The Consorts of Death

by Gunnar Staalesen

  ‘I’m amazed he can remember me!’

  ‘I was summoned there myself to negotiate with him, but … I’ll only talk to Varg! he shouted. Varg? Who’s Varg? we asked. Varg, he repeated, and I contacted Hans Haavik to see if he knew who he was talking about, and he referred me to you.’

  I swallowed. ‘So then …’

  ‘The question is just … how quickly can you get to Førde, Varg?’

  I looked at my watch. ‘There are several hours till the afternoon boat leaves, and I have no idea about plane routes. But … if I jump in my car now, if I’m lucky with the ferries and ignore speed limits, I should be there in five to five and a half hours.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘I’ll have to, won’t I! How will I find you?’

  ‘I’ll meet you … Do you know where Sunnfjord Hotel is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go there and I’ll meet you in reception.’

  ‘OK, let’s say that. But it’ll take me getting on for half an hour to leave. I have the car parked …’

  ‘Yes, yes. Just come as quickly as you can. We’re relying on you …’

  People had had their fingers burnt doing that before, but I didn’t say that to her. I switched off the lights, locked the office and hared off up to Skansen to fetch the car. Barely half an hour later, I was on my way.

  It had turned dark by the time I reached Førde a little before nine that evening, and it had not been an easy drive. If it had been dark in Masfjorden before, the dense rain had not made it lighter. I stopped in Brekke to wait for the ferry, but once over the fjord I broke all the speed limits that existed in the hope that every available variety of local police official was in Førde and Angedalen on this dark October day which was to go down in the local history annals under the headline: Double Murder in Angedalen.

  There is much that could be said about Førde and most of it has already been said. In many ways it is the centre of the Vestland region, south-west Norway, in reality it is a huge crossroads with a few buildings thrown in for good measure. I passed the bridge over the Jølstra River and bore left towards Sunnfjord Hotel. The rain was hammering down on the car roof and I pulled the hood of my all-weather jacket tightly over my head as I sprinted, bent-over, the few metres to the main entrance.

  Grethe Mellingen realised who I was, got up off a chair and came towards me. ‘Varg?’

  I nodded and we shook hands.

  ‘I’m Grethe. Come with me!’

  She looked to be two or three years older than me and had sleek, golden yellow hair which hung in damp clumps on either side of her symmetrical face. I immediately noticed her eyes, light blue, as if made of glass. She was dressed in full rain gear, dark green from the sou’ wester to the high wellies. ‘We have no time to lose,’ she added as we charged from the hotel entrance to the car and tore open the doors on both sides.

  ‘That way,’ she said pointing west, towards the main hospital. ‘Just follow Angedalsvegen and we’ll see the lights when we’re there. We can only go on foot in Trodalen.’

  ‘Trodalen?’

  ‘Yes, you may have heard of it?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Trodalen Mads – does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘An old criminal case, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I can tell you all about it – later.’

  ‘But the old case has no connection with this one, I suppose?’

  ‘No, no. Of course not.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me – how Johnny boy is?’

  ‘Jan? You call him Johnny boy, do you?’

  ‘We used to call him that – ten years ago.’

  The road climbed abruptly to Angedalen now, to the long valley that lay like a hollow in the countryside between the municipalities of Naustdal and Jølster. I had never been there before.

  ‘Well, what should I say? He hasn’t been so easy, but … we thought things were going better now. At any rate, this came as a shock to us all. Like a bolt from the blue.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Now we don’t know yet if it was him who did it …’

  ‘Don’t we?’

  ‘Well, it’s like this. His foster parents are called Kari and Klaus Libakk. One of their neighbours called the police. He thought something must have been amiss because he hadn’t seen either Kari or Klaus since Sunday, and the only person who went to the cowshed was Jan Egil. He made up some pretext about wanting to see the Libakks and asked after Klaus, but Jan Egil behaved so strangely, said they were away and didn’t know when they would be back. So this neighbour, Karl on the Hill, as we call him, contacted the local sergeant, who sent up one of his officers. And that was when everything came out.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Jan Egil must have seen him coming because after the officer knocked on the door he suddenly saw Jan Egil and Silje racing up the mountainside behind the farm buildings, towards Trodalen.’

  ‘And Silje, that’s …’

  ‘Silje Tveiten, she’s from a neighbouring farm. But the worst of it all is …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When the officer tried to follow them, Jan Egil fired a shot at him. A rifle shot.’

  ‘Oh, bloody …’

  ‘Then he gave up. And when he went back into the farmhouse it was a gruesome sight that met him. At first the place seemed empty, but when he went to the first floor, into the bedroom … Klaus had been shot in the chest while he was still in bed. Kari must have tried to escape, because she was lying on the floor right in front of the window, shot in the back. There was blood everywhere!’

  ‘But … had no one heard the shooting?’

  ‘It’s mid deer-hunting season, Varg. There’s shooting at all hours.’

  ‘And now they reckon it was Jan who shot them?’

  ‘There was no sign of a break-in, so for the moment they haven’t got anything else to go on, I’m afraid.’

  ‘When did the murders take place?’

  ‘I don’t know, but all the indications are that the bodies have been lying there for a couple of days.’

  ‘My God!’

  ‘Yes, there’s not a lot else you can say! And now he’s holed himself up in the scree on the eastern side of Lake Trodalsvatn, not far from Strand.’

  ‘Strand?’

  ‘Yes, or Trodalsstrand. Where the murder took place in 1839.’

  We passed a farmyard, and I slowed down. Round the next bend we were met by a mass of lights: brake lights, courtesy lights, headlights and torches. The exhaust fumes drifted like patches of mist over several of the cars parked in a line winding its way up a narrow gravel path to the north of the main road. At the very top a patrol car was parked across the path, blocking any movement in that direction. There was an ambulance with the side door open, the driver in conversation with a policeman. Beside the patrol car was another constable with his arms crossed, staring sternly ahead.

  ‘Pull in there,’ Grethe said, pointing to a narrow gap between a large Mercedes and a four-wheel drive Mitsubishi Pajero. I rammed the Mini halfway up the slope. From the boot I took my waterproof trousers I had had the foresight to bring with me. I always kept rubber boots there, in case I went fishing.

  We trudged up to the patrol vehicles and the ambulance. They had gathered around the two vehicles, the whole caboodle: photographers under wide rain capes with their cameras held against their chests; radio commentators with portable recorders held in shoulder straps and microphones sticking out, as if to measure the moisture in the air; and veteran reporters with soaking wet, lit cigarettes between their lips, sou’westers and rain hats pulled down over their foreheads.

  Grethe ploughed a way through the media throng for us before she was stopped abruptly by the brusque police officer. ‘No one passes here!’

  She gasped for breath. ‘But we’re on our way up to – negotiate. This is Veum, the social services man from Bergen that Jan Egil demanded to speak to.’

  The uniformed officer gave me a sce
ptical look, then turned to the car. There were two others sitting there. He motioned to one of them to roll down the side window.

  ‘It’s that welfare bloke. They should be let through, shouldn’t they?’ he said in vernacular.

  ‘Yeah, but Standal said that everyone should be escorted.’ The officer got out of the car. He stuck out his hand and introduced himself. ‘Reidar Ruset.’ His face was thin and pale, his handshake wet and cold. ‘In addition, they have to wear bulletproof vests.’ He stretched into the car and pulled out two stiff, greyish-black vests.

  With a little difficulty, we put the vests over our all-weather jackets. If nothing else, they provided a little extra warmth.

  Reidar Ruset pointed up at the dark, tree-clad mountainside. ‘On that mountain.’

  We began walking. Directly in front of us lay an old hay barn. As we passed it, Grethe said: ‘This is where he lived as an old man.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Trodalen Mads.’

  No more was said. In the heavy rain and with only Reidar Ruset’s head lamp as illumination we had more than enough to think about just looking where to put our feet. We followed the path upwards alongside a stone wall. Then we entered the forest, a mixture of deciduous and dark spruce trees. Neither of us said a word. Thoughts were ricocheting around my head, completely out of control.

  Memories of 1974 … the call-out to the accident in Wergelandsåsen, which would later turn into a crime scene, Jan and all the work with him, the search for Vibecke Skarnes, the confession, the trial and the six months with Jan afterwards, before he was sent up here. All this merged with the impressions I had formed during the hectic hour since I had met Grethe Mellingen: a possible double murder with Jan as the principal suspect, a boy fleeing with a girl of the same age, a boy who ten years earlier had pushed me down the stairs in a violent fit of anger …

  We waded up through withered ferns, bare blueberry bushes and a path that regularly became a rushing stream through the dense undergrowth. Now and then we passed a clearing with bare rock face. If we had cast our eyes across we would have glimpsed the lights from the farms at the furthest end of Angedalen valley, already a long way down. After a good half an hour we were at the top of the incline. We continued through the forest until we could make out black water. On both sides of the lake rose steep mountainsides. Even in the daylight Trodalen had to be a fairly gloomy place. Now, in the dark and the rain, it was just one black abyss in the night, a slumbering volcano which could erupt at any time.

  Reidar Ruset pointed along the eastern bank of the lake. A powerful searchlight lit up the scree where the rough terrain and the crooked old tree trunks formed troll-like shapes on the mountainside. Around the searchlight we saw the flickering light of less powerful lamps. ‘Over there.’

  We followed him up the slope from the lake, fast at the beginning, slower as we approached. We were almost there when it happened.

  The rifle shot rang out like a whiplash in the darkness. With a splintering sound the glass lens of the large searchlight was smashed, there was a scream, followed by more, and the flickering lights in front of us suddenly scattered in all directions, away from the area where the searchlight had stood. Then it was dark. Completely dark.

  Through the darkness came the sound of piercing laughter from somewhere up in the scree. It was an eerie, almost supernatural sound.

  Reidar Ruset switched off his head lamp and mumbled in local tones between clenched teeth: ‘Yeah, isn’t it what they’ve always said? That there are ghosts here …’

  ‘That’s because they never found the body,’ Grethe mumbled, shaking the rain off her sou’wester with a swish of her head.

  19

  Reidar Ruset beckoned to us to move forward again. Without the light from his head lamp it was even more difficult to see where we should walk. The terrain was trickier now, the path overgrown, impassable in places. The darkness lay thick around us, and it felt as though the rain had penetrated all the fibres of our clothing. Grethe had grabbed my hand tight. I kept close to Reidar Ruset, if for no other reason than not to lose sight of him.

  Somewhere ahead we heard voices: a hushed animated discussion.

  ‘Hello!’ Ruset whispered.

  ‘Reidar?’ came the answer.

  ‘I’ve got the bloke from Bergen with me.’

  Something came crashing through the birch trees in front of us. A well-built man in a police uniform with a nose reminiscent of a deformed potato filled the path ahead of us in the evening gloom. Reidar Ruset stepped out of the undergrowth so as not to stand in his way and half-turned towards me.

  ‘Sergeant Standal,’ said the newcomer, holding out an ample wet hand.

  ‘Veum,’ I said, passing him mine.

  ‘Good you could make it. I suppose Grethe’s explained the situation to you?’

  ‘In rough outline.’

  ‘We have what we assume is a hostage situation. A killer on the run who has taken a girl from the neighbouring farm with him and has now holed himself up in the scree here. You heard the shot, I take it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He smashed our bloody searchlight! But you know the boy, I understand?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. I was involved in … had some dealings with him ten years ago in Bergen. I haven’t had any contact with him since then.’

  He came closer in the darkness. ‘You operate as a kind of private investigator, I’ve been told.’

  ‘Yes, I –’

  ‘You can make ends meet doing that in Bergen, can you?’

  ‘I’m surviving anyway.’

  ‘Well, well. Each to his own, as the bride said. At any rate, the boy has informed us that he won’t speak to anyone except you.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘In fact … he said to Varg, and we found out, with the help of a bit of detective work – we country constables can do that too, you know – it had to be you.’

  ‘I don’t share my name with many, shall we say.’

  ‘No, you don’t. My name’s Per Christian, so that’s more like the opposite.’

  Grethe cleared her throat impatiently behind us. ‘Shall we try to make contact then or what?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, of course. We’re just chatting,’ said the sergeant, looking as though he would love to continue. He angled his head and said, ‘We’ve got a megaphone over here.’

  We staggered on through the dark. Half hidden behind a clump of trees stood a handful of policemen. The metal on their weapons glinted, several had night sights.

  They greeted us in low voices. One of them had a large battery-operated megaphone in his hand.

  ‘Give me it, Flekke,’ said the sergeant.

  It was difficult to see him in the dark, but Flekke appeared to be a relatively young officer. He passed the megaphone to Standal, who passed it on to me with a sweep of his arm.

  I took the megaphone. The amplifier was designed to hang over the shoulder from a broad strap. I grasped the handle, which was attached to the amplifier by a flexible cable.

  Standal pointed upwards in the gloom. ‘He’s up there. You’ll have to see if you can make contact, but … move around a bit. Don’t stand on the same spot for long.’

  I understood what he meant by that and instantly felt a chill go down my spine. I had been elevated, not to a place in heaven, but to a moving target.

  The only place on my body that was dry was my mouth. ‘Anyone got anything to drink?’

  ‘Just water,’ came a chuckle from somewhere in the dark.

  ‘And coffee, boiled to death.’

  ‘That’s what I was after. Bit of water perhaps?’

  From the murk came a bottle of mineral water. It had been drunk from, but I relied on Sogn and Fjordane germs being no more deadly than those from Hordaland, and took a good swig. I rinsed my mouth thoroughly before swallowing.

  Then I cleared my throat, raised the megaphone to my mouth and called: ‘Jan Egil! Are you there?’

  The
sound was muffled, dead, and young Flekke leant forward to the amplifier. ‘You have to turn it on first.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  He performed the action with a little click. A green light went on and I raised the megaphone again. This time the sound reverberated between the mountain walls: ‘Jan Egil! Johnny boy! This is Varg here!’

  Everything was quiet, both around me and in the dark night. All we heard were nature’s own sounds: the rain against the trees, dripping leaves, the trickle of rivulets between our feet.

  ‘Can you hear me?!’

  No answer.

  ‘You remember me! Varg from Bergen! You asked me to come and talk to you!’

  Suddenly there came a shout from above: ‘There ain’t nothin’ to talk about!’

  ‘But you asked me to come here! I’ve driven all the way from Bergen just to meet you!’

  Again there was a silence, as if he was thinking.

  ‘It’d be nice to see you again! It’s ten years since you left, isn’t it! You’ve grown up since then!’

  From above came a sound that we could not decipher.

  ‘What was that? I didn’t hear!’

  ‘Bullshit!’

  I lowered the megaphone and had a think. Then I raised it again. ‘Cecilie says hello. You remember her, don’t you!’

  No answer.

  ‘Johnny boy! Is it OK if I come up to you?’

  Standal shook his head and raised a flat palm in the air, as if to say he could not allow that.

  ‘Are you so keen to snuff it?!’

  ‘No! But it’s so tiring shouting at each other like this! I can come up and keep my distance. Then at least we can see each other!’

  After a short pause, the answer came. ‘Just you!’ But there was no warmth in the intonation. He sounded more like a big troll trying to entice me out onto the bridge and thence down into the abyss.

  ‘I don’t know if I can allow this, Veum,’ Standal said with heavy authority.

  ‘It’s why I was called in, wasn’t it.’

  ‘But you heard what he said.’

  ‘He’s a big mouth. Believe me. I’ve worked in social services and I know the type. He’d rather shoot himself than me.’