The Consorts of Death

39

Back in Forde again, I tried to get in touch with Jens Langeland. It was impossible. He was with Jan Egil and had made it quite clear that they were not to be disturbed. Not by anyone.

Instead I went for a last offensive against Sergeant Standal. I said I had something to tell him, something that might shed some light on the case. He therefore insisted on having a KRIPOS representative present.

It was the same well-built, cropped detective who had attended the press conference. ‘Tor Frydenberg’ he introduced himself as, with a robust handshake and a look of curiosity, before taking up a position against one wall with his arms crossed, ready to hear what I had to say.

I told them everything I had discovered about a possible connection between the smuggling affair of 1973 and the events of this week. I told them about Terje Hammersten, the connection with Svein Skarnes and the alleged stash of money Klaus Libakk had been keeping on his farm.

They listened patiently. After I had finished, Standal said: ‘You brought this Terje Hammersten to our attention yesterday. I can reassure you that orders have been drawn up to hold him for the purposes of questioning. But we have examined the conclusion they came to in 1973.’

‘And that was?’

‘He was in Bergen the day the murder took place.’

‘Who with? His associates?’

‘His alibi was accepted by the investigators at the time. It was impossible to disprove, at any rate.’

‘And what about now? Did he also have an alibi last Sunday?’

‘We haven’t got that far yet. However, as I said, we’re picking him up for questioning. We won’t leave anything untried. Anything else you wished to present?’

‘Let me come back to Klaus Libakk’s stash. Have you observed any unusually high spending behaviour from Libakk since 1973?’

‘As I told you a day or two ago, Veum, Klaus Libakk was never on our records.’

‘Strange. But you agree it could be a motive?’

‘If the money really existed, yes. So far, though, we have no evidence of it. And there was no sign of a burglary in the house.’

‘Isn’t it normal in these parts for people to sleep with their doors unlocked?’

‘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 grace 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 slumped 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 Asane 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.