This time Natsu took off her coat, sat down, and even smiled a little. The same perfume as last time already hung in the air.
“I’m pleased you’ve accepted the case. Fabio was really keen on getting you. He says that in prison…”
I felt a slight irritation. I didn’t want her to continue. I didn’t want her to tell me how much faith Fabio Rayban had in me. I didn’t want her to remind me that I had decided to defend him for a reason he wouldn’t like and I couldn’t confess. So I made a gesture with my hand, as if to say, forget about that, I’m modest, I don’t like compliments. The gesture was a lie: I actually like compliments a lot.
“As I said, it’s just the way I work. I always like to look through the papers first to make sure there isn’t any reason for me not to take on a case.”
Why was I still talking such bullshit?
To put on airs, obviously. To play a part. To make myself look good. I was behaving like a schoolboy.
“What did you think when you read the file?”
“Pretty much what I’d thought before. This is a very difficult situation. Even supposing-”
I broke off, but too late. I was about to say, even supposing your husband is telling the truth – and supposing doesn’t mean conceding – proving it, or at least creating a reasonable doubt, will be extremely difficult. I broke off because I didn’t want to reawaken her more than reasonable doubts. But she understood.
“You mean: even supposing Fabio’s story is true?”
I nodded, lowering my eyes. It seemed as if she wanted to say something else, but whatever it was she obviously decided not to say it. So it was up to me to continue.
“To try and get an acquittal, we’d have to prove that the drugs weren’t your husband’s. Or at the very least present arguments to the court that cast doubt on the idea that the drugs were your husband’s.”
“That means we would have to discover who planted them.”
“Precisely. And as the whole thing happened in Montenegro a year and a half ago, I’m sure you realize-”
“That there’s nothing we can do. Is that it?”
Well, I replied, it was true that there wasn’t a lot we could do. But we could try to reconstruct, in as much detail as possible, what had happened in the days immediately prior to her husband being arrested. I told her, in a nutshell, what Tancredi had suggested – making it seem as if everything was my idea. I spoke in the tones of someone who’s used to this kind of investigation. As if all this was quite normal in my line of work.
When I’d finished explaining my plans for the investigation, she seemed impressed.
Damn, I was clearly someone who knew his stuff.
She asked if I wanted to start reconstructing the facts right now with her. I told her I preferred to talk to her husband first: I would visit him the next day, and then we two could meet before the end of the week.
She said that was fine. She asked me about the advance, I mentioned a figure, and when she took out a chequebook I asked her to see my secretary about that side of things. We princes of the bar don’t dirty our hands with money or cheques.
That was all for the moment.
When she had gone I felt quite good, like someone who’s made a good impression on the right person. I studiously avoided thinking about the implications of that.
9
Now I needed information about this Macri.
The first thing I did was switch on my computer, go to the website of the bar association of Rome, and type in his name. What came up was the small amount of information most bar associations provide. Born in 1965, Macri had been a member of the Rome association for just over three years and had previously been a member of the association in Reggio Calabria. His office was in a street with an unusual name. And it didn’t have a phone. Where the contact details should have been, there was only a mobile number. Strange, I thought. A lawyer’s office without a phone. I made a mental note of the fact. It might mean something.
I’d have to turn to some of my Roman friends if I wanted to find out more. So I went through the list of my so-called friends in Rome. It wasn’t a long list.
There were a couple of colleagues I’d sometimes joined forces with for appeals to the Supreme Court or other proceedings that had gone through the Roman courts. To call them friends would have been an exaggeration. There was a journalist who had worked in Bari for some years on the legal column of La Repubblica. He was a pleasant guy, and we’d sometimes had a coffee or an aperitif together, but we’d never been more than casual acquaintances. And if I called him and asked him for information about Macri, there was always the danger I’d arouse his professional curiosity.
There remained my old friend from university, Andrea Colaianni, an assistant prosecutor in the regional anti-Mafia department in Rome. The only person I could turn to without any hassle and who might be able to give me the information I needed.
I looked in my mobile’s phonebook and found his number. For a few minutes I stared at the coloured screen. How long was it since Colaianni and I had last spoken? It must have been years. We’d run into each other once in the street in Bari when he was visiting his parents. We’d exchanged a few words and I’d had the impression that our friendship, like so many others, was over. Now I was phoning him – assuming the number was still valid. What would he think? What should I say to him? Should I chat for a while to observe the social conventions before I asked him for help?
I’ve always had major problems with telephones and telephone calls. What if he was annoyed? He might be in the middle of interrogating someone, or busy in some other way. Besides, magistrates – even if they’re your friends – are unpredictable creatures.
OK. That’s enough.
I pressed the button. Colaianni replied after two rings.
“Guido Guerrieri!” I was surprised he had my number in his phonebook.
“Hi, Andrea. How’s it going?”
“Fine. And you?”
We started chatting. We chatted for at least ten minutes about various things. Family – well, his, at least – work, mutual friends neither of us had seen or heard from for ages. Sport. Did I still box? You’re crazy as ever, Guerrieri.
Finally I told him the reason for my call. I explained everything, briefly. I told him I was groping in the dark, that I didn’t know what to do or what to tell my client. That I needed some information to help me see more clearly. Even if in the end it meant telling my client that the only serious prospect was to plea-bargain.
Colaianni told me he’d never heard of Macri, though in a place like Rome that didn’t mean anything. But he would ask around, and get back to me in a few days.
“But don’t build up your hopes. The likeliest hypothesis is that your client really was transporting those drugs, but hadn’t told his wife. The reason he denies it, despite all the evidence, is because he’s ashamed and doesn’t have the courage to admit it to her.”
Right. I knew that and almost hoped that things really were like that.
It would all be so much simpler.
10
It had to happen sooner or later. I mean: that I would ask myself that question again. It happened quite naturally as I sat waiting for Paolicelli in the lawyers’ room at the prison.
Were the rumours that had circulated in those days true? Was he really one of the people responsible for the death of that young man? Or at the very least, did he belong to the same gang as the killers?
For many months after that murder, I had been haunted by the image, created in my own troubled imagination, of Paolicelli watching that young man die with the same thin, evil smile I’d seen on his face while his Fascist friend had been beating me up.
At times it had occurred to me that I’d been lucky, because those guys were really crazy. I could easily have been stabbed to death myself, that evening I’d been beaten up because of my anorak.
For a long time I was obsessed with the idea of revenge. When I was older, stronger and, above all, k
new how to fight – I’d already started learning to box-I would go and get them one by one and we’d settle our scores. The short, muscular one first, then the others, even though I didn’t remember their faces very well, but that was a mere detail. Last but not least, the blond guy with the face like David Bowie, who’d smiled as he watched the show. And maybe while I beat him to a pulp, I’d also get him to tell me what had really happened on the evening of November the 28th, who the killers were and if he was one of them.
“Good morning, Avvocato.”
I was so lost in thought that I hadn’t even heard the door open. I nearly jumped, but managed to control it. I replied, with a slight change of facial expression. That was as friendly as I was prepared to be to Paolicelli after that flood of memories.
“I’m very pleased you’ve taken on my case. It gives me the feeling there’s a real possibility now. My wife also told me you inspire confidence.”
I felt ill at ease when he mentioned his wife. And the other thing that made me ill at ease was that he was so different from the evil-faced young man I’d hated all through my teenage years. He was a normal person, almost likeable.
But I didn’t want him to be likeable.
“Signor Paolicelli, I think we should be clear about something right from the start. So that you don’t have any unrealistic expectations. I’ve decided to accept your case and I’ll do whatever I can for you. We’ll decide together on our strategy and on what we choose to do in court, but what you have to know, what you have to be absolutely aware of, is that you’re still in a very difficult situation.”
It was a good way of approaching things. The technical tone I was adopting helped to dispel the embarrassment I had felt a few moments earlier. And behind my front of professional efficiency, I was actually being pretty nasty to him. I’d immediately deprived him of even that momentary relief, that comfort felt by anyone who, after months of prison and gloomy forebodings about the future, meets someone who is on his side and can help him.
The very reason, basically, for the existence of lawyers.
You’re really an arsehole, Guerrieri, I told myself.
I opened my briefcase to take out the papers, and started speaking again without even looking at him. “I’ve been through all the documents, made a few notes, and now I’m here to discuss what line we take. There are basically two options. Both very different.”
I looked up to make sure he was following me. It was the first time I’d looked him in the face and seen it the way it really was: the lined face of a man in his forties with curiously gentle blue eyes, not the face that had been embedded in my memory all these years, the face of a teenage Fascist with an evil smile.
It was a very strange, very confusing feeling. Things weren’t right, weren’t as I’d expected.
Paolicelli nodded, because I’d stopped speaking and he wanted to know which two options we had, basically.
“As I was saying, there are two options. The first is damage limitation. That means we go to the appeal court, hope we have an assistant prosecutor who’s flexible, and we plea-bargain and try to get the largest reduction we can in your sentence…”
He was about to interrupt me but I raised my hand to stop him, as if to say, wait, let me finish.
“I know what you’re going to say. The drugs weren’t yours. I know, but right now I have to present you with the different options, and what each entails. Then you’ll decide what to do. So, as I was saying, that’s the first option. With a little luck we could bring the sentence down to ten years, perhaps even less, which means-”
“My wife said you thought we could make some inquiries. To find out who put the cocaine in the car.”
Why did it bother me that he was constantly mentioning his wife? Why did it bother me that his wife had talked to him about our conversations? I asked myself these questions and didn’t wait for the answers. They were too obvious to need putting into words.
“We could try.”
“In order to get an acquittal?”
“In order to get an acquittal. But we have to be clear about this. There’s no guarantee we’ll find anything. In fact it’s very unlikely. We’ll talk now and see if we come up with anything useful. But even if we can construct a specific hypothesis as to how those drugs ended up in your car, our real problem is convincing the court of appeal. And we certainly won’t do that if all we have is conjecture.”
“What do you want to know?”
I repeated the lesson Tancredi had taught me. “Did you meet anyone during your holiday? I mean, someone who was very friendly, maybe even too friendly. Someone who asked questions, tried to find out where you were from, when you were leaving.”
He waited a moment before replying. “No. We did meet people, of course, but we didn’t make any friends. We didn’t hang around with the people we happened to meet.”
“No one asked you when you were leaving?”
Once again he didn’t reply immediately. He was making an effort to see if he could remember anything useful, but in the end had to give up.
“All right, it doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about the hotel car park.”
“As I told you, we gave the keys to the porter because the car park was small and always full. A lot of cars were double parked and they needed the keys to move them.”
“And did that happen the night before you left, too?”
“Yes, every night we left the keys in the porter’s lodge. In the morning, if we wanted to go for a drive, we’d pick them up. If not they stayed there all day.”
“Was there only one porter?”
“No, there were three of them on shifts, day and night.”
“Do you remember which of the three was on duty the last night you were there?”
No, he didn’t remember. He’d already thought about this, he said, and had never managed to pin down which man he had left his keys with the last time.
It was a blind alley. Both of us fell silent.
In my mind, I worked out what might have happened, always supposing that Paolicelli wasn’t having me and his wife on.
During the night, these people had taken the car to a safe place somewhere. A machine shop, a garage, or maybe just an isolated spot in the country. There, they had filled it with drugs and then had brought it back to the hotel car park. Easy and safe, with very few risks.
In any case, we wouldn’t get very far pursuing the business of the porters, since we had no evidence as to which of the three – supposing one of the three was really involved – had been part of the operation.
And even if we could, what then? What would I do? Call Interpol and ask them to launch an international investigation to clear my client? I told myself we were just wasting time. Innocent or guilty, Paolicelli was in it up to his neck. The only sensible thing I could do as a professional was limit the damage as much as possible.
I asked him if he had noticed anyone on the ferry who he’d already seen in Montenegro, either in the hotel or anywhere else.
“Yes, there was someone on the ferry who’d been in our hotel. He’s the only one I remember.”
“Do you remember where he was from, what his name was?”
Paolicelli shook his head firmly. “It’s not that I don’t remember. I just don’t know. I’d seen him a few times in the hotel. Then I saw him again for a moment on the ferry and we waved at each other. That was it. The only thing I know is that he was Italian.”
“But would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“Yes, I think so. I remember him quite well. But how do we trace him?”
I replied with a gesture of the hand which was supposed to mean: don’t worry. I know what to do, this is my job. When the moment comes, we’ll manage. Which was mostly nonsense, of course. It wasn’t my job at all – it was the police who traced people, not lawyers – and anyway, I had no idea what to do. Apart from going back to Tancredi and asking for his help.
To Paolicelli, though, that gesture of mine seemed to
be all he needed. If you know what to do and this is your job, then I’m calm. I chose the right lawyer, the one who’ll get me out of this. The Perry Mason of the Murgia.
That would do for this morning, I thought.
He realized the interview was over. I was about to leave and he was about to go back to his cell. But I could tell from his face that he didn’t want to be alone again.
“I’m sorry, Avvocato, I have another question. You said we could either plea-bargain or decide to appeal. When do we have to decide? I mean, what’s the last moment we can leave it till?”
“The day of the hearing. That’s when we have to say if we intend to plea-bargain, which would bring proceedings to an end, or if we want to carry on. It’s a few weeks yet before the hearing, so we have time to think about it, and to see if we can find out anything useful. If we don’t, then any option other than plea-bargaining would be suicidal.”
There wasn’t much to add, and we both knew it. He looked away from me and fixed his gaze on the floor. After a while he started to wring his hands methodically, so hard that he seemed about to dislocate them.
I was about to stand up, say goodbye and leave. I could feel my leg muscles impelling me to get to my feet and get away from the chair, away from that place.
But I didn’t move. I thought he was entitled to a few minutes’ silence. To give free rein to his despair, in his own time. To wring his hands without having me interrupt him to say that we’d finished for the day, that I was leaving – leaving a place he couldn’t leave – and that we’d meet again soon.
When I decide, of course, not when you decide.
Because I’m free and you’re not.
He was entitled to those few minutes of silence in my company, to go off in pursuit of his own thoughts.
To fill the time, I also gave myself up to my thoughts. Once again, I thought about the situation we were in. I was aware of it, and he wasn’t. I knew we’d met all those years before, he didn’t. In a sense he’d never known it, because in all probability he hadn’t even looked properly at the face of the boy his friend had beaten up. Besides, he’d almost certainly forgotten all about it.
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