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Motsamai that way, he can find an answer within its context.
    Could be an advantage. If there’s one of the black judges on the bench.
    His voice is dry: that he should be thinking like this. Ashamed. And why should such a calculation come to mind—a black judge inclined to think better of an accused because he has chosen a black advocate—when we are not talking here of a criminal, a murderer, appearing before him. Where does such a thought come from, for God’s sake!
    But do you know anything about him? Maybe he’s just another good friend.
    We can make some enquiries. I’ll talk to someone at the top, I’ve met him a few times, he’ll understand although it’s not usual to expect one advocate to pass an opinion on another, I suppose.
    Damn what’s usual. I’m trying to think. What else should we be doing, Harald? Just sat there—chatting. Chatting. You might at least have assured him we’ll pay for the lawyers, anything. How do we know whether fees didn’t come into the choice? These senior counsel cost a fortune a day. If he thinks he’ll have to find the money himself, it might affect everything.
    He knows it’s not a question of money. He knows he can depend on us. Not the time or the place to make some kind of magnanimous announcement.
    I just thought you’d say … his father … oh all right, not about money, something—
    All you could think of was to prescribe a sleeping pill.
    I know. Well at least it was some sort of message that if he
wasn’t being well treated I’d have pull with whoever the medical officer is. But something —
    You tell me what we should have said to him.
    She hit her thighs with her fists.
    That we believe him.
    When he says what? He has said nothing. We know nothing. I read the record of circumstantial evidence. The man is dead. A gun in the mud. What does that mean?
    While he is speaking she is hammering across his words. That we believe in him! That we believe in him! That there’s no possibility, ever, in this world, that we would not! That’s what wasn’t there, wasn’t said—
    He was checked in obedience to a traffic light. His hand went down to shift the gear to neutral and she moved slightly to avoid contact with the hand. He waited, with the red light, then spoke.
    Believe?
    You know.
    There was no response.
    That we believe he could never do such a thing and we’re right about that.
    He was carried along with the traffic as if the car drove itself. His head was stirring, almost weaving, in some unshareable conflict, intolerable reluctance.
    Claudia—he knew he should qualify the formal use of her name with some intimacy, but the old epithets, the darlings and dearests were out of place in what had to be stated, hard. Begin again.
    We don’t even know if he accepts that we believe in him.
    Accept? Why should he not? What’s accepting got to do with it!
    He cannot allow it to become real to them both by pronouncing it, the father’s voice enunciating it to the mother, but it is there, secreted in the car between them as he arrives at the security gates of the townhouse complex: Because he knows he did what was done. That is why nothing was said in that half-hour in the
prison visiting room; the premise we were there on does not exist. That is what our son was conveying to us. That is what there is to believe.
    He presses the electronic gadget which lets them into their home but provides no refuge.

T he Board of his company has its own prominent firm of legal advisers, one of whom sits on the Board. Harald approaches him for his opinion on all legal matters.
    In ordinary circumstances. But he can do now what he would not find proper in ordinary circumstances. He can use the slight acquaintance at, public dinners to importune one of the prestigious figures in the legal profession for a confidential opinion of the capability, reputation and status of the