“Great. Then I’ll get straight to the point.”
The standard phrase of a man who feels at home “getting to the point,” Katrine thought. Because even if Krohn evidently enjoyed the limelight, he was first and foremost a nerd. A now-renowned defense lawyer, almost fifty years old, who still looked like a boy, someone who used to be bullied and now wore his professional reputation and freshly won confidence like a suit of armour. Katrine had read about the bullying in a magazine interview. It hadn’t been the same getting-beaten-up-in-every-break that Katrine had experienced growing up, but low-level teasing and withheld invitations to birthday parties and games, the sort of bullying that every celebrity now claimed to have suffered, to be applauded for their openness. Krohn had said he had come forward to make it easier for other smart kids suffering the same thing. Katrine found it odd that the sought-after lawyer’s desire for justice was balanced by his lack of empathy.
OK, Katrine knew she was being unfair. They were — as they were now — on opposite sides of the table, and it wasn’t Krohn’s job to feel empathy for the victims. Perhaps it was a prerequisite for the judicial system that defense lawyers had the capacity to switch off their sympathy for the victim and only focus on what was best for their clients. The way it had been a prerequisite for Krohn’s personal success. That was probably why it bothered her. That, and the fact that she had lost too many cases against him.
Krohn glanced at the Patek Philippe watch on his left wrist as he held his right hand out to the young woman sitting beside him wearing a discreet but ridiculously expensive Hermès outfit and presumably equipped with top grades from law school. Katrine realised that the dry Danish pastries she’d salvaged from a meeting yesterday weren’t going to be eaten today either.
As if it was a carefully practised move, like a nurse passing a surgeon a scalpel, the young woman placed a yellow folder in Krohn’s hand.
“This case has obviously attracted a lot of media attention,” Krohn said. “Something that does no favours either to you or my client.”
But it does favour you, Katrine thought, wondering if she was expected to pour coffee for the visitors and the Chief of Police.
“So I assume it’s in everyone’s interests for us to come to an agreement as quickly as possible.” Krohn opened the folder, but didn’t look down at it. Katrine didn’t know if it was true or just a myth that Krohn had a perfect photographic memory, and that his party trick at law school had been to ask fellow students to give him a page number between 1 and 3,760, and then he would proceed to recite the entire contents of that page of Norwegian law. Nerd parties. The only type of party Katrine had been invited to when she was a student. Because she was pretty but still an outsider, with her leather clothes and punk hair. She didn’t hang out with punks, and she didn’t hang out with straight, well-dressed students. So the staring-at-their-shoes gang had invited her into the warm. But she had turned them down, she didn’t want to fulfill the classic “pretty girl teams up with attractive but socially inadequate nerds” role. Katrine Bratt had had enough to deal with. More than enough. She had been bombarded with psychiatric diagnoses. But somehow she had coped.
“In the wake of my client being arrested on suspicion of the murder of Rakel Fauke, three accusations of rape have come to light,” Krohn said. “One of these is from a heroin addict who has already received rape victim’s compensation twice before on, frankly, very thin grounds, and without any conviction on either of those occasions. The second has, as I understand it, today asked to withdraw her accusation. The third, Dagny Jensen, has no case as long as there is no forensic evidence, and my client’s explanation is that intercourse was entirely consensual. Even a man with a previous conviction must have the right to a sex life without being an open target for the police and any woman who feels guilty afterwards?”
Katrine looked for signs of a reaction from the young woman next to Krohn, but saw nothing.
“We know how much of the police’s resources get swallowed up by such ambiguous rape cases, and here we have three of them,” Krohn went on, with his eyes focused on a point in front of him, as if an invisible script was hanging in the air. “Now it isn’t my job to defend the interests of society, but in this specific instance I believe that our interests might coincide. My client has declared himself willing to confess to murder, if no rape charges are brought. And this is a murder investigation in which I understand that all you have is” — Krohn looked down at his papers as if he needed to check that what he was about to say really was true — “a breadboard, a confession acquired under torture, and a video clip that could be of anyone, possibly taken from a film.” Krohn looked up again with a questioning expression.
Gunnar Hagen looked at Katrine.
Katrine cleared her throat. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks.” Krohn scratched — or perhaps smoothed — one eyebrow carefully with his forefinger. “My client would also — assuming we can reach an agreement — consider withdrawing his charge against Inspector Harry Hole for unlawful imprisonment and physical assault.”
“The title of inspector is irrelevant under current circumstances,” Hagen muttered. “Harry Hole was acting as a private citizen. If any of our officers broke Norwegian law while on duty, I would report them myself.”
“Of course,” Krohn replied. “I certainly don’t mean to call the integrity of the police into question, I merely wish to suggest that it looks unseemly.”
“Then you’re no doubt also aware that it isn’t normal practice for the Norwegian police to engage in the sort of horse-trading you’re suggesting. Negotiations for a reduced sentence, of course. But writing off the accusation of rape...”
“I appreciate that you might have objections, but can I remind you that my client is well over seventy years old, and that in the event of a guilty verdict the likelihood is that he would die in prison. I can’t honestly see that it makes a great deal of difference if at that point he is in there for murder or rape. So instead of clinging to principles that don’t benefit anyone, how about asking the people who have accused my client of rape what they would prefer: that Svein Finne dies in a cell sometime within the next twelve years, or that they see him on the street again in four years? As far as compensation for the rape victims is concerned, I’m sure my client and the supposed victims could reach a suitable settlement outside of the legal process.”
Krohn passed the folder back to the female solicitor, and Katrine saw her glance up at him with a mixture of fear and infatuation. She was fairly certain the pair of them had made use of the law firm’s dark leather furniture after office hours.
“Thank you,” Hagen said, standing up and holding his hand across the table. “You’ll be hearing from us soon.”
Katrine stood up and shook Krohn’s surprisingly clammy and soft hand. “And how is your client taking it?”
Krohn looked at her seriously. “Naturally, he’s taking it very hard.”
Katrine knew she shouldn’t, but couldn’t help herself. “Perhaps you could take him one of these pastries, to cheer him up? They’ll only be thrown away otherwise.”
Krohn looked at her for a moment before turning back towards the Chief of Police. “Well, I hope to hear from you later today.”
Katrine noted that Krohn’s female appendage was wearing such a tight skirt that she had to take at least three steps for each of his as they walked out of the Police Chief’s office. She briefly considered the possible consequences of throwing the Danish pastries at them out of the sixth-floor window as they left Police Headquarters.
“Well?” Gunnar Hagen said when the door had closed behind the visitors.