The Consorts of Death

by Gunnar Staalesen

  The crime scene was in Wergelandsåsen, a hillside dotted with large detached houses lying like a buffer zone between Landås and Minde, Landås with its fifties and sixties blocks of flats, Minde with its sedate twenties residences. The house we were called to was brown and had a wintry grey garden with faded rosebushes, patches of snow in the shrubbery beds, apple trees with long-established mushroom-like growths in the bark and rhododendrons in their hibernation phase, with hanging leaves and brownish-green winter buds.

  Several cars were parked outside the garden gate. The front door was open and a handful of people had gathered on the steps. I recognised many of them from Bergen Police HQ as they stood there drawing their very first conclusions over thin roll-ups. We opened the gate and stepped inside.

  Cecilie had briefed me about the case on our way there. A six-year-old boy had been at home with his father. On her return, the mother had discovered the boy crying in the hallway and when she shouted to her husband, there was no answer. She started to look and found him at the bottom of the cellar stairs. His neck was broken. The man was dead. She had managed to ring for help before breaking down. For the time being she was being held at Haukeland hospital, heavily sedated and with a female police officer at her bedside in case she needed someone to talk to when she came round. ‘What are their names?’ I had asked. ‘Skarnes. Svein and Vibecke Skarnes.’ ‘Background?’ ‘That’s all I know, Varg.’

  We entered the house, where Inspector Dankert Muus gave us a grim welcome nod. Muus was a tall man with grey skin, a small hat screwed down on his head and the burning stump of a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, like an amputated limb. I hadn’t said more than hello to him before, but he clearly recognised us. He pointed towards a door on the left of the cosy white hallway. ‘He’s in there.’

  We went into a simply furnished modern living room with dark bookshelves, a TV cabinet alongside the shortest wall, potted plants in the windows and light, shiny curtains. A policewoman, a round-faced Bergen-blonde, was sitting on a sofa with a little boy in her arms. In her hands she was holding a blue transformer with a red button, while on the floor in front of them a small Märklin train was running round an ellipsoid track carefully laid between the rest of the furniture. The boy sat watching the train without any visible signs of pleasure. He resembled a doll rather than a small boy.

  The constable smiled with relief and stood up. ‘Hi! Are you from social services?’

  ‘Yes.’

  As she put down the transformer, the train came to a halt. The boy sat watching. There was no indication that he wanted to take over the transformer.

  We introduced ourselves. Her name was Tora Persen. Her accent revealed roots in Hardanger, maybe Kvinnherad. ‘And this is Johnny boy,’ she added, lightly placing her hand on the back of the tiny boy’s head.

  ‘Hello,’ we chorused.

  Johnny boy?

  The boy just looked at us.

  Where had I heard the name before?

  Cecilie squatted down in front of him. ‘You’re going to be with us. We have a lovely room for you which will be all yours. You’ll meet some nice people there and some children you can play with if you want.’

  Then it struck me: But it couldn’t be … that would be too grotesque.

  The scepticism in his eyes remained. His lips were clenched together and his gaze was big and blue, as if frozen in a cry, in a terror that still had not released its grip.

  ‘Is there anything you would like?’ I asked.

  He shook his head.

  I glanced at Tore Persen. ‘Has he been like this the whole time?’

  She nodded, half-turned away from him and whispered: ‘We haven’t had a word out of him. It must be – the shock.’

  ‘He was with his mother when you arrived?’

  ‘Yes. A grisly situation of course.’

  The boy did not move. He sat staring at the electric train as though waiting for it to start of its own accord. There was nothing to suggest that he had heard a word of what we had been discussing. There was not the slightest hint of a reaction.

  I felt myself wince inside. It had been exactly the same with the other boy, whose name was also Johnny boy.

  But it couldn’t be …

  I looked at Cecilie. ‘What do you think? Should we bring in Marianne for this one?’

  ‘Yes. Could you ring her?’

  ‘OK.’

  I went back to the hallway. A constable was standing by the entrance to the cellar.

  ‘Was this where it happened?’

  The constable nodded. ‘They found him down there.’

  ‘Is he still there?’

  ‘No, no. He’s been moved.’

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘About midday.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘We received the report at two thirty.’

  I looked around. ‘Is there a telephone we could use?’

  He sent me a sceptical look. ‘I think you’ll have to go outside and use one of the car phones. We haven’t examined the telephone here yet. For fingerprints.’

  ‘I see.’

  The front door was still open. I walked over to the parked cars and asked the plainclothes officer in one of the cars whether I could use his phone.

  He put on a surly expression. ‘And who’s asking?’

  ‘Varg Veum. Social services.’

  ‘Veum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. I’ll get you a clear line.’

  He tapped some numbers into the dialling pad and passed the phone to me through the door. ‘You can dial the number there,’ he explained.

  In the meantime, I had found the number for Dr Marianne Storetvedt, the psychologist, in my address book. I called.

  After a few rings, she picked up. ‘Dr Storetvedt.’

  ‘Marianne? Varg here.’

  ‘Hi, Varg. How can I help you?’

  ‘We have an acute situation here.’ I gave her a brief summary.

  ‘And the mother?’

  ‘Has been taken to Haukeland. Nervous breakdown.’

  She sighed. ‘Well … what are you planning to do with him?’

  ‘We were going to take him to Haukedalen. To one of the emergency rooms there.’

  ‘Sounds wise. But do pop by here first. How soon could you be here?’

  ‘Barring anything unforeseen cropping up … in a half an hour’s time?’

  ‘That’s great. I’ll be waiting. I don’t have any more patients today, so that’s fine.’

  We finished the conversation and I passed back the phone to the officer in the car, who switched it off for me. Then I returned to the house. In the hallway I stopped by a slender bureau. On top was a framed photograph. It was a family picture of three people. I recognised Jan in the middle. The other two must have been his parents. Svein Skarnes looked older than I had assumed. He was almost bald with a narrow, slightly distant face. His wife had dark hair and a nice, regular smile, an everyday beauty, the type you see six to a dozen. Jan looked a little helpless sitting between them, with an expression of pent-up defiance on his face.

  In the living room the situation had not changed. Cecilie had taken a seat on the sofa with Jan. Now she had the transformer and the train ran in fits and starts; she wasn’t used to this kind of activity. The policewoman stood to the side with a pained air.

  ‘All done,’ I said. ‘We can go to Marianne’s right away.’

  ‘And she is?’ asked Tora Persen.

  ‘A psychologist we consult whenever necessary. Marianne Stortvedt.’

  ‘I suppose we ought to check with Inspector Muus first. To make sure it’s alright that we’re taking him, I mean.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She disappeared.

  I looked at Jan. Six years old. I had a boy of two and a half, Thomas, living with his mother now, after things had gone wrong for Beate and me six months ago. For the moment we were separated, but the outcome of the waiting period was a foregone conclusion. I had tried to chang
e her mind, but she had given me a look of despair and said: ‘I don’t think you understand what’s behind this, Varg. I don’t think you understand anything.’ And she was right. I didn’t understand at all.

  I gazed at the vacant, apathetic look on his face and tried to summon up the photograph of the tiny boy on the Rothaugen estate from three or four years ago. But my first impression had been too hazy. I remembered the awkward atmosphere in the small flat, the loudmouth who had burst in, the mother’s despairing eyes; and I remembered the tiny boy in his cot. But his face … it still had not taken shape; had hardly done that now.

  I crouched down beside the sofa where they were sitting, to be on the same level as him. I put one hand on his knee and said: ‘Would you like to come in my car, Johnny boy?’

  For the first time a glint appeared in his eyes. But he said nothing.

  ‘Then we can go have a chat with a nice lady.’

  He didn’t answer.

  I took his hand. It was limp, lifeless, and he didn’t respond. ‘Come on!’

  Cecilie rose to her feet, carefully took him under the arms and warily lifted him onto the floor. He stood upright, and as I led him to the door he offered no resistance. He tentatively placed his feet in front of him as if he were setting out across a frozen pond, unsure it would bear his weight.

  Then we were brought to a halt, all of us. Inspector Muus filled the doorway. Behind him I glimpsed Tora Persen. The tall policeman stared down at the boy in a surly manner. ‘Has he started talking?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well,’ he growled. ‘And where had you been thinking of taking him?’

  ‘First of all to a psychologist we use, then to an emergency shelter organisation in Åsane.’

  He nodded. ‘Just let us know its whereabouts. I suppose it’s not impossible that some of us might have to interview him.’

  ‘Interview!’ exclaimed Cecilie.

  ‘He’s the only witness,’ Muus said, sending her a measured glare.

  ‘I’ll keep you posted,’ I said. ‘But now we have to think about Jan. Could we pass?’

  ‘Less haste, young man. What name did you say?’

  ‘Veum. But I didn’t say.’

  ‘Veum. I’ll make a note of it,’ he said with a faint smile from the corner of his mouth. ‘We could have an amusing time together, we two could.’

  ‘But not today. Can we go now?’

  He nodded and stepped aside. Cecilie and I led Jan into the hallway and headed briskly for the door. From the corner of my eye I saw Muus turn quickly and return to the cellar staircase while Tora Persen remained in the hallway, looking as abandoned as a passing headlight on an ice-bound road.

  Outside on the steps I took Jan in my arms and carried him the last part of the way. He didn’t object; I might just as well have been carrying a sack of potatoes. By the car I said to Cecilie: ‘I think you’ll have to sit at the back with him.’

  She nodded. I sat Jan down and pushed the right-hand seat forward so that they could get in. Cecilie clambered in and eased herself into the seat behind the driver. I lifted Jan up and she held out her hands to take him. Suddenly he turned his head round and looked me straight in the eye for the first time. ‘Mummy did it,’ he said.

  4

  Dr Marianne Storetvedt was a somewhat old-fashioned-looking beauty, around forty years old. Her hair fell in loose cascades over her shoulders. She had an attractive, narrow face with high cheekbones. Her sharp eyes were softened by the adjacent laughter lines. She was dressed simply, a bright twin set and a brown skirt with a pearl necklace.

  Her office was at the far end of Strandkaien and looked over the docks, Rosenkrantz Tower and Haakon’s Hall or towards Skansen and Mount Fløien, if she cast her gaze in that direction. I would not have minded an office there myself, had anyone offered me one.

  The Åsane-bound line of traffic in Bryggen had come to a standstill, as usual at this time of the day, and on the archaeological dig site after the 1955 fire, the new museum building on the slope down from St Mary’s Church was beginning to take shape.

  Marianne Storetvedt was in the waiting room to greet us. She had immediate eye contact with Jan, who, after the statement he made while being lifted into the car, had been as silent as a trapeze artist. ‘Hello,’ she said, smiling at him, then laying a friendly hand on his shoulder. ‘We’re going to be good friends, you and I.’

  He looked at her without saying a word, without any visible reaction.

  She turned to Cecilie and me. ‘I think I’d prefer to speak with him on my own, but … do you have anything to tell me first?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If we could have a few words undisturbed.’

  ‘I’ll look after Jan in the meantime,’ Cecilie said. ‘We’ll find ourselves a magazine to look at, won’t we.’

  She sat down with him on one of the upholstered benches in the waiting room and took a weekly from the shelf under the coffee table. I followed Marianne Storetvedt into her office.

  The room was as simply kitted out as she was herself: a desk with a chair, a very comfortable leather armchair on the other side of the desk and a leather couch along one wall for those of her clients who preferred to be lying down during the consultation. On the walls hung a handful of beautiful, unpretentious landscapes – sea, mountain and forest – broken only by one of Nikolai Astrup’s pictures of Jølster, the well-known spring evening motif, where a man and a woman were on their knees working in a meadow, the apple tree in blossom and the moon reflecting off the lake beneath them.

  We stood, and she looked at me with a little smile. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, we don’t know much. He’d been at home with his father who was found dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs. He was standing in the hall crying when his mother returned home. He didn’t say a word to us until …’

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Well … when we were getting in the car to drive here he said …’

  ‘Yes? Come on!’

  ‘“Mummy did it.”’

  ‘“Mummy did it?”’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you tell the police?’

  ‘No, we haven’t yet. She’s still at the hospital and … I suppose it’ll all come out at some point. Anyway …’

  ‘Is there anything else I should know about?’

  ‘I’ll have to get it checked out first, but I was wondering whether Jan could be … whether he might’ve been their foster child, and I’ve met him before.’ Briefly I told her what I could remember of the flat on the Rothaugen estate that July day three and a half years ago.

  ‘What’s the background of the foster parents? Do you know anything?’

  ‘No. We haven’t been told anything as yet. They’re called Skarnes. Svein and Vibecke. That’s all I’ve been told. But they live in a detached house in Wergelandsåsen, so we’re not talking about a low-income family here.’

  ‘No one else? No brothers or sisters, I mean?’

  ‘No, not as far as I’ve been informed.’

  ‘OK, so let’s get cracking. I’ll see if I can get him to loosen up. But I don’t want to push him too much. If you and Cecilie wouldn’t mind waiting out there, then …’

  We walked into the waiting room together. Outside the windows it was getting dark. The street lighting had come on and the car headlights in Bryggen resembled a torn necklace, the pearls falling off one by one as they headed for Åsane. After a further, unsuccessful, attempt to establish contact with Jan, Marianne guided him into her office and closed the door behind her.

  Cecilie and I sat outside. She was flicking through the same weekly magazine. It was hardly her taste. I had known her since the summer of 1970, and a periodical like Sirene would have been more up her street, workaday feminist that she was.

  Some people would call her the classic social worker: short hair, metal oval-framed glasses, no make-up, white blouse under a bright little waistcoat I guessed had been manufactured in a Mediterranean country, dark brown, some
what worn velvet trousers and short black winter boots. Her accent revealed that she came from south of Bergen, more Røldal than Odda. We were chums; we had a great relationship that had moved in two directions since Beate went for separation. On the one hand, we had become more open, on an almost personal level, and, on the other, a new distance had sprung up because her sisterly solidarity demanded that Beate should be seen to be right. But when Beate had complained that I spent too many nights away, on business, in fact it was Cecilie I had spent most of them with, and truly on business: on the streets looking for children and youths who had upped sticks.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked.

  She looked up into my eyes, as though she could see down to the very bottom of them, and shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know. Hard to imagine that he’s making it up.’

  ‘The stuff about his mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do we know anything about – the parents?’

  ‘No. It all happened so quickly.’

  ‘Perhaps we should delve a little deeper?’

  ‘Really we should just hand him over to the Haukedalen centre, shouldn’t we.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  She gave a weak smile. ‘You always have to dig deeper into cases, don’t you, Varg.’

  ‘Well, that’s the way I am. A bit too nosy perhaps. Anyway …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mm, I’m frightened that I may have met him before.’

  ‘Met – Johnny boy?’

  ‘Yes.’ Once again I told the story about the hot July day in 1970.

  After I had finished, she said: ‘Yes, we’ll definitely have to do some digging into this one. I agree with you.’

  She flicked through the magazine without really reading. It was obvious that I had given her something to ponder. I walked round studying the pictures on the wall. They were old photographs of Bergen, most were of the area around Vågen, the bay, some of down from Murebryggen wharf, others of the market square. It was a town in black and white with busy people in motion, something the camera of the time had not always been able to capture, some of the figures were fuzzy at the edges, like apparitions. In the bay the forest of masts revealed how many boats there were. Down on the quay, delivery boys and porters passed by with sacks over their shoulders and barrels on their handcarts. Another town, another time, other problems.