The Measure of Time

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  presiding judge: Show the witness the ruling, Assistant Prosecutor.

  At this point the assistant prosecutor shows the document to the witness.

  assistant prosecutor: So, signora, do you remember being subject to legal proceedings for the charges of aiding and abetting and resisting an officer of the law?

  witness: I was never put on trial.

  assistant prosecutor: It says here that you struggled with officers of the Treasury Police to prevent them from arresting a drug dealer. It also says that there is no evidence for an acquittal, but that since there has been an amnesty – the last amnesty, Your Honour, the one in 1990 – the charge, or rather, the charges are to be declared null and void. Don’t you remember being involved in anything like that? Weren’t you ever taken to a Treasury Police station in relation to the arrest of a drug dealer who was a friend of yours?

  witness: Many years ago there was something like that. But it was all a mistake. He wasn’t a drug dealer, he was a young man who had a few small pieces of hashish and the officers —

  assistant prosecutor: So now you’re starting to remember. To be precise, they were officers of the Treasury Police.

  witness: All right, I don’t even remember what they were. The Treasury officers, or whatever they were, didn’t say that’s what they were, they didn’t identify themselves.

  assistant prosecutor: Were you taken to a station and charged with aiding and abetting and with resisting an officer of the law?

  witness: We went to a station, they took some statements, I have no idea what it was all about, I mean, I don’t remember, we’re talking about twenty-five years ago. I never heard any more about it. I didn’t even know this ruling you’ve shown me existed.

  assistant prosecutor: Before this ruling was issued you were informed. You could have forgone the amnesty, asked for a trial and hoped for acquittal. Why didn’t you do so?

  witness: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

  assistant prosecutor: I fear this is a problem of yours. Anyway, thank you, I have no further questions. I place the document at the disposal of the court.

  presiding judge: The court orders that it be admitted as evidence. Does the defence wish to re-examine the witness?

  avvocato costamagna: No, thank you, Your Honour. We reserve the right to examine the document at a later time and to ascertain whether or not to make a further request for evidence regarding it.

  Assistant Prosecutor Cotturri had been good, although Costamagna hadn’t been entirely wrong in objecting to that ruling being displayed. According to the code of criminal procedure, the submission of documentary evidence should be requested during the introductory phase of the trial. This is a non-mandatory rule, and one interpreted with a certain flexibility, but its aim is to avoid evidence being suddenly sprung on the court, to safeguard the integrity of the proceedings, and to avoid one or other party having to deal with unexpected evidence for which they have not been able to prepare.

  The assistant prosecutor had overcome the problem in the proper way: he had asked Lorenza if she had ever been subject to legal proceedings, and it was only after receiving a negative answer that he had brought up that old case that had ended with the implementation of the amnesty. The ruling, therefore, didn’t directly prove anything, but once a certain testimony had been obtained, it helped indirectly to cast doubts on the reliability of the witness. As it had indeed done.

  I leafed through the papers in search of a copy of that ruling, even though I already knew I wouldn’t find much that was useful. A ruling that implements the declaring of a charge to be null and void, as in an amnesty, simply says that although there is no evidence for acquittal, the charge should be declared null and void anyway. Apart from amnesties, other reasons for this might be the statute of limitations, the withdrawal of the action, or the death of the offender.

  The only interesting thing, apart from the ritual formulas, was the charge. Lorenza had been charged “as under articles 81, 337 and 278 of the penal code, with violating several provisions of the law by struggling with Sergeant Gattuso and Officer Scarano as they were attempting to arrest Nicola Damiani for the offence of possession of narcotics of the hashish type for the purposes of dealing, thus helping the above-mentioned Damiani to escape or otherwise evade investigation. Offence committed in Torre Canne, Fasano, 5 July 1987.”

  It struck me that the Lorenza I had known so many years before – the memories were starting to come back to the surface – was definitely the kind of person to struggle with Treasury officers in order to help a friend “escape or otherwise evade investigation”.

  It had seemed, at the time, that she wasn’t afraid of anything, and that she hated the police for deeply rooted ideological reasons.

  Then I looked again at the date beneath the charge.

  5 July 1987.

  In other words, when we were still seeing each other. We had met in the spring of that same year.

  Lorenza

  The only things I remember clearly are the beginning and the end.

  The rest of it, in my memory, is as disjointed and haphazard as a painting by Braque. I don’t know which episodes happened first and which later. Not with any accuracy, at least.

  The beginning is when I met Lorenza, one evening in March 1987.

  I had graduated the previous year and was a trainee in a legal practice. Becoming a defence lawyer wasn’t my dream, but it should be said that I’d never had clear ideas about what my dream was. Anyway, I was a trainee while waiting to clarify my ideas. Sooner or later.

  It was the mid-eighties. The moral decline of that period is represented with almost metaphorical effectiveness by padded shoulders. When we wore jackets or coats we all of us, male or female, looked like mannequins. You just have to look at the photos.

  It was a time when the soundscape of our lives was starting to change irreversibly. A period still full of noises and sounds that no longer exist today.

  For example, the noise of a token or a coin inserted in a public telephone, and the noise, similar and yet very different, of the click when a token or its equivalent value in lire was used up.

  The noise as you turned the dial of a home telephone – a strange grey object, pot-bellied and reassuring. The different sounds of a typewriter. The sound of the keys – rhythmical or tentative depending on how good the typist was – which was also, and above all, produced by the heads of the keys, with the letters on them, beating on the paper. The sound of the platen, which you turned with grainy black knobs. The sound of the little lever that took you back to the beginning. The sound of the paper bail that hit the sheet as if to inflict a wound on it and render it powerless.

  The click of the tape recorder when you started and stopped it; the urgent, slightly dizzying noise of the tape winding back.

  The almost frenetic tapping of the calculator as it printed the result on a roll of paper.

  It was an analogue world still made up (not for much longer, though we didn’t know that then) of wheels, gears and switches.

  I had recently broken up, not altogether amicably, with my girlfriend Rossana. We’d been together, through ups and downs, for most of our time at university. When we said goodbye, she told me a series of things about me, none of them pleasant, as far as I recall: I had a tendency to rationalize everything out of a fear of intimacy; I used irony to avoid responsibility for my feelings; I was incapable of true commitment and, in spite of appearances, I was someone who led a passive existence. Things like that.

  That afternoon in March 1987, having been unattached for a couple of weeks, I was dawdling on my way to the office. In Via Sparano I bumped into a guy named Saverio, otherwise known as Verio (yes, whoever had thought of the nickname hadn’t made much of an effort), who I’d occasionally hung out with. He was a year older than me, was studying medicine, lived in Poggiofranco, was gay (there weren’t a lot of people in those days who declared it openly), had a certain tendency to talk too much and when very young
had been a champion horse rider, a sport he had abandoned for unknown reasons.

  We hugged and he gave me two big kisses on my cheeks, the kind that make a smacking sound.

  “Guido Guerrieri, great to see you, it’s been a while. Going anywhere nice?”

  “To work,” I replied, in a tone that implied that if I didn’t have to earn a living, I’d certainly know how to spend my afternoons.

  “Work,” he repeated. The word seemed to make an impression. “You’re becoming a lawyer, is that right?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying it, but I’m not sure it’s right for me. How about you? How long before you graduate?”

  “A year, more or less. Then I don’t know. Maybe I’d like to go abroad to specialize.”

  “Great,” I said, just to say something.

  “Are you still with that blonde girl? What’s her name?”

  “Rossana. No, not any more.”

  “Sorry to hear that. She had blue, almost violet eyes, really special. Like Elizabeth Taylor.”

  The subject made me uncomfortable. So I uttered a series of things about relationships that end after a while, that’s life, and other banalities that I fortunately don’t remember.

  “What are you doing this evening?” he asked me.

  “I don’t have any plans,” I replied, a touch cautiously.

  “Why don’t you come to a party? It’s at the home of a friend of mine, there’ll be loads of people. Maybe you’ll meet somebody, seeing as how you’re a free man now.”

  My first thought was that I had no particular desire to go to a gay party, but he hadn’t actually said it was a gay party, he was only trying to be nice. I felt ashamed of my reactionary mistrust, and I told myself it was a good idea to start seeing new people. In short, at the end of these few seconds of reflection, I replied thank you, I’d be happy to come. Fantastic, he said. He’d pick me up from my place around 9.30. He asked me to remind him of my address – which he’d never known, as far as I recalled – and said goodbye.

  6

  On Tuesday – after a very quick trip to Rome to present an appeal at the Supreme Court – Consuelo, Annapaola and Tancredi met with me in the office. All three of them had read the ruling and it was clear after a few minutes that all three were convinced Lorenza’s son was guilty. The worst of it was that I was inclined to think the same.

  “The kid’s a lowlife,” Tancredi said when I asked him for his opinion.

  “Why?”

  “Have you seen his record?”

  “Yes, he was put on probation as a minor, for armed robbery. In the end, the case was declared null and void.”

  “My colleagues dealt with it – my former colleagues at the Squad. I dropped by and they were kind enough to give me copies of the arrest transcript and the statements of the victim, a lady who’d made a withdrawal at the post office.”

  “And what emerges from that?”

  “What emerges is that, like I said, your new client is a lowlife. Or at least he was when he was a minor. He and someone else who wasn’t caught, whose name he didn’t give up – which suggests he was already a fully formed criminal before he was eighteen – were apparently in the post office watching out for people who were making cash transactions or collecting their pensions. They saw this lady who’d withdrawn a substantial sum, followed her home, grabbed her at the front door of her building and stuck a knife to her throat. What particularly marks them down as two nasty pieces of work is what they said to her.”

  “What was that?”

  “‘Keep your eyes down, bitch, and don’t look us in the face. If you look us in the face you’re dead.’ Something along those lines.”

  “Nice. How much did they take from her?”

  “Eight hundred euros.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “They were unlucky. Or at least, he was unlucky, because the other guy managed to get away. Two guys from the street crimes team were passing on motorbikes. They heard screams, saw two kids running and followed them. One they caught, and that was our client. Or rather, your client.”

  “What happened to the money?”

  “He had it, so the woman got it all back. The kid was put on probation, he behaved well – or pretended to behave well – and in the end the case was declared null and void. But it was a nasty robbery and the modus operandi suggests they’d done it before.”

  I took a deep breath. I wondered if it had been a good idea to take on this assignment.

  “All right, let’s not let ourselves be influenced by that.” I hadn’t even finished the sentence before it struck me as being as fake as a brass sovereign.

  The situation didn’t improve with Annapaola’s contribution.

  “I also read the ruling. Last night. The long and the short of it is, I think the guy’s guilty. The investigation was clean and the verdict is perfectly justified.”

  I turned to Consuelo, though I wasn’t sure I could expect any help from her.

  “I agree. I also think he’s guilty. It was a nasty murder, and I don’t understand why you took on the case. There, I’ve said it.”

  I felt the surge of irritation that goes through me every time I discuss these subjects with Consuelo and have to confront her prosecutorial intransigence. If it was up to her, we would only deal with plaintiffs in civil cases or with defendants who were unequivocally innocent. There’s no doubt she should have been a prosecutor or a judge rather than a counsel for the defence.

  I waited a few seconds until the wave of irritation faded, otherwise I’d have started at a total disadvantage and would have been beaten in the debate that was about to start.

  “I also know he’s probably guilty. Or rather: I get the impression he’s guilty.”

  “Then why have you agreed to defend him?” Consuelo asked. “We’ve talked about this so often. As a practice, we don’t handle organized crime.”

  “First of all, this has nothing to with organized crime. Worst-case scenario, if Cardace really is guilty, we’re dealing with a settling of scores between low-level dealers. And anyway, I have news for you: if we had to make a living agreeing only to defend those who were guaranteed innocent, we might as well go and work in the fields.”

  “Working in the fields isn’t bad,” Annapaola said, in that typical tone of hers, where you can’t tell if she’s serious or if she’s pulling your leg.

  “Have you read the court transcripts?” I asked.

  I knew that wasn’t possible, given that I hadn’t had copies made for them. My question was only there to gain a little breathing space in the ongoing debate. They replied no, obviously.

  “I have. The defence was practically non-existent.”

  “Wasn’t Costamagna his lawyer?” Annapaola asked. The implication being: Costamagna was good.

  “He was already ill, and a few weeks ago he died. In his last months he wasn’t the same any more. He may just have been worn out, but that’s not the basic point. The basic point is that, to all intents and purposes, Cardace didn’t get proper representation. There was practically no evidence presented in his defence, apart from his mother’s testimony, and there was no cross-examination. Guilty or not guilty, the kid has a right to a decent defence.”

  Nobody said a word. They seemed less sure of themselves now.

  “We’d need to ask for new evidence to be admitted, if we found any,” Consuelo said, in a more conciliatory tone than before. “Except that the time limit’s already up. The hearing’s in ten days.”

  As almost always happened after an initial argumentative phase, she was starting to think like a lawyer and not like an inquisitor.

  “We’ll have to ask for an extension. I’m going to see Judge Marinelli tomorrow to let him know.”

  “As long as he’s prepared to compromise,” she said.

  “I’ll tell him clearly what the problem is, assuming he doesn’t already know. I think he and Costamagna were friends, or at any rate knew each other well. I imagine he knows what
the situation was like in the man’s last months.”

  “You haven’t met the kid yet, have you?” Annapaola asked.

  “I’m going there today for an initial interview. We’ll see what kind of person he is.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Tancredi asked.

  “First of all I’d read the phone intercepts carefully to get an idea of the context and see if those two conversations between Cardace and Gaglione just before the murder really are so unambiguous. Then I think we should look at the question of the forensics test. It’s an indisputable fact that they found powder residue on his jacket, but in statements he made the kid said he’d been shooting a few days earlier, wearing the same jacket, and that would explain it. We need to establish if that’s at all possible.”

  “Theoretically, yes,” Tancredi said. “Gunshot residue can stay on fabric for up to a few days. That said, the story he told can’t be used. The judges were right not to take it into account. It’d be interesting to know a little more about this phantom shooting session. If there’s any truth to it or if it was just something his lawyer dreamed up to create a bit of doubt.”

  “I’ll talk about it to the kid. I also think we should look at the area around the victim’s apartment, just to get a better idea. And I repeat, let’s study the intercepts. If we have any doubts about the way they were transcribed, let’s get hold of the recordings. Apart from anything else, they were admitted in evidence under article 270 even though they related to another case, the one against Gaglione for dealing, and we have to decide if there’s any point in requesting the ones that weren’t admitted.”

  “Why, do you think there were problems with the way the intercepts were allowed in evidence?” Consuelo asked.

  “It wasn’t flawless, but frankly I don’t see any grounds for claiming they’re unusable. But let’s look at them anyway, and maybe we’ll talk about it again. Apart from the request for an extension, let’s try to figure out if we need to add further grounds to the appeal, though at first sight I don’t think so: the appeal is succinct, but it contains what we need.”