“I don’t know if his story is true either. I don’t know if he’s been telling me the truth, even though he swears that the drugs weren’t his. He’s sworn it to me over and over. Sometimes I believe him, and sometimes I think he’s denying everything because he’s ashamed and doesn’t want to admit he was carrying drugs in the same car as me and our daughter.”
That’s what I think too. It’s the likeliest hypothesis, and it’s probably true.
I told myself these things as I looked at her in silence, my face devoid of expression. And as I looked at her I realized something.
It wasn’t true that she had doubts about her husband’s innocence. She was convinced her husband was guilty, and that, more than anything else, had been her curse since the whole affair had started.
“Fabio told me you’d have to read the file first before you decided whether or not to accept the case. Do you mind if I ask why? Does it mean that if you’re convinced he’s guilty you won’t defend him?”
That was a question I really needed. No, I don’t give a damn whether he’s guilty or not. I defend guilty people every day. It’s just that your husband-I don’t know if he ever told you this – has a past as a criminal and maybe a murderer, or at least an accomplice to murder. I say this from personal knowledge, I hope I’m making myself clear. Given all this, I don’t know if I’m capable of defending him properly.
I didn’t say that.
I told her that this was the way I worked. I had to examine the papers first. I didn’t like to take on a case sight unseen. It was a lie, but one I couldn’t help telling.
“When will you let me know if you accept?”
“It isn’t a very big file. I could look at it over the weekend and give you my answer on Monday, or Tuesday at the latest.”
She took a large man’s-style wallet out of her handbag. “Fabio told me you didn’t want an advance before deciding whether to accept or not. But you’re going to read the file, and that’s work, so…”
I raised my open hands and shook my head. I didn’t want any money for the moment. Thanks all the same, but this was the way I worked. She didn’t insist. Instead of taking money or a cheque from the wallet she took a business card and handed it to me.
Natsu Kawabata, Japanese Cuisine, it said. Beneath that, two telephone numbers, one home and one mobile. I looked up from the card, questioningly.
She told me she was a chef. Three evenings a week she worked in a restaurant – she mentioned the name of a fashionable spot – but she also made sushi, sashimi and tempura for private parties thrown by people who could afford it. Japanese food has never come cheap.
The words escaped me before I could stop them. “I’d have said you were a model or something like that, not a chef.” I regretted saying it before I’d even finished the sentence. I felt like a complete idiot.
But she smiled. It was only the hint of a smile, but it was very beautiful.
“I used to be a model.” The smile disappeared. “That was how I met Fabio, in Milan. It seems like a long time ago, so many things have changed.”
She left the sentence hanging in the air, and in the brief silence that followed I tried to imagine how their relationship had begun, why they’d moved from Milan to Bari. Other things, too.
She was the one who broke the silence and interrupted my thoughts. “But I like cooking more. Are you familiar with Japanese cuisine?”
I said yes, I was very familiar with it and liked it a lot.
In that case, she said, I ought to try her version of it some time.
It was the kind of thing you say to be polite, I thought.
But a shiver went through me, the kind you feel when you’re sixteen and the prettiest girl in the class suddenly, amazingly, stops and talks to you in the school corridor.
Natsu asked me to call her as soon as I’d read the papers and had decided what to do.
She left, and it occurred to me that she hadn’t said a word about having come to court and watched me at work. I wondered why, and couldn’t find an answer.
A slight scent of amber lingered in the air. With that hint of something more pungent that I couldn’t quite identify.
5
A few minutes before nine, Maria Teresa came in and asked me if I still needed anything, as she was about to leave. I asked her to order me a pizza and a beer before she left. She looked at me with an expression that said it’s Friday evening, do you think it’s right to stay in the office eating a disgusting pizza, drinking a disgusting beer and working?
I looked back at her, with an expression that said yes, I do think it’s right, especially as I don’t have anything better to do. Anyway I don’t want to do anything better.
To be honest, I don’t even want to think about it.
She looked as if she was about to say something, but thought better of it. She would order the pizza, she said, and she’d see me on Monday morning.
I ate the pizza, drank the beer, cleared up the desk, put the latest Leonard Cohen album, Dear Heather, on the CD player and settled down to look through the papers Signora Natsu Kawabata had brought in.
Kawabata – like the writer, I thought. What was the title of that story? House of the Sleeping Beauties, wasn’t it? Yasunari Kawabata. A lovely, sad story. I ought to reread it, I thought. Maybe Natsu was related to the Kawabata who’d won the Nobel Prize. She could even be his granddaughter.
What a brilliant thought, I told myself. Absolutely brilliant. Like a Japanese person meeting a Signor Rossi and thinking, “Ah, his name’s Rossi, I wonder if he’s related to the motorcyclist.”
I think it’s best if I read the file.
It didn’t take long. The story was pretty much the way Paolicelli had told it. The arrest and custody records mentioned a routine check by the customs police in the harbour area, using dogs trained to sniff out drugs. I thought the same thing I’d thought the day before, when Paolicelli had told me his story. The customs police had probably had a tip-off. On the blank sheet of paper I’d placed next to the file I jotted down: Why the check? Then I told myself it was a question that was likely to remain unanswered, and I went on.
With the records were Paolicelli’s statements.
They were headed Transcript of statements made by the accused of his own free will. Of his own free will, of course. The transcript was very short and, after a few preliminaries, the gist of it was in this sentence:
“I acknowledge that the quantity of forty kilos of cocaine was discovered in my car. Regarding this, I freely declare that the drugs belong to myself alone and that my wife Natsu Kawabata, whose full particulars have been noted in other documents, has no connection whatsoever with this illegal transportation, which is the sole responsibility of the undersigned. I placed the narcotics in the car without my wife’s knowledge. I have no intention of naming the persons from whom I acquired the aforementioned quantity of narcotics, nor those to whom I was supposed to deliver them. I have nothing to add.”
Read, confirmed and signed.
On my sheet of notes, I jotted down: Usability of statements?
That meant that there were serious doubts about the validity and usability of these statements, which had been made without a lawyer being present. It wasn’t much to go on, but considering the situation I couldn’t afford to overlook anything.
I went quickly on to the report of the customs police, which mostly reiterated what was in the arrest and custody records. Then the transcript of Paolicelli’s interrogation by the examining magistrate, in which my putative client stated that he was exercising his right to remain silent. It was here that Avvocato Corrado Macri made his first appearance.
On the sheet of notes I wrote: Avvocato Macri, who the fuck are you?
The nice thing about these personal notes is that you can write whatever you like, including obscenities. As far as I’m concerned, swear words help me to think. If I can write a few nice expletives in my notes, my ideas seem to flow more easily.