Punishment

Book 0: The Crime Trilogy

by Ferdinand von Schirach

Genres: Legal Thrillers

Synopsis

A young lawyer puts aside her sense of justice to succeed at her new firm.

A man who values silence is driven to murder by his noisy neighbours.

A cheated wife seeks revenge.

How do you decide what punishment fits the crime?

Our narrator is a man you'd never want to meet unless you really needed him. A nameless criminal defence lawyer, he coolly narrates the fate of twelve characters who cross his path. In spare, gripping prose, he tells their stories, uncovering the loneliness and alienation, desire and desperation which drive their choices and shape the consequences they face.

Drawn from Ferdinand von Schirach's eminent career as a criminal defence lawyer, Punishment masterfully treads the line between fiction and truth, each meticulously crafted story crackling with white-knuckle suspense and vivid characters who stay with you long after the final page.

Release date: August 18, 2022

Publisher: John Murray Press

Print pages: 288

Sample

The Lay Judge

 

Katharina was raised in the Upper Black Forest. Eleven farms at an altitude of 1,100 metres, with a chapel and a grocery that opened only on Mondays. They lived in the last building along, a three-storey farmhouse with a low-lying roof. It was her mother’s family home. Beyond the farmhouse lay the forest; beyond the forest lay the rocks; beyond the rocks lay yet more forest. She was the only child in the village.

Her father was the deputy director of a paper mill, her mother a teacher. Both worked down in the city. At the age of eleven, Katharina often spent time at her father’s workplace after school. She sat in the office as he negotiated prices, discounts and delivery dates. She listened as he made phone calls and explained everything to her so that she understood. In the school holidays, he took her on business trips. She packed his bags, laid out his suits, and waited at the hotel for him to return from meetings. At thirteen, she was half a head taller than him; slender, with a fair complexion and hair that was almost black. Her father called her Snow White, and laughed when someone told him he had a very young wife.

Two weeks after Katharina’s fourteenth birthday, the first snow of the year fell. It was very bright and very cold. New wood shingles lay stacked in front of the house; her father was planning to mend the roof before the onset of winter. As usual, her mother drove her to school. There was a truck up ahead of them. Her mother hadn’t spoken all morning.

‘Your father’s fallen in love with someone else,’ she said now. There was snow on the trees and snow on the rocks. They overtook the truck, which had TROPICAL FRUIT written along its side, each letter a different colour. ‘With his secretary,’ said her mother. She was driving too fast. Katharina knew the secretary; she had always been friendly. All she could think was that her father hadn’t said anything to her. She dug her nails into her school bag until it hurt.

Her father moved to a house in the city. Katharina didn’t see him after that.

Six months later, the windows of the farmhouse were boarded up, the pipes drained and the electricity turned off. Katharina and her mother moved to Bonn, where they had relatives.

It took Katharina a year to stop speaking in dialect. She wrote political essays for the school newspaper. When she was sixteen, a local newspaper printed one of her pieces for the first time. She scrutinised everything that she did.

Because she got top marks in her final school exams, she had to give the graduation speech in assembly. It was an uncomfortable experience. Later, at the party, she had too much to drink. She danced with a boy from her class. She kissed him and felt his erection through his jeans. He wore imitation horn-rimmed glasses and had damp hands. She sometimes thought about other men – self-confident, mature men who turned their heads to look at her and told her she was pretty. But they stayed beyond her reach, too far from what she knew.

The young man drove her home. She masturbated him in the car outside her house while she thought about the mistakes she had made when giving her speech. Then she went upstairs. In the bathroom, she used some nail scissors to cut her wrist again. It bled more than usual. When she tried to find a dressing, little bottles and tubes fell into the sink. ‘I’m damaged goods,’ she thought.

 

After leaving school, she moved into a two-room apartment with a school friend and began to study Political Science. After a couple of semesters she got a job as a teaching assistant. At weekends she worked as an underwear model for department store catalogues.

In her fourth semester, she interned for a member of the State Parliament. He came from the Eifel region; his parents had a fashion business there. It was his first term in office. He looked like an older version of her earlier friends: still completely self-absorbed, more boy than man, he was short and stocky with a round, amiable face. She didn’t think he was cut out for politics, but kept that to herself. On a tour of his constituency, he introduced her to his friends. He’s proud of me, she thought. At dinner, after discussing his schedule for the following day, he leaned over the table and kissed her. They went back to his hotel room. He was so aroused that he came straight away. She did her best to soothe his embarrassment.

She held on to her apartment, but almost always stayed at his place. Sometimes they went away, but only for short breaks as he was very busy. She was tactful when correcting his speeches; she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. When they slept together, he lost control of his body. She found that moving.

 

She didn’t celebrate her exam results; she told her friends and family she was too tired. She was already in bed when her boyfriend arrived home late after an event. He was wearing the tie she had given him. He opened a bottle of champagne that he had brought back and asked her to marry him. He stood by the edge of the bed. She didn’t have to give an answer right away, he said with a glass in his hand.

That night she went into the bathroom, sat on the floor of the shower, and let the hot water run over her until her skin was practically scalded. It’ll always be there, she thought. She had been aware of it even at school – she’d called it background radiation then, like the microwaves found throughout the universe. She cried silently, then the worst of it passed and she felt ashamed.

‘We should visit my parents next week,’ he said at breakfast.

‘I’m not coming,’ she said.

Then she talked about his freedom and about her freedom, and about everything they still wanted to do. She talked at length about all those things, which were neither true nor relevant to their situation. The heat of the midsummer day came through the open windows. She no longer knew what was right or what was wrong, and at a certain point there was nothing more to say. She rose, and cleared the table that he had laid. She felt wounded and empty and very tired.

She got back into bed. When she heard him crying in the next room, she got up again and went to him. They slept together one last time, in a way that suggested it meant something, but it no longer meant anything and wasn’t a commitment.

That afternoon she packed her things into two plastic bags. She put the key to his apartment on the table.

‘I’m not the person I want to be,’ she said. He didn’t look at her.

She walked past the university, then over the scorched grass of the Hofgarten and up the tree-lined avenue to the palace. She sat on a bench and drew up her legs. Her shoes were covered in dust. The sphere on the palace roof shone oxide green. The wind turned to the east, grew stronger, and it started to rain.

Her apartment was muggy. She undressed, lay on the bed and fell instantly asleep. When she woke up, she heard the rain and the wind and the bells of the nearby church. Then she fell asleep again, and when she awoke a second time it was very quiet.

 

She started working for a political foundation. Her job was to look after delegates during conferences – politicians, businessmen, lobbyists. The hotels smelled of liquid soap; at breakfast, the men flipped their ties over their shoulders so they wouldn’t get stained. Later, she had only vague memories of this period.

Gradually, things improved. The chairman of the foundation recognised her abilities: people liked her and, because she was very reserved, said more than they intended. The chairman made her his advisor. She accompanied him, wrote press releases, counselled him, suggested strategies. The chairman said that she was very good, but she thought she was worthless, a kind of imposter, her work insignificant. They sometimes slept together when they were on trips; it seemed to go with the territory.

After three years of living like this, her body began to ache. She kept losing weight. When she had time off, she was too exhausted to meet up with anyone. Every appointment, every phone call, every email felt too much for her. Her mobile lay by her bed at night.

In a gap between two conferences, she needed to have a wisdom tooth extracted. She broke down at the dental surgery, and because she couldn’t stop crying, the dentist injected her with a sedative. It had too strong an effect: she lost consciousness and only came round once she was in hospital.

She sat up. She was wearing just a hospital gown, which was open at the back. A yellow curtain was drawn across the window. Later, a psychologist came to see her. He was calm and gentle. She talked with him for a long time. He said that she reacted too strongly to others; she needed to take care of herself and to understand that she was her own person. Things would end badly if she kept going the same way.

A week later, she handed in her resignation at the foundation.

 

Four months after her breakdown, the chairman called her. He asked whether she was feeling better. A company in Berlin was looking for a press spokeswoman, and he had recommended her. Young people, a software company. Perhaps she’d be interested; either way, he wished her all the best.

She knew that she needed to work again; her days had long since lost their rhythm. She got in touch with the company and flew to Berlin a week later. She had often visited the city, but only really knew the government quarter, and the inside of conference rooms and air-conditioned bars.

The head of the company was younger than her, with very white teeth and light blue eyes. He showed her the app they had developed. He gave her a tour of the office; the staff were also very young, most of them staring at their screens.

That evening at the hotel, she pushed an armchair in front of the open window, took off her shoes, and put her feet up on the windowsill. The trees in front of the building were glowing alternately green and red from the nearby traffic lights. In an apartment across the street, someone put. . .