Collini and the officer walked away, side by side, but before they reached the first barred door something odd happened. Collini simply stopped in the middle of the corridor and seemed to be thinking. ‘What is it now?’ asked the officer. Collini did not reply, only stood there motionless, looking down at the toecaps of his shoes for almost a minute. Then he took a deep breath, turned, and went back to the visitors’ room that Leinen had used. The prison officer shrugged his shoulders and followed him. Without knocking, Collini opened the door. ‘Herr Leinen,’ he said. Leinen was just putting his things together, and looked up at him in surprise. ‘Herr Leinen, I know it isn’t easy for you. I’m sorry. Just wanted to say thank you.’ Collini nodded to Leinen. He did not seem to be expecting an answer, but turned round and went back down the corridor, walking with his legs wide apart, not in any hurry.
Trying to find his way back to the lawyers’ exit, Leinen went in the wrong direction, until a woman officer stopped him and told him which way to go. Then he had to wait for a few minutes outside the bulletproof-glass door for the opening system to operate. The plaster above the door was flaking off. He looked at the police officers checking ID and entering names in notebooks. Here, where the remand prisoners were in their cells, waiting to be found guilty or acquitted, he was in a small, narrow world. No professors here, no textbooks, no discussions. All of it was serious and final. He could try to get rid of his legal aid defence brief. He didn’t have to defend Collini; the man had killed his friend. It would be easy to end it by saying no; anyone would understand that.
Outside, he took a taxi and went home. The fat baker was sitting on one of the wooden chairs outside his shop, under a sun umbrella.
‘How are you?’ asked Leinen.
‘Hot,’ said the baker. ‘But it’s even hotter inside.’
Leinen sat down, tipped his chair back against the wall and squinted at the sun. He thought of Collini.
‘And how are you?’ asked the baker.
‘I just don’t know what to do.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘I don’t know whether I ought to defend a man or not. He killed another man, someone I knew well.’
‘But you’re a lawyer.’
‘Hmm…’ Leinen nodded.
‘You know something? I roll the shutter up at five every morning, put the light on and wait for the chilled truck to arrive from the factory. I push the prepared dough into the convection ovens, and then all day, from seven onward, I’m selling the stuff that was delivered. When the weather’s bad I sit inside, when it’s fine I sit here in the sun. I’d rather make real bread in a real bakery, with real equipment and real ingredients. But it just isn’t that way.’
A woman with a Dalmatian passed them and went into the shop. The baker stood up and followed her. A few moments later he came back, bringing two glasses of iced water.
‘See what I mean?’ asked the baker.
‘Not entirely.’
‘Maybe I’ll have a proper bakery again some day. I did have one, but I lost it in the divorce. Now I work here, that’s all there is to it. Simple.’ He emptied his glass of water in a single draught and crunched an ice cube. ‘You’re a lawyer, you have to do what lawyers do.’
They sat in the shade and watched the passers-by. Leinen thought of his father. In his world, everything seemed clear and simple, there were no secrets. His father had not wanted him to become a defence lawyer. It was no profession for a decent man, he had said, everything legal was too complicated for that. Leinen remembered a duck shoot one winter. His father had fired his gun, and a mallard crashed down on the ice of the pond. The dog his father had at the time was still young, and had run off to retrieve the duck without waiting for his master’s signal. The ice in the middle of the pond was thin, the dog broke through it, but he wasn’t giving up. He swam through the ice-cold water and brought the duck to land. Without a word, his father took off his jacket and rubbed the dog dry with the lining. He carried him home in the jacket. For two days, his father sat in front of the fire with the dog on his knees. When the animal was better, he gave him to a family in the village. He’d never make a gun dog, he had said.
Leinen told the baker that he was probably right, and went home to his apartment. That evening he called Johanna. He said he had no option, he’d have to go on with Collini’s defence. He had persuaded his client to confess to committing the crime, but that was as much as he could do. It was a long conversation. Johanna was furious at first, then helpless, and finally desperate. She kept on and on asking why that man had done it. She called him only ‘that man’. She was crying.
‘Shall I come over there to see you?’ he asked, when they’d said everything there was to say. She did not reply for a long time. In the silence, he heard her wooden bangles clicking against each other.
‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘but I need time.’
When they ended the call, he felt tired and lonely.
Two weeks later Fabrizio Collini confessed to the murder. The interrogation room in the old building in Keithstrasse was cramped: two pale grey desks, a window, mugs of luke-warm coffee. Collini’s chair was too small for him. Two police officers had prepared the interrogation, the files from the public prosecutor’s office lay in front of them, with yellow Post-its on the pages that they wanted to ask about. The older officer was head of this department of the murder squad; he had three grown-up children and a weakness for chocolate. Thirty-six years in the police had made him not cynical, but calm and composed. He saw defendants as human beings, got them to talk and listened to them. The other police officer was still new here. He had come in from the drugs-related crimes department, and he was nervous. He went to the shooting range more often than his colleagues, his shoes were polished to a shine every morning, and he spent his leisure time at the gym.
This younger officer put a folder of pictures in front of Collini: photographs of the scene of the crime on yellow cardboard, over-sharp shots of the murder victim’s shattered head. Leinen was just about to protest when the older officer told his colleague that the pictures weren’t necessary; Collini was confessing to the crime anyway. He tried to pick up the folder, but Collini had put his large hands on it and was pressing it down on the desk. When the older officer let go of the folder, Collini pulled it towards him and opened it. Leaning forward, he looked at every single picture. He took his time. No one in the room said a word. When he had finished, he closed the folder and pushed it back over the desk. ‘He’s dead,’ said Collini, looking down at the desk. Then he told them how he had pretended to be a journalist and fixed a date for an interview with Meyer’s secretary, and how he had then gone into the hotel suite and killed him. Asked about the murder weapon, he said he had bought it at a flea market in Italy.
Leinen sat beside his client, now and then correcting a phrase that the police officers were about to put on record, but otherwise he drew little stick men on a notepad. He had explained to Collini that a defendant could always keep silent, but if he confessed to the crime the judge had to take it into account and pass a more lenient sentence. That didn’t apply to murder, for which the sentence was always life. But in a case of manslaughter the confession was a help.
After two hours the police officers had no more questions to ask about the crime itself. Leinen got to his feet and told them that the interrogation was now over.
‘If you don’t mind, we were about to come to the heart of the matter – your client’s motive, Herr Leinen. We have to talk about the motive,’ said the older police officer.