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.
40
Hans Haavik and I walked back to the hotel together. Neither of us said anything. We were equally depressed.
‘Now I have to have something to drink,’ he said as we entered the reception area. ‘I have a bottle in my room. Will you join me?’
‘Why not? Let me just find out if…’
But there weren’t any messages for me in reception. I wondered whether I should try and ring her, but Hans was so impatient, shifting from one foot to the other, that I didn’t have the heart to keep him waiting any longer.
His room was identical to mine. There was an open suitcase on the luggage bench. A used shirt hung over the only chair. He took the shirt, slung it in the suitcase and picked up a bottle of Tullamore Dew from which so far only a quarter had been drunk. He went to the bathroom and returned with two plastic beakers. ‘You have the chair,’ he said, placing the beakers on the table and pouring almost to the rim. I didn’t complain.
He took one of the glasses himself, raised it for a toast and we drank. Then he flopped down on the edge of the bed with the drink in his hand. The wooden frame creaked under the weight of his large body.
‘Now and then you can just get so damnably bloody depressed, Varg!’
I nodded. ‘I know the feeling.’
‘Things are so bad you have to ask yourself the question: what the hell are we doing? Are we any use to anyone?’
‘You must have seen some positive results over the years?’
‘Yes, we have… some.’ Despite his massive presence, it was as if he had shrunk while sitting on the bed. Most of his height was in his legs of course, but the way he held his shoulders, like a mother bird protecting a newly hatched chick, made his powerful upper body narrower and smaller. ‘Take a case like this one, though. Jan Egil Skarnes… Johnny boy whom we’ve followed almost since he was born.’
‘You, too?’
‘Yes, don’t forget that I studied with Jens Langeland. By the way, he had brilliant exam results, unlike others I can mention.’ He grinned. ‘As soon as his studies were over, he got a job as a solicitor’s clerk at one of Oslo’s prestigious law offices, Bakke amp; Lundekvam. In the autumn of 1966 — it must have been — he assisted on his first case. A drugs case, a young couple were arrested at Flesland Airport with a huge packet of hash in their bag. That is, the man was carrying it all, and Bakke managed to get the girl off because she’d been unaware of what the journey involved. But this girl… it was Mette Olsen in fact. And I knew all too well who she was.’
‘Mm?’
‘They called her the Princess in Copenhagen.’
‘Yes, actually I’d heard that, but…’
He gave a flourish with his arm as if to dismiss what I had been going to ask. ‘You know what it was like in those years, Varg. Hell, there were lots of us who flirted with hash and other hallucinogenics. My own passage through was not entirely without incident. Was yours?’
I smiled with embarrassment. ‘No, I suppose I’d had a few puffs, but…’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, my problem was that I’d never smoked. Just inhaling was a challenge for me.’
‘Right… Later, when I started at social services, I met her again of course. Jan was no more than six-seven months old the first time we had her in for an assessment. He was sent for a short stay at an infants home while she was drying out, and then we gave her another chance, a chance she wasted a year or two later.’
‘1970,’ I said. ‘I went with Elsa Dragesund to Rothaugen to fetch him.’
‘You see, you’re just as bloody involved in his life as I am. You’re like me and all the others.’
‘All the others?’
‘Or no one, if you understand what I mean.’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Well, listen here…’ He studied his glass in amazement. It was already empty. He leaned forward and re-filled it to the brim. At the same time he re-filled mine. I didn’t complain this time, either. It was a good Irish whiskey, a rounded taste with a golden colour.
‘This boy was brought onto this earth by a mother who was so doped up that she hardly registered it. Right from the very beginning he had poor odds. The first thing that should have been done was to take him away from her for good. Then neither you nor I would be sitting here today, Varg. I’m convinced about that. The injuries a child suffers in the first years of its life can be fatal. You and I know that and so does everyone else who works in this business of ours.’
‘True. But there are exceptions. And there are some who travel in the opposite direction, born with a silver spoon in their mouths and take it down the swannee with them.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. But then he reappears — how many years is it? — six years later?’
‘Three and a half after Elsa and I picked him up from Rothaugen.’
‘Yes, but six and a half years old. And he was unlucky with the hand he was dealt yet again.’
‘Unlucky, maybe. You knew Vibecke Skarnes from university, didn’t you? Was she bad luck?’
‘No, but her husband probably was. He had far too many pokers in the fire, and he never gave Jan the
