by Anne Holt
“I think you killed the guy. We’ll know better tomorrow, when the results come back from Forensics. But lab technicians can’t tell me why. That’s where I need your assistance.”
The appeal seemed to be in vain. The man didn’t move a muscle, he just retained his remote, slightly mocking smile, as if he had the upper hand. There he was mistaken.
“To be frank, I think it would be more sensible of you to give me that assistance,” the Inspector went on. “Maybe you did it on your own. Maybe it was to order. Perhaps you were even forced into it. And that might have a decisive impact on what happens to you.”
She paused in her steady stream of words, lit a new cigarette, and stared him in the face. He went on sitting there displaying absolutely no intention of talking. Hanne heaved a sigh and switched off the typewriter.
“It’s not up to me to determine your sentence. If you’re guilty, that is. But it could definitely be to your advantage if I was able to say something positive about your willingness to cooperate and so on when I have to testify in court.”
Håkon recognised the feeling from when he was a child and had been allowed to watch a detective story on television. He would be dying to go to the loo, but didn’t dare say so for fear of missing something exciting.
“Where did you find him?”
The Dutchman’s question took Håkon completely by surprise, and he noticed for the first time a hint of uncertainty in the Inspector’s face.
“Where you killed him,” she replied, with exaggerated slowness.
“Answer me. Where did you find the guy?”
Both police officers hesitated.
“By the River Aker at Hundremanns Bridge. As you well know,” Hanne said, holding him steadily in her gaze so as not to miss even a flicker of reaction in his expression.
“Who found the body? Who reported it to the police?”
This time Hanne Wilhelmsen’s hesitation created a vacuum that Sand was sucked into.
“It was someone out for a walk. A lawyer, a friend of mine in fact. Must have been a dreadful experience.”
Hanne was livid, but Håkon realised it too late. He hadn’t picked up on her warning gesture as he started to speak. He flushed deeply at her fierce look of reproof.
Van der Kerch stood up.
“I would like a lawyer after all,” he declared. “I want that woman. If you get her here, I’ll think about talking, at any rate. If I can’t have her, I’d rather have ten lonely years in prison at Ullersmo.”
He went across to the door unbidden, stepping over Håkon Sand’s legs, and waited politely to be taken back to his cell. Hanne Wilhelmsen escorted him, without a backward glance at her red-faced colleague.
The coffee had been drunk. It hadn’t been particularly good, even though it was freshly made. Decaffeinated, Håkon Sand explained. There were six cigarette stubs in a tawdry brown and orange ashtray.
“She was bloody mad at me afterwards. Understandably so. It’ll be some time before I’ll be allowed to be present at an interrogation again. But the man won’t be budged. It’s you or no one.”
He seemed no less exhausted now than when Karen Borg had arrived. He was massaging his temples and running his fingers through his hair, which was now quite dry.
“I asked Hanne to give him all the counterarguments. She says he remains adamant. I’ve kept well out of it. It’ll smooth things over a bit if I can get you to help us.”
Karen Borg sighed. For six years of her life she’d done little else but favours for Håkon Sand. She knew she wouldn’t be able to refuse this time either. But she would play hard to get.
“I’m only agreeing to have a talk with him. I’m not promising anything,” she said curtly, and stood up.
They went out the door, she first, he following. Just like the old days.
The young Dutchman had insisted on speaking to Karen Borg, with a vague intimation that he would open up to her. But that seemed to have been forgotten now. He looked full of bile. Karen Borg had moved over to Håkon Sand’s chair, and Håkon had discreetly withdrawn. The lawyers’ room in the custody suite was a miserable place, so in justified apprehension that she might renege on her promise to talk to the young Dutchman, he’d put his own office at her disposal.
Their suspect should have been handsome, yet was somehow unprepossessing. An athletic body, fair hair that looked as if it might have been expensively styled a month or so back. His hands were delicate, almost feminine. Did he play the piano? A lover’s hands, Karen thought, with no idea of how she was going to deal with the situation. She was used to boardrooms, meeting rooms with heavy oak furniture, airy offices with curtains costing five hundred kroner per metre. She could tackle men in suits with fashionable or garish ties, and women with briefcases and Shalimar perfume. She knew all about the laws relating to shares and the formation of companies, and only three weeks ago had earned herself a nice 150,000 kroner fee for checking over a comprehensive contract for one of her biggest clients. It hadn’t involved much more than reading five hundred pages of contractual agreements, ensuring they contained what they purported to, and writing “OK” on the cover. That worked out to 75,000 kroner per letter.
The prisoner’s words were obviously just as valuable.
“You asked to speak to me,” Karen Borg began. “I don’t know why. Perhaps we could take that as our starting point?”
He measured her up with his eyes, but maintained his silence. He kept tilting his chair backwards and forwards; up and down, up and down. That sort of thing put Karen Borg on edge.
“I have to say I’m not the right kind of lawyer for you. I know a few suitable people, and I can make some phone calls and get you a top lawyer in a matter of moments.”
“No!”
The front legs of the chair hit the floor with a crash. He leant forward, looked directly at her for the first time, and said it again.
“No. I want you. Don’t make any phone calls.”
Suddenly it occurred to her that she was alone with a man who was presumably a murderer. The faceless corpse had been haunting her ever since she’d found it on Friday evening. Then she pulled herself together. No lawyer had ever been killed by a client here in Norway. Certainly not in a police station. She repeated this reassurance to herself three times and felt more relaxed. The cigarette helped too.
“Answer me then! What do you want from me?”
Still no response.
“You’ll be up in front of the judge this afternoon for remand in custody. I’ll have to refuse to meet you there unless I have some idea of what you’re going to say.”
Threats didn’t have any effect either. Nevertheless she thought she could detect a glimmer of concern in his eyes. She made one last attempt.
“Besides, I’m running out of time now.”
She glanced quickly at her Rolex. Her fear was giving way to irritation. Which was increasing. He evidently noticed it. He was rocking back and forth in the chair again.
“Stop that!”
The legs of the chair banged down on the floor a second time. She’d won a modest victory.
“I’m not necessarily asking for the complete truth.” Her voice was calmer now. “I just want to know what you’re going to say in court. And I have to know that right now.”
Karen Borg’s experience of criminals without white collars and silk ties was entirely limited to having yelled after a bicycle thief who was making off down Markveien with her new fifteen-gear bike. But—she had seen this on TV. Defence Counsel Matlock had said: “I don’t want to know the truth, I want to know what you’re going to say in court.” Somehow it didn’t sound quite as convincing coming from her own lips. More hesitant, perhaps. But it might be a way of eliciting something.
Several minutes passed. The suspect had stopped rocking the chair, but was scraping it on the linoleum instead. The noise was getting on her nerves.
“It was me that killed the man you found.”
Karen was more relieved than surpris
ed. She’d known it was him. He’s telling the truth, she thought, and offered him a throat pastille. He’d acquired the habit of smoking with a pastille in his mouth, just as she had. She’d started many years ago in the vague belief that it prevented the smell of smoke on the breath. By the time she’d realised it didn’t, she’d already become hooked.
“I was the one who killed the guy.”
It was as if he wanted to convince someone. It wasn’t necessary.
“I don’t know who he is. Was, I mean. That is, I know his name, and what he looks like. Looked like. But I 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 café 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 Håkon 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, Farmøy & 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 rates would even cover the rent on Aker Brygge! Have things got so bad that you’re having to poach on our territory?”
She didn’t take offence at this. Her hourly rate was often well in excess of two thousand kroner, partly depending on who the client was. Even she had to laugh a little.
“We get by. It’s purely a matter of chance that I’m helping this chap.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought. I’ve got enough to do, but I’ve been approached by a friend of his enquiring whether I can help the boy. An old client of mine, this friend, and we defence lawyers have to look after our clients, as you know!”
He laughed again.
“In other words, I don’t mind taking the case on, and I can imagine you’re not particularly keen on it.”
Karen wasn’t quite sure what to say. The chance to put the whole matter in the hands of the best defence counsel in the country was very tempting. Peter Strup would undoubtedly do it better than she could.
“Thanks, that’s kind of you. But he’s insisted on having me, and in a way I’ve promised him I’ll continue. Of course I’ll pass on the offer to him, and I’ll ring you back if he wants to take it up.”
“Okay, we’ll leave it at that, then. But you obviously appreciate I’ll need to know soon. I’d have to familiarise myself with the case, and see if there’s anything that can be done.”