The Consorts of Death (37 page)

‘No, I didn’t think that. We’ve got them in Bergen, too, though on a smaller scale.’

‘At the moment, Veum. At the moment. Norway is virgin
territory
for organised crime of this calibre. The worst is yet to come. Mark my words.’

‘But … you’re maintaining that Jan Egil is part of this?’

‘We have substantiated evidence that he is. In a sense, prison is the best school you can attend.’

‘So what shall we do with them? The ones who deserve to be there?’

She sighed. ‘It’s a weighty issue, Veum. Either they have to invest more in preventive measures, including precautionary
surveillance
of criminal milieus. Or else we’ll just have to lock them up, chuck the keys and walk away. One of the two options.’

‘So, in reality, there’s just one.’

She smiled weakly. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Are you suggesting that the killing of Terje Hammersten was a hit job?’

‘It could be. Hammersten was himself a link in the criminal network.’

‘He’d left it, my informant tells me. Rumour had it he’d been converted. He was holding the Bible in his hand when he was murdered.’

‘Yes, a Bible was found at the crime scene. That’s right. But we stick to what we’ve got on Hammersten in our files, and a good part of that comes from Bergen. If he’d converted today, there would’ve been a lot to pay for from the past. And this criminal fraternity can bear grudges for a long time. Deliberately, so that the punishment is not linked too closely to the actual deeds.’

I sat pondering what she had just said. Then something clicked. ‘Tell me … You said you were holding this flat in Ildalen under observation, that was why you brought me in.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘So it wasn’t you following me from Eiriks gate then?’

‘Not as far as I know. Do you think you’re being followed?’

‘Perhaps.’ I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, a warning sign that something was brewing, something I wasn’t going to like.

‘Another reason to look at least twice before crossing the street.’

‘So … what would you recommend I do, Anne-Kristine?’

She showed with the utmost clarity that she did not appreciate my familiar tone. ‘Go back home, Veum. The sooner, the better. Oslo is not a healthy place for you to stay.’

‘I found that out a long time ago for myself, but …’

She breathed in through her nose, raised her head a fraction and peered at me through her shiny glasses. ‘Yes?’

‘There’s an old friend I just feel I should visit first.’

‘And that is?’

‘Langeland, the solicitor. Jens Langeland.’

Twilight had begun to fall as I got off the Holmenkollen line train at Besserud, and after a bit of a search, but without falling into any traps set for me, I found Jens Langeland’s huge detached house in Dr. Holms vei. A solid brick wall separated the property from the passing peasantry, and the lock mechanism on the gate was so complicated to work that I considered shimmying over instead.

The house stood screened against prying eyes by thick,
well-established
elm trees. The architectural style was a strange mixture of national romanticism and functionalism, rustic red with vast flat surfaces. From the plot, the view was beyond what money could buy, at least for all those of us who didn’t have
millions
handy in our inside pockets, a dizzying drop to the fjord below.

I followed the gravel path to the solid, green front door, pressed the bell and announced my arrival.

The woman who opened was small, nimble and of Asian origin. She was wearing a plain turquoise dress of shiny material. She smiled gently and said in a somewhat sing-song voice: ‘Yes? How can I help you?’

‘Is
herr
Langeland at home?’

‘One moment,’ she said, and tried to close the door, but I had been in fancy areas like this before and already had my foot in the door. I pushed the door firmly and stepped inside; she was
powerless
to prevent me.

She glared at me, and for a second or two it went through my head that, for all I knew, she could do kung fu and karate, with dreadful consequences. I said quickly: ‘I’ll wait here.’

She stood still for a second. Then she turned her back on me with no other comment than a chill smile. I watched her cross the spacious hallway and start ascending the stairs to the first floor with springy steps and small, firm buttocks.

Not long afterwards she came back down, followed by Jens Langeland. He cast a glance at me from the top of the stairs and frowned, then, still a good distance away, called: ‘Veum?’

‘Correct.’

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ he asked, crossing the floor.

‘I’m sure, with a moment’s thought, you know.’

He gave a routine nod, as if in court. ‘Jan Egil.’

‘Jan Egil,’ I said.

‘Let’s go into my study,’ he said, pointing west with a sweep of his hand. ‘Lin can take your coat.’

Lin took my padded jacket with a deep bow, placed it elegantly over her arm and carried it to a wardrobe as if expediting a royal cape.

Before we got as far as the study, we were interrupted by a woman’s voice from the top of the stairs. ‘What’s this about, Jens?’

We both looked in her direction. She was standing on the landing, slim and graceful in a short black skirt and light grey silk blouse with a black print, like the casual brushstrokes of a bewitched artist. She had very nice legs, and her hair was arranged in a studied casual fashion, steel grey with dark streaks.

‘Business, my dear,’ said Langeland. ‘This way,’ he said to me with an imperious gesture.

But it was too late. I had recognised her.

My eyes held hers, even from this distance. ‘Vibecke … Skarnes?’ I said with a conscious pause before her surname.

She continued to descend without speaking.

‘My wife,’ said Jens Langeland, quite superfluously.

It was twenty years since I had last seen her, and the only time close up had been that late afternoon when I had met her at
Langeland’s
place in Ole Irgens vei.

‘Haven’t we met before?’ she asked, searching my face.

‘Yes, in Bergen the time your first husband … died. I was in social services and …’

‘Oh, yes, I remember you now,’ she interrupted. She shook my hand. ‘Vibecke Langeland.’

‘Varg Veum.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ came the toneless response. She was still something of an everyday beauty, with attractive regular features and a lovely smile. But her eyes were pensive and distant, and time had drawn two bitter furrows on each side of her mouth. She stroked her steely grey hair with a graceful movement. ‘What is it you wish to discuss with my husband?’

‘It’s ….’

‘Is it about Johnny boy?’

‘Yes, I can’t …’

‘Then I want to be present as well!’

Langeland threw his hands in the air in frustration. ‘I suggest then that we go up to the living room,’ he said. ‘It’s cosier there after all.’ He turned to the Asian woman who had stood in
attendance
in the background like a shadow. ‘Lin? Could you brew us up a pot of tea, please?’

‘As you wish,
herr
Langeland,’ Lin said, swifly withdrawing.

On one wall in the hallway there was a stuffed elk head. ‘Did you shoot it?’ I asked Langeland as we passed beneath.

He shook his head. ‘Came with the house. None of the heirs wanted it.’

Despite being on the losing side in both court cases I had witnessed, Jens Langeland had had a meteoric career in the last decade, which his des res on Holmenkollen Ridge confirmed. His lean figure was unchanged, but his hair had suffered deep inroads and the strains of grey were stronger, and there was an air of fatigue about his face that I could not recall having seen before. Then again he was one of the most popular defence counsels in the country and appeared in the newspapers as often as the Prime Minister.

The living room we entered could have held the whole of my Bergen flat, and I would still have had room for a little garden outside. The parquet floor was only partly covered with very
exclusive
furniture arranged in a variety of formations. The bookcases were in classic empire style, and behind the glass fronts there was hardly a paperback to be seen. Broad windows revealed a dusk landscape with scattered gleaming lights and Oslo fjord lying like a blue-black silk drape casually discarded between Nesodden and Bærum. Far beneath, we saw an aeroplane taking off from Fornebu, as soundless as in a silent movie. It was only later that the faint echo of jet engines at full throttle reached us.

Vibecke Langeland led us to a small coffee table, also in
classical
style, burgundy and dark brown, and so polished that we could see our reflections in the wood. ‘Sit down, Veum,’ she said, indicating one of the four high-backed chairs. On the same finger as the thin wedding ring she wore a diamond ring, two distant relatives, one rich and one poor, out promenading. A plain jewel, vaguely triangular-shaped, set in a precious stone at least as
exclusive
, hung from a gold chain around her neck, from the very spot where her pulse was throbbing.

We sat down; she with her elegant legs slanting to the left, Langeland sitting in a more casual fashion, or as far as it was
possible
in such a chair, with his long legs sticking out at the side of the table. I felt as if I were being interviewed for the vacant
gardener’s
post.

‘That was a surprise,’ I said casually, essaying a tiny smile.

Langeland eyed me in silence.

Vibecke said: ‘Oh, you mean us two? I can explain that.’

‘Vibecke,’ Langeland said.

‘Of course, of course … We have nothing to be ashamed of, have we.’ She patted him affectionately on the knee. Then she turned her gaze back to me. ‘Jens and I have known each other, well, ever since university. We were also together for a while then, in fact.’

‘Yes, I seem to remember someone saying.’

‘But then, well, we wandered apart for a few years. I got together with Svein, and then all the disastrous events came at once. But in 1984, when Jens came back from Førde after all the
happenings
there, and looked me up to tell me everything, …’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Zing went the strings of my heart! Since then it has been just us two.’

I glanced at Langeland. ‘That was how it was?’

He put on an expression of indifference. ‘Does it matter? Has it got anything to do with you? I assume you did not come here, unannounced and uninvited, to delve into our private lives?’

‘No, the cause is of course, yet again … what do you call him? Johnny boy?’

It was Vibecke who answered. ‘For me he will never be anything else. They started calling him … the other name in Sunnfjord.’

‘Have you ever met him?’

She recoiled in surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

‘No, I mean, naturally enough, have you met him since … 1974?’

She slowly shook her head, as though remonstrating to a small child. ‘No. Never. You have to understand. He …’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, after what happened at that time. I ended up in jail, Veum, don’t forget that! Had it not been for Jens then …’ Her face had suddenly cracked, it was open now. Sheer despair was written all over it.

‘So …’

‘Veum!’ Langeland sat up erect in his chair. ‘What the hell is all this? She told you she hasn’t seen the boy since he was six and a half years old. Everything that has happened since then is … history to her.’

Lost in thought, I looked at him. ‘That’s just it, Langeland. The roots of this case go way back. A very long way.’

‘This case! Which case?’

‘You know he’s wanted by the police?’

Vibecke’s eyes widened and she looked up at her husband in amazement. He gave a brief nod to her before focusing on me again. ‘And so?’

‘He’s suspected of having committed another murder, this time here in Oslo.’

‘A murder?’ Vibecke almost whispered. ‘Who was it?’

‘Someone by the name of Terje Hammersten. Does that mean anything to you?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing at all! Who is he?’

A clinking sound came from the staircase, and we were
interrupted
by Lin who came in carrying a silver tray crammed with teacups, saucers, spoons, an elegantly shaped teapot, sugar in a bowl and a plate of fresh lemon slices. As if by a flick of the fingers, Vibecke switched into the perfect hostess, helped Lin put out the cups and saucers, offered me sugar and lemon and told Lin, after she had poured tea for us all, that we could manage fine on our own now, thank you.

When Lin had left, I faced Langeland. ‘But
you
remember Terje Hammersten, don’t you?’

‘Indeed I do. But we never managed to get anything on him, at least not in connection with the cases that concerned Johnny boy.’

‘No, we drew a blank there, I regret to say.’

‘Probably because there was no connection.’

‘Are you still convinced about that?’

He eyed me with raised eyebrows. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘Did you ever meet him?’

‘Not face to face. I had to attend a police interview with him once, behind a two-way mirror – that was the closest I came. He was never taken to court because of the damned alibi.’

‘Exactly. And now he’s been killed, in all probability by Jan Egil. I don’t suppose he’s contacted you?’

‘Jan Egil? No.’ He shook his head firmly.

‘When did you last speak to him?’

‘Veum … in fact, I’ve been visiting him regularly. Because it was important that he should have contact with … someone. On a private basis, in other words. But of course I had a finger in the pie when he applied for parole this spring. But that was also the last time I saw him. When he was released, I mean. Some time in May.’

‘In other words, you’re ready to help?’

‘I’m still his solicitor, yes, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Which is what you’ve been all his life.’

‘All?’

‘Yes, you were even his mother’s solicitor, before he was born. I think you yourself told me that on one occasion.’