‘That was just something I said.’
I leaned forward. ‘Something you said? All of it? Or just parts of it?’
She didn’t answer.
As I started formulating a new question, she interrupted me. ‘Do they have to be here?’
‘Do you mean Lars and Klara?’
‘Yes.’
I glanced at her two foster parents. Klara looked desperate, Lars as if he were about to explode. In a low voice I said: ‘This is not an unusual situation. Children or teenagers don’t want to say their opinions in front of their parents.’
‘They’re not my parents!’
Oygunn Bratet placed a small, reassuring hand on Silje’s arm.
‘We can go out! If that’s how it has to be.’ Lars’s voice was brusque. ‘We don’t want to impose. We’ve just cared for the girl, we have. Since she was five years old and alone in the world.’
‘I wasn’t alone! I had my mum!’
Lars ignored her. ‘Oh yes, she had her mum. And we could all see what she’d done for her.’
Klara gripped him. ‘Lars… Don’t… If she doesn’t want us here, that’s…’
‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying. We can go outside. By all means. Can we take our cups of coffee with us?’
Klara sent us an apologetic smile as she shooed Lars into the kitchen and gestured that we should help ourselves.
I got up and closed the door after them. ‘Now you can speak, Silje.’
‘There’s nothing to say, I told you.’
‘There must be something. Tell me about Jan Egil and you when…’
She said sulkily: ‘We were good friends. We grew up together, didn’t we! And then he was my boyfriend.’
‘In every sense?’
She straightened up. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I mean…’ I glanced over at Oygunn Bratet, who refused to give me any kind of support. ‘Had you been to bed together?’
She stared at me with wide open eyes, as if it were inexcusable to ask questions of that nature. Her face went crimson. Then she jerked a nod. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Many times.’
‘… Mm, did you use any, er, contraception?’
‘We did, yes,’ she jeered, without going into detail. It wasn’t important, anyway.
I responded with a friendly expression, to imply that it was sensible of them. Oygunn Bratet sent me a condescending glare.
‘And last weekend… Sunday night. Is that right?’
‘Yes, it is. They asked me the same at the police station. I don’t know what’s so…’ She broke off.
‘… important about it? Oh yes, you do. After all, a double murder took place that night.’
‘Right, but Jan Egil was here with me!’
‘All night?’
She nodded.
‘Absolutely sure? You were asleep, weren’t you? I assume you weren’t at it all night?’
Oygunn Bratet gave an admonitory cough. I thrust forward my chin in an apologetic manner.
‘He was asleep, too, I think.’
‘But he nipped home before you went to school, he said.’ As she didn’t respond, I went on: ‘Weren’t you afraid of being found out? By your… by Lars and Klara, I mean?’
‘They never looked in at night. We heard them hitting the hay, and so we went the other way, through the barn. I’ve got a room at the other end of the house from them,’ she explained.
‘What happened then?’
‘You know what happened! On Monday we had so much schoolwork that we didn’t see each other, and he didn’t go to school on Tuesday. That was why I went to see him at home. But I should never have done that.’
‘Did you see them? Kari and Klaus?’
She shook her head.
‘But how did you come to say… what you did up there in the valley and afterwards?’
Then the tears flowed. ‘It was for his sake! How many times do I have to tell you? I did it for his sake. But that doesn’t mean I think he did it. I just… he’s my boyfriend. I wanted to help him…’
‘And you did that by calling Klaus Libakk an old pig, with all that that might imply?’
She put on a defiant look through the tears.
‘ Was he?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Had he made approaches to you?’
As she still refused to answer, I said: ‘Why don’t you answer? Because it was all fabrication? You made it up to explain why you’d done something you hadn’t? Or have you realised now… that this, in fact, also gives Jan Egil a motive? A very strong motive, some would say.’
But she had gone into a new mode. For some reason she had decided not to say another word.
I sent Bratet a quizzical look, but she just shrugged. She had nothing to add.
Was it something I had said? Something she had reacted to?
At length, I stood up and said: ‘Well… I suppose then I have no more questions. I hope you get over this, Silje, and I wish you all the best in your life.’
She peered up, tossed her head and stared at me stiffly with tears in her eyes. I waited for a moment, but she had no more to say. I left her in Oygunn Bratet’s hands and went into the kitchen.
Klara and Lars were sitting on opposite sides of the table with a cup of cold coffee in front of them. Neither of them had tasted it, as far as I could see. Lars was staring into the middle distance; Klara looked up nervously when I came in.
‘Did you know that Silje and Jan Egil were girlfriend and boyfriend?’
Lars’s mouth twitched. Klara answered: ‘Yes. No. Of course we saw that they were together a lot.’
‘She says he spent the night here last Sunday. In her bedroom.’
Lars’s face darkened. Klara said: ‘Yes, we’ve been told. But we had no idea that was going on! We would’ve intervened straightaway.’
‘I hope you won’t tell her off for that now. She’s been put under colossal pressure.’
She nodded. Neither of them spoke.
‘What impression did you have of Jan Egil?’
‘I’ve never liked him!’ Lars snarled. ‘There was something about him right from the very beginning.’
‘When they were small, they played together so well,’ Klara said. ‘But in recent time they’ve met in places other than here. I think we lost contact with him over the years.’
Lars nodded in agreement.
Oygunn Bratet came through the door from the sitting room. She looked at me. ‘You can leave, but I’ll stay here for a while. I’d like to talk a bit more with Silje.’
The two at the kitchen table nodded.
‘I’ll do that then,’ I said. No one seemed upset to see me go.
No one accompanied me out into the farmyard, either. Before getting into the car, I had a look around. Surrounded by high mountains, Angedalen lay like a paradise on earth, a landscape exuding peace and tolerance, a striking contrast to the dramatic events that had taken place here in the last week.
I contemplated Trodalen and thought about what had happened up there, in the past and now. In a strange way the two seemed to reflect each other, the two unhappy couples: Mads Andersen and Maria Hansdottir in 1839, Jan Egil Skarnes and Silje Tveiten in 1984. Birds floating on the wind, transfixed by the sun, with death as the only way out after a long period of imprisonment for others’ crimes; death as the centre around which the whole solar system rotated.
