“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 Karen Borg had moved over to Håkon Sand’s chair, and Håkon had discreetly withdrawn.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.