When the break was over, Langeland immediately went on the attack. He wanted to know if several people could have been involved in the crime. The police officer had turned to the defence benches and, with the rifle half-raised in front of him, had said: ‘No weapon other than this was used, and only the accused’s fingerprints were on it, apart from those of the deceased.’ ‘Klaus Libakk’s?’ ‘Yes, but they were of an earlier date.’
Langeland, however, still did not give in. Looking intensely at the officer in the witness box, he asked: ‘But what if the guilty party wore gloves? Is there any reason whatsoever not to consider that?’ The policeman returned his glare, as if to tell Langeland he hadn’t been born yesterday. ‘There were no traces of glove fibre on the rifle.’ ‘What about plastic gloves?’ The officer sent him a condescending smile and shrugged his shoulders: ‘Not imposssible, of course. But not very likely.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because in our opinion there is no doubt who the guilty person in this case is.’ Everyone’s eyes turned to Jan Egil, even mine. He sat with his eyes directed into the distance, the way he had sat the whole time. ‘No doubt? In other words, you as a group were prejudiced?’ Langeland went on. ‘The forensic examination has swept away any doubts, to be more precise then,’ said the policeman, and I saw the judge note something down on the pad in front of him.
But still Langeland would not give in. It was easy to see that he had an uphill struggle on his hands, which the faces of the ten jurymen made manifest with abundant clarity. The three judges listened with professional sensitivity, but not even they displayed any sympathy for his arguments. His summary of Jan Egil’s unhappy life, the first years and the sudden departure from Bergen in 1974 after the tragic events in his foster parents’ house, seemed to be having the opposite effect to its intention, not so different from the testimony given by one of Marianne Storetvedt’s colleagues, in which I recognised the thoughts and terminology from the assessment I had been given some months before. Langeland had decided to call Silje as a witness, but it was the prosecuting counsel who gained most from her, too. When the prosecutor produced the undocumented claims of sexual abuse on the part of Klaus Libakk, Silje had to concede that she had made this up in the heat of the moment to help her boyfriend. ‘I see. Wasn’t it also the case that you at some point confessed to being the killer?’ ‘Yes, I did, but…’ Silje burst into tears: ‘That was just somethin’ I said to help ’im.’ ‘So you, too, thought he had done it, in other words,’ commented the counsel, turning to the jury in a telling fashion, but without any further comment. It was obvious that the prosecutor had triumphed in the duel. Even though Silje’s testimony had made an impression on the jury and the allegation of sexual abuse also caused a degree of sympathy to spread through their ranks, a realisation that he had had a kind of motive for the brutal act cemented the notion that it was he and no one else who had to be the guilty party.
Langeland’s attempt to point to other potential explanations fell on stony ground, since the police investigation had not uncovered anything to corroborate them. The alleged burglars who had broken into Libakk Farm at night had not left a trace of any break-in, and there was not a single testimony from the neighbours or anyone else pointing in that direction. Next Langeland touched on Klaus Libakk’s involvement in the local alcohol-smuggling activities of the early seventies, intimating that the killing might be tied up with the hitherto unsolved murder of Ansgar Tveiten, a supposition which the prosecution counsel flatly rejected in his response, saying that, for his part, they were dealing with the specific crime of October 1984, not dragging up criminal cases that were more than ten years old.
Langeland’s final summing up was brilliant, a masterpiece of rhetoric, but in the final reckoning no more than a scintillating precis of the arguments he had brought to bear earlier. After the jury had retired, it was difficult to see who had had most impact: Langeland with his masterly eloquence, the prosecutor with his rugged stating of facts or the judge with his sober review of the salient points.
When Jan Egil was led out of the court again, he cast a first glance at the benches in the gallery. Once again our eyes met, and once again I felt the incomprehensible hatred I thought I could read there; as though he laid all the blame for finding himself in this situation at my door.
The next day the jury was ready with its verdict. Jan Egil Skarnes was found guilty on all counts of the indictment, and the judges retired to consider the sentence.
I exchanged a few words with Langeland in the corridor that day. I thanked him for his efforts and asked whether he had any opinion as to how long Jan Egil would be imprisoned. ‘Impossible to say, Veum. Anything from five to fifteen years, closer to the latter in all probability, I’m afraid.’ ‘Fifteen!’ ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’ The high-flying lawyer had turned away with a downcast expression, as though this was such a terrible defeat for him personally that it was hard to bear.
Jan Egil chose not to appear when the jury announced their verdict. As the sentence was read out, he sat on his seat without raising his eyes once. Langeland bent down to him several times and spoke in a low voice, probably to explain what the often complicated legal formulations in fact meant. He was sentenced to twelve and a half years’ imprisonment, with his time on remand to be deducted. From Jan Egil’s blank face it was clear that he had not understood a word of what had been said, and when the court rose for the last time, as the panel of judges left the courtroom with a long final stare at the convicted felon, only a squeeze to his shoulder from his lawyer could rouse him from his chair.
During the trial at Gulating the case was reported comprehensively in the press with new photographs of the farm in Angedalen, artists’ impressions of what had happened in Klaus and Kari’s bedroom and anonymous-looking drawings of the accused. It was only when the High Court had taken its decision and stipulated the final sentence, in line with the previous court’s decision, that the convicted person was named in the media. In the wake of the judgement there was a great deal of discussion in the papers; many commentators considered the punishment much too mild, yet more evidence of the lenience with which today’s legal system treated serious lawbreakers.
Jens Langeland wrote a letter countering this, in which he stressed the tender age of the accused and the fact that in many people’s eyes, including his own, there was still substantial doubt about what had actually happened in Angedalen during that fateful night between the Sunday and the Monday of the penultimate week in October last year. Are we so sure that the guilty party or parties is not still walking around free? the letter concluded, sowing another dose of disquiet in my head; a disquiet which had never been extinguished, but had lain there smouldering, until it burst into flame again on that September day ten years later when Cecilie Strand phoned me at my office, asking me to meet her in Fjellveien.
45
Over all these years my thoughts had regularly returned to Jan Egil. I had never managed to reconcile myself with the claim that we had got to the bottom of the matter. A couple of times I had been on the point of ringing Jens Langeland, who I assumed was still his solicitor, but had then rejected the idea. ‘What’s the point?’ I had asked myself.
And now here she was, Cecilie, sitting on a bench in the sunshine by the sub-station in Fjellveien, looking at me through her round glasses and saying I was on his death list.