"Honestly. If it is going to be like this, would it not be better simply to let him out?"

The prison officer had shown the visitor as far as the detention centre's interview room, and he said it to the prosecution investigator as though the whole thing were a nuisance to him.

"He as good as lives here. The man treats the place like his own front room."

He looked round the room wearily and went on.

"Just lift the detention and be done with it. It is we who suffer for it."

"Do you suppose we would not like to? But let him out and people will not stand for it. So bear with it a little. Once the trial result comes down he will be moved elsewhere."

The investigator talked him round, and looked toward the interview room.

Ever since Sang-jong Lee had gone into the detention centre, one interview room had become his private room entirely.

He called in his lawyers and his acquaintances one after another to use it, and — however he had got round those above him — took his meals there besides.

Here was a man who ought to have been minding how things looked, using a place of confinement as his own house. Those responsible could not help feeling their blood dry up day after day.

"What he can have to say every single time, I cannot imagine."

The prison officer shook his head, unable to make sense of it.

"But the strange thing is, his wife has not come once."

"It is hardly a pleasant place to invite her to."

The investigator gave him a slight smile, glanced once at the interview room, and said,

"Let us go. Once he is in there it takes a good while, does it not? Let us at least go and eat."

"Yes. Very good. What was on the canteen menu today…"

And while the two of them grumbled in this way over the use of the room, inside it Seong-ho Kim was putting a question to Sang-jong Lee and Chang-jong Lee, and there was…