeman ‘in panic’, but argued that this had its roots in the situation in which Jan Egil had found himself, by all accounts one of deep shock.

  He would not comment on Silje’s role in this tragedy, but he pointed out that there were so many dubious points in the prosecution’s recommendation that the court should have ‘no hesitation’ in rejecting the case for charging Jan Egil Skarnes and release him until the investigation was complete. In this regard, he placed great emphasis on the age of the young boy, only just over the minimum age for criminal responsibility.

  In a brief flurry of exchanges the police offical asked Langeland who he was referring to when he said ‘the perpetrators’. Langeland replied that in his assessment of the investigation so far, there could very well be one or two ‘unknown gunmen’ and he begged the police to concentrate their efforts on this aspect of the case as well in the coming time. In this context he called the court’s attention to the fact that a ‘known violent criminal from Bergen’ had been in the district on the day of the murder, a claim which the police lawyer rejected after a rapid conferral with Sergeant Standal: so far no evidence had been found to suggest that the person in question was in the area at the time of the deaths, but the police were aware of the claim, and this person had been brought in for questioning to Police Headquarters and this would be resumed as soon as the review meeting was over.

  Not much more was said and the meeting was brought to a close.

  At various points during the review I had looked across at Jan Egil. He was sitting slu
mped over a table, staring down; he only raised his gaze a couple of times. He was sitting as if he found himself in a completely different place and that the events taking place here, in this chilly room on the third floor of the post office building, did not concern him. I couldn’t help but see the tiny boy Cecilie and I had collected and taken to Åsane on that February day in 1974. He was still the same boy, just ten years older, thirty kilos heavier and – if we were to believe the prosecution service – a lot more dangerous than he had been.

  When the court re-sat, after a short adjournment, it came as no surprise which way the judge had gone. The plea for Jan Egil Skarnes to be charged with the double murder of his foster parents and the intent to harm a police officer had been accepted. The same applied to the prosecution authority’s request for Jan Egil to be held on remand until the trial, incommunicado for the first four weeks.

  After it was all over, I caught Jan Egil’s eyes as he walked out with Jens Langeland beside him. His look shocked and hurt me; it was a look so full of hatred, so dismissive that it pierced me like an arrow of ice. As if I had personally failed him. As if I was the only one.

  40

  Hans Haavik and I walked back to the hotel together. Neither of us said anything. We were equally depressed.

  ‘Now I have to have something to drink,’ he said as we entered the reception area. ‘I have a bottle in my room. Will you join me?’

  ‘Why not? Let me just find out if …’

  But there weren’t any messages for me in reception. I wondered whether I should try and ring her, but Hans was so impatient, shifting from one foot to the other, that I didn’t have the heart to keep him waiting any longer.

  His room was identical to mine. There was an open suitcase on the luggage bench. A used shirt hung over the only chair. He took the shirt, slung it in the suitcase and picked up a bottle of Tullamore Dew from which so far only a quarter had been drunk. He went to the bathroom and returned with two plastic beakers. ‘You have the chair,’ he said, placing the beakers on the table and pouring almost to the rim. I didn’t complain.

  He took one of the glasses himself, raised it for a toast and we drank. Then he flopped down on the edge of the bed with the drink in his hand. The wooden frame creaked under the weight of his large body.

  ‘Now and then you can just get so damnably bloody depressed, Varg!’

  I nodded. ‘I know the feeling.’

  ‘Things are so bad you have to ask yourself the question: what the hell are we doing? Are we any use to anyone?’

  ‘You must have seen some positive results over the years?’

  ‘Yes, we have … some.’ Despite his massive presence, it was as if he had shrunk while sitting on the bed. Most of his height was in his legs of course, but the way he held his shoulders, like a mother bird protecting a newly hatched chick, made his powerful upper body narrower and smaller. ‘Take a case like this one, though. Jan Egil Skarnes … Johnny boy whom we’ve followed almost since he was born.’

  ‘You, too?’

  ‘Yes, don’t forget that I studied with Jens Langeland. By the way, he had brilliant exam results, unlike others I can mention.’ He grinned. ‘As soon as his studies were over, he got a job as a solicitor’s clerk at one of Oslo’s prestigious law offices, Bakke & Lundekvam. In the autumn of 1966 – it must have been – he assisted on his first case. A drugs case, a young couple were arrested at Flesland Airport with a huge packet of hash in their bag. That is, the man was carrying it all, and Bakke managed to get the girl off because she’d been unaware of what the journey involved. But this girl … it was Mette Olsen in fact. And I knew all too well who she was.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘They called her the Princess in Copenhagen.’

  ‘Yes, actually I’d heard that, but …’

  He gave a flourish with his arm as if to dismiss what I had been going to ask. ‘You know what it was like in those years, Varg. Hell, there were lots of us who flirted with hash and other hallucinogenics. My own passage through was not entirely without incident. Was yours?’

  I smiled with embarrassment. ‘No, I suppose I’d had a few puffs, but …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, my problem was that I’d never smoked. Just inhaling was a challenge for me.’

  ‘Right … Later, when I started at social services, I met her again of course. Jan was no more than six-seven months old the first time we had her in for an assessment. He was sent for a short stay at an infants home while she was drying out, and then we gave her another chance, a chance she wasted a year or two later.’

  ‘1970,’ I said. ‘I went with Elsa Dragesund to Rothaugen to fetch him.’

  ‘You see, you’re just as bloody involved in his life as I am. You’re like me and all the others.’

  ‘All the others?’

  ‘Or no one, if you understand what I mean.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Well, listen here …’ He studied his glass in amazement. It was already empty. He leaned forward and re-filled it to the brim. At the same time he re-filled mine. I didn’t complain this time, either. It was a good Irish whiskey, a rounded taste with a golden colour.

  ‘This boy was brought onto this earth by a mother who was so doped up that she hardly registered it. Right from the very beginning he had poor odds. The first thing that should have been done was to take him away from her for good. Then neither you nor I would be sitting here today, Varg. I’m convinced about that. The injuries a child suffers in the first years of its life can be fatal. You and I know that and so does everyone else who works in this business of ours.’

  ‘True. But there are exceptions. And there are some who travel in the opposite direction, born with a silver spoon in their mouths and take it down the swannee with them.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. But then he reappears – how many years is it? – six years later?’

  ‘Three and a half after Elsa and I picked him up from Rothaugen.’

  ‘Yes, but six and a half years old. And he was unlucky with the hand he was dealt yet again.’

  ‘Unlucky, maybe. You knew Vibecke Skarnes from university, didn’t you? Was she bad luck?’

  ‘No, but her husband probably was. He had far too many pokers in the fire, and he never gave Jan the stability and tranquility at home he would have needed.’

  ‘Mm. You were pals I remember you saying once, weren’t you?’

  ‘For a while. But it came to an abrupt end when he and Vibecke got together.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Well,’ he shrugged. ‘That’s the way it goes sometimes.’

  ‘Do you know what I found out yesterday? An apparently reliable source told me that Svein Skarnes had played a very central role in the big booze smuggling ring that I think we talked about the other evening in the bar.’

  ‘Yes, but we were talking about Klaus Libakk.’

  ‘Right. But Libakk was only responsible for distribution here. Locally. Skarnes was the main man behind the whole racket.’

  ‘Svein?’

  ‘Yes. He was the one who had the contact with the German distributors, he was the one who brought home the deals with the boats supplying the goods, when they were transferred to smaller boats, fishing cutters and the like, and then they were brought down the fjords, from Sognfest to Selje. But that’s not all …’

  He reached for his glass. ‘No?’

  I gave him a quick shakedown of the case, including the murder of Ansgår Tveiten, the connection with the double murder in Angedalen and the conversations I had had over recent days with Mette Olsen, Trude Tveiten and Terje Hammersten.

  He leaned forward. ‘I know Hammersten. A brutal bastard.’

  ‘That’s my impression, too.’

  ‘He’s got a son who’s been in and out of our Åsane home. Fourteen years old.’

  ‘A son? Who with?’

  ‘I don’t know if I … Yes, I do, to hell with it. This will have to be the day for openness. The mother is
a streetwalker. The father is Terje Hammersten. The boy flits from one foster home to another, and Hammersten is such a pain. The last time was Monday morning – I had hardly got back home from Angedalen – and there he was at my door ready to give me a mouthful.’

  I sat watching him. ‘What did you just say? Was Hammersten at your place in Bergen on Monday morning this week?’

  ‘Ye-es?’ he said, with questioning eyes.

  ‘But then … oh shit, Hansie, you’ve given him an alibi. Bloody hell.’

  ‘Alibi. You don’t mean that … Has there been some suspicion that Hammersten …?’

  ‘Would that be so improbable?’

  ‘He’s the type, right enough. But what did he have to do with Klaus and Kari Libakk?’

  ‘He was in on the booze-running at any rate, and according to my source he made threatening phone calls to Svein Skarnes in 1973.’

  ‘Threatening? On whose behalf?’

  ‘Well …’ I threw my hands in the air. ‘The big wheels in Germany? What do I know? But … you’ll have to tell the police this, Hans.’

  He looked at me with crestfallen eyes. ‘Another nail in Jan Egil’s coffin?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Shit! Now and then you could wish …’

  ‘Yes, you could, couldn’t you. If you only knew how I blame myself, Varg! What feelings of guilt I am plagued by …’

  ‘My God, Hansie! Who could have guessed that all this would happen?’

  ‘True, but we should perhaps have been a bit more thorough.’ He took a big swig from the beaker and shook his head with vehemence, as if to spread the alcohol to all the brain cells that might have been open a crack and waiting. ‘It’s enough to make you despair. We work our bollocks off to help these young kids. And what the hell do we end up with? Double murderers!’

  ‘Now, now. Go easy on the pessimism …’

  We took a break and filled our glasses again. I was starting to feel the alcohol. The lighting had begun to glare a bit and the room had changed character, becoming longer and narrower. Hans was out of the room, peeing. When he returned, I could see he was swaying, too. This time he sat down on the bed so hard it almost broke in half.