didn’t know him. Do you know any defence lawyers?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, with a smile of relief. He didn’t smile back. “Well, it depends what you mean by know. I’m not a personal friend of any, if that’s what you mean, but it’ll be easy to find a good defence counsel for you. I’m glad you realise what you need.”
“I’m not asking you to get me another lawyer. I’m just asking you whether you know any. Personally.”
“No. Well, a few of my fellow students went on to specialise in that field, but none of them is in the top league. Yet.”
“Do you often see them?”
“No, only when I meet them by chance.”
That was true. And a sore point. Karen Borg didn’t have many friends now. They had slipped out of her life one after another, or she out of theirs, on paths that had become overgrown, only crossing now and again as polite exchanges over a beer in a pavement cafe in the spring, or emerging from a cinema late on an autumn evening.
“Good. Then I want to have you. They can charge me with the murder, and I’ll be remanded in custody. But you must get the police to guarantee me one thing: to let me stay here in police headquarters. Anything to keep away from that bloody prison.”
The man was certainly full of surprises.
The disgraceful conditions in the cells at police headquarters had hit the headlines from time to time in the newspapers, and with reason. The cells were intended for twenty-four-hour remand. They were scarcely even adequate for that. Yet they were where this prisoner wanted to stay. For weeks.
“Why?”
The young man bent forward confidentially. She could smell his breath, now rancid after several days without a toothbrush, and leant back in her own chair.
“I can’t trust anyone. I have to think. We can talk again when I’ve worked some things out. You will come back?”
He was intense, verging on desperation, and for the first time she almost felt sorry for him.
She rang the number Hakon had written on a piece of paper.
“We’ve finished. You can come and fetch us.”
Karen Borg didn’t have to go to court, to her great relief. She had only once attended a court hearing. It was while she was still a student, and convinced she would use her law degree to help the needy. She had sat herself on the public benches in Room 17, behind a barrier which seemed to be there to protect innocent observers from the brutal reality in the room. People were being imprisoned at half-hourly intervals, and only one out of eleven had been able to persuade the judge that he couldn’t possibly be guilty. On that occasion she had found it difficult to see who was defending and who was prosecuting counsel, so matey were they, laughing and handing one another cigarettes and telling crass courtroom jokes, until the wretched accused had been put in the dock and they went off to their respective corners to begin the contest. The police won ten rounds. It was swift, effective, and merciless. Despite her youthful urge to defend all the accused, she had to confess that she didn’t particularly react against the judge’s verdicts. Those charged had seemed to her to be dangerous, unkempt, unsympathetic, and too aggressive in their assertions of innocence and their resentment of the law, some in tears and many cursing and swearing. Nevertheless she had felt indignant at the convivial atmosphere that returned to the room immediately after a prisoner was led away shaking his head, a policeman gripping each arm, down to the holding cells in the basement. Not only did the two opponents, who only moments before had been impugning each other’s honour, continue with their half-finished anecdotes, but even the judge craned forward to listen, smiled, nodded his head, and threw in an amusing comment, until the next poor devil was ready in the dock. Karen thought judges should remain aloof, and friendships be kept out of the courtroom. Even now she still had the same idealistic opinion. So she was glad that during her eight years in a law office she had never set foot in a courtroom, always managing to resolve matters before they got that far.
The custodial decision in respect of Han van der Kerch was a pure formality. He signed his written agreement to eight weeks, with a ban on visits and letters. The police had in some bewilderment granted his request to remain in the police headquarters cells. He was certainly an oddball.
So Karen Borg hadn’t been required in court, and was back in her office. The fifteen commercial lawyers had their offices in the modern development at Aker Brygge on the waterfront, with an equal number of secretaries and ten clerks. The exclusive men’s fashion boutique on the lower ground floor had gone bankrupt three times, and was eventually replaced by the larger fashion chain, Hennes & Mauritz, which was prospering. The cosy, expensive lunch bar had given way to a McDonald’s. On the whole the premises hadn’t lived up to their expectations at the time of purchase, but to sell now would involve a catastrophic loss. And it was a central location, after all.
Greverud & Co. was inscribed on the glass door, after old Greverud, who still, at the age of eighty-two, appeared in the office every Friday. He had established the firm just after the War, having built up an impressive reputation in the trials of collaborators. By 1963 there were five lawyers, but Greverud, Risbakk, Helgesen, Farmoy & Nilsen eventually became too much of a mouthful for the switchboard operator. In the mid-eighties they bought themselves into what everyone thought would become the mecca of capitalism in Oslo, and were among the few who had survived there.
In her third year as a student, Karen Borg had obtained her final summer job with this rock-solid firm. Hard work and an incisive mind were greatly esteemed at Greverud & Co. She was only the fourth woman ever to have had the opportunity, and the first to succeed. When she passed her exams a year later, she was offered a permanent position, interesting clients, and an immorally high salary. She fell for the temptation.
She’d never actually regretted it. She’d been sucked into the exciting world of capitalism, and was involved in the real-life game of Monopoly during its most thrilling decade. She was so talented that she was offered a partnership after a record three years. It was impossible to say no. She was flattered, pleased, and felt she deserved it. Now she earned one and a half million kroner a year, and had almost forgotten her reasons, all those years ago, for actually embarking on the study of law. Sigrun Berg ponchos had given way to elegant suits purchased for a fortune on Bogstadsveien.
The telephone rang. It was her secretary. Karen Borg pressed the loudspeaker button. This was uncomfortable for the person phoning, because her voice was surrounded by an echo that made it indistinct. She felt it gave her an advantage.
“There’s a lawyer called Peter Strup on the line. Are you in, at a meeting, or have you left for the day?”
“Peter Strup? What can he want with me?”
It was impossible to hide her astonishment. Peter Strup was-besides much else-the chairman of the Defence Group, the special union of defence lawyers who regarded themselves as either too good or too bad simply to be members of the Norwegian Lawyers’ Association like everyone else. A year or so previously he had been voted Norway’s most eligible man, and was well known as one of the most frequent media pundits on just about any subject. He was in his sixties, but looked forty, and his time for the Birkebeiner Ski Race was up among the best. He was also said to be a friend of the Royal Family, though he would never confirm this in the presence of journalists.
Karen Borg had neither met him nor spoken to him. She had often read about him, of course.
“Put him through,” she said, after some slight hesitation, and picked up the receiver in an unconsciously respectful gesture.
“Karen Borg,” she said, in a flat and expressionless voice.
“Good afternoon, this is Peter Strup. I won’t take up much of your time. I hear you’ve been appointed defence counsel for a Dutchman charged with last Friday’s murder by the River Aker. Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s correct as far as it goes.”
“As far as it goes?”
“Well, I mean, it’s true that I’ve been appointed, but I haven’t talked to him very much yet.”
She riffled involuntarily through the papers in front of her, the defence counsel’s copies of the murder case. She heard Strup laugh, a charming laugh.
“Since when have you been working for four hundred and ninety-five kroner an hour? I didn’t think legal aid
