‘My wife,’ said Jens Langeland, quite superfluously.
It was twenty years since I had last seen her, and the only time close up had been that late afternoon when I had met her at Langeland’s place in Ole Irgens vei.
‘Haven’t we met before?’ she asked, searching my face.
‘Yes, in Bergen the time your first husband… died. I was in social services and…’
‘Oh, yes, I remember you now,’ she interrupted. She shook my hand. ‘Vibecke Langeland.’
‘Varg Veum.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ came the toneless response. She was still something of an everyday beauty, with attractive regular features and a lovely smile. But her eyes were pensive and distant, and time had drawn two bitter furrows on each side of her mouth. She stroked her steely grey hair with a graceful movement. ‘What is it you wish to discuss with my husband?’
‘It’s…’
‘Is it about Johnny boy?’
‘Yes, I can’t…’
‘Then I want to be present as well!’
Langeland threw his hands in the air in frustration. ‘I suggest then that we go up to the living room,’ he said. ‘It’s cosier there after all.’ He turned to the Asian woman who had stood in attendance in the background like a shadow. ‘Lin? Could you brew us up a pot of tea, please?’
‘As you wish, herr Langeland,’ Lin said, swifly withdrawing.
On one wall in the hallway there was a stuffed elk head. ‘Did you shoot it?’ I asked Langeland as we passed beneath.
He shook his head. ‘Came with the house. None of the heirs wanted it.’
Despite being on the losing side in both court cases I had witnessed, Jens Langeland had had a meteoric career in the last decade, which his des res on Holmenkollen Ridge confirmed. His lean figure was unchanged, but his hair had suffered deep inroads and the strains of grey were stronger, and there was an air of fatigue about his face that I could not recall having seen before. Then again he was one of the most popular defence counsels in the country and appeared in the newspapers as often as the Prime Minister.
The living room we entered could have held the whole of my Bergen flat, and I would still have had room for a little garden outside. The parquet floor was only partly covered with very exclusive furniture arranged in a variety of formations. The bookcases were in classic empire style, and behind the glass fronts there was hardly a paperback to be seen. Broad windows revealed a dusk landscape with scattered gleaming lights and Oslo fjord lying like a blue-black silk drape casually discarded between Nesodden and B?rum. Far beneath, we saw an aeroplane taking off from Fornebu, as soundless as in a silent movie. It was only later that the faint echo of jet engines at full throttle reached us.
Vibecke Langeland led us to a small coffee table, also in classical style, burgundy and dark brown, and so polished that we could see our reflections in the wood. ‘Sit down, Veum,’ she said, indicating one of the four high- backed chairs. On the same finger as the thin wedding ring she wore a diamond ring, two distant relatives, one rich and one poor, out promenading. A plain jewel, vaguely triangular-shaped, set in a precious stone at least as exclusive, hung from a gold chain around her neck, from the very spot where her pulse was throbbing.
We sat down; she with her elegant legs slanting to the left, Langeland sitting in a more casual fashion, or as far as it was possible in such a chair, with his long legs sticking out at the side of the table. I felt as if I were being interviewed for the vacant gardener’s post.
‘That was a surprise,’ I said casually, essaying a tiny smile.
Langeland eyed me in silence.
Vibecke said: ‘Oh, you mean us two? I can explain that.’
‘Vibecke,’ Langeland said.
‘Of course, of course… We have nothing to be ashamed of, have we.’ She patted him affectionately on the knee. Then she turned her gaze back to me. ‘Jens and I have known each other, well, ever since university. We were also together for a while then, in fact.’
‘Yes, I seem to remember someone saying.’
‘But then, well, we wandered apart for a few years. I got together with Svein, and then all the disastrous events came at once. But in 1984, when Jens came back from Forde after all the happenings there, and looked me up to tell me everything,…’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Zing went the strings of my heart! Since then it has been just us two.’
I glanced at Langeland. ‘That was how it was?’
He put on an expression of indifference. ‘Does it matter? Has it got anything to do with you? I assume you did not come here, unannounced and uninvited, to delve into our private lives?’
‘No, the cause is of course, yet again… what do you call him? Johnny boy?’
It was Vibecke who answered. ‘For me he will never be anything else. They started calling him… the other name in Sunnfjord.’
‘Have you ever met him?’
She recoiled in surprise. ‘What do you mean?’
‘No, I mean, naturally enough, have you met him since… 1974?’
She slowly shook her head, as though remonstrating to a small child. ‘No. Never. You have to understand. He…’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, after what happened at that time. I ended up in jail, Veum, don’t forget that! Had it not been for Jens then…’ Her face had suddenly cracked, it was open now. Sheer despair was written all over it.
‘So…’
‘Veum!’ Langeland sat up erect in his chair. ‘What the hell is all this? She told you she hasn’t seen the boy since he was six and a half years old. Everything that has happened since then is… history to her.’
Lost in thought, I looked at him. ‘That’s just it, Langeland. The roots of this case go way back. A very long way.’
‘This case! Which case?’
‘You know he’s wanted by the police?’
Vibecke’s eyes widened and she looked up at her husband in amazement. He gave a brief nod to her before focusing on me again. ‘And so?’
‘He’s suspected of having committed another murder, this time here in Oslo.’
‘A murder?’ Vibecke almost whispered. ‘Who was it?’
‘Someone by the name of Terje Hammersten. Does that mean anything to you?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing at all! Who is he?’
A clinking sound came from the staircase, and we were interrupted by Lin who came in carrying a silver tray crammed with teacups, saucers, spoons, an elegantly shaped teapot, sugar in a bowl and a plate of fresh lemon slices. As if by a flick of the fingers, Vibecke switched into the perfect hostess, helped Lin put out the cups and saucers, offered me sugar and lemon and told Lin, after she had poured tea for us all, that we could manage fine on our own now, thank you.
When Lin had left, I faced Langeland. ‘But you remember Terje Hammersten, don’t you?’
‘Indeed I do. But we never managed to get anything on him, at least not in connection with the cases that concerned Johnny boy.’
‘No, we drew a blank there, I regret to say.’
‘Probably because there was no connection.’
‘Are you still convinced about that?’
He eyed me with raised eyebrows. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Did you ever meet him?’
‘Not face to face. I had to attend a police interview with him once, behind a two-way mirror — that was the closest I came. He was never taken to court because of the damned alibi.’
‘Exactly. And now he’s been killed, in all probability by Jan Egil. I don’t suppose he’s contacted you?’
‘Jan Egil? No.’ He shook his head firmly.
‘When did you last speak to him?’
