“Did he tell you that he would get you acquitted?”
“No. He never said that. But he often told me that if I was patient and let him get on with it, he would get me a lower sentence. He said it in a knowing kind of way, as if he knew the right channels
… I don’t know if I’m making myself clear.”
“Yes, you’re making yourself very clear,” I said, looking at the judges. “You trusted completely in this unknown lawyer, who appeared out of the blue in somewhat mysterious circumstances. Can you explain why?”
“I felt – and still feel – as if I was in the middle of something I didn’t understand and couldn’t control. Macri seemed to know what he was doing, it seemed as if he knew things… I don’t know how to put it… it seemed as if he really could do what he promised.”
“Didn’t you know any lawyers you trusted who could have worked with Macri?”
“I didn’t know anyone well enough to trust them. As I said, Macri had this knowing way about him that-”
Mirenghi broke in. “Please avoid giving us your impressions and personal feelings. If there are facts, then state them, but keep your personal opinions and conjectures to yourself.”
“With all due respect, Your Honour, the defendant was explaining why he-”
“Avvocato, I have ruled on this point. Ask another question.”
Actually, he’d already said what I’d wanted him to. How useful it would be was another matter. It was time to bring the examination to its conclusion. I asked Paolicelli to talk about his last meeting with Macri in prison and the quarrel they had had. I’d advised him to tone things down in his account of that meeting, and in particular not to mention Macri’s threats. I wanted to avoid the court refusing to allow Macri’s testimony on the – perfectly reasonable – grounds that it was impossible to summon someone as a witness and then ask him questions which might oblige him to incriminate himself. That would have brought our case to a premature halt.
Paolicelli was good. He used exactly the right tone, once again implying that there was something not quite above board about Macri’s conduct, but without exaggerating, without explicitly accusing him of anything. When his account of that last meeting was over, I told myself that so far we had done everything we could, as well as we could. The difficult part was coming up now.
Paolicelli was led back to the cage. Mirenghi looked ostentatiously at his watch and turned to me.
“We still have pending your request to call your client’s former defence counsel as a witness. Do you still wish this request to be considered, Avvocato Guerrieri?”
I got to my feet, making my usual gesture, almost a tic with me, of pulling my robe up over my shoulders. Yes, I said, I did still wish the request to be considered. Avvocato Macri’s testimony was important to us. Indeed, after the statements we had heard during this hearing, its importance should have been obvious.
Very briefly, I went over the objections the assistant prosecutor had made in the previous hearing, concerning the admissibility of the testimony, and tried to explain why those objections should not be heeded. Then the judges retired to their chamber to make their decision.
34
Mirenghi had said that they would be in their chamber for twenty minutes at the most. They took an hour and a half. I wondered – as I had often done during similar delays – if they were completely incapable of foreseeing how long their work would take them, or if they did it deliberately. As a petty and more or less conscious demonstration of power.
Mirenghi sat down, checked that the clerk of the court was in his seat, cast a glance at me and at the giant squid, just to make sure that we were also there, put on his glasses and read out the ruling.
“Regarding the defence counsel’s request to hear further testimony, and having heard the opinion of the assistant prosecutor, the court declares as follows. There are no obstacles of a formal nature to the request to call the defendant Paolicelli’s previous defence counsel as a witness. Considering the objections of the prosecution and the subsequent observations of the defence it is possible to state that:
“One. Given the version of the facts presented by the defence, to which we have adhered in evaluating the admissibility of the requests, Avvocato Macri’s testimony must not focus on the conduct of the aforesaid lawyer but on circumstances within his knowledge; within these limits his testimony is admissible;
“Two. There is no conflict of interest as defined in Article 197 of the code of criminal procedure: Avvocato Macri did not carry out any investigations on behalf of the defence and does not fall within any of the other conditions laid down in said article;
“Three. Lawyer-client confidentiality may be claimed in the course of the testimony but does not constitute a reason for the testimony not to be admitted.
“On this basis the request to call Avvocato Macri as a witness is therefore considered admissible.”
Mirenghi concluded the reading of the judges’ ruling with the date of the next hearing and a few further formalities, and then declared that the hearing was adjourned.
As the judges rose to leave I walked to the cage, feeling Natsu’s eyes on me. I told Paolicelli it had gone well, we should be pleased. I didn’t tell him the thought I’d had a little earlier, after his examination. The difficult part was just starting.
35
The phone call came in the afternoon while I was seeing a client.
Maria Teresa called me on the internal line and, before I had time to tell her that I didn’t like to be interrupted when I was seeing a client, she told me it was Avvocato Corrado Macri, calling from Rome.
I was silent for a few seconds. I remember asking myself, word for word: why the hell didn’t it occur to me that he might phone?
“All right, put him through.” I covered the receiver with my hand and asked my client – Signor Martinelli, a stolid-looking pensioner whose beautiful little villa, which he’d built without permission in the middle of a protected forest, had been seized by the forest rangers – if he would excuse me for a few minutes, I had an urgent matter to attend to. What I meant was: if he’d be so kind as to leave the room for a few minutes, but he didn’t understand. He told me not to worry, I could carry on, and stayed where he was.
“Hello?”
Pause. Noise in the background. He must have been in a car.
Then a deep, rather mellow voice. With a barely noticeable Calabrian accent, much less obvious than I would have expected from my stereotypical image of him.
“Avvocato Guerrieri?”
“Who is that?”
“Your colleague Macri from Rome.”
My colleague, right.
“Go on.”
Another pause, a shorter one this time.
“Listen, colleague, I won’t beat about the bush. I had a letter from the clerk of the court’s office in Bari yesterday. A summons to appear as a witness in the appeal hearing of a man named Paolicelli. I defended him, as I’m sure you know.”
Defended was a somewhat loose way of putting it, I’d say. How about saying you really fucked it up for him?
“I found out that you’re his counsel now and I wanted to ask you why they summoned me. Was it the prosecutor’s doing?”
A barely perceptible hint of anxiety in that mellow voice. He didn’t know why he’d been summoned. Which meant he didn’t yet know it was me he had to thank for it. The most amusing part of the call was still to come.
“Look, Macri, we need to clarify a number of details-”
“I’m sorry, Guerrieri, but who is ‘we’?”
The hint of anxiety had become an aggressive undercurrent.
“My client and I-”
“Your client and you? You mean Paolicelli? Are you telling me it was you who asked for me to be summoned?”
“As I was saying, we need to clarify a number of things -”