“Why do you want to choose the shortened way?”
“What do you mean, why? Because it’s the thing that suits the case best. With this judge you get off with the lightest possible sentence, and in-”
“I didn’t do what they say I did.”
I took another deep breath, got out a cigarette. I didn’t know what to say, so naturally I said the wrong thing.
“Listen, Abdou. I don’t know what you’ve done. But for a lawyer it can be better not to know what his client has done. This helps him to be more lucid, to make better decisions without allowing himself to be influenced by emotion. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
Abdou gave an imperceptible nod. His eyes seemed to have sunk into their black orbits. Averting my gaze, I continued.
“If we don’t opt for the shortened procedure, if we go before the Assize Court, it’s as if we were playing cards with your life, with very few chances of winning. And then, to play it that way takes money, lots of money. A trial before the Assize Court takes a long time and costs a great deal.”
I realized I had said something stupid even as the words were coming out of my mouth. And at the same time I realized why I was uneasy in my mind.
“You mean that because I can’t pay enough money it’s better to opt for the shortened procedure. Is that it?”
“I didn’t say that.” My tone of voice went up a notch.
“How much money does it take to have a trial before the Court of Assizes?”
“The money is not the problem. The problem is that if we go before the Assize Court you’ll get a life sentence and your life is finished.”
“My life is finished anyway if they convict me for killing a child. How much money?”
I suddenly felt dead tired. An enormous, irresistible weariness came over me. I let my shoulders slump and realized then how tense they had been until that moment.
“Not less than forty or fifty million. If we wanted to make investigations for the defence – and in this case we would probably need them – a good deal more.”
Abdou seemed stunned. He swallowed, with some difficulty, and gave the impression of wanting to say something but failing. Then he began to follow a train of thought from which I was excluded. He looked up, shook his head, then moved his lips in the recitation of some soundless, mysterious litany.
In the end he covered his face with his hands, rubbed them up and down two or three times, then lowered them and looked me in the face again. He said nothing.
I had an unbearable buzzing in my ears and spoke chiefly to drown it.
We didn’t have to decide that very morning. There was still a month left before the preliminary hearing, when we might or might not opt for the shortened procedure. And then we had to talk to Abajaje. The question of money was the least of our problems. I would give the documents another reading, look for other rays of hope. Right now I had to be off, but we’d meet again soon. If he needed anything he could let me know, even by telegram.
Abdou said not a word. When I touched his shoulder in greeting I felt a body totally inert.
I escaped, pursued by his phantoms. And my own.
13
When I left home the next morning I realized there was a removal in progress. New tenants were moving in to our building. I registered the fact in my mind and uttered a quick prayer that we were not getting a family with Pomeranian dogs and rowdy children. Then my thoughts turned to other matters.
That day was to see the beginning of a trial that the newspapers had dubbed “Dogfighting”.
To be exact, it was not the papers which called it that, but the police who had carried out the operation some ten months previously. The papers had confined themselves to repeating the code name for investigations into organized dogfights and the related clandestine betting ring.
It had all started with a denouncement by the Anti-Vivisection League and had continued because the inquiries had been entrusted to a truly exceptional policeman, Chief Inspector Carmelo Tancredi.
Inspector Tancredi had succeeded in infiltrating the clandestine betting ring, had attended the dogfights, made recordings, managed to find out where the breeders kept their animals, and noted how and where the bets changed hands. In short, he had nailed them.
He was a small man with a gaunt face and a large black moustache that looked completely out of place on it. He seemed the most innocuous person on earth.
He was, in fact, the most intelligent, honest and deadly cop I have ever met.
He worked in the sixth section of the flying squad. The one that dealt with sexual offences and everything that the other sections – the more important ones – wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.
He had always refused to leave that job, even though they had often tried to induce him to transfer to the Criminalpol, the anti-drug section or even the Secret Service. All jobs in which he would have worked less for more pay.
On one occasion I’d had a visit from the parents of a nine-year-old child who had been sexually abused by his swimming instructor.
They wanted advice on whether or not to report the incident, on what they would be up against if they did, and especially what the child would be up against. I took them to Tancredi and saw how he spoke to the child, and saw how the child – who until then had answered in monosyllables, never raising his eyes – spoke in turn to Tancredi, looked him in the face and even began to smile.
The swimming instructor ended up behind bars and, what’s more, stayed there. Just as ending up behind bars and staying there was the fate of most of the maniacs, rapists and child abusers who had had the bad luck to cross the path of Inspector Tancredi.
The organizers of the dogfights were similarly unlucky.
The first strike of the operation led to the seizure of eight pit-bull terriers, five Fila Brasileros, three Rottweilers and three bandogs, these last being a deadly cross between Alsatian and pit bull. They were all champions, each worth between twenty and a hundred million. The most priceless was a three-year-old bandog called Harley-Davidson. He had won twenty-seven fights, invariably killing his opponent. He was considered a sort of champion of southern Italy, and the inquiries established that there were preparations in hand for a contest for the All-Italy title against a pit bull which fought in the Province of Milan. A contest worth over half a billion lire in bets.
Dozens of videos of dogfights, not to mention fights between dogs and pumas, and even dogs and pigs, were confiscated as well. The owners of a kennels, where not only the animals but also arms and drugs were found, were arrested. Among those charged were a very well-known vet, a number of breeders and three people who had previously been arrested and found guilty on charges of association with the Mafia and trafficking in drugs. Needless to say, they had all been released, because the length of time for which they could be held had run out.
Anyway, that late March morning the trial resulting from Operation Dogfighting was scheduled to begin. The Anti-Vivisection League planned to start civil proceedings and had appointed me to represent them.
There were only two precedents of trials concerning cruelty to animals in which the Anti-Vivisection League and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dogs had been admitted as civil parties. The matter was anything but a walkover, so I’d had to work hard the previous afternoon to find convincing arguments to present in court. And to clear my mind of the meeting with Abdou.
Purely because I was well-prepared that morning and ready to do my job in a professional fashion, the preliminary hearing was immediately adjourned on account of – in the words of the same old formula that was always used – “the excessive workload involved in the hearing and the impossibility of concluding all the proceedings at today’s date”.
The adjournment was immediate, but it was ordered only after four hours of hearing. And waiting.