The Consorts of Death

by Gunnar Staalesen

For the first time I had a decent look at him. The night before, up in Trodalen he had been wrapped up in an anorak and hood, and when we came back down to Angedalen he was put in the other police car. Now I saw an overgrown seventeen-year-old I would never have recognised if I had met him in the street. He seemed to be taller than me, even when he was sitting, with disproportionately long arms. He had red scars and fresh spots in the area around his mouth and down his neck, and his facial hair was blond and downy, which further strengthened the impression of a grumpy cockerel. It was the taut, slightly aggrieved, expression around his mouth that I seemed to recall, and when my eyes met his, I caught a glimpse of the demonstratively silent and aggressive Jan that was ingrained within him. He looked down with a scowl on his face. He sat hunched over the table with the palms of his hands on the surface as though he could launch himself any minute and dive forward. It was only when Standal and the other policeman had closed the door that some of the tension seemed to leave his body. He raised his head and scrutinised my face, perhaps in an attempt to raise me from his database, as I had done with him.

  We were in a kind of interview room. There was a small window situated high up in the wall. All we could see through it was the sky over Førde, and that wasn’t much to shout about from here, either. Scattered raindrops fell on the pane, becoming thin lines of tears between us and life outside. Now and then we heard the sound of passing vehicles and the odd scream of a child from Kyrkjevegen; distant everyday sounds.

  I went to the table edge and held out my hand. ‘Hello again, Jan Egil.’

  He looked at my hand in surprise, without showing any sign of wanting to shake it.

  I shrugged, smiled to signal it didn’t matter, pulled out a spindle-back chair and sat down opposite him.

  Again I met his eyes. The expression in them was let’s-wait-and-see, wily almost, as though he was prepared for anything.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me, they said.’

  He gently tossed back his head, and averted his eyes. Then they returned and he gave a stiff nod.

  ‘So what’s on your mind, Jan Egil?’

  I watched the muscles in his jaw swell. The blood vessels in his temple grew and his face went red. ‘Nothing,’ he mumbled, unconvincingly.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m sure you will have when you’ve had a think.’ I gave him some space, but as he didn’t react, I continued. ‘Yesterday you said I was the only person you wanted to speak to. I’ve come all the way from Bergen to help you and would have come twice as far if it had been necessary. Langeland, your solicitor, has come all the way from Oslo. Grethe from social services. Hans Haavik. We’re all here to help you. You can be sure of that. None of us takes what the police say happened as read. We want to hear it from your own mouth, in your words.’ After a pause I added: ‘What really happened.’

  As he still didn’t answer, I said: ‘Silje has given her version of events. The same as she said up in Trodalen last night.’

  His mouth twitched, but he still didn’t say anything.

  ‘Of course you know the story about Trodalen Mads?’

  He nodded with a jerk. ‘Heard about him at school.’

  ‘It’s not at all certain that he’d be sentenced nowadays. I mean, now even a middling lawyer would’ve got him off provided that the trader’s body hadn’t been found. And who knows what was behind it. No one knows. Perhaps it was a miscarriage of justice, too. There have been enough of them over the centuries. The Hetle case. You must have heard of that one as well.’ He nodded, and I went on: ‘What I’m trying to say is … that this case may not be what it appears to be at first glance. That’s why it’s so important that we hear the version of events of all those implicated.’

  ‘Impli …?’

  ‘Yes, all of those who are involved in some way or other.’

  He nodded heavily. I thought I could discern a first glint of understanding in his eyes.

  ‘So you tell me now … You do remember, don’t you … The last time I saw you was almost exactly ten years ago, when you moved here in 1974. To Kari and Klaus in Angedalen. You were well looked after, weren’t you?’

  Again he tossed his head in that way of his. ‘They were OK.’

  ‘Yes? You were treated well in their house?’

  ‘They were OK,’ he repeated, as though I hadn’t heard the first time.

  ‘Good. You went to school. Now you’re starting the final years, I’ve been told. Electronics, right?’

  He nodded. ‘… Lectronics.’

  ‘Right, but that’s fine, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘And then you got to know Silje.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘How long have you known her?’

  ‘From – kiddies’ school.’

  ‘She’s a foster child too, isn’t she …’

  He nodded.

  ‘So in a way you were in the same situation?’

  He looked at me and tossed his head. ‘Mm.’

  ‘Did she become … your girlfriend?’

  Again he went red. The corners of his mouth twitched, but this time it might have been a smile pushing through rather than anything else. ‘She is now!’

  ‘So when she went up with you to Trodalen yesterday, it wasn’t because you forced her?’

  His brow darkened. ‘No! That’s lies, something the sergeant cooked up.’ Jan still spoke in dialect.

  ‘OK, OK. I don’t believe you forced her. I realised that as soon as I saw you. That she wasn’t a hostage in any shape or form, I mean.’

  ‘No! She wasn’t.’

  ‘Right.’ I waited for a bit, until he had calmed down. ‘But what she said up there …’

  Again his eyes turned wary.

  ‘You heard it as well, didn’t you. It was me who did it, she said. Have you got anything to say to that?’

  He pursed his lips, like a reflection of the six-and-a-half-year-old Jan ten years before.

  ‘She blamed … Klaus,’ I whispered.

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Was there anything in what she said?’

  His expression smouldered and I could see him fighting with the words that just would not come out. For a moment I was afraid he would go on the attack, and I involuntarily tensed my stomach muscles, ready to get to my feet if it was necessary.

  Then he seemed to shrink inside himself again, crumpled up, lowered his head and stared down at the table top. ‘Dunno,’ he mumbled.

  I sighed. ‘Perhaps we should take it right from the beginning, Jan Egil. Can you tell me what happened the day before yesterday, on Monday?’

  His reaction was instant. ‘I wasn’t at home!’

  ‘But … where were you then?’

  ‘At Silje’s house!’

  ‘At night?’

  ‘Yes!’ he said with a defiant stare. ‘We’re old enough!’

  ‘Yes, yes … but …?’

  He suddenly looked almost pleased with himself. ‘Her parents … Klara and Lars. They didn’t hear anything. But we were sleeping together, all night.’

  I smiled sympathetically. ‘Through till Tuesday?’

  ‘Through till Monday!’

  ‘Through till … OK. But you had to go to school then, on Monday?’

  ‘Yeah. I just popped by to fetch my bag. Popped home to Libakk.’

  ‘And …what happened?’

  He looked across at me. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But … didn’t you speak to them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You just …’

  ‘I just shouted. But when I didn’t get an answer, I assumed they were in the cowshed. So I just made myself a packed lunch and rushed off to the school bus. It wasn’t until I came home, in the afternoon, that I – found them.’

  ‘You found them! Where?’

  ‘In their bedroom. Klaus was in bed, Kari over by the window. Shot, both of them.’

  He told me this with the same intonation as if we were both sitting in a chair and reading a newspaper
, strangely untouched, as if this had nothing to do with him at all.

  ‘And the weapon?’

  ‘It was on the floor, just inside the door. Klaus’s rifle, the one he uses for deer-hunting.’

  I studied him. His expression was hard to decipher. It was flat and catatonic, the way I remembered him in 1974.

  ‘So this is Monday afternoon …?’

  He nodded in silence.

  ‘But you didn’t ring the police?’

  ‘No, I knew what it would be like. Knew who would get the blame … and that was how it turned out of course.’

  ‘But what did you think you would do? Leave them lying there?’

  He didn’t answer, just pursed his lips tightly and tossed his head in his characteristic way.

  ‘Silje. Didn’t you tell her?’

  He just shook his head.

  ‘Did you talk to her at all that day?’

  ‘No, not after school.’

  ‘Tell me … you say you slept together the whole night. Through till Tuesday. Could she have nipped out while you were asleep and down to Libakk?’

  His face changed colour. ‘It wasn’t Silje!’

  ‘So who was it then?’

  ‘How should I know! Somebody trying to rob them perhaps.’

  ‘Well … we’ll have to hear what the forensic examination turns up. So what then? Tell me what happened on Tuesday.’

  ‘I didn’t go to school that day.’

  ‘Oh, what did you do then?’

  ‘I went into the cowshed, Monday night and Tuesday morning. Someone had to look after the animals.’

  I nodded. ‘So you’ve taught yourself to milk?’

  ‘We’ve got a machine.’

  ‘Right, of course. But when you’d finished that?’

  ‘I just sat there, in the sitting room, waiting for something to happen.’

  ‘Uhuh? With Klaus and Kari lying dead upstairs.’

  ‘And then Silje came. Because I hadn’t been on the bus.’

  I waited.

  ‘Then I told her.’

  ‘And how did she react?’

  ‘She was scared, of course.’

  ‘Nevertheless she didn’t say –’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you? It wasn’t her!’

  ‘No, of course not. But didn’t she say you should ring the police?’

  ‘Yeah, she said that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That was when they arrived! I panicked. I didn’t know what they would think, and I was right! I grabbed the rifle and took off with Silje, out the back of the house and up the mountain, towards Trodalen.’ ‘

  But the sergeant says you shot at him?’

  ‘Yes, I did, when he shouted for me to stop! I didn’t want to stop. I knew what they would say, and now … Now I’m sitting here, just as I had feared, accused of something I didn’t do!’

  ‘But the rifle … you say you grabbed it. The bedroom’s on the first floor, isn’t it?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And you were sitting on the ground floor waiting for something to happen, as you say.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’d taken the rifle downstairs?’

  ‘I had to have something to defend myself with if they came back!’

  ‘If they came back! Who came back?’

  ‘The robbers!’

  ‘But it was the police who’d come …’

  ‘Yes! You know the rest. I hid up in Trodalen, together with Silje. I should never have given myself up. I should be sitting up there now … then they would have had to shoot me, if that was what they wanted.’

  An eerie silence fell over us. There was something unreal about the whole thing. I found it difficult to visualise. The two dead people, Klaus in bed, Kari by the window, both in a pool of blood. And then the perpetrator … I tried to imagine Silje, but it was hard. Such a young girl … Jan Egil, on the other hand, if he had strong enough reason to do it. But it could easily have been someone else, or several others. Robbers, as he put it. Nothing had been reported stolen, though, and there were no signs of a break-in. What could the motive have been?

  The perpetrator, standing by the bed with two dead or dying people in front of them. What was he thinking? Or she? What did they do? Run off? Drive away? Did anyone observe any cars in the yard that night? On their way in or out of the valley? And if it had been Silje or Jan Egil, had she or he just run back to Almelid, gone into the bedroom and cuddled up to the other person without anyone noticing?

  Or … could they have been in on it together?

  What if Silje was telling the truth – about the motive at any rate? In that case perhaps it wasn’t so strange that she had confided in the person who had become her boyfriend, and who even lived in the house of the possible abuser, although he was not related. Had they conspired, or had he become her avenger, the person who carried out the action she herself could not? In that case Klaus was the target and Kari had the misfortune to be in the same room as him when revenge was exacted; that is, if she hadn’t known what was going on and thus made herself an accomplice, at least in the eyes of the two youngsters.

  When they had to give themselves up, Silje did what she could to protect him and assumed all the guilt herself …

  Yes, I had to admit it. Until there was proof of anything else, there was a lot going for this version of reality.

  I cleared my throat to attract his attention again. He looked up from the table.

  ‘Listen, Jan Egil. What Silje said last night, when she called Klaus an old pig, we all understand what she meant by that. But even though neither you nor she had anything to do with the murders themselves … could there be anything in it? Could he have tried it on her?’

  He shook his head sullenly. ‘Not as far as I could see. She never said anything to me, about stuff like that.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid that’s the way it often is. You keep it to yourself for as long as possible. My question was: could he have done it? Could it have happened without your knowing?’

  He shrugged. ‘Anything’s possible, I s’pose.’

  ‘He never tried it on you?’

  ‘No!’ He looked at me with an expression of horror. ‘What do you think I am?’

  ‘Sexual abusers are not always bothered about gender. I had to ask. I’m sorry.’

  I thought briefly about what the sergeant had proposed. He wanted a confession, he had said. But I had the feeling we were further from that than when I had stepped into the room.

  I studied him for a long time, then said tentatively: ‘Something quite different, Jan Egil. Now I would like you to think back ten years.’

  His eyes narrowed and he seemed to be holding his breath.

  ‘That was why it was me you wanted to talk to, I assume. Because you can remember what a great time we had, Cecilie, you and me, the time you had to move from … where you were living at the time.’

  He eyed me warily.

  ‘Can you remember any of what happened at that time?’

  He just gawped.

  ‘I’m thinking of …’ I was unsure as to how far I should go. ‘Do you remember an accident taking place? Your father … fell down the staircase and broke his neck. Your mother said it happened during a row. But at first you and your father were alone at home. Do you remember any of that?’

  He pinched his lips together, but made a faint negative movement with his head.

  ‘Not even that you and your father were alone at home? You were playing with your train, I think.’

  For a moment he brightened up. ‘My Märklin train. I’ve still got it!’

  ‘Exactly. I remember how well it ran.’

  ‘There was a ring at the door.’

  I bent closer and nodded, gestured for him to continue. But he stopped there.

  ‘There was a ring at the door,’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes. Someone came in. I heard them quarrelling. But I was playing with my train. I didn’t want to hear!’

 
‘They were quarrelling? Your mother and father?’

  ‘It wasn’t her! It was a man. A man’s voice.’

  A shudder ran through me. ‘What! What did you say?’

  He looked at me in bewilderment. ‘That’s all. I don’t remember any more. Not until I was standing there, at the top of the stairs, and he was lying at the foot. There was a ring at the door, and she let herself in. She screamed out loud. Looked at me horror-stricken, as though I had done it. But it wasn’t me! I always get the blame!’

  His eyes were open wide. For a second it was as if he were six and a half again and was going to be told off for something he hadn’t done. ‘The last thing I remember is her scream. Then I remember nothing until we’re at Hans’s place with you and me throwing snowballs.’

  ‘But why …?’

  It suddenly rushed in over me, like a wave reaching the shore all too late. Why didn’t he say anything about this at the time? Why had no one asked him? Or had they, without getting an answer? Had he not told anyone till now? Was I the first person to hear? For a moment my mind went giddy. What would Jens Langeland say to this? I wondered. Should Vibecke Skarnes have been acquitted in 1974? And … did this have any repercussions for this case, ten years later? Did death follow in his footprints, or was this all just a network of coincidences?

  I threw out my arms. ‘I don’t know if we’re going to get much further today, Jan Egil. Have you got everything you wanted to say off your chest?’

  ‘I think so.’ All of a sudden he stretched out one hand and grabbed my wrist hard, the way a drowning man grasps a branch before he is inexorably dragged down by the current. ‘Help me, Varg! You have to help me!’ There were tears in his eyes. ‘It wasn’t me! Not this time, either …’

  I patted his hand with the one I had free.

  ‘I promise, Jan Egil! I’ll do everything that’s in my power. If you’re lucky, something will turn up that can underpin what you’ve told me. Forensic evidence, a witness’s statement, whatever. One thing you can be absolutely sure of, Jan Egil. We’ll help you as much as we can, all of us.’

  His eyes implored me. ‘You have to help me! You do!’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I felt almost ashamed at the trust he was showing me. ‘I will help you, Jan Egil. I will, too. As much as I can.’

  I didn’t dare promise him any more. I was frightened it was too much already. But I felt a strong urge to have a detailed conversation with Jen Langeland; and not only about the double murder in Angedalen but perhaps just as much about the accident in Wergelandsåsen ten years before …