“Plausibility, as the assistant prosecutor sees it, means compatibility with a kind of script of normality, developed on the basis of what usually happens.
“What usually happens, when certain given elements of fact are present, therefore becomes the criterion according to which we decide what may have happened in a specific case.”
All three were listening to me. Incredibly, Russo seemed the most alert.
I went over everything that had emerged during the hearings. It didn’t take long. They had already admitted all these things as evidence, they were as familiar with them as I was. This recap was only there to introduce my main argument.
“At the end of the day, what is it that we do in court? All of us, I mean. Policemen, carabinieri, prosecutors, defence lawyers, judges? We all tell stories. We take the raw material contained in the evidence, gather it together, and give it a structure and meaning in stories that present a plausible version of past events. The story is acceptable if it explains all the evidence, if it doesn’t leave anything out, if it forms a coherent narrative.
“And a coherent narrative depends on the reliability of the laws of experience, which we use to extract from the evidence those stories which present a version of past events.
“Stories that in a way – in an etymological way – we have to invent.
“Let us look briefly at the two stories which can be told on the basis of the material that has been presented to us.
“The story told in the sentence handed down in the original trial is a simple one. Paolicelli purchases a large quantity of drugs in Montenegro and tries to smuggle these drugs into the country hidden in his car. He is discovered and arrested. And even confesses his guilt.
“This story is constructed on the basis of a single significant fact: the discovery of the drugs in Paolicelli’s car at the border post. To go from an established fact – the presence of drugs in Paolicelli’s car – to the unestablished sequence of events which constitute the story told in the sentence from the original trial, it is necessary to go through a logical process.
“How do I know that the story I have told is a true account of past events? By applying to the established fact – the finding of the drugs in Paolicelli’s car-a law of experience, which we could summarize like this: if someone has a quantity of drugs in his car, those drugs are his.
“This is a highly reliable law of experience. It tallies with common sense. Normally, if I have something in my car – especially if it’s something of great value – then that something belongs to me. It’s a law of experience. But it isn’t a scientific law, and it allows for alternatives.
“The assistant prosecutor says, quite rightly, that the new evidence that has emerged during this appeal hearing is not incompatible with this story.”
I glanced at Montaruli before I continued.
“But now let’s see what other story it is possible to tell on the basis of the evidence we have.
“A family spends a week’s holiday in Montenegro. At night their car stays in the hotel car park and – in case it needs to be moved – the keys are left with the porter. The night before they are due to leave someone takes those keys.
“Someone who knows that Paolicelli and his wife are going back to Italy the next day, in that same car.
“This someone, with his accomplices, strips the bodyshell from Paolicelli’s car – his wife’s car, to be more precise – and fills it with drugs. Then they put everything back where it was, the car and the keys. It’s a good way to carry out an extremely lucrative operation with the minimum of risk. An operation set up by an organized group, which goes about things in a highly professional way, involving a division of roles and tasks. One of these tasks must be to check that everything goes well on the journey, to follow the unwitting courier and make sure the drugs are retrieved once they are in Italy. This retrieval probably to be carried out through a targeted theft of the car itself.
“At the border post in Bari, something goes wrong. The customs police find the drugs and arrest Paolicelli, who makes a confession without a lawyer being present-a confession which is therefore completely unusable – with the sole purpose of avoiding his wife being arrested.
“Immediately after the arrest, someone, in circumstances which are bizarre to say the least, suggests to Paolicelli’s wife that she appoint a lawyer from Rome. This lawyer has previously had a nasty brush with the justice system himself, in which he was arrested, charged and then acquitted for the offence of criminal conspiracy to traffic drugs. This same lawyer has a private relationship, the nature of which is unclear, with a man who – as Macri himself says – has also been charged with drug trafficking. By a curious coincidence, this man was travelling on the same ferry as Paolicelli.
“Of course it could be, as the prosecutor hypothesizes, that Paolicelli and this man were accomplices in the illegal operation.
“I must point out, however, that there exists at least one important piece of evidence which contradicts this hypothesis. The file contains printouts of the defendant’s mobile phone records, and those of his wife, during the week immediately prior to the arrest. They were acquired, quite correctly, in an attempt to identify possible accomplices, but when they were examined nothing significant emerged. There weren’t many calls that week, almost all of them between Paolicelli and his wife, and none to numbers in Montenegro. And none to any phone users related to Romanazzi. If the customs police had found any, they would surely have highlighted it, given that Romanazzi had previously been charged with drug offences. Instead, the note that was sent to the Prosecutor’s Department with these printouts simply states that nothing significant emerged from an examination of the phone records.
“We can therefore explain the presence of Romanazzi on board that ferry by saying that he was there to keep a close watch, without any risk to himself, on the transporting of the drugs by the unwitting Paolicelli, and to make sure that the next phase, the retrieval of the drugs, went well.
“And it could be that it was in fact Romanazzi who suggested to Paolicelli’s wife, through a go-between, that she appoint Macri.
“Why would he do that? To follow as closely as possible, through a person he trusted completely, the development of proceedings. To make sure that Paolicelli didn’t tell the investigators anything that might compromise the organization, for example anything about the hotel in Montenegro, the person with whom he left the keys, and so on. Indeed, Macri advises Paolicelli to exercise his right to remain silent and the whole process goes through without the defendant making a single statement, apart from the false confession he made immediately after the arrest.
“Let us also remember that when the sequestration order on the car is lifted-a car which is the property of Paolicelli’s wife – Macri is anxious to go personally and pick up the car from the police pound.
“What lawyer does something like that? And why does he do it? As a rule, as we all know, the lawyer gets the sequestration order lifted and then the client is the one who goes to pick up the car.
“Macri acts in a very unusual way, for which we must find a reasonable explanation, even if only a hypothetical one. Isn’t it possible that there was something in the car which the investigators had not found and which those responsible for the illegal operation had a major interest in retrieving? More drugs, perhaps. Or else a GPS tracker that had been planted in the car at the same time as the drugs. I’m sure you know what a GPS tracker is.”