by Tim Parks
That is all,’ the pubblico ministero told the judges. ‘I need nothing more from this witness.’
‘La difesa?” the presiding judge asked. There was a shuffling of chairs as one man sat and another stood. Apparently one of the two defence lawyers was going to do the questioning for both. At the back, someone got up and slipped out. Inwardly bracing himself, Morris allowed his eye to stray over the forty or fifty people in court to see if there was anyone really dangerous there. Like Stan. No, thank God. Though Morris was surprised to see the ageing Don Carlo in his cassock and crucifix. He shot the man a quick smile of scars and sorrow and got something wearily understanding in exchange. Then he turned his attention to the new voice addressing him.
The defence lawyer was tall, young, rather handsome actually, in that Roman way of hooked nose, proud forehead and dark eyes. And this was annoying because Morris generally found it easier to feel on top and score points with the ugly and unfashionable -Bobo, Genital Giacomo back in Rimini, Marangoni. But never mind. Apparently the man was asking about Morris’s arrival in Italy, his first contacts with the Trevisan family. Replying, Morris made sure to be at his most disarming, his voice charmingly smooth and as correctly Italian as he could make it. One of the young lady judges, he noticed, dyed blonde and with the features of a precocious child, was looking at him with some interest, despite his mauled face. Or perhaps because of it. When an usher drew the microphone close to him, he had the pleasing sensation of being at the centre of attention, even sympathy.
‘Naturalmente,’ the lawyer suddenly went on the attack, ‘when you first went to see the Trevisan family you told them a whole pack of lies.’
Morris was silent, wondering if his stitched-up face was properly conveying the amiability and lack of concern he felt.
‘Allora?’ the lawyer insisted.
‘I’m sorry, but you didn’t actually ask me a question. I can’t answer if you don’t ask me a question.’
‘Is it true that you told a pack of lies, about your job, your family, your financial situation, when you first went to visit the Trevisan family?’
‘Yes,’ Morris said, and added slyly: ‘You can assume I would have objected, if it wasn’t true.’
The more pertinent truth was that he was almost glad they hadn’t found the car yet with its treasure trove of dead skin and used johnnies, courtesy of Paola and Kwame, since it gave him this opportunity to shine, though it might be unwise to let his enjoyment become too obvious.
‘From which we might infer that you frequently tell lies.’
‘You might, but you would be mistaken,’ Morris said, but stopped there. He was in no hurry to justify himself. He would wait for the lawyer to insist on knowing why he had told those lies, and then very politely, sweetly, he would tell him. In fact he would turn to the prettier of the two young lady judges as he did so, his eyes shining.
Now.
‘Signori giudici, I was at the time deeply in love with the youngest sister of the family, Massimina Trevisan. In my eagerness to please the mother so as to be allowed to keep seeing the girl, I rather foolishly told her the kind of thing I thought she wanted to hear. I was younger and rather naive. She found out and I was, quite understandably, er, rejected.’
A ghost of a smile passed, against her will, over the pretty judge’s face. Morris made no attempt to look at other people in the courtroom to see what effect this testimony was having on them. Rather irritatingly the prosecution stood up at this point and complained that he couldn’t see the relevance of these questions. The defence should not stray from what was pertinent to the crime In question.
The other judge, presiding, overruled the objection. It was clear, he said, that the defence was calling Into question the reliability of one of the key witnesses and Initial suspects, the person who had come across the scene of the crime and informed the police. This was perfectly legitimate. Morris looked up at the ceiling and inadvertently caught a glimpse of painted buttocks as If seen by someone about to be sat on. It brought back a shiver of unpleasant memories. But on the far side, above the busy court typist, there was a bosom worthy of Mimi’s (and Antonella’s): nipples cream and chocolaty, emerging from a fleece of cloud, though cut off at the neck. Morris waited.
‘And do you know how the family found out you were lying?’
‘I presume they checked up on something I said.’
To be exact, Roberto Posenato “checked up” and you have resented it ever since.’
‘No,’ Morris said, ‘no, at this point, I’m afraid I must object. I have no Idea who checked up. I didn’t even think about it. Nor did or do I bear any grudges towards anyone. After all, it was only a matter of weeks later that the family was to be shattered by the tragedy of Massimina’s kidnap. It would have been churlish indeed to bear a grudge against the family after such a terrible thing had happened to them.’
His Italian, he thought, was remarkably eloquent today. He hadn’t made a single mistake yet as far as he could see.
The defence lawyer said drily: ‘Meester Duckworrth, it would seem that a remarkable number of “terrible things” have happened to the Trevisan family since they met you.’
Morris closed his eyes. He kept his face perfectly Impassive, but at the same time managed to communicate all the self-control required to keep it like that, to accept this gibe without reacting. He felt a scar tingle and tremble above his eye. Eventually he said: ‘Yes, Massimina, with whom I was very much in love, was kidnapped and killed. Her mother died almost two years later at an old age and of natural causes. Bobo Posenato, my brother-in-law, with whom I had a very successful working relationship, as the accounts of Trevisan Wines can plainly demonstrate, disappeared shortly after firing the two men now being tried. More recently my wife died of gas poisoning in unfortunate circumstances which the press don’t seem to be able to get enough of, victim of a racist attack on her lover, one of the immigrants I had tried to help.’ He paused. ‘I must apologise to the court if I do not appear to be as moved by all this as they would imagine, if I am not expressing my grief openly, but the truth is that the whole series of events of the last months, including, I may say, my own arrest and then again the accident which led to my face being mauled, has left me in a state of total shock, completely drained. I simply do not know how to react any more. In fact I am only able to be here at all thanks to the help of considerable doses of tranquillisers.’
This was not actually true, but one had to be willing to lose a little pride if it served. Anyway, he could hardly imagine them giving him a blood test.
The defence lawyer said: ‘As your catalogue suggests, there are still a great many mysteries to be resolved in the Trevisan family, Meester Duckworrth.’
Morris said sadly: ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t agree more.’
There was a brief pause in the fray. Morris smiled at his judge, waiting for the ball to be thrown back in.
‘Signor Duckworth,’ the Arabs’ defence pressed on, ‘both your wife, Paola, and your sister-in-law Antonella Trevisan made statements to the police to the effect that your relationship with Roberto Posenato was not of the easiest.’
Morris was unperturbed. ‘We disagreed about certain aspects of the company’s management.’ He tried to explain: ‘Of course, it’s difficult in a company when it’s not clear who is boss. Obviously there’s a certain amount of jockeying for position. However, apart from this we got on famously. The barista at the pasticceria in Quinto will testify that we frequently went there for our cappuccino and chatted quite happily together.’
‘Meester Duckworrth, on the morning of the crime, your mother-in-law died; you rushed to her house, where, as your sister-in-law has testified, she found you looking through various drawers. Perhaps you could tell us what, you were looking for, Meester Duckworrth.’
Morris found that the repetition of his ugly name was beginning to grate. But he was determined to show no signs of irritation. He had often noticed that, not having the socio-linguistic cont
ext in which to put it, Italians had no sense of how ungracious a name it was. As to an Englishman a name like Chiavagatti would mean nothing at all. Perhaps in the end that was why he had decided to live abroad.
He sighed. To my shame,’ he admitted, ‘I was looking for Signora Trevisan’s will. Immediately Antonella, my sister-in-law, came into the room, I appreciated how awfully insensitive of me this was.’
‘Perhaps you could explain to the court why you were in such a hurry to find that will,’
‘My wife had insisted I find it.’
‘Ah, you were not looking for it for yourself.’
Morris hesitated. Then he said: ‘One of my great mistakes in life was that I was always too concerned to please my wife.’
‘Who, if I may remind the court, was the sister of the girl you were “in love with” only a year before you married her.’
Morris closed his eyes. There was a definite hush in the room. Quietly, blindly, between gritted teeth, he said: ‘When I spoke about this to my psychoanalyst, he explained to me quite feasibly that my problem was that I was trying to make up to my wife for the fact that I had loved her sister more.’ He paused. ‘However, if this information is not entirely central to your line of questioning I would much rather it wasn’t discussed in court.’ Then his voice almost broke. ‘I feel I have been humiliated and mutilated quite enough in these past weeks.’
Opening his eyes again he deliberately did not look at the young blonde judge, but up at the ample breasts on the vaulted ceiling. For a moment he managed to visualise a big crucifix dangling between them. Perhaps being mauled would turn to his advantage in the end.
‘And why, Meester Duckworrth,’ the defence asked, ‘was your wife so eager to see that will?’
‘She was afraid that Signora Trevisan might have left everything to her sister and her husband.’ He added: ‘My wife was not on good terms with her mother. They had argued about almost everything.’
‘And so you too were concerned.’
‘Quite concerned,’ Morris agreed. ‘As well I might be. But, to repeat, as soon as my poor sister-in-law came in crying, I realised what an insensitive fool I had been. I felt like a worm.’
‘Quite,’ the lawyer said with handsome condescension. Morris was perfectly aware that the man was playing on his superior physical beauty, though it was actually Morris who was getting the attention of the more attractive of the judges. Perhaps precisely because of this willingness to wear sackcloth and ashes, to admit mistakes.
‘And did you find the will?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I admitted to Antonella that I had been looking for the will and she told me that Bobo had it.’
‘You then immediately rushed off to argue with your brother-in-law.’
Morris drew a deep breath, again suggesting the quality of his self-control. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘On the contrary, first I stayed to comfort Antonella, who was most upset. Then I stopped in the bar in Quinzano, as I believe has now been established after some earlier misunderstanding. I wanted to think things over calmly. Then I went to Villa Caritas, the hostel where the immigrants were staying, this in order to find out what had happened about these sackings. I spoke to one of the immigrants, a boy called Kwame.’
‘Later found dead in bed with your wife,’ the lawyer interrupted. There was a considerable titter from somewhere at the back of the room.
Morris clenched his teeth. ‘I see,’ he said, turning to the judges, ‘that as far as insensitivity is concerned, I come a very poor second to the avvocato per la difesa.’
The older man presiding remarked sympathetically that a certain amount of insensitivity was unfortunately inevitable when trying to clear up such ugly matters. ‘You must be patient, Signor Duckworth,’ he concluded.
The defence lawyer began to speak, but Morris interrupted. ‘If you would let me finish my account of that morning,’ he said. ‘As I was saying, I did a variety of things, and then, yes, I went to the office to talk to Bobo, both about the sackings and the will.’
‘And found the office as you later described to the police?’
‘And to this court, yes.’
The defence lawyer slapped down his papers in what was really a rather unimpressive attempt at drama. ‘Meester Duckworrth, perhaps you would like to explain to the court why shortly after these events you were arrested and imprisoned for a number of weeks.’
Morris gave the impression of someone determinedly following the advice the judge had given him a moment before. He would be patient. He raised his eyes and let them linger on Mimi’s ample breasts high up on the indifferently restored Renaissance ceiling. Since they were only fragments, it seemed absurd to have recoloured them so vividly. A buttock sailed out in total detachment, as if cut from the pages of the kind of magazine his father so enjoyed. Or Kwame for that matter. He looked down, half smiled and began to speak. Yes, well, there had been some rivalry, he said, or at least that had been his impression, between police and carabinieri, as to who would catch the culprit. With the result that when Morris had been unwilling to explain what he had been doing the evening of the day after the crime, Colonnello Fendtsteig had immediately had him arrested and, when he still wouldn’t explain, protesting that it was a private matter, imprisoned. Fendtsteig believed that since he had been out until after two in the morning, he might have been disposing of, well, of Bobo’s body. Eventually, however, after some weeks in prison, what he, Morris, really had been doing that evening had come out -and come out via the psychoanalyst, he might add, for he himself would never have told - after which Fendtsteig had let him go. Though,’ Morris added, ‘I will say, because I’m sure that if I don’t you will, Avvocato, that Colonnello Fendtsteig continues to believe that I was responsible for Bobo’s disappearance. He has told me that he is merely waiting to find the evidence which will demonstrate my guilt. This is the kind of atmosphere I have been living in these past few weeks and I can assure you it has been most trying.’
Sure enough this stole a little thunder. There were people in the court who must be admiring his frankness and courage. But the defence lawyer was canny. He said: ‘So, Meester Duck-wonth, perhaps you can now explain to the court what you were doing that evening after your brother-in-law disappeared.’
For the first time Morris allowed a little alarm to invade his scarred features. He turned abruptly to the judges. ‘Signori giudici, you have all read the police reports. You know what I said to my analyst. You know that I only said it after being advised to do so by a priest. Do I really need to repeat it in public? Don’t I have a right to silence?’
The older man and the two lady judges put their heads together. A blonde curl fell over the childish cheek. Pushing it back an eye flickered up to glance at Morris.
The right to silence,’ the presiding judge eventually said, ‘refers above all to information that might incriminate either yourself or a member of the immediate family, which is not the case here. To remain silent would thus be in contempt of court. Certainly the court would appreciate, if only to dispel all doubts in your regard, a statement as to your whereabouts on that evening, if not your exact activities.’
Immediately and very swiftly, as if to get the thing out and over with, Morris said: ‘I was in the cemetery weeping over the coffin of my ex-girlfriend, the coffin having been brought out from the communal family grave to accommodate the burial of the mother the following day.’
Again there was a stir in the court. Morris looked determinedly at the ceiling. Nobody could say he wasn’t going through the worst possible humiliation here. He was earning his freedom.
After waiting for the stir to subside, the lawyer asked quietly: ‘And you expect us to believe this?’
‘If you expect me to treat that as a serious question you are clearly the more impertinent,’ Morris snapped back most convincingly, but then immediately recovered himself. ‘Mi scusi, I appreciate that you are only doing your job on behalf of your
clients, with whom I have every sympathy’ - how Italian encouraged this kind of wonderful pomposity! ‘No, I’m afraid that ever since Massimina’s disappearance and death I have been obsessed by the idea that I had lost the one great experience of my life. In a way it’s as if I had been left behind, marooned with her. I speak to her every day in my mind, I feel she is close to me, I feel she guides me. Perhaps it was this sensation of already having someone that allowed me to continue with what can only be described as an arid marriage.’
Morris looked straight at the lawyer and reflected that there was nothing like admitting the unpalatable to gain a little credence. Certainly the sincerity in his voice must have been undeniable. At the same time he distinctly heard a voice whisper: ‘Morrees, grazie, grazie. Thank you for saying in public that you love only me.’
The lawyer was understandably irritated. ‘Meester Duck-worrth, let me put it to you that, rather than these two young men having killed or abducted Signor Posenato, it would have been perfectly possible for you to have killed him, to have driven his car away some short distance with the body inside, to have returned, called the police, then disposed of both car and body the following evening, inventing this farcical business of weeping over an ex-girlfriend’s coffin only after three weeks of racking your brains in a high-security prison.’
Again the: court responded with a ripple of interest, though the two accused seemed to be having extreme difficulty following the whole thing. Azedine was chewing his nails.
Morris said: This, as I suggested before, is Colonnello Fendtsteig’s theory. Though how I could have done all this car-shuffling and body-burying without an accomplice is beyond me.’