“What exactly do you want me to do with them?”
The summer intern was standing in the doorway to Sophia’s office. He was holding a stack of email printouts four inches high. Sophia had asked him to go through her in-box. He’d made a face as if she’d asked him to scrub the bathroom on his knees. But he hadn’t dared to refuse.
“I’d like you to pass on the ones I need to answer,” Sophia said with as much calm as she could muster.
“And how am I supposed to know which ones those are?”
“If it comes from another law firm, a government authority, a client, or the courts, I want it right away.”
He handed over six sheets of paper.
“Thanks,” she managed to say. “Is the rest about Stig Ahlin?”
“Uh-huh. And quite a few ads too.”
“Did you read the ones about Stig Ahlin?”
He nodded and handed that bundle to her. Sophia shook her head and pushed it aside.
“Can you give me a summary, please?” she asked. “If I wanted to read them myself, I would have.”
“‘How the hell could you, you goddamn witch?’” The intern curled his upper lip. His capacity for empathy was impressive. Reluctantly, he went on. “In summary, that is. And you got the occasional congratulations. And a few that say they know who really murdered Katrin.”
“Did they seem credible?” Sophia took the opportunity to glance through the six emails that didn’t have to do with Stig Ahlin.
The intern snorted. “Two of them claim they killed Katrin Björk themselves. Because they were possessed by evil spirits. Or because Katrin Björk was possessed by evil spirits. One claims Breivik did it. Another said it was the prime minister. The rest are in a similar vein.”
“Okay.” Sophia looked at her watch. “Thanks. You can set them there.” She pointed at the pile of unread material on her visitor’s chair. “And delete the emails from the server, please. Otherwise it won’t be long before it crashes.”
The young man gave a stiff nod, put down his printouts, and walked off. He closed the door behind him, only a little too fast and a little too hard. He didn’t quite dare to slam it.
The summer intern returned to the reception desk. He plunked himself down in the parental-leave secretary’s seat at the main computer.
She was so bossy, that Sophia Weber. So smug that half as much smugness would have been enough for at least five female assistants. She didn’t look at him when she spoke, and she cut him off anytime he used more than three words per sentence.
This was definitely not how he’d imagined a summer job at a law firm. They hadn’t even given him an office. People who visited the firm thought he was a receptionist. That he sat there answering the phone, watering the flowers, opening the door, and booking appointments for the partners. Him. A guy who’d received an A on every exam since he started his legal studies, who was scheduled to go on an Erasmus exchange program to King’s College in London. Who certainly had no intention of wasting two years of his life clerking in the lower courts but could have done it if he’d wanted to. His grades were good, really good — he could have gotten a clerking position anywhere in Sweden. It was just those high-end business law firms who sent back his applications without even bringing him in for an interview.
“Criminal law,” he’d said to his classmates to explain why he wouldn’t be working on Norrmalmstorg that summer. “That’s real law, what real lawyers do. The only ones who go to the business firms are people who couldn’t get jobs at Goldman Sachs.”
But clearly he had ended up at the wrong place.
Each morning when he arrived at the office, he was assigned a fresh batch of pointless tasks. First, he’d had to write a couple of case briefs for Lars Gustafsson. Presumably no one would ever even read them. Then they’d asked him to write a lecture on legal ethics for Lars to give at the Swedish Bar Association. And now this. Going through Sophia Weber’s email account and cleaning out crap from nutjobs. And he wasn’t even earning anything at this stupid gig. Flipping burgers at McDonald’s paid better.
Never again, he thought, opening Sophia Weber’s email account. Never again.
He clicked through quickly. But only one at a time; he better not delete an important work email by accident, that woman would probably go mad. Because you could tell by looking at her she was unbalanced. She was clearly the type to shout and go on rampages if something didn’t go her way. Not that he’d seen this for himself, but it was obvious that she was capable of it. He clicked on. It was incredible that people had time to sit around writing this sort of thing.
At least he’d increased his vocabulary. If it was, in fact, a perk to learn a ton of innovative words for sex organs — it wasn’t as if he could include it on a CV.
He felt his heart growing lighter as the number of emails in the in-box decreased.
How does Sophia Weber stand it? he thought. No wonder she’s so grumpy. It couldn’t be easy to be the attorney who managed to land a dream case like Stig Ahlin’s and then receive these sorts of reactions. Tinfoil-hat types who said they knew who shot Olof Palme or who had killed Katrin Björk. Those clowns. How had they even learned how to turn on a computer? But Gustafsson & Weber should have a secretary for this stuff. They should be using him for real tasks, important tasks.
Anyway, he was almost done. He could call that girl he’d met out at Sturecompagniet last night. She’d been decently impressed when he told her he was working at a law firm over the summer. He’d also told her why he preferred criminal law instead of that fill-in-the-blanks jurisprudence they did over at Norrmalmstorg. He could tell her he was working on the Stig Ahlin case, but they’d decided to finish early for once. She would like that.
The in-box was almost empty when he clicked on an email from Ida Sörensson.
“I need to meet with you,” the brief note said. “There’s something I want to tell you, it’s really important. I know things about Stig Ahlin and the murder of Katrin Björk.”
She had included her phone number and address.
The intern hesitated. Had he noticed that email before? The name didn’t mean anything to him.
Whatever, he thought. Who killed Palme? I know! I was possessed by the devil, and he told me. Naturally, whatever she wanted to share would be along those lines. Fuck it. A copy of the email was in the pile he’d given to Sophia too. She had a copy of all the crazy emails. They couldn’t accuse him of being careless. So he clicked the trash symbol. The computer made a crunching noise.
That’s that, he mumbled to himself, pleased. It was only five o’clock — time for a beer. Or a drink, if the girl from yesterday wanted to tag along. If she did, it would have to be drinks. Although in that case he’d have to go home first to put on a tie. Lawyers wore ties. He would make a date with her, hurry in a few minutes late, and loosen his tie as he sat down. And he would tell her how they were in the process of preparing Stig Ahlin’s case for the court of appeals. But no details — she would understand, client-attorney privilege and all. She would definitely like that.
He scrolled through the in-box, selected the rest of the emails and erased them as well. Then he turned off the computer.
Law. A noble occupation.