‘Would he have any reason to lie though?’
‘Maybe not. But you never know. An ex-employee, conflicts in the workplace, chance to get back at…’
‘Yes, but Skarnes has been dead for ten years. How can you get back at someone who’s been in his grave since 1974?’
‘No, you’re right, of course.’
I turned back to Cecilie Lyngmo. ‘When you questioned Vibecke Skarnes long ago… what sort of impression did you have of the marriage?’
‘As I’ve already said, and the main point of the defence’s plea was that Vibecke Skarnes was an abused housewife who happened to push her husband down the stairs and accidentally kill him. She painted a very credible picture of a tragic marriage. They didn’t have children, either, until they adopted one. And he was a pretty restless chap. She had little to be happy about and received minimal understanding from her husband. On top of that, she hinted that he had committed a number of infidelities without covering up any more than he was absolutely duty- bound to do. I remember she was very suspicious of his secretary.’
‘A classic affair, in that case. I met her by the way. The secretary. Fru, or was it froken? Berge or Borge, I think.’
‘Well, all this is history now. She was sentenced, and the appeal was unsuccessful. Now she’s out. So what use would any new information be?’
I shrugged. ‘Justice is a word in my dictionary,’ I said.
‘Yes, but what’s the point? The husband’s dead, as you said. The wife’s served her sentence. The son…’
‘Exactly. The son, or the adopted son, to be accurate. He’s alive, and right now he’s locked up, charged with a double murder in Angedalen.’
She glanced at Vadheim. ‘Yes, you mentioned something about that.’ Then she turned back to me. ‘And this is the same boy?’
‘One of the many parallels between these cases.’ I went through the case for them, including the connection between Klaus Libakk, Svein Skarnes and the smuggling ring. ‘And one more thing,’ I concluded. ‘When I was talking to Jan Egil, we eventually touched on what happened in 1974. And then he said something which never came out at the time, neither during the police questioning nor at the trial.’
I had their undivided attention.
‘He claimed that while he was sitting in the lounge playing with his toys he heard the doorbell ring. Then someone arguing with his father.’
‘Yes, the mother,’ Vadheim said.
‘But she didn’t need to ring. She had a key.’
‘Yes, yes, but if she knew her husband was at home anyway.’
‘No, it doesn’t make sense. At least there’s an element of doubt here. Someone might have visited Svein Skarnes that day. It could’ve been Terje Hammersten, for example.’
‘Hammersten! So that’s why you wanted to know what we had on him.’
‘At any rate, this Harald Dale claims that Hammersten physically threatened Skarnes several times in 1973 in connection with the debt he was left with, after the smuggling business fell apart in Sogn and Fjordane earlier that year.’
‘But why didn’t all of this come out at the time?’
‘Because Dale was too scared to risk his own skin, of course. And, if we are to believe the rumours, Hammersten had shown what he was capable of when he did Ansgar Tveiten in. But, as you said on the phone earlier today, Vadheim: It’s never been easy to pin anything on him.’
‘And the same applies now. As long as all this is pure speculation. Here at the station we need tangible proof.’
‘I know. So what have you got on him from the past?’
Vadheim sighed and held out a thick file. ‘Look. This is our friend Terje Hammersten’s record. Fat, heavy and not very delectable. Most of it’s trivial stuff, frequent use of violence in connection with threats. He’s what they used to call a torpedo in America, a heavy.’
I opened my palms. ‘There you go!’
‘But never anything big. Just minor matters. He’s had a few relatively short prison terms.’
‘Yes, I can remember he got one in 1970.’
He nodded, distracted. ‘The longest stretch he had was two years.’ He flicked through the pile of papers. ‘From 1976 to ’78. I see there’s a lot of material about the Bygstad killing, too, but he had a cast-iron alibi in Bergen, so nothing there.’
‘The alibi was drinking pals, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, but there are several… neighbours. The man who ran the grocery where they bought beer. A prostitute he’d been with.’
‘Easy enough to get if you lean hard on the right people. Or if you have some cash to wave around. But you didn’t manage to crack the alibis, I see.’
‘No, not that time. And now it’s definitely too late.’
I nodded. ‘What about the other case I asked you to dig up? That’s even older.’
‘Yes.’ He took out another file, considerably thinner, and opened it. ‘The case against David Pettersen and Mette Olsen, November 1966. He was given eight years, she was acquitted. He topped himself after the sentence was pronounced.’
‘Yes, I know. But… were they picked up at customs by chance, or were there grounds for suspecting them?’
He began to flick through.
‘She thought they’d been set up,’ I added.
He took out the documents from the case file and flicked through to the end. Then he nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. An anonymous telephone call, it says here. August 30th, 13.05. The same afternoon they were nabbed.’
‘A telephone call? Where from? From Copenhagen?’
‘Nope. From Bergen.’
‘From Bergen! Was any attempt ever made to trace the call?’
He nodded again. ‘It would certainly have helped the defence during the trial. But they never got any further than one of the telephone booths at the railway station.’
‘But who the hell would want to inform on them in Bergen? I assume the drugs were coming here?’
‘Here, and maybe travelling further. We’ll never know. But think back, Veum. This was in 1966, right at the beginning of the new drugs boom. It was still tied up with dope romanticism and hash heaven, sex ’n’ drugs ’n’ rock ’n’ roll. No one knew about the consequences, what tragedies and misery it would lead to for coming generations.’
‘What are you driving at?’
‘Well, I mean… there was big money to be made with hash at that time, and there were lots of dogs after the same bone.’
‘You mean… it could have been someone competing in the same market?’
‘Someone. Anyone. What do I know?’ He thrust out his arms. ‘Anyway, there was a telephone call, and the police rang customs. They were stopped at customs, and the rest we know.’
‘So what’s the common theme here, Vadheim?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘But can’t you see it? The theme is smuggling.’
‘Smuggling?’
‘Yes! From Mette Olsen and this David Pettersen, who are apprehended at Flesland airport, to Ansgar Tveiten, who is killed in Bygstad, to Svein Skarnes, who falls down the stairs in Bergen, and to the Libakk couple who are killed in Angedalen almost exactly a week ago.’
‘Aren’t you jumping to conclusions now, Veum? You can interpret all of this in a completely different way, too. The common theme for the first two cases is smuggling, that’s right. But the first one’s about narcotics, the second alcohol, which at that time were two very different markets. And as far as Svein Skarnes is concerned… he falls victim to a marital dispute in which the theme might just as easily have been abuse or infidelity.’ He looked to Cecilie Lyngmo for help and found it in the form of an affirmative nod. ‘This Angedalen double murder seems to have
