He swept this aside. ‘Spit it out!’
‘The day before yesterday, when we were driving Jan to Haukedalen, he said something to us.’
‘Did he now?’
‘He said: “Mummy did it.”’
He didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I see. And?’
‘Well… I thought you might like to know.’
‘And that thought took about forty-eight hours to reach base?’
‘There was no one on duty, if I can put it like that,’ I ventured, but it didn’t meet with approval.
‘And what’s the reason for your coming here now with this?’
‘Mm… she’s at large, isn’t she?’
‘You have some idea of where she might be staying?’
For a second my eyes relinquished their hold on his. ‘No, that…’
‘But there’s something you’ve missed, Veum.’ He sent me a triumphant look.
‘Really? And that is…’
‘She’s come forward.’
‘Come forward! Fru Skarnes?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did that happen?’
‘Early today, on the recommendation of her solicitor, herr Langeland.’
‘Yes, I suppose I knew,’ I mumbled.
‘She’s being questioned now, by Inspector Lyngmo.’
‘Questioned? So you…’
‘No, we haven’t, Veum. And you haven’t brought anything new to the case. In fact, she has confessed.’
I found it difficult to understand what he meant. ‘Confessed?’
He raised his voice a fraction. ‘Yes, she’s confessed. Something wrong with your hearing? She admitted she’d pushed her husband down the cellar stairs that day during a marital row. The defence will, of course, plead involuntary manslaughter and that it happened in self-defence. But we’ll see. We’re making further investigations, naturally, but in essence the case is as good as solved. I doubt that comes as much of a surprise to you either, in light of the information you’ve just brought us. Mummy did it. Wasn’t that how it went?’
‘Yes, it… And if she’s really confessed, then… I suppose it no longer has anything to do with me.’
He raised his eyebrows sardonically, the clearest indication of a facial expression since I had arrived. ‘No, I suppose, strictly speaking, indeed it does not.’
‘But you’re aware he has another mother, aren’t you? He was adopted.’
He looked at me without enthusiasm. ‘And this mother…’
‘Mette Olsen. Living with an old acquaintance of yours. Terje Hammersten.’
‘Hammersten? But — ’
‘If I were you, I would…’
His voice rose a notch. ‘What I was trying to say, Veum, before you interrupted me… This mother, has she also confessed?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Exactly.’ He stood up behind his desk. ‘Do you know what you remind me of? You remind me of those bloody private eyes that swan around in American films thinking they’re so much bloody better than the police.’
‘Uhuh?’
‘Yes. So now, would you be so kind as to hop it? We have more useful things to do here than exchange views with representatives of the social services.’
‘Perhaps social services has more useful things to do as well.’
‘I don’t doubt it. Have a good life, Veum. I hope I never see you again.’
He was mistaken, sad to say. Sad to say for us both. Later I often wondered if it was then that the idea was first sown in me: if all else failed… start up on my own. But I never reminded him. That would have been taking the joke too far.
At nine that night there was a ring at my door. I went to open. Cecilie was standing outside, made up to the nines and wearing a slim dark coat I had never seen her in before. She held out a net bag. ‘I’ve brought a couple of bottles of red wine. Can I come in?’
17
Twenty-one years later she asked me with a slight blush, on the bench in Fjellveien: ‘Do you remember that we had a — fling at that time, Varg?’
I gave a wry grin. ‘Is that so?’
Yes, I remembered we had had what she called a fling. I remembered the iron tang of the red wine she brought with her that Thursday night in 1974, with the case apparently solved and Jan in specialist care; I remembered her lips tasting of the same, and the compact little body that she could never quite keep still, but wriggling and squirming whether on top or underneath, so lively that I slipped in and out of her like an inexperienced plumber on his very first solo call-out. She had kissed me, hard and firm, and there had never been any doubt about what she wanted. Afterwards we were agreed that it had been our way of celebrating the end of the case. Later we repeated the celebrations on two or three occasions before the whole thing, for reasons I had never quite been able to articulate, just petered out, becoming fleeting memories, a quick raid on my recall faculties when later in my life I was served a red wine with a similar flavour.
Yes, I did remember. I had not forgotten. But there were so many other things that happened that year, far too many other agonising incidents.
The investigation ended with Vibecke Skarnes being charged with involuntary manslaughter. The case went straight to court where she was defended with great passion by Jens Langeland.
I was myself sitting on one of the court benches for several of the days and I was impressed by Langeland’s performance. He used Vibecke Skarnes’s confession to maximum effect, and in court a far more negative impression was given of Svein Skarnes than I had received from Randi Borge. Langeland presented the awkward home situation, with a very unstable adopted child requiring a lot of attention. Vibecke Skarnes claimed that her husband had made unjustified accusations of infidelity against her, accompanied with violence, and just such a row had ended with the fatal fall down the cellar stairs, a fall caused by her pushing her husband away so that she would not be beaten up in, what Langeland called in his final summing up, nothing less than self-defence. She also claimed that Skarnes, on several occasions, had shown unnecessary brutality towards their tiny adopted son.
These claims were rejected by the opposing side in no uncertain terms. I remembered one day in particular when one character witness after the other testified what a decent fellow Svein Skarnes had been, and that they had never seen a hint of maltreatment towards his wife or had any reason to suspect that anything of the kind had taken place. Randi Borge took her stand, even more attractively dressed than when I visited her in the office, and gave Skarnes the best possible character reference; it was so convincing that Jens Langeland had squeezed in a couple of well camouflaged but nonetheless quite defamatory insinuations about the kind of relationship there might have been between this magnificent boss and his secretary. He was soon called to order, but I could see that the jury had taken the point.
However, the court was never entirely convinced that the tumble down the stairs was a pure accident in an impassioned situation. Despite what was referred to as mitigating circumstances, Vibecke Skarnes was convicted. She was sentenced to two and a half years’ imprisonment for involuntary manslaughter, and the subsequent High Court appeal from both sides did nothing to change the judgement. I was present at the court’s final pronouncement, and it was with a feeling of sadness that I left the courtroom that day with a cursory nod to Vibecke Skarnes.
After emergency hospitalisation in Haukeland, Jan was given treatment for what Marianne Storetvedt termed reactive attachment disorders and placed in Haukedalen. In the autumn of 1974, on the initiative of Hans Haavik, he was transferred to a foster home in Sunnfjord, where the combination of a smaller community and life on a farm working at full capacity was assumed to be a good way to lead him back onto the right path, to make him a benefit to society.
Both Cecilie and I had kept tabs on him as well as we could during the six months he was in therapy. We went for walks with him on Geitanuken or other mountains in Asane and around Bergen. We went out on the fjord with boat-savvy social workers and taught him how to fish. One June day in 1974 we went to Vollane to swim, and I can remember — yes, I remembered Cecilie in a very small bikini, white with green dots, and nipples that went erect after a cold dive. That was another of the times when we rounded off the day with a very private party in Telthussmauet. But it was a grey, rainy summer, and there were not many swimming trips.