Something came back to me. I had only just started at Karchinger and Kunze when I took on the defence of a guy I knew at school and university. He had gone back to our school and convinced several of the students to take part in a demonstration. He was leading them from the schoolyard when a teacher stepped in their way, there was a scuffle, the teacher fell and was injured. Did my old schoolmate have no money for an attorney? Did he challenge me by saying that defending him would be too much for me? Was he flattering me, that I would be the perfect choice to defend him? In any case, I took him on. I did it pro bono, informing only the firm manager, not Karchinger and Kunze. But they caught wind of it and they were furious. I was defending someone who had incited a riot – what would our corporate and industry clients think? I had to give up the case, and although I found a replacement, the prosecution won. The fact that I gave up the case right after the teacher was admitted to hospital, and the defendant faced conviction on an even more serious charge, made it look as though I was distancing myself from my old schoolmate. That did nothing to help his defence.

Would I have obtained an acquittal? I was confident; I wanted to win my first and presumably only criminal case, so I had hired a private investigator and discovered that the furious janitor had started the scuffle, and that the teacher had previously suffered epileptic fits. I had told all this to my replacement, but he had not been good enough. Perhaps someone else would have been better – and more expensive. I had promised my former schoolmate that I would pay the costs.

He could not have afforded the lawyer I found him, let alone a better one. I owed him nothing. We had been friends in school and during the first few semesters at university, but that was a long time ago. He was an eternal student. I did not want to idle away my life, so soon we had nothing in common. At the time, sentences in political cases were draconian, and he was sent to prison without probation. Maybe it was not so bad for him, maybe it didn’t make a difference to him whether he idled away his days inside prison or outside. I didn’t visit him in prison, and he never got in touch again. What became of him?