“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.
So he had no idea he had been an obsession of mine all through my teenage years.
He had no idea that, in my waking dreams of revenge, I’d often smashed his friend’s face in first, and then his. He had no idea, and now I was his lawyer, in other words his only hope.
He continued wringing his hands. I recalled the speech I had imagined myself making when the moment came.
Do you remember when you and your friends beat and humiliated that young boy who didn’t want to take off his anorak? Do you remember? That bastard friend of yours smashed his face in and you watched and smiled smugly. Well, I was that boy and now I’m here to smash your face in. You won’t look like a David Bowie of the suburbs any more and our account will finally be settled.
Or rather, no, before settling our account you have to tell me if it was you who stabbed that other boy. Did you hold the knife, and then sacrifice the poor bastard who killed himself in prison? And if you didn’t actually hold the knife in your hand, were you part of the gang? Tell me, damn it.
I noticed that he was clenching his fists under the desk.
Then he thanked me. For being so frank with him, and so fair. He said he was sure that if there was a way out, I would find it.
Then he said something else. “You realized that I needed to get it out of my system and you didn’t interrupt me, didn’t say you had to go. You’re a good man.”
As I left the prison, these words were still clattering around in my head.
I was a good man.
Of course I was.
11
The next day I called Tancredi again and told him about my conversation with Paolicelli in the prison.
He listened without saying a word until I’d finished.
“As I told you last time, if you wanted to identify the hotel staff, there’d have to be an ongoing official investigation. If there was, then we could go through Interpol and let the police in Podgorica fuck us around officially.”
“I was thinking about the man on the ferry. The one who was in the same hotel as Paolicelli, the one he saw again on the return crossing.”
“And what do you suggest we do? Oh, yes, the passenger list. We trace all the male passengers on that ferry – only a few hundred at most – and then we get hold of their photographs and take them to your client in prison. Look, is it this one? No? What about this one? No, it’s that one! Bingo! We’ve identified a dangerous tourist we can charge with aggravated international travel. You’ve practically won the case.”
“Carmelo, listen to me. I know perfectly well we’re not going to get anywhere with the people in the hotel or with what happened in Montenegro in general. But I must tell you this: the more I think about it, the stronger the feeling I have that Paolicelli is telling the truth. I know intuition and all that is mostly bullshit, but I talked to him and the way he tells it, the look on his face, everything-”
“Let me introduce Guido Guerrieri. No one can ever tell him a lie.”
But there wasn’t much conviction in his voice. It was a last skirmish. Carmelo knew I didn’t easily go overboard for my clients.
“All right, what would you like us to do?”
“The passenger list, Carmelo. Get hold of it, narrow it down to the Italian citizens – Paolicelli said the man was Italian – and then check your database to see if any of these people have a record for drug trafficking.”
I could just see him shaking his head. He said it would take him at least a day, he would have to waste one of his days off, and it wouldn’t lead anywhere anyway, but in the end he took the details of the boat and the crossing.
“After this, Guerrieri, you’ll be in debt to me your whole life.” And he hung up.
I spent the whole afternoon preparing my opening argument for a case due to be heard the following morning.
I was representing an association of people who lived a few hundred yards from a waste disposal plant. When the wind was blowing the wrong way – in other words, from the plant to the built-up area where they lived – the smell was revolting.
The delegates of the association had come to my office and explained the situation. Before they would agree to entrust me with the case, they had demanded that I take a little trip to where they lived so that I could be made directly aware of the nature of the problem.
As I entered the home of the association’s chairman, I could sense something slightly nauseous in the background. A smell that suggested something mysterious, unnameable, hidden in that apparently normal dwelling. The man asked me to follow him into the kitchen and sit down, and his wife made coffee.
After a while, I had the impression that the chairman, his wife and the other members of the association were exchanging knowing glances. As if to say, now we’ll show him.
They’re a Satanic sect, I told myself. Someone’s going to come up behind me now and hit me on the head. Then they’ll take me to a garage equipped for sabbaths and black masses and cut me in pieces with ceremonial knives acquired at the local discount store. Maybe before that, they’ll force me to have ritual sex with this priestess of Mephistopheles here. I looked at the chairman’s wife – five feet tall, weighing about twelve stone, a pleasant face and a moustache like a pirate – and told myself this would probably be the most Satanic part of the whole thing.