Punishment aka What Is Mine

FOUR

The man referred to in Alvhild Sofienberg’s papers was named Aksel Seier and he was born in 1935. When he was fifteen years old, he’d started an apprenticeship as a carpenter. The papers said very little about Aksel’s childhood, except that he moved to Oslo from Trondheim when he was ten. His father got a job at the Aker shipyard after the war. The boy had three offenses on his criminal record before he even reached adulthood, but nothing particularly serious.

“Not compared with today, at least,” Johanne mumbled to herself and read on. The paper was dry and yellow with age. The court transcripts mentioned two kiosk break-ins and an old Ford that was stolen and then left stranded on Mosseveien when it ran out of gas. When Aksel was twenty-one, he was arrested for rape and murder.

The girl was named Hedvig and was only eight years old when she died. A customs officer found her, naked and mutilated, in a sack by a warehouse on the Oslo docks. After two weeks’ intense investigation, Aksel Seier was arrested. It was true that there was no technical evidence. No traces of blood, no fingerprints. No footprints or marks of any kind to link the person to the crime. But he had been seen there by two reliable witnesses, out on honest business late that night.

At first the young man denied it vigorously. But eventually he admitted that he had been in the area between Pipervika and Vippetangen on the night that Hedvig was killed. Just doing some bootlegging, but he refused to give the customer’s name.

Only a few hours after his arrest, the police had managed to dig up an old charge for flashing. Aksel was only eighteen when the incident took place, and according to his own statement he was simply urinating when drunk at Ingierstrand one summer evening. Three girls had passed him. He just wanted to tease them, he said. Drunken horseplay and high spirits. He wasn’t like that. He hadn’t flashed them, but was just joking around with three hysterical girls.

The charge was later dropped, but never quite disappeared. Now it was resurrected from oblivion like an indignant finger pointing at him, a stigma that he thought had been forgotten.

When his name was published in the newspapers, in big headlines that led Aksel’s mother to commit suicide on the night before Christmas, 1956, three more incidents were reported to the police. One was discreetly dropped when the prosecuting authorities discovered that the middle-age woman in question was in the habit of reporting a rape every six months. The other two were used for all they were worth.

Margrete Solli had dated Aksel for three months. She had strong principles, which didn’t suit Aksel, she claimed, blushing with downcast eyes. On more than one occasion he had forced her to do what should only be done in marriage.

Aksel himself told another version. He recalled delightful nights by Sognsvann, when she giggled and said no and slapped his hands playfully as they crept over her naked skin. He remembered passionate good-bye kisses and his own half-baked promises of marriage when he had finished his apprenticeship. He told the police and the judge that he’d had to persuade the young girl, but no more than was normal. That’s just the way women are before they get a ring on their finger, is it not?

The third charge was made by a woman Aksel Seier claimed he had never met. The alleged rape had taken place many years before, when the girl was only fourteen. Aksel denied it repeatedly. He had never seen her before in his life. He stubbornly stuck to this throughout his nine-week custody and the long and devastating trial. He had never seen the woman. He had never even heard of her.

But then he was known to be a liar.

When he was charged with murder, Aksel finally gave the name of the customer who could give him an alibi. The man was named Arne Frigaard and had bought twenty bottles of good moonshine for twenty-five kroner. When the police went to check this story, they met an astonished Colonel Frigaard at his home in Frogner. He rolled his eyes when he heard the gross accusations and showed the two officers his bar. Honest drinks, every one. His wife said very little, it was noted, but nodded when her pompous husband insisted that he had been at home nursing a migraine on the night in question. He had gone to bed early.

Johanne stroked her nose and took a sip of cold tea.

There was nothing to indicate that anyone had investigated the colonel’s story any further. All the same, she could sense the irony, or perhaps even sarcastic objectivity, in the judge’s dry, factual rendition of the policeman’s testimony. The colonel himself had not been called as a witness in court. He suffered from migraines, his doctor claimed, thereby sparing his patient of many years the embarrassment of being confronted with allegations of buying cheap spirits.

Johanne jumped when she heard noises from the bedroom. Even after all this time, even when things had been so much better for the past five years-the child was healthy now, and usually slept soundly from sunset to sunrise and probably just had a bit of a cold-she felt a chill run down her spine whenever she heard the slightest sleepy cough. All was quiet again.

One witness in particular stood out. Evander Jakobsen was seventeen years old and was in prison himself. However, he had been free when little Hedvig was murdered and claimed that he’d been paid by Aksel Seier to carry a sack for him from an address in the old part of town, down to the harbor. In his first statements, he said that Seier walked through the night streets with him but didn’t want to carry the sack himself as “that would draw too much attention.” He later changed his story. It was not Seier who had asked him to carry the sack, but another-unidentified-man. In the new version, Seier met him at the harbor and took the sack from him without saying much. The sack supposedly contained old pigs’ heads and feet. Evander Jakobsen couldn’t be certain, as he never checked. But it stank, that’s for sure, and it could have weighed roughly the same as an eight-year-old.

This obviously phoney story had sowed seeds of doubt in the mind of Dagbladet’s crime reporter. He described Evander Jakobsen’s explanation as “highly implausible” and had found support for this in Morgenbladet, in which the reporter unashamedly mocked the young jailbird’s conflicting stories told from the witness stand.

But the journalists’ doubts and reservations were of little help.

Aksel Seier was sentenced for the rape of little Hedvig Gåsøy, age eight. He was also found guilty of killing her with the intent to destroy any evidence of the first crime.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Johanne placed all the papers carefully one on top of the other. The small pile contained transcripts of the judgement and a large number of newspaper articles. No police documents. No records of questioning. No expert reports, though it was clear that several of these had existed.

The newspapers stopped writing about the case soon after the verdict was given.

For Johanne, Aksel Seier’s sentence was just one of many similar cases. It was the end of the story, however, that made it different and that made it hard to sleep. It was half past twelve and she wasn’t in the slightest bit sleepy.

She read through the papers again. Under the verdicts, attached to the newspaper cuttings with a paper clip, was the old lady’s alarming account.

Eventually Johanne stood up. It was starting to get light outside. She would have to be up in a few hours. When she nudged the child over to the other side of the bed, the little girl grunted sleepily. She could just stay where she was. Sleep was a long way off anyway.