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, knew 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.”