The Consorts of Death (13 page)

I could see the weapon. It was a big Mauser. No longer pointing at me, it was down by his side, as if to indicate that if I behaved myself, I wouldn’t come to any harm.

Now I could see her, too: a little cowering creature, also with her head covered by a weatherproof hood, a face with an open round mouth, like a fish in an aquarium, unable to escape through the glass, to get out and away.

I held up the plastic bag. ‘Here’s the food.’

He motioned with the rifle barrel. ‘Throw it here!’

‘There’s a bottle of Coke inside.’

‘Then bring it here!’ he commanded impatiently.

I went closer. Now I saw that the skin around his mouth was pimply and uneven. When I had advanced far enough, he said: ‘Stop!’

I did as instructed. Then I passed over the bag.

He removed the hand that had been resting on the trigger. As he held it out, our eyes met for the first time, and immediately I recognised him. Set far back in the oblong, pimply adolescent face, there was Johnny boy’s wronged, defiant expression that we had grown to recognise in the period after Vibecke Skarnes’s arrest, when the responsibility for him had been ours for six months. The round, not yet fully formed facial features of the small boy were gone, replaced by new, craggy contours, but the look and that
particular
set of the mouth were the same.

He grabbed the bag and took it. He cast a look inside. Then he threw it over to the girl who snatched at it greedily, opened the bottle of Coke and took a long draught before feverishly tearing the paper off the energy bars. Once the bars were out, she passed one to Jan who started eating without letting me out of his sight for a moment. Then he extended his hand for the bottle, raised it to his mouth and took a long, deep swig.

I could have rushed him then. I could have thrown myself on him, grabbed the rifle and tried to wrestle it from his hands. But I didn’t. The risk of something going wrong was too great.

It was as if I could sense the presence and intensity among the police officers down in the woods. I knew that those with night sights on their rifles were keeping an eye on us. But I didn’t want to give them the slightest reason for going into action.

I felt a strange calm seeping into me. The two young persons stuffing themselves with emergency rations in front of my eyes reminded me of starving whelps. This seemed to be what they had actually holed themselves up for: a last, desperate meal before they had to face reality head-on again.

While they were eating I saw that Jan Egil was paying less and less attention to the weapon. It was no longer pointing in my
direction
; it just hung loosely under one arm, hitched over a shoulder with a military-coloured strap, but out of action for no longer than the second it took to lift it.

‘Do you remember what a great time we had in Bergen … Jan?’

‘My name’s Jan Egil!’

‘Jan Egil,’ I corrected. ‘The fishing trips we went on, the walks in the mountains with Cecilie and …’

‘Barely,’ he sulked.

‘But you must have had a reason to ask me to come all this way here?’

With an involuntary toss of the head, he fixed his gaze on me and his eyes were shiny, filled with tears. He swallowed and nodded. After a while he said in a strangulated voice: ‘You were kind.’

I nodded. ‘We liked you, you know.’ As he didn’t react, I went on: ‘You had experienced terrible things, and we wanted you to have a good time. That was why Hans got you this home here, too. Everyone wanted the best for you.’

His lips trembled, and I saw him pursing them tight.

I chose my words with care now. ‘But … something happened here, too, I understand.’

He gave a brief nod. A single tear ran from one eye, down the side of his nose, resting under one nostril as a teardrop.

‘But whatever has happened … there’s no sense in hiding up here with … what’s your girlfriend’s name?’

I watched him fight to speak. I turned to face her. ‘You … can you answer me? What’s your name?’

‘Silje,’ came the reedy response.

‘You want to go home, don’t you?’

As she didn’t reply, I addressed Jan Egil again. ‘This is
horrendous
weather, and the night’s going to be long and cold. You can’t seriously mean that you’re going to stay out here all night?’

As he didn’t reply either, I went on: ‘I can promise you one thing, Jan Egil. You’ll be given a hundred per cent fair treatment.’

He snorted with contempt.

‘You will! I’ll guarantee it. Perhaps you don’t know, but since we got to know each other ten years ago, I have stopped working for social services. Now I’m a private investigator. A detective. I promise you that if there’s anything at all doubtful in this case that you’ve got involved in, then I … I won’t leave a stone unturned until I know everything. Together we’ll find out what actually happened here, and you’ll get all the help you need. It won’t cost you a bean!’

I thought I could hear my creditors cheering in unison in the background, but I could see the message had got through. The word
detective
had been the key to make him listen, and it was also the first word he said, in that same slightly dumbstruck intonation most people adopted after being told: ‘D-d-detective?’

‘Yes,’ I smiled. ‘Varg Veum, private investigator, with an office in Strandkaien, just by the fish market. Next time you’re in town, you’ll have to pop in!’

‘But the police …’

‘The police have their job to do. But now that you’ve turned
seventeen
, social services don’t have much say any more. You’ll get some help from a solicitor as well, of course. You can be sure of that. No one down there is after you, Jan Egil! Everyone wants to help you.’

It had almost stopped raining now. I celebrated by pulling back my hood so that he could see all of my face. ‘What do you say?’ I carefully stretched out my hand. ‘Give me the rifle, Jan Egil. Then it’s all over. We can go down to the village, have a roof over our heads, put on dry clothes and get something nice and hot down us. Eh? Doesn’t that sound good?’

I could see how his emotions were pulling him in all
directions
. But I knew that I had got through to him, that the thought of spending the whole night up in the valley, soaked, cold, without any food, other than what they had already made short work of, as compared with what I had promised him – dry clothes, roof over your head, hot food – was too much to resist.

He looked down at Silje. She nodded back enthusiastically.

Then he held out his hand, holding the rifle.

I grasped the barrel firmly and took it. Then I hurriedly
examined
the side for the safety catch. With some surprise I noticed that it was on. I stepped away in case he should change his mind.

I half-turned, looked down towards the trees, formed my hands into a loud-hailer and called: ‘Veum here! Everything’s fine. We’re coming down.’

It took a bit of time for an answer to come. I heard the sergeant’s voice, metallic in the speaker they had brought with them. ‘That’s great! We’ll be waiting here!’

‘Will I have to wear … handcuffs?’ asked Jan Egil in a thin voice behind me.

I turned back to him. ‘No, no. That shouldn’t be necessary.’

‘No,’ said Silje. ‘Because it was me who did it.’

‘Wha…’ I started.

‘Shuddup, Silje!’ Jan Egil shouted.

‘But I …’

‘Shuddup, I said!’

I took a couple of steps away from them. ‘Now I think we should do what I said, OK? Go down to the village, put some dry clothes on, and then we can talk all this through properly in somewhat more comfortable surroundings than these, right?’

‘I just wanted to say that,’ she sobbed.

‘Shuddup!’

‘Now, now,’ I said. ‘Let’s calm down a bit, shall we?’

They looked at me, both of them. For a moment it was as if they had united against me, a strict father, an angry teacher or an exacting confirmation priest. I was happy now that I had taken the rifle off them.

I thrust out my hand, smiled and motioned towards the bottom of the valley. ‘Let’s get moving. I’m freezing my arse off!’

They neither laughed nor smiled, but both nodded, and soon we were on our way down. I stepped to the side and let them pass. ‘I’ll bring up the rear,’ I determined, without saying why. Neither of them objected.

Like a quiet, gloomy procession we stumbled our way down the scree, to the uprooted tree and from there into the forest. As we approached the others, I called out again: ‘We’re coming! Silje and Jan first, me at the rear!’

‘Fine, Veum!’ Standal answered, without the loud-hailer this time.

With which they were upon us. I heard the muffled sounds of a brief scuffle in front of us as Silje was shoved aside and three to four policemen overpowered Jan Egil, then the click of handcuffs.

‘Vaaaaarg!’ Jan howled desperately as he kicked out in the dark. ‘You said I wouldn’t be handcuffed!’

I charged through the undergrowth. ‘Nor should you be! I’ve got the rifle here!’

‘Are you or the police in charge here, Veum?’ the sergeant snapped. ‘We obviously have to ensure that there are no further attempts to escape.’

‘But for Christ’s sake! He’s only a child.’

‘He’s seventeen years old and responsible for his actions.’

‘But I promised him!’

‘And who gave you the authority to promise anything at all?’

‘Bloody knuckleheads!’

At once his face was there, right in mine. ‘Mind your step now, Veum – or we’ll handcuff you, too.’

I looked around. We were standing in a tight clump in the forest. Silje had sought shelter in Grethe’s arms, and I met her eyes over Silje’s shoulders. She warned me with a glare and shook her head as a sign that I shouldn’t attempt any further provocation. Around us stood police officers, tired and irritable. Jan Egil had given up. He was almost hanging from the arms of two officers, attached to one by handcuffs.

Silje suddenly turned round. ‘But I’m the one who did it!’

Everyone focused on her. Standal barked: ‘What?! What did you say?’

‘I’m the one who did it!’

‘Did what?’

‘Shot ’em!’

‘What did you say? Are you telling us the truth? Do you mean that?’

‘D’you think I’m lying?’ Her face was red with repressed fury. ‘About something so serious?’

‘No, no – I sincerely hope not,’ Standal mumbled, caught off guard and perplexed.

‘He was an old pig!’

Standal regarded her with a flinty look.

‘You mean …’

‘Uncle Klaus!’

‘Silje!’ Grethe reproved.

An excited mumble spread through the officers around us. ‘There’s the motive!’ I heard one of them say, looking around
triumphantly
. ‘Isn’t that what I …?’

Standal seemed to have run out of words. He just stared down at the young girl, depressed, with that disgruntled expression of his.

‘Now listen here,’ I said. ‘We’re not going to stand here for the rest of the night, are we? For God’s sake let’s get back down to civilisation, get a roof over our heads, put on some dry clothes and then we can sort out this business down there.’

Standal visibly pulled himself together. ‘Of course. You’re
absolutely
right there, Veum.’ Not without some difficulty, he took command again. ‘OK, men!’ He pointed to two of them. ‘You go first. Then you …’ he pointed to the man handcuffed to Jan Egil, ‘… and him. You follow, Reidar. Then you …’ He pointed to some other officers. ‘Next you three …’ That was Grethe, Silje and I. ‘We’ll form the rearguard,’ he concluded, indicating himself and the young officer with the loud-hailer, Flekke. ‘And … Olsen! When we reach Angedalen … make sure the cars come up to us and keep the bloody media pack a hundred metres away, at least!’ As an afterthought he added: ‘And when you get contact on the walkie-talkie, inform them that the ambulance can go back. We won’t need it, I’m happy to say.’

He turned to me and held out his hand for the rifle. ‘Veum … I’ll take that.’ I passed him the heavy Mauser, and he beckoned to one of the officers, who conjured up a large black bin bag, in which the rifle was placed.

After some final instructions we set off down the path again. No one said anything. We had enough to do to find our footing and make sure we didn’t crash into the person in front. I saw Silje’s and Grethe’s heads bobbing up and down ahead. Behind me I could hear Standal puffing and panting down my neck. There was a strange atmosphere in the group. Everyone was lost in their own thoughts. There was a marked sense of relief that the whole thing was over, but at the same time we knew that we had been given something new to mull over.
It was me who did it
, Silje had said and like an inner echo I heard Jan’s own voice from ten years ago say:
Mummy did it
…

Were there any similarities? Were there any connections at all between these dramatic incidents?

I had promised him that not a stone would be left unturned until I was satisfied I had a result. But right now we were not talking about a stone or two but a whole landslide of complex events.

The first thing to do when I got down to Førde was to have the last ten years of Jan’s life mapped out, from the time we parted in Bergen, to attempt to find out what might have led to the atrocity committed.

We were approaching the end of the gradient now. The path flattened out, and we were in open country again. By the old hay barn we came to a stop, while the two foremost officers went down to make sure that Standal’s orders were being followed. From a distance we could see the throng of press people being pushed down the hill, and their protests reached all the way up to us, like the distant baying of a pack of hounds.

‘I’ve got my car down there,’ I said.

‘You can pick it up tomorrow, Veum. Now you’re coming with us,’ Standal said.

When the area was clear, we continued on down. Jan Egil was put in the first car; Silje, Grethe and I in the back seat of the second, with the sergeant in the front and a police officer behind the wheel. It was only then that I looked at my watch. It was five minutes to one.