A Fine Line

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  I stood up and addressed the judges.

  “We consent, Your Honour. Our only motion is to reexamine the injured party, who is apparently present and could therefore be heard immediately. This is not in any way a dilatory motion. In the previous phases of the trial, the defendant was unable to present his defence. The events in question go back several years. Despite Signor Bronzino having gone abroad to work, the summonses were sent to his former residence, and he was unaware of the proceedings until last January. We do not question the fact that those proceedings were carried out correctly. We do not do so because we are not interested in technicalities, nor are we interested in postponements. We want the trial to continue immediately. That is why our only motion is to proceed with the examination of the offended party. The defendant is not present because he is working abroad, as I said. Believing as we do that his presence is not indispensable, we ask for this examination, and it is highly likely that we will rest our case on the outcome of the injured party’s testimony.”

  A few years earlier, our client had met a girl at a party, they started going out together and definitely had sexual relations. There was no doubt about this, nobody denied it. It was on the nature of those relations – whether or not they were consensual – that opinions differed. The girl (Marilisa, she was called, I don’t know why the name had stuck with me) had lodged a complaint against him, claiming that he had assaulted her. Bronzino had been arrested on the basis of these statements and held in custody for a few weeks. Then the judge must have realized that something wasn’t quite right about the accusation and had released him. A couple of years later, however, there had been a petition for remand. The prosecutor who was dealing with the case, not exactly a lover of hard work, must have thought that filling out a petition for remand was less of a bother than writing a well-argued motion for the case to be closed.

  In the meantime, Bronzino, convinced that there would be no further proceedings against him following his release, had moved to Germany. Within a short time, he had been declared a defaulter and was remanded for one of those surreal proceedings that are sometimes seen in our courthouses. The so-called defence had been entrusted to court-appointed lawyers who, from one hearing to the next and one postponement to the next, had put in appearances without ever contributing, for the obvious reason that none of them knew anything about the case.

  None of the witnesses had been cross-examined, not even the key witness, the presumed injured party, Marilisa Di Cosmo.

  When Bronzino, on his return to Italy, had received a boxful of mail that had accumulated at his old address, informing him of the proceedings, he had come to me.

  Things weren’t looking too good for him after the previous hearings. There was the injured party’s testimony, there was a medical certificate confirming the existence of abrasions compatible with sexual assault, there were statements from the victim’s then partner, who had been the first to hear about what had happened when she had returned home in a distressed state. Above all, there had been no real activity on the part of the defence. As things stood, the trial could easily end with a guilty verdict, and the minimum sentence for sexual assault is five years.

  *

  When I had finished speaking, the presiding judge turned first right, then left, to look at the associate judges. They were two demure-looking women – one with hair tied in a ponytail, the other with hair gathered in a bun kept in place by a chopstick – wearing the expressions of people who would have preferred to be somewhere else. It’s the kind of expression that’s almost a professional disease for those who’ve been associate judges for too long. It seems like interesting work, and to an extent it is. For a few months, if you get the right trials. But sitting there three times a week, for years on end, listening to witnesses, defence lawyers, prosecutors and defendants (each category produces its fair amount of nonsense or worse), without saying a word out loud (the only person who opens his mouth is the presiding judge) would be enough to fry anyone’s brains. I’d have gone crazy.

  Anyway, as I was saying, the judge exchanged rapid glances with his associates to see if they had any observations to make. Both barely moved their heads. That meant no, they had no observations, and yes, they were fine with my motion.

  “Prosecutor?”

  Assistant Prosecutor Castroni was a very polite person, a nice man in his way, disinclined to get caught up in legal subtleties. He got to his feet and said that he had no observations, no particular motion to make, and no objection to the injured party being examined.

  “Very well, then, we have said that the witness is present. Let’s hear her,” the presiding judge said to the bailiff, who went into the witness room and emerged a few moments later with an attractive young woman. Attractive but with something dull about her bearing and features. A tall, shapely, dull brunette.

  She looked around almost furtively, like a scared animal ready to attack in self-defence. The kind of witness – actually, the kind of person – you have to be particularly careful with. Only when she realized that the defendant wasn’t in court did she seem to relax a little.

  The judge asked her to read the formula of commitment. It used to be called the oath, the sentence witnesses had to recite before making their statement. When I started work as a lawyer, before the new – now old – code for criminal procedure was approved, the oath still existed. I know it by heart: “Conscious of the responsibility that with this oath I assume before God, if a believer, and before men, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

  There was a perfect balance between drama and farce in the rising cadence of that admonition that lent itself to being mangled in the most surreal ways. My favourite one was when people, nervous at being in court, asked for the formula to be repeated and then swore that they would tell anything but the truth. Which of course is what happens in most testimony, irrespective of the witness’s good faith.

  Then, with the new code that was introduced in 1989, it was considered that taking an oath was somewhat inelegant and ill-suited to a secular State, and the law introduced a formula of commitment, which goes like this: “Conscious of the moral and legal responsibility I assume with my testimony, I commit myself to tell the whole truth and not to conceal anything of which I have knowledge.” More correct, certainly, but much less poetic.

  This was what our witness recited, reading from a dirty laminated card.

  Judge Basile made her give her particulars – the most pointless of obligations, given that these particulars were already on at least six or seven documents in the case file – and at last gave the prosecutor the floor.

  “Thank you, Your Honour,” Castroni said. “Signora, do you remember already giving evidence in court some months… or rather, about a year ago?”

  The young woman nodded.

  “You must answer yes, for the record.”

  “Yes.”

  “You do remember. Good. Do you remember what you said on that occasion?”

  She sniffed before replying. She seemed very ill at ease. “More or less, yes.”

  “In any case, you told the truth on that occasion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your Honour, I have no other questions. We have a full record of the previous hearing.”

  “Wow, he really exerted himself,” Consuelo whispered in my ear.

  “In that case,” the judge said, “defence counsel may proceed with their cross-examination.”

  Consuelo stood up, adjusted her robe over her shoulders – again giving off that slight scent of amber – and turned to the witness with a smile. Consuelo’s smile can be deceptive. She looks good-natured, with a face like a small, friendly rodent in a cartoon. If you look more closely, however, you notice a much less reassuring gleam in her eyes. Consuelo is a good lawyer, someone of almost embarrassing rectitude, but above all she’s someone you really don’t want to quarrel with.

  “Good morning, Signora, I’m Avvocato Favia. Together with Avvocato Guerrier
i, I represent Signor Bronzino. I need to ask you a few questions, but I’ll try to be brief. Do you feel up to answering?”

  The young woman stared at her with a somewhat dazed expression, then looked around in search of help, as if trying to make sense of the situation. You don’t expect a girl from the Andes to be a criminal lawyer in Bari, so looks of surprise are the norm. Consuelo is used to it, but it’s going to be like that for a while longer.

  “Signora, please answer Avvocato Favia,” the judge said in an understanding tone.

  “Yes, yes, I’m sorry.”

  Consuelo glanced at her notes. She didn’t need to, but we all make pointless gestures when we have to start something, or finish it. “Could you tell us when and on what occasion you met the defendant?”

  “We met at a party. I went with a friend of mine.”

  “When was this party?”

  “I don’t remember, it was years ago.”

  “So you can’t answer?”

  “No, how could I possibly remember?”

  “No problem. After meeting the defendant at that party… By the way, whose party was it?”

  “I don’t know, I told you I went with a friend of mine. She was the one who knew the host.”

  “So you didn’t know the host?”

  “No, what’s so strange about that?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. What kind of party was it?”

  Castroni stood up. “Objection, Your Honour, the witness is being asked to make a value judgement. That makes the question inadmissible, quite apart from the fact that it’s completely irrelevant.”

  “All right, Avvocato,” Basile said, “let’s forget about what kind of party it was, unless there’s a specific reason to go further into this aspect of the matter. If there is, please tell us.”

  “Your Honour, knowing the context in which the defendant and the injured party met may help us to understand the beginning of their relationship. But I’ll drop the question, it isn’t essential. So, Signora, after meeting the defendant at this party, did you have occasion to meet him again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just once, or several times?”

  “I think I already said, he sometimes dropped by the office—”

  “You mean your place of work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he ever invite you out? For a coffee, for example, an aperitif, dinner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever accept any of his invitations, apart from the evening with which this trial is concerned?”

  “That evening I only agreed to go for a walk.”

  “Before that evening did you ever accept any invitations, walks or otherwise?”

  “Just once, a coffee at a café near the office.”

  Consuelo paused, turned to look at me, we exchanged knowing looks, and I stood up as she sat down. It was my turn.

  “Signora, do you have a boyfriend, a partner?”

  “Not at the moment, I’m single.”

  “But at the time when these events happened, you had a partner?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s the person who went with you when you lodged a complaint the following morning, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you living with this person at the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of work does your former partner do?”

  “He’s area sales manager for a confectionery company.”

  “Was he ever away for a few days?”

  “Yes.”

  “Often?”

  “He was always travelling, almost every day. He’d go from one place to another.”

  “Did he usually come back in the evening?”

  “Yes, he’d leave in his car in the morning and get home in the evening.”

  “And apart from spending all day away, did he sometimes take longer trips which obliged him to spend the night away from home?”

  “Yes.”

  “How frequently?”

  She did not reply immediately, but it wasn’t clear if the hesitation was due to the fact that she was concentrating on the answer or because, for some reason, the question made her uncomfortable.

  “I can’t say exactly. A couple of times a month.”

  “Ah, by the way, when you went to that party with your friend, do you remember if your partner was away?”

  “I don’t know, it was a long time ago.”

  “Let me try and help you. Did you ever go out alone when your partner was in the city? Did he mind?”

  Marilisa sighed, torn between exasperation and resignation. “I couldn’t really say, it’s a period of my life I’m trying to forget.”

  “I’m sorry to be so insistent and to remind you of things you’d prefer to forget, but unfortunately I need an answer. Do you happen to remember if, when you went to that party, your partner was away on business?”

  “Maybe yes.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Yes, yes, I remember, he was away.”

  “I’d like now to get a better idea of the timeline. How much time passed between that party and the events that concern us in this trial?”

  “I can’t say for certain.”

  “Weeks, months?”

  “A couple of months.”

  “So, since the date of the offence with which the defendant is charged is 3 April, your acquaintance presumably goes back to the beginning of February, or maybe the end of January?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “And between that party and the first time you saw each other again, or spoke to each other on the phone, how much time passed?”

  “He called me a couple of days later.”

  “Where did he call you?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “On what telephone did he call you?”

  “On my mobile.”

  “So you’d given him your mobile number?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He asked me for it.”

  “Please don’t take this question the wrong way, but do you give your mobile number to everyone who asks for it?”

  I glanced sideways out of the corner of my eye. The prosecutor shifted in his chair. He might have been thinking of objecting, but then decided to wait and see what would happen. Nor did the judge say anything.

  “No, no, I mean, it depends—”

  “You had only met Signor Bronzino that evening, is that correct?”

  “Yes, but what I mean—”

  “I assume you felt a particular liking for him, you trusted him.”

  She passed her hand over her face. She looked as if she was suffering. I wished I could get this over with as soon as possible.

  “Yes, he was… very polite, and besides, he knew my friend.”

  “Don’t worry, Signora, you don’t have to justify yourself. I was only asking the question in order to get a clearer idea of the situation. So, Signor Bronzino called you two days after meeting you at the party. I assume there were other calls, other telephone conversations?”

  “Yes, he’d phone me and we’d chat.”

  “And did you sometimes phone him?”

  “I can’t remember. Maybe I did.”

  “Maybe you did. When did you meet again?”

  “I’m not sure. He told me that he was often in the area where my office was and asked me if I felt like taking a break and coming outside for a coffee. He kept insisting, and one time I accepted.”

  “Was that the only time you met, apart from the evening of 3 April?”

  “I think so.”

  I let those words hang in the air for a few seconds, with their heavy burden of ambiguity.

  “Do you know the Hotel Royal in Milan?”

  She looked at me in genuine surprise. “No… I don’t think so.”

  “Did your partner ever go to Milan on business?”

  “Yes, he had meetings there.”

  “Do you know which hotel he stayed in when he went to Mila
n?”

  She half closed her eyes, and let several seconds go by before replying. She was trying to understand. “It may have been that one, yes.”

  “The Royal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he always go there?”

  “I think so.”

  “A couple of times a month, as we said before?”

  “More or less. Sometimes he went more often.”

  “Do you remember if there was a particular day of the week when he went on these business trips to Milan?”

  A deep breath. Our eyes met for a few seconds. Then she looked away. “I think it was Monday.”

  “Thank you. Now I’d like to bring this document to your attention. It’s a record of calls made to and from the defendant’s mobile phone. To be more specific, the one Signor Bronzino was using at the time of these events. This record shows that there was a call lasting five minutes and twenty-three seconds to a number in Milan late in the evening of 6 March 2006. The number is that of the Royal, the hotel we were just talking about. Do you have any idea why Signor Bronzino should have telephoned that hotel that evening?”

  “You should ask him.”

  “As it happens, I have asked him, but right now I’m interested in your opinion. Can you answer me? If it’s any help, I can tell you it was a Monday.”

  The worst situation for a witness to be in, especially a witness of dubious honesty, is when he or she realizes that something is about to come out, but isn’t sure exactly what and can do nothing about it. She pursed her lips in silence.

  “Do you know if the defendant knew your partner?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know, or he didn’t know him?”

  “He didn’t know him, as far as I know.”

  “I ask you the question because it turns out that your partner spent the night of 6 to 7 March 2006 at the Hotel Royal in Milan. So it’s quite likely that he was there when that phone call I told you about occurred. Can you explain that coincidence?”