Consorts of Death Read online

  Jens Langeland’s telephone feedback on the police interview with Hammersten, first of all in Førde, later in Bergen, was even less uplifting. Hans Haavik’s confirmation that he had had a confrontation with Hammersten in Bergen early in the morning after the night of the Angedalen murders gave Hammersten an alibi that while not a hundred per cent watertight did, however, based on the ferry companies’ night routes, make it in practice impossible for him to have travelled from Førde to Bergen for that time. ‘Unless you have any better cards up your sleeve, Veum.’ ‘Not yet, I’m afraid.’ ‘Hmm, that was what I feared …’

  When Hammersten was back in town, a week and a half later, I made an attempt to make him talk. All that produced was a black eye, which took a further two weeks to heal. By way of a parting shot, he had said that if I continued to stick my big nose into what he was doing, he would give me such a thorough pasting that I would never stand on two legs again. I gave Ansgår Tveiten a thought and took him at his word.

  At length, I ate humble pie, phoned Langeland and said I had reached the end of the road. There didn’t seem to be any fresh leads anywhere. He took note without giving any kind of audible reaction. ‘How’s Jan Egil?’ I asked. ‘Not too good. It’s all we can do to get him to talk. Even to me,’ he added, before concluding the conversation and with that the commission. I sent him an invoice, which was paid promptly, unlike most other invoices I sent.

  In the winter and spring of 1985 I followed the case, first of all at Gulating, the West Norway law court, and then – in late May that year – in the newspapers, after both sides had asked for the High Court to deliver the sentence.

  While the trial was on at Gulating, I visited the courthouse as often I was able. I followed attentively when one of the police weapons experts was in the witness box. He held the weapon Klaus and Kari Libakk had been shot with in his hand. It was a 1938 Mauser, 7.62 calibre, and there were five bullets in the magazine. The forensic examination of the bullets and cartridges left no room for doubt that it was this weapon that had been used at the Angedalen double killing. All the bullets had been fired. It gave you a special feeling of horror to watch the dispassionate police officer stand there with the rifle in his hand and demonstrate how the safety catch was released, the bolt was pulled back with the handle and the rifle was loaded with cartridges, one by one. ‘Does it have to be loaded after each shot?’ Langeland wanted to know. The policeman nodded. ‘We think that Klaus Libakk was shot first, in the chest, and that his wife woke up and tried to escape. She was shot twice in the back, then the gunman turned on Libakk and shot him once again, also in the chest. Finally Kari Libakk was also given the coup de grâce, through the back of the head.’ There was a deathly hush in the heavy air of the vast courtroom as the brutal actions were presented in such a down-to-earth, factual fashion. Only a few weak, nervous coughs could be heard from the gallery as the most gruesome details were stated. The atmosphere was not lightened when the policeman concluded his presentation by showing a series of slides based on the same crime scene photographs I had been shown in Førde. The powerful pictures caused a shock wave to surge through the courtroom, and when the court took a break afterwards, there was a noticeably gloomy mood among the spectators collecting outside in the corridor and the internal galleries overlooking the courthouse’s central lobby. I made small talk with a court reporter from one of the town’s newspapers. He was convinced that this had been the kiss of death for Jan Egil Skarnes. I couldn’t produce any cogent counter-arguments. For once in my life I kept my mouth shut.

  When the break was over, Langeland immediately went on the attack. He wanted to know if several people could have been involved in the crime. The police officer had turned to the defence benches and, with the rifle half-raised in front of him, had said: ‘No weapon other than this was used, and only the accused’s fingerprints were on it, apart from those of the deceased.’ ‘Klaus Libakk’s?’ ‘Yes, but they were of an earlier date.’

  Langeland, however, still did not give in. Looking intensely at the officer in the witness box, he asked: ‘But what if the guilty party wore gloves? Is there any reason whatsoever not to consider that?’ The policeman returned his glare, as if to tell Langeland he hadn’t been born yesterday. ‘There were no traces of glove fibre on the rifle.’ ‘What about plastic gloves?’ The officer sent him a condescending smile and shrugged his shoulders: ‘Not imposssible, of course. But not very likely.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because in our opinion there is no doubt who the guilty person in this case is.’ Everyone’s eyes turned to Jan Egil, even mine. He sat with his eyes directed into the distance, the way he had sat the whole time. ‘No doubt? In other words, you as a group were prejudiced?’ Langeland went on. ‘The forensic examination has swept away any doubts, to be more precise then,’ said the policeman, and I saw the judge note something down on the pad in front of him.

  But still Langeland would not give in. It was easy to see that he had an uphill struggle on his hands, which the faces of the ten jurymen made manifest with abundant clarity. The three judges listened with professional sensitivity, but not even they displayed any sympathy for his arguments. His summary of Jan Egil’s unhappy life, the first years and the sudden departure from Bergen in 1974 after the tragic events in his foster parents’ house, seemed to be having the opposite effect to its intention, not so different from the testimony given by one of Marianne Storetvedt’s colleagues, in which I recognised the thoughts and terminology from the assessment I had been given some months before. Langeland had decided to call Silje as a witness, but it was the prosecuting counsel who gained most from her, too. When the prosecutor produced the undocumented claims of sexual abuse on the part of Klaus Libakk, Silje had to concede that she had made this up in the heat of the moment to help her boyfriend. ‘I see. Wasn’t it also the case that you at some point confessed to being the killer?’ ‘Yes, I did, but …’ Silje burst into tears: ‘That was just somethin’ I said to help ’im.’ ‘So you, too, thought he had done it, in other words,’ commented the counsel, turning to the jury in a telling fashion, but without any further comment. It was obvious that the prosecutor had triumphed in the duel. Even though Silje’s testimony had made an impression on the jury and the allegation of sexual abuse also caused a degree of sympathy to spread through their ranks, a realisation that he had had a kind of motive for the brutal act cemented the notion that it was he and no one else who had to be the guilty party.

  Langeland’s attempt to point to other potential explanations fell on stony ground, since the police investigation had not uncovered anything to corroborate them. The alleged burglars who had broken into Libakk Farm at night had not left a trace of any break-in, and there was not a single testimony from the neighbours or anyone else pointing in that direction. Next Langeland touched on Klaus Libakk’s involvement in the local alcohol-smuggling activities of the early seventies, intimating that the killing might be tied up with the hitherto unsolved murder of Ansgår Tveiten, a supposition which the prosecution counsel flatly rejected in his response, saying that, for his part, they were dealing with the specific crime of October 1984, not dragging up criminal cases that were more than ten years old.

  Langeland’s final summing up was brilliant, a masterpiece of rhetoric, but in the final reckoning no more than a scintillating precis of the arguments he had brought to bear earlier. After the jury had retired, it was difficult to see who had had most impact: Langeland with his masterly eloquence, the prosecutor with his rugged stating of facts or the judge with his sober review of the salient points.

  When Jan Egil was led out of the court again, he cast a first glance at the benches in the gallery. Once again our eyes met, and once again I felt the incomprehensible hatred I thought I could read there; as though he laid all the blame for finding himself in this situation at my door.

  The next day the jury was ready with its verdict. Jan Egil Skarnes was found guilty on all counts of the indictment, and the judges retired to consider the sentence.
r />   I exchanged a few words with Langeland in the corridor that day. I thanked him for his efforts and asked whether he had any opinion as to how long Jan Egil would be imprisoned. ‘Impossible to say, Veum. Anything from five to fifteen years, closer to the latter in all probability, I’m afraid.’ ‘Fifteen!’ ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’ The high-flying lawyer had turned away with a downcast expression, as though this was such a terrible defeat for him personally that it was hard to bear.

  Jan Egil chose not to appear when the jury announced their verdict. As the sentence was read out, he sat on his seat without raising his eyes once. Langeland bent down to him several times and spoke in a low voice, probably to explain what the often complicated legal formulations in fact meant. He was sentenced to twelve and a half years’ imprisonment, with his time on remand to be deducted. From Jan Egil’s blank face it was clear that he had not understood a word of what had been said, and when the court rose for the last time, as the panel of judges left the courtroom with a long final stare at the convicted felon, only a squeeze to his shoulder from his lawyer could rouse him from his chair.

  During the trial at Gulating the case was reported comprehensively in the press with new photographs of the farm in Angedalen, artists’ impressions of what had happened in Klaus and Kari’s bedroom and anonymous-looking drawings of the accused. It was only when the High Court had taken its decision and stipulated the final sentence, in line with the previous court’s decision, that the convicted person was named in the media. In the wake of the judgement there was a great deal of discussion in the papers; many commentators considered the punishment much too mild, yet more evidence of the lenience with which today’s legal system treated serious lawbreakers.

  Jens Langeland wrote a letter countering this, in which he stressed the tender age of the accused and the fact that in many people’s eyes, including his own, there was still substantial doubt about what had actually happened in Angedalen during that fateful night between the Sunday and the Monday of the penultimate week in October last year. Are we so sure that the guilty party or parties is not still walking around free? the letter concluded, sowing another dose of disquiet in my head; a disquiet which had never been extinguished, but had lain there smouldering, until it burst into flame again on that September day ten years later when Cecilie Strand phoned me at my office, asking me to meet her in Fjellveien.

  45

  Over all these years my thoughts had regularly returned to Jan Egil. I had never managed to reconcile myself with the claim that we had got to the bottom of the matter. A couple of times I had been on the point of ringing Jens Langeland, who I assumed was still his solicitor, but had then rejected the idea. ‘What’s the point?’ I had asked myself.

  And now here she was, Cecilie, sitting on a bench in the sunshine by the sub-station in Fjellveien, looking at me through her round glasses and saying I was on his death list.

  I sat looking at her. ‘Can we run through that one more time?’

  She nodded. ‘By all means.’

  ‘Jan Egil is out?’

  ‘On probation. He was let out in May, after serving ten years.’

  ‘They waited a long time before letting him go. Were there problems?’

  ‘He wasn’t exactly a model prisoner. Several times he overstayed his home leave and his parole was delayed accordingly as a punishment.’

  ‘So, what’s he doing?’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s part of the problem. The Probation and Aftercare Services found him a job, which he soon began skipping. At a car workshop. Later he had the occasional part-time job here and there, but I’m afraid it’s the same with him as most of the others who do time … The relationships they form behind locked doors pursue them on the outside, and I fear he already has contacts inside the semi-organised crime circle in Oslo.’

  ‘OK. Go on,’ I said with impatience.

  ‘He stayed in a hospice in Eiriks gate in Tøyen. A kind of private social initiative, run on idealistic guidelines. In fact the person running the place is an old friend of ours, Hans Haavik.’

  ‘Hansie! So that’s what he did. He couldn’t quite hang up his profession, either.’

  ‘No, but let me get to the point. On Monday this week a man was found dead in this hospice. Killed over the weekend.’

  ‘Right, but what has that got to do with Jan Egil?’

  ‘One of the other inmates found the body and reported it to Hans, who in turn called the police. Just as a matter of routine the police officers went from room to room in the hospice, first of all to see if anyone had heard or seen anything recently. Jan Egil wasn’t in. But they found something else in his room …’ She hesitated before continuing: ‘A bloodstained baseball bat.’

  ‘That’s an unpleasant reminder of something I’ve heard before.’

  She nodded gravely. ‘Furthermore, it was to transpire that the dead man was someone Jan Egil knew. In other words … all the signs are that he’s in a serious fix. For the moment they’re conducting internal enquiries, but it won’t be many more days before it’s in the papers.’

  ‘Well … alright. I’ll have to find out more. But what were you saying about a – death list?’

  ‘Right, death list. Perhaps it was a little drastic to call it that, but the woman he’s had a child with told me.’

  ‘A child! He’s had …’

  ‘Result of an earlier home leave. But the mother … well, they’re in care.’

  ‘Sounds familiar.’

  ‘As he was when he was a child, yes.’

  ‘This bloody vicious circle that is so difficult to break! This woman … is she reliable?’

  ‘It’s Silje.’

  ‘Silje! Not the same Silje who …?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Wow, she’s been loyal. I have to give her that. What did she have to say?’

  ‘She said Jan Egil had said several times that there were at least two people he had decided to do in. The two people who, more than anyone else, had made him into the person he was.’

  ‘Made him who he was! But, for Christ’s sake, I never …’

  ‘You were there when he was taken from his mother, weren’t you? The very first time?’

  ‘Yes, but I wasn’t the one who …’

  ‘So I suppose you’ve become a kind of symbol for the hated social services system, which once again has started to take control of his life because we were following the progress of his child with eagle eyes. Hans thought we should warn you, anyway.’

  ‘You said – two people.’

  ‘Yes. The other person was killed a couple of days ago. Clubbed with a baseball bat until he was …’ She shuddered in the sunshine. ‘Almost unrecognisable.’

  ‘But he was identified, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘And who was it?’

  For a moment her gaze wandered off to the fjord beneath us. Then it returned, accompanied by a determined expression around her mouth. ‘You know him, Varg.’

  I could feel the alarm mounting in me. ‘Yes? Come on! Who was it? Not …?’

  ‘Terje Hammersten.’

  46

  The following day was a Friday, and we took an early flight to Oslo. The cabin crew served breakfast with a smile, and Hardanger Plateau lay beneath us like a patchwork quilt of grey, blue and brown.

  Cecilie sat sipping from her mug of coffee when she burst out: ‘That time in 1984, up in Førde …’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Did you get to know a colleague of mine – Grethe Mellingen?’

  ‘Yes. For as long as it lasted. But I never saw her again. It was only the once.’

  ‘The once?’

  ‘Yes, the days when …’

  ‘She said nice things about you.’

  ‘You’ve met her?’

  ‘At a seminar a few years back.’

  ‘Right … You know how it is. Some people you meet again. Others you lose track of. And suddenly ten years have passed, and then it’
s all too late. Getting in touch after such a long time would be embarrassing.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. ‘Are you still … on your own, Varg?’

  ‘Are you asking me if I …?’

  ‘You don’t need to answer. I was just wondering.’

  ‘Yes, but in fact I am. I didn’t find her in Førde, and she hasn’t popped up in Bergen, either. The dream princess, I mean.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to …’

  ‘Not at all. I understand. But she told me an interesting story when I was there, Grethe did. About someone they called Trodalen Mads, and who was convicted of a killing he may not have committed – at least if I’m to believe what she told me.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Yes, too late then, too. He was convicted in 1839 and imprisoned for forty-two years afterwards.’

  ‘Forty-two!’

  ‘The justification for it was apparently that he had sworn to avenge himself on the parents because it had been their testimony – and especially the mother’s – that had led to him being convicted. That was why he was kept in Akershus until both parents were dead, and it lasted so long, with the accrued interest, if I can put it like that. I can’t help thinking that this is reminiscent of Jan Egil and his story.’

  She looked at me in surprise. ‘In what sense? Not that he was innocent surely?’

  ‘No one knows if Trodalen Mads was innocent. Though, maybe they did. And this revenge business. The only difference is that nowadays murderers aren’t given forty-two years. With good behaviour they are soon out on the street again. Sooner than people like to think.’

  ‘But … you didn’t answer my question. Do you really think he was innocent? That he was convicted of something he didn’t do? Johnny boy?’