The Measure of Time

by Gianrico Carofiglio

“For me, there’s no need to present additional grounds. The appeal is unremarkable, it sticks rigidly to the main points, but it doesn’t stop us from bringing up others. It questions the undervaluation of the defendant’s mother’s testimony, as well as the reconstruction of Cardace’s movements that afternoon. It could have been better, but it’ll be material for the closing statement. On the other hand, I haven’t found any procedural irregularities. In particular, the phone taps were properly authorized. Not flawless, as you said, Guido, but there are no grounds for suggesting they’re unusable.”

  “Yes, we’d only make them nervous if we brought up the question of irregularities,” I said. “They’d be convinced we don’t have any real arguments.”

  “If you all agree,” Consuelo resumed, “using what Annapaola and Carmelo have found out as a basis, I’d like to go over some aspects of the investigation to highlight what wasn’t done, things we could bring up at the hearing.” Nobody made any comment. “Everything revolves around the fact that, when Gaglione calls 118, the police are listening in and immediately link it to the quarrel he had with Cardace a few hours earlier. It was the most natural assumption to make. The problem, which we need to highlight at the hearing, is that from then on, as far they’re concerned, the hypothesis that Cardace was responsible for the murder becomes the one possible truth. We can’t even say they stop considering alternative hypotheses. They don’t consider them in the first place. A few minutes after the murder, they’re already sure about what happened and have no doubts as to who the guilty party is. They just have to find a bit of corroborating evidence. In my opinion, to introduce an element of reasonable doubt we have to emphasize the fact that potentially important checks weren’t carried out, because they were basically convinced that the case was already solved.”

  “That’s right,” I said, “but we have to avoid this looking like an attack on the police. Apart from obvious cases of abuse, which we don’t have here, judges don’t like that. And some jurors even less. We have to treat the matter as objectively as we can.”

  “Of course. Anyway, here’s the list of what wasn’t done. Firstly, no footage from security cameras in the area was submitted in evidence – unless, which I doubt, they viewed the footage, thought it was irrelevant and didn’t inform the Prosecutor’s Department. In any event, we’ll have to call the head of the Flying Squad or the head of Homicide and question them about that.”

  “Then there’s the matter of the apartment being on the mezzanine,” Tancredi said.

  “Right,” Consuelo said. “There’s no mention of that in the documents relating to the investigation, apart from a few words in the transcript of the inspection, when they describe the apartment. It’s obvious they didn’t consider the possibility that the killer might have gained access from the inner courtyard. There’s no mention of them checking the windows for signs of a break-in or anything like that. We’ll have to point this out, too. It’s quite a suggestive argument.”

  “All right, so which witnesses will we need to call, Carmelo?”

  “The man who used to be head of Homicide. He was transferred somewhere else a while ago. He isn’t a particularly pleasant guy and I don’t think he was directly involved in drafting any of the reports. If you ask him why he didn’t do this or that, it’s likely you’ll fluster him and he’ll get on his high horse. So if you want to sow a few doubts, he’s our man.”

  “Now listen, all of you: in my last interview with Cardace, something interesting came out. He remembered that, as he was being taken to Headquarters, one of the officers asked him informally if he’d seen Gaglione that afternoon, and he said yes. At this point nobody had yet said anything to him about the murder. It’s unlikely that a guilty person would admit so calmly that he’d been in the victim’s apartment. Maybe we can do something with that. ‘I had nothing to hide, I didn’t even know there’d been a murder.’”

  “This doesn’t appear anywhere,” Consuelo said.

  “Precisely. It’s something new, and in my opinion it’s quite significant.”

  “How are you planning to proceed?” Annapaola asked.

  “Cardace will definitely mention it in his testimony – we’ve agreed he’ll appear as a witness. And we’ll also examine the officer concerned. Why would he deny it?”

  “You want to ask a police officer to testify about a statement made by the accused?” Consuelo said. “That’s forbidden.”

  Actually, this was a correct objection. Article 62 of the code of criminal procedure says that statements made by an accused person or a suspect in the course of police inquiries cannot be used in evidence. The rule is there to prevent the police or anyone else, having obtained a confession without legal guarantees, from testifying as to its substance, which is completely unusable.

  “I think article 62 only applies to statements that are self-incriminating or unfavourable to the accused. The aim of the rule is to safeguard the right to a defence. Interpreted in accordance with this spirit, it shouldn’t prevent testimony about statements made by the accused that might be useful in his defence. Then there’s also another argument.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In this case, we’d actually be eliciting testimony about a fact, not a statement. Let me explain: Cardace, at a specific and significant moment, said a certain thing. The substance of the statement doesn’t matter as much as the fact that the statement was made.”

  They were all silent for about twenty seconds. My argument made sense, but it required a modicum of reflection. At last Consuelo nodded: she also thought it might work.

  “Let’s try.”

  I turned to Tancredi. “Carmelo, in your opinion, talking about the jacket and the gunshot residue, do we need to call an expert witness?”

  “No, we just need the member of the forensics team. All we have to do is explain the procedure and draw attention to the fact that the residue was found on the jacket, but not on Cardace’s hands or any other part of his body. That’s an element in favour of the theory that the contamination occurred a few days earlier.”

  “So let’s put whichever forensics person did the test on the list. If we need anything more, we’ll have time during the hearings. Now the two most complicated points: the target practice in the quarry and the story of the fight at Chilometro Zero.”

  “I talked to an old informant of mine this morning and finally found out the name of the guy who was beaten up by Gaglione.”

  He told us it was the son of one Sebastiano Amendolagine, known as Pitbull. A provincial boss active between Cassano and Acquaviva with a group of his own, dealing in drugs and extortion, especially of farmers; those reluctant to pay often found themselves with their grape canopies cut. He was on excellent terms with a few families in Bari, especially with people in San Girolamo. When he found out that his son had been beaten up by a bouncer he’d gone crazy.

  “How can we use this?”

  “I don’t know. As I told you, I got it from an old informant of mine. Obviously, I can’t reveal his name, and anyway it doesn’t mean he had direct knowledge of the event. He told me the rumour that was going around about the fight and how pissed off the father was. Just to be clear, nobody’s said that what happened to Gaglione was the work of somebody sent by Amendolagine.”

  “Maybe we could check if Amendolagine Junior was hospitalized somewhere,” I said.

  “Already checked,” Tancredi replied. “He wasn’t in any local emergency department. But he may have been treated in Trani, Foggia or Brindisi. That, I don’t know.”

  I took a deep breath. “If I could manage to bring it out that Gaglione beat someone up who then turned out to be close to some dangerous people, even without naming names, that might open it up a little.”

  “The one possibility is if Cardace mentions it in his testimony,” Tancredi said. “But we should find somebody who can at least confirm the circumstances of the fight. Somebody who was in the disco, one of the bouncers maybe.”

  “We may ha
ve one,” Annapaola cut in. “A guy who owned a gym with Gaglione. Let me check some things, and I’ll let you know in the next few days.”

  “Then there’s the guy Cardace went shooting with in the quarry,” Consuelo said. “Cipriani, is that right?”

  “He’ll never testify,” Tancredi said. “We already talked about that. He’d have to admit he owned and carried an unauthorized weapon. I can’t see that happening. Apart from anything else, his apartment was searched a few months ago and nothing was found. If they’d discovered a gun then, we might have been able to use it as an excuse.”

  “And Cardace won’t say his name in court,” I said. “We’ll never persuade him to do that. He doesn’t want the other prisoners to think he’s a snitch – you know what happens to snitches.”

  Tancredi continued. “Annapaola and I, though, have tracked down the guy Cardace had coffee with. We talked to him and, incredibly, he’s willing to testify. He seems like a decent kid.”

  “Well, that’s good news,” I said.

  “But do we just get a statement from him or actually call him as a witness?” Consuelo asked.

  “Let’s call him as a witness. If there’s no statement, it’ll be more genuine. It’ll look like the witness is impartial. Of course, if he gets cold feet and denies everything we have a problem.”

  “In that case, put me up on the stand,” Annapaola said. “I’ll testify as to what he told me, and if necessary we’ll confront him with it.”

  I passed my hand over my face, against the growth of beard. One of the gestures I make when I’m at a loss what to say. The idea of Annapaola testifying in court as to the substance of the witness’s statements – in case the latter didn’t say what we expected – was very risky. The kind of request that makes judges angry.

  All right, I concluded, we’d think about that if the problem arose.

  Lorenza

  In my memories of those months there are sudden flashes, patches of light where everything is visible, everything is solid and real. And there are long interludes that I can barely make out, as if they’re something vaguely dreamed about or seen through a pane of frosted glass.

  There’s no chronological order, no true connective tissue, in these memories.

  I know only a few things.

  I know that I always carried coins and tokens with me; that I kept only a small amount of paper money in my pocket, held together with a large paper clip; that I had a cigarette case I’d been given by a girlfriend, and a Walkman; that I used a scent called Drakkar; that I had quite long hair.

  I saw Lorenza again a few days later. She came again to pick me up outside my office, without warning of course. From that point on, our relationship took on a rhythm of its own, neurotic but somehow regular. She didn’t have a telephone and would decide when to meet at the last minute. As to her movements, her work at school, what she did on the evenings when we weren’t together, they were shrouded in mystery.

  Every now and again she’d call me at home, more often at the office. She’d ask for Avvocato Guerrieri, which annoyed me (she knew perfectly well I wasn’t a qualified lawyer yet, just a mere trainee prosecutor, and the practice’s secretary knew it too – whenever she put the call through to me, she couldn’t conceal the irony in her tone) and flattered me, as you might flatter a little boy who’s playing at being an adult.

  Sometimes I thought of asking for her to be told that the avvocato was out of the office, just like that, to establish the principle that it couldn’t always be her who decided the when, the where and the how. I never did it.

  She always found a way to provoke me about something. I would try to respond by reasoning and she would retort, for example, that my excess of rationality was a clear symptom of a lack of conviction, or of insufficient mastery of the various subjects. She had a formidable ability to manipulate any discussion, to avoid the obligation to answer argument with argument. A natural talent for fallacies. She liked it when I became rattled, got angry, possibly lost control. Immediately afterwards we would make love.

  Once, while we were in bed in Via Eritrea, she asked me:

  “Would it be a problem for you if I was also seeing another man?”

  I replied something I don’t remember, putting on a show of nonchalance while a spasm of jealousy tore right through me. A little while later, I asked her if there really was someone else, and who it was. She changed the subject with her usual, unbearable vagueness, which she handled like a weapon.

  One evening, she came to pick me up with a girlfriend of hers. We went to the Taverna del Maltese, had a few sandwiches, drank rum and various beers, and as the evening wore on the conversation became full of hints and insinuations. I became convinced that they’d decided to have a threesome, that this had been their aim from the beginning of the evening. But as soon as we left the place they walked me home. They had another appointment, Lorenza told me almost chirpily as they waved goodbye and I stood there like an idiot.

  One afternoon, I spotted her in a blue Audi with a man in his forties: they’d pulled up at a traffic light on Corso Vittorio Emanuele. He exuded wealth, power and virility. I felt stupid, inferior, humiliated, but when I saw her again, maybe two days later, I didn’t have the guts to ask her any questions.

  Only on a few occasions did she seem to forget about the character she was playing. When we chatted about books, for example. Then a fierce, genuine, even touching passion emerged. It was she who introduced me to Yasunari Kawabata, Sylvia Plath, Fernando Pessoa, Luciano Bianciardi, Anna Akhmatova and others.

  She’d talk to me about a writer and I’d immediately go and buy one of their books because, even though I would never have admitted it, I wanted her to think well of me. But then I’d really read them, and my eyes would be opened to worlds and stories and ideas I hadn’t even known existed before.

  Of all our conversations about books there’s one I’ve never forgotten. The subject was fairy tales.

  “If you want to understand the dark side that’s in each one of us,” she said, “reread the classic fairy tales. Just under the surface you’ll find things that’ll leave you stunned. The ambiguity of love, for example, which is never pure but always mixed up with anger, resentment, even hate. Think of all the stories in which the mother isn’t there any more and her place is taken by a wicked stepmother on whom the child can vent its anger without fear of destroying the object of its love. Think of the stories about abandoned children. ‘Tom Thumb’, or ‘The Little Match Girl’, which for me is the cruellest. They’re all about poverty, illness, death. They’re anything but kids’ stories. Read fairy tales and you’ll find the most powerful key to understanding the nature of the evil and fear enclosed in the human heart.”

  16

  The seventh of April was a sharp, bright spring day. I woke early and decided to take a stroll before going to court.

  The seafront was metaphysically beautiful. The air was limpid, at once weightless and tangible. The perspective of the cast-iron lampposts suggested an army of spirit guides placed there to defend the city. On a day like this, if I’d had more time and gone a few miles further south, I’d have been able to see, clear in the distance, the outline of the Gargano promontory.

  At eight, after having breakfast in a little bar where they make you brioches with the filling of your choice, I returned home, had a cold shower, put on my regulation charcoal-grey suit, went out again and headed for the appeal court.

  Consuelo was waiting for me outside the main entrance with my briefcase, the papers we couldn’t do without, and my robe.

  We walked into the courtroom at a few minutes to 9.30 and, to my surprise, I saw that the assistant prosecutor was already there. That meant that the judges were ready to come out, didn’t want to waste any time and had asked the Prosecutor’s Department to guarantee punctuality.

  “Good morning, Dottoressa,” I said to Gastoni, who was absorbed in reading the case file. She replied to the greeting without any warmth.

  Loo
king her in the face I thought I noticed something different about her compared with the last time I’d seen her, though I couldn’t remember when that had been.

  “Strange, she looks … younger. That is, not exactly younger. Different,” I said under my breath to Consuelo, once we had taken our seats.

  “She must have spent a couple of months’ salary to ‘look younger’,” Consuelo whispered. Needless to say, she didn’t particularly like Gastoni.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes I think you men are stupid. The plastic surgeon must have had a heavy hand. Can’t you see she looks like a carnival mask?”

  I didn’t have time to reply. The bell rang and the court entered.

  Judge Marinelli didn’t look as if he was in a good mood. He told the clerk of the court to have the accused brought in.

  Five minutes later, Cardace was behind the bars, in the space reserved for defendants who are in custody. He was dressed soberly, in a blue sweater and white shirt. More boyish and more adult at the same time.

  Just as Marinelli was asking his associate judge to read out the charges, Lorenza arrived. She waved to us from the public benches. Consuelo went to her and told her she would have to wait outside: witnesses are not allowed in court until they have testified.

  The associate judge, Valentini, had been an assistant prosecutor. A good magistrate, quiet, reserved and, in my experience, competent and honest. Not just in the sense that he wasn’t a crook: he was someone capable of not taking advantage of his own position, not abusing his own power. Something which can easily be done even without committing crimes. Valentini was someone who didn’t dig his heels in when he realized he had made a mistake.

  It has long been a topic of debate whether, in a hearing such as the one about to start, a magistrate like that is better or worse than one who’s less adequate. A magistrate who’s mediocre, lazy and incompetent (just one of these unenviable qualities is sufficient, but they’re usually found together in the same individuals) is easier to convince: you just have to suggest that any alternative solution to yours is very, very tiresome to account for.