‘And?’
‘…and you can extricate yourself from this trial without any difficulty. The Meyer Works will pay for a mandated defence counsel, we already have someone in mind who’d do it. Then you’d be automatically released from the case and rid of your brief.’ Baumann’s voice hadn’t changed, it still sounded friendly. The big boat was so close now that you could hear its passengers through the mist. A woman cried out aloud and then laughed. The navigation lights lit up the landing stage, and were reflected in Baumann’s glasses.
Baumann leaned forward and placed his hand on Leinen’s arm. Now he was talking to him almost as if he were a child. ‘Don’t you understand, Herr Leinen? I like you, you’re just starting out, you have your whole career ahead of you. Don’t spoil it all now.’
‘Please, Herr Baumann, just enjoy the party. This isn’t the place for such a discussion.’
Baumann’s voice sounded forced, as if he were speaking under great stress. ‘Listen, we don’t know what you’ve been digging up in Ludwigsburg… we don’t want to know, either. But we’re anxious for this trial to come to a swift end. Every day in the glare of publicity is damaging to the company.’
‘I can’t help that.’
‘Yes, you can.’ Baumann’s breath came noisily. ‘Make no plea in court, just let the trial come to an end. Quietly, do you see?’
‘Why should I do that?’
‘We’d speak to the court ourselves and explain that we’d agree to a lenient sentence.’
‘I don’t think that has anything to do with it.’
‘And in addition we’d pay compensation for your client’s cooperation.’
‘You’d do what…?’
‘We’d pay. A considerable sum, to bring the trial to an end quickly.’
It was a moment before Leinen could take it in. His mouth was dry. They had decided to buy a man’s past.
‘You’d pay me to refrain from defending Collini properly? Do you really mean that seriously?’
‘It’s the suggestion of the board,’ said Baumann.
‘Does Johanna Meyer know about this?’
‘No, it’s a matter between the company and you.’
All this could only mean that they were afraid, thought Leinen. He had got things right, not that knowing it gave him any satisfaction.
‘Come on…’ The beam of a small searchlight on the boat briefly fell on Baumann’s red face. ‘Look at it this way: you have chambers at the back of a building, your car is fifteen years old, and you’re wasting your abilities on small-time drug pushers and brawls in bars. We’re on good terms with a bank that happens to have a problem in Düsseldorf at the moment; it looks like being the biggest insider-dealing trial of the post-war era. If you like you can represent one of the defendants. You’d earn good money: the daily rate is 2,500 euros a day, plus additional expenses. The main trial will last a year, at least a hundred days. We’ll help you if you like. We can also offer you other briefs. Think about it, Herr Leinen. What you do now will determine the rest of your life…’
Baumann went on, but Leinen had stopped listening. The mist was getting thicker, a wind rose. He heard the cry of a mallard in flight overhead, but he couldn’t see the bird. He interrupted Baumann. ‘I’m not accepting your offer.’
‘What?’ Baumann wasn’t pretending, he was genuinely astonished.
‘You don’t get it at all,’ said Leinen quietly, getting to his feet. ‘Goodbye.’ He walked over the landing stage and back to the marquee. He heard Baumann call something after him. The large boat on the lake turned, its lights illuminating the bank. A few guests in dinner jackets and evening dresses stood outside the marquee, raising their glasses to the passengers on the boat. There was a smell of diesel fuel and decay.
Leinen passed the marquee and went up the steps to the house. Mattinger was standing in a brightly lit room, his arm round his girlfriend. She was pointing to something or other out on the lake, Mattinger was looking in a different direction. Leinen wondered whether to say goodbye to him, but there were too many people in there for his liking. He went to his car. When he unlocked it, the firework display was going off. He sat on the bonnet of the car smoking, and watched for a while.
The air was musty at home in his apartment. He opened the window, undressed and lay down on his bed. ‘A defence lawyer defends his client, no more and no less,’ Mattinger had said. That was supposed to help, but it didn’t. Then he thought of Johanna, and of the trial of Fabrizio Collini, which wouldn’t really begin until tomorrow.
14
It was the seventh day of the trial. The presiding judge had the resumption of the trial announced, stated for the record that everyone was present, and said she was glad that the lay judge was better again.
‘For all involved, I will make the following remark,’ she said. ‘Counsel for the defence told me yesterday that there would be testimony provided by his client, and as we have nothing else on the agenda today, I would like to hear it now.’ She turned to Leinen. ‘Is that still how things stand?’
‘Yes, your honour.’
‘Very well, Herr Leinen, you have the floor.’ The presiding judge leaned back.
Leinen drank a sip of water. He looked at Johanna. He had told her on the phone yesterday that today would be terrible for her, but there was no alternative. Leinen stood there, calm and upright at his place in front of the lectern. He began reading, slowly, softly, speaking almost without emphasis. Everyone in the courtroom sensed the young lawyer’s concentration as he spoke in his first major trial. Apart from his voice, nothing could be heard in the courtroom except the sound as he turned the pages. He seldom raised his eyes, and when he did he looked at every one of the judges in turn. Leinen used the dry language of the law, saying only what he had heard from Collini and what he had found in the files in Ludwigsburg. But as he read out the statement, as he presented the horror of it sentence by sentence, the courtroom itself changed. People, landscapes and towns came into view, the sentences became images, the images came to life, and much later one of those who had heard Leinen said he had been able to smell the fields and meadows of Collini’s childhood. However, something else, something different, was happening to Caspar Leinen himself: for years on end he had listened to his professors, he had learned the law and its interpretation, he had tried to get a good grasp of criminal proceedings – yet only today, only in his own first plea to the court, did he understand that those proceedings were really about something quite different: abused human beings.
‘Ite, missa est – go in peace.’ The priest’s voice was rough and friendly.
‘Deo gratias – thanks be to God,’ responded the eleven children in chorus. They stayed put for a moment, not daring to run away yet. Of course the two-hour confirmation class on Sunday after church was always a pain. The old priest could speak well, some of his stories weren’t at all bad, but he was strict, and Fabrizio had already felt the force of his cane several times. At last the old man opened the door, laughed, and said, ‘Go on, then, off with you.’ The children ran along the schoolhouse corridor and out into the cold November day. Fabrizio got on his bicycle. ‘See you tomorrow!’ he shouted to the others, and pedalled away. He had seventeen kilometres to ride back to his father’s farm. Once he was home he’d take this idiotic suit off at once and put on his robber outfit; maybe there’d still be time for him to cycle to the old mill and meet the others.
On that day, 14 November 1943, Fabrizio Collini was nine years old. He was lord and master of one cow, four pigs, eleven chickens and two cats on his family’s farm, he was an outstanding military commander, cycle-racing champion and circus artiste. He had already seen a crashed plane and two dead soldiers; he owned a pair of field glasses, a bicycle and a pocketknife with a stag-horn handle. He also had a sister; she was six years older than him, and most of the time he couldn’t stand her. But what mattered now was that he was hungry.