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the tone of one used to better organisation of a public event, ‘Which camera am I on?’
    [‘ The shit, listen to him, the bastard .’
    ‘ We don’t buy it, Stoyo, we don’t buy it any more .’
    ‘ I hope he dies in front of us. Live on TV .’
    ‘ Calm down, Atanas. You’ll croak if you go on like that .’]
    ‘Make your statement.’
    Petkanov nodded again, more in self-consultation than acknowledgement of another’s instructions. ‘I do not recognise the authority of this court. It does not have the power to try me. I was illegally arrested, illegally imprisoned, illegally interrogated and am now before a court which is illegally constituted. However …’ and here he allowed himself a pause, and a quick smile, knowing that his ‘However’ had cut off an interruption from the bench, ‘… However, I will answer your questions provided they are relevant.’
    He paused again, allowing the Prosecutor General time to wonder if that was the end of his statement or not. ‘And I will answer your questions for a simple reason. I have been here before. Not in this very courtroom, true. But more than fifty years ago, long before I became helmsman to the nation. With other comrades I was helping organise the Anti-Fascist Struggle in Velpen. We were protesting against the imprisonment of railway workers. It was a peaceful democratic protest but of course it was attacked by the bourgeois-landlord police. I was beaten up, so were all the comrades. In prison we discussed how we were to proceed. Some of the comrades argued that we should refuse to answer the court on the grounds that we had been illegally arrested and illegally imprisoned and that the evidence against us was being fabricated by the police. But I convinced them that it was more vital to warn the nation about the dangers of Fascism and the preparations for war by the imperialist powers. And that is what we did. As you know, we were sentenced to hard labour for our defence of the proletariat.
    ‘And now,’ he went on, ‘I look around this court and I am not surprised. I have been here before. And therefore, once again, I consent to answer your questions, provided they are relevant.’
    ‘You are Stoyo Petkanov?’ the prosecutor repeated, with an emphatic weariness, as if it were not his fault that justice required him to pose every question in quadruplicate.
    ‘Yes, indeed, we have established that.’
    ‘Then, being Stoyo Petkanov, you will know that your conviction by the court in Velpen on 21st October 1935 was for criminal damage to property, theft of an iron railing, and criminal assault with the said stolen item on a member of the national police.’
    When the camera cut back to Petkanov, Atanas took a deep puff of his cigarette and exhaled through narrow, pushed-out lips. The smoke hit the screen and flattened against it, drifting away. It was better than spitting, thought Atanas. I spit in your face with smoke .

    Peter Solinsky had not been first choice for the post of prosecutor general. His experience was largely academic, and only partly in criminal law. But he knew after his first interview that he had done well. Other, more qualified candidates had played politics, suggested conditions; some, after consulting their families, had discovered previous commitments. But Solinsky had manifestly wanted the job; he came with specific ideas about the framing of charges; and he boldly proposed that his own years of party membership might even be an advantage in trying to ensnare Petkanov. Set a fox to catch a wolf, he had quoted, and the minister had smiled. In this slim, anxious-eyed professor he identified a pragmatism and an aggression which he thought necessary in a prosecutor general.
    The appointment came as little surprise to Peter. Hislife, when he examined it, seemed to consist of long periods of caution followed by moments of decisiveness, even recklessness, in which he got what he wanted. He had been a dutiful child, a good student;