I could hear him thinking aloud. ‘Nonethless, Veum. I still want you to carry on with your enquiries. Concentrate on Hammersten. That’s by far the best card we have.’
‘You’ll still cover my costs?’
‘Naturally, Veum. We’ll pass this onto the police anyway, so take the time you need.’
After ringing off, I sat looking out of the window. We had all heard about solicitors’ bulging wallets, but this was more like pockets stuffed with wads of notes. My creditors could look into the future with confidence, if this carried on.
The day after, it rained. It was mean, probing rain and made me turn up my jacket collar that bit extra; another reminder that winter was around the corner. The light was lower, the days shorter, and it was a long, long time to next summer. That didn’t matter all that much. I had more than enough to be getting on with.
The first thing I did was to call Vegard Vadheim, the detective at Bergen police station I got on best with. I told him I had some information for him about several earlier cases to do with the ongoing investigation into the Angedalen double killings. I asked him to dig up the files of two of them from their archives: the case against Mette Olsen and a man called David from the autumn of 1966 and the case against Vibecke Skarnes in 1974.
‘And what do I get in return?’
‘I’ve got some info, as I said. I think it will interest you.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Especially if you dig up all you have on Terje Hammersten at the same time.’
‘Hammersten? It’s never been easy to pin anything on him.’
‘I’ve noticed. If you have any files on the big seventies alcohol smuggling ring in Sogn and Fjordane, I may have something for you there, too.’
‘Doubt we have much on that lying around.’
‘Then I have something to tell you about it.’
We agreed I would drop round the police station after lunch.
Before that I met Cecilie Strand over a cup of coffee and a roll at the cafe in Sundt. From the corner table looking over Torgallmenning, the main square, it was possible to imagine we were the mother and father of the whole town, with a full perspective of everything that went on down there. We had no idea how wrong we were; or perhaps we did.
Cecilie sat listening attentively to everything I had to tell her from Forde, restricting myself to things directly relevant to my investigations. I only mentioned Trodalen Mads in a subordinate clause, although it didn’t seem to make much of an impression, and I referred to Grethe Mellingen as ‘our social services colleague there’. There were tears in her eyes when I told her about the time I met Jan face to face, and once again I was reminded of the close, intimate, almost family situation she, I and Jan had found ourselves in during the spring and summer of 1974, with Hans Haavik as a kindly uncle.
‘But… do they really think he did it?’
‘The Public Prosecutor definitely thinks so. And the evidence against him is compelling, I have to admit.’
‘But why would he do it? Such a brutal thing?’
I shrugged. ‘This girl, Silje, claimed she had been subjected to sexual abuse by her foster father. That may have been enough.’
She sent me a doubtful look.
‘By the way… something new about Svein Skarnes came to light while I was there too.’
‘Svein Skarnes?’
’Yes, just listen.’
I told her about the link between Skarnes and the smuggling, the murder of Ansgar Tveiten and Hammersten’s role in both affairs, as well as his appearance in Sunnfjord the day after the double murder.
‘The day after?’
‘Yes, and his alibi in Bergen is no less than Hans Haavik.’
I told her everything I knew, and in the end she looked as bewildered as I was becoming. In a way, it seemed as if everything and nothing fitted. Threads led in all directions, but none of them met, and the pattern was still a mystery, even for a trained observer like myself. But I was convinced there was a pattern.
‘Anything else new?’ I asked, drawing the session to a close.
She shrugged and drained her coffee cup. ‘No, I suppose by and large everything is the same here. But when you hear things like this you wonder about what we do. Whether we’re having a beneficial effect at all.’
‘That’s exactly what Hans said the other day in Forde. So I’ll say to you what I said to him: Yes, we are. You are. You might slip up a few times, but you’re successful many more times. Aren’t you?’
‘Mm… but then you dropped out.’
‘I didn’t drop out, Cecilie. I was gently given the boot. And I’ve continued in the same area, in my own way.’
‘As a private investigator.’ She smirked.
‘Yes.’
We took the broad marble stairs down to street level again. On two of the floors we were met by our own reflection in the same chequered mirrors that had been there since my childhood, in the days when taking the escalator up to the top of Sundt was the closest a little Bergensian got to an amusement park. We both looked somewhat disillusioned, like a disgruntled couple who had just agreed that there was no way of avoiding separation and divorce after all.
I gave her a quick hug on the pavement and went for a walk around a small lake called Lungegardsvann and over to the library to kill time before meeting Vegard Vadheim. At the local branch I found the newspapers from 1974 on microfiche and refreshed my memory of the Vibecke Skarnes case, though I didn’t end up much the wiser.
Just before one o’clock I announced my presence at the police station and was met by Vadheim at the desk. When we arrived at his office, he knocked on the adjacent door, popped his head round and a female colleague of his, Cecilie Lyngmo, joined us.
‘Cecilie was the officer responsible for questioning Vibecke Skarnes at that time, so I thought it would be a good idea if she came along,’ he explained, and I nodded.
I said hello to Cecilie Lyngmo, whom I had met before but I had not been introduced. She was in her early fifties, a strapping woman, but she didn’t give the impression of being overweight. Her hair was greyish-brown, no sign of it having been dyed. She beamed when we shook hands, a firm grip.
‘A few years ago now, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘ Fru Skarnes must have been out for some time.’
I nodded. ‘She lives in Ski, just outside Oslo, I’ve been told.’
‘She’s no danger to her surroundings, if you ask me.’
‘So, in your view, she could have gone free at the time?’
‘No, no. Even an unpremeditated murder is murder. But she found herself in an unhappy situation, as so many women do.’ We all sat down, and she continued: ‘Inside the sheltered walls of home they’re subjected to systematic violence, direct or indirect, for years. And the one time they defend themselves, it ends in — murder.’
‘But that was taken into account during the trial, wasn’t it?’
‘To a certain extent. But one character witness after another spoke up for the husband. The Counsel for the Prosecution had done a very good job there.’
‘Sounds to me as if you’d have preferred to work with the defence.’
She said drily: ‘Now and then it can be like that, when you’ve seen all the nuances. We investigators are victims of the case; we’re much closer to the case than the lawyers. And among other victims of the case I include the accused just as much as the real victims.’
‘Yes, I can remember several of the witnesses myself. I was in court for a couple of the days.’
Vadheim cleared his throat, to join the conversation. ‘You said something on the phone about new information, Veum.’
‘Yes, listen to this.’ In broad outline, I told them what I had heard about Svein Skarnes and the smuggling racket.
They listened attentively. In the end, Vadheim said: ‘But all you have is allegations made by this Dale, an ex-employee of Skarnes. No concrete evidence, no documentation.’
