She declined to assist him further, thanked him politely for calling, and replaced the receiver.
Hans Olsen? Why that question? She’d read the bloodcurdling details in the daily papers, but had put it to the back of her mind, since it didn’t concern her and she had no idea who the man was. It hadn’t occurred to her that the case might have anything to do with her client. Of course it didn’t mean there was any connection anyway; it might just have been a journalistic shot in the dark. She let it rest at that, though with a slight feeling of annoyance. She saw from the screen in front of her that nine people had tried to get in touch today, and from the names she could tell that she would have to spend the rest of the day on her most important client, Norwegian Oil. She pulled out two of the relevant files, bearing the bright red N.O. logo. Fetching herself a cup of coffee, she started making her calls. If she was finished in time she might manage a trip to the police station in the evening. It was Friday, and she had a bad conscience for not having visited her incarcerated client since that initial meeting. She definitely had to follow it up before the weekend.
Despite nearly a week in custody Han van der Kerch wasn’t any more talkative. He’d been provided with a urine-stained mattress and a blanket. In one corner of the bunk-like platform he’d piled up a number of cheap paperbacks. They were allowing him one shower a day, and he was beginning to get acclimatised to the warmth, stripping off as soon as he came into the cell, and usually just sitting around in his underpants. Only when he was given the occasional opportunity for exercise, or a further attempt was made at questioning him, did he bother to dress. A patrol car had been out to his room in the student residences in Kringsja to fetch him a change of underpants, some toilet things, and, rather excessively, his small portable CD player.
He was dressed now. Karen Borg was sitting with him in an office on the second floor. They weren’t exactly having a conversation, more a monologue with intermittent mumbles from the other party.
“Peter Strup phoned me at the beginning of the week. He said he knew a friend of yours, and wanted to help you.”
No reaction, just a darker and sulkier look around his eyes.
“Do you know Strup, the lawyer? Do you know what friend he’s talking about?”
“Yes. I want you.”
“Fine.”
Her patience was nearly at an end. After a quarter of an hour of endeavouring to get something more out of him, she was on the point of giving up. Then the Dutchman unexpectedly slumped forward in his chair and in a gesture of despair sank his head in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees. He rubbed his scalp, raised his eyes, and began to talk.
“I can see you’re confused. I’m bloody confused myself. I made the biggest mistake of my life last Friday. It was a cold, premeditated, and cruel murder. I got money for it. Or rather, I was promised money for it. I haven’t seen a penny yet, and will probably have my own creditors on my back for years to come. I’ve been in this overheated cell for a week now thinking about what could have come over me.”
Suddenly he burst into tears. It was so abrupt and unforeseen that Karen Borg was taken completely by surprise. The boy-for now he looked more like a teenager-was leaning over with his head in his lap as if he were bracing himself for a crash landing in an aeroplane, and his back was heaving. After a few moments he straightened up to get more air, and she could see that his face was already blotchy. His nose was running, and, being quite unable to think of anything to say, Karen pulled out a pack of tissues from her briefcase and passed it to him. He dried his nose and eyes, but didn’t stop sobbing. Karen had no idea how to console a remorseful murderer, but nevertheless pulled her chair closer and took his hand.
They stayed sitting in that position for over ten minutes. It felt more like an hour-probably for both of them, Karen thought. At last the young man’s breathing became somewhat less ragged. She let go of his hand and soundlessly pushed back her chair, as if to erase the short period of intimacy and trust.
“Perhaps you could tell me a bit more now,” she said in a quiet voice, offering him a fresh cigarette. He took it with a trembling hand, like a bad actor. She knew it was genuine, and gave him a light.
“I don’t know what to say,” he stammered. “The fact is that I’ve killed a man. But I’ve done a lot of other things too, and I don’t want to talk myself into a life sentence. And I don’t know how to speak about one thing without revealing others.”
Karen was in some perplexity. She was accustomed to treating information with the greatest discretion and confidentiality. She wouldn’t have had many clients had she not possessed that quality. But confidentiality up till now had been about finance, industrial secrets, and business tactics. She had never received a confidence about anything unequivocally criminal, and was in a quandary about what she could keep to herself without falling foul of the law. But before she’d even thought through the problem, she decided to put the Dutchman’s mind at rest.
“Whatever you say to me will be between the two of us. I’m your lawyer, and bound by the rules of professional confidentiality.”
After a few final sighs he blew his nose vigorously into a wet tissue and began to tell her all about it.
“I was in a sort of syndicate. I say ‘sort of,’ because quite honestly I don’t know very much about it. I know of two others in it, but they’re people at my own level: we collect and deliver, and sell a little now and then. My contact runs a secondhand car business north of the city centre, up in Sagene. But it’s pretty big, the whole operation. I think. There’ve never been any problems getting paid for the jobs I’ve done. A bloke like myself can travel to the Netherlands as often as he wants without arousing any suspicion. I visited my mother every time.”
At the thought of his mother he broke down again.
“I’ve never been in trouble with the police before, neither here nor back home,” he sniffed. “Oh hell, how long do you think I’ll get?”
Karen knew very well what a murderer could expect. And maybe even a drug courier. But she said nothing, just shrugged her shoulders.
“I’ve probably made about ten to fifteen runs in all,” he went on. “Unbelievably easy job, in fact. I would be given a rendezvous in Amsterdam in advance, always a different place. The goods would be completely sealed. In rubber. I would swallow the packets, without actually knowing what was in them.”
He paused for a moment before correcting himself.
“Well, I guessed it was heroin. Must have known it was, really. About a hundred grams each time. That’s more than two thousand fixes. Everything went okay, and I got my twenty thousand on delivery. Plus all expenses paid.”
His voice was thick, but he was explaining himself clearly enough. He sat tearing at the tissues, which were just about shredded to pieces already. He stared at his hands throughout, as if he couldn’t believe they had so brutally killed another person exactly a week before.
“There must be quite a lot of people involved. Even if I don’t know more than a couple myself. The whole thing’s too big. One scruffy spiv in Sagene couldn’t run it on his own. He doesn’t look bright enough. But I haven’t asked any questions. I did the job, got my money, and kept my mouth shut. Until ten days ago.”
Karen Borg felt exhausted. She was caught up in a situation over which she had no control whatsoever. Her brain registered the information she was receiving, while she simultaneously made febrile attempts to work out what she might do with it. She could feel her cheeks reddening and perspiration beginning to dampen her armpits. She knew she was going to hear about Ludvig Sandersen now, the man she’d found last Friday, a discovery that had haunted her at night and tormented her by day ever since. She clutched her chair tightly.
“I was up with the garage guy last Thursday,” Han van der Kerch went on. He was calmer now, and had finally relinquished the remnants of the tissues and dropped them in the bin on the floor by his side. He looked at her for the first time that day. “I hadn’t done a job for several months. I was expecting to hear something any moment. I’ve had a phone put in my room, so that I’m not dependent on the communal one in the corridor. I never pick up the receiver before it’s rung four times. If it rings twice and then stops, and then rings twice more, I know that I have to meet him at two o’clock in the morning. Smart system. Not a single call is ever registered between us on my phone, yet he can contact me. Well, I turned up last Thursday. But this time it wasn’t about drugs. There was someone in the syndicate who’d got a bit too big for his boots. Had begun to demand money from one of the guys at the top. Something like that. I didn’t get to know much, just that he was a threat to all of us. I was terrified.”
