Involuntary Witness

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  Beside the judge were the two other women. One of them – I thought at that moment – looked like a headmistress and the other, by chance seated next to the judge, was suntanned, heavily made-up, with garish lips, fresh from the hairdresser’s.

  I broke off my scrutiny when I realized that the public prosecutor was rounding off with the applications for evidence.

  “... I therefore request the admission of the witnesses indicated in the list, the acquisition of the documents previously indicated and the questioning of the accused, if he consents. Should the accused not intend to submit to questioning, I herewith request the attachment of the statement rendered by him in the course of the preliminary inquiries. Furthermore, since the two witnesses of Senegalese nationality are nowhere to be found, and it is therefore impossible to have them here present as witnesses, I herewith – in accordance with Article 512b – request the attachment of the statements made by them in the course of the preliminary inquiries.”

  The judge then called on Cotugno, who spoke briefly. The civil party, he said, was not involved in this trial for revenge but for justice alone. And justice is done when, responsibility having been rigorously ascertained, a penalty commensurate with the gravity of the offence is inflicted with equal rigour. He had no applications for evidence and associated himself with all the requests of the public prosecutor, whose position he fully shared.

  It was my turn.

  “Your Honour, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the public prosecutor has just spoken as if he were reading out the grounds for a verdict of guilty. In the course of the proceedings, by cross-examining the witnesses, the witnesses called by the public prosecutor himself, we intend to show that the verdict of guilty, already pronounced in the mind of the representative of the public prosecution, is nothing more than a house of cards. We will demonstrate that from the first moment on, the investigations were directed not towards finding the culprit responsible for this horrible crime, but towards finding a culprit. We will show that the urgency – the justifiable urgency – of satisfying the demand for justice of the family of poor Francesco Rubino, and of the community as a whole, has led to an objective manipulation of the probative material. I wish to be clear on this point. We do not intend to maintain that the evidence has been deliberately manipulated – either by the carabinieri or still less by the public prosecutor – to the damage of my client, Signor Abdou Thiam. We do, however, intend to maintain that the desperate need to find a guilty party as soon as possible, in order to satisfy that demand for justice, gave rise in the investigations to short-sightedness, mistaken perspective, errors of method—”

  The judge interrupted me.

  “Avvocato Guerrieri, you have to make your applications for evidence, if you have any. Do not anticipate your harangue.”

  “With respect, Your Honour, I point out that I am confining myself to indicating the facts which I intend to prove, in accordance with Article 493 of the code of criminal procedure. In particular I intend to prove that a defective approach to the inquiries – arising certainly from the best intentions – has affected the quality and reliability of the probative material assembled. In any case, I have nearly finished, so, with your permission, I would like to continue.”

  “Avvocato, you may proceed, but stay within the limits.”

  “Thank you, Your Honour. I was saying, then, that the almost immediate singling out of a possible suspect, by a series of coincidences, has led the investigators to transform suspicions into conjectures and conjectures into alleged proofs in a kind of involuntary chain. The objective which we shall pursue in the course of the hearing will be to reveal this mechanism, to reverse it, to identify the defective links, the incorrect deductions, and show the substantial and grave, even though involuntary, iniquity of it.

  “I have no applications for evidence to put forward at the present time, though I state in advance that in the course of some of my cross-examination I shall make use of a number of documents. Documents of which I shall subsequently request the attachment by the court. I wish to conclude by reminding the ladies and gentlemen of the jury that, in a civilized country, the defendant does not have to prove a thing. Let me repeat that: the defendant does not have to prove a thing. It is up to the prosecution to prove the responsibility of the defendant beyond all reasonable doubt. I ask you to bear this in mind at all times during this trial. Thank you.”

  I had improvised, but when I sat down I was almost pleased. I liked the brainwave about working backwards, from presumptive proofs to conjectures to mere suspicions. And in speaking in order to convince others – the court – I had begun to convince myself. It happens in this job. It has to happen.

  Perhaps we might make it. Perhaps the situation was not as desperate as I had thought that morning, and for some days before.

  Perhaps.

  The judge dictated for the record a brief ruling whereby he admitted the applications for evidence and adjourned the proceedings until the next day, for the beginning of the hearing. That morning, he explained to us off the record, two of the jurors had personal commitments that could not be deferred, so the adjournment was unavoidable.

  The court left the room, Abdou was handcuffed again and escorted away, the public dispersed.

  I put away my papers. I folded my robe over one arm, picked up my briefcase with the other and was the last to head for the exit.

  24

  The first witness called by the prosecution was a lieutenant of the carabinieri, the officer commanding the operations unit in Monopoli. He was a young man of twenty-six or -seven, with a pleasing air, not very military.

  The judge ordered him to take the oath. The lieutenant accepted the well-thumbed sheet handed to him by the Clerk of the court and read aloud: “Conscious of the moral and juridical responsibility I am assuming with my deposition, I undertake to speak the whole truth and to conceal nothing of which I have knowledge.”

  “Give your full particulars.”

  “Lieutenant Alfredo Moroni, born in Brescia 12 September 1973, domiciled at the carabinieri station of Monopoli. I am the officer commanding the operations unit and flying squad.”

  “Mr Public Prosecutor, you may now proceed with your questioning.”

  Cervellati took a sheet of notes from the file in front of him and began.

  “Now, Lieutenant, would you care to tell the court what part you played in the investigations concerning the unlawful restraint and killing of little Francesco Rubino?”

  “Yes, sir. On 5 August 1999, at about 19.50 hours, the operations centre received a telephone call on the emergency number 112. It reported the disappearance of a nine-year-old boy named Francesco Rubino. The call came from the boy’s grandfather, with whom he was spending the holidays because, if I am not mistaken, the parents are separated.”

  “Very well, Lieutenant, but avoid superfluous details. Stick to the relevant facts.”

  The lieutenant looked on the point of saying something in reply. He hadn’t cared for that interruption. But he was a carabiniere, he said nothing, and after a brief pause resumed his testimony.

  “On receipt of the message by the operations room I was personally informed and dispatched a radio patrol car to the grandparents’ villa—”

  “Where was the villa?”

  “As I was on the point of saying, the grandparents’ villa was ... is in Contrada Capitolo, in proximity to the Duna Beach bathing establishment. Having reached the spot and spoken to the grandparents of the child, the patrolmen realized that the matter might be serious, seeing that the boy had been missing for almost two hours, so they contacted me. At that point I communicated the information to my opposite number in the police, with a view to his collaborating in the search, and then I myself went to the scene, accompanied by the personnel of the flying squad.”

  “How was the search organized?”

  “As well as the state police I also called upon the municipal police. Of course I also reported the fact to my superiors in Bari. I
ought to mention at once that the captain was on sick leave, so that I was in command of the Monopoli detachment. In any case, after the very first phase, personnel from HQ also took part in the search. The next morning we also put the dog-handling units to work.”

  “Did anything of relevance emerge from the work with the dogs?”

  “Yes, sir. We took the dogs to the villa and started them from the point at which the boy was playing when last seen. The dogs set off confidently, crossed the square immediately outside the gate of the villa, reached the lane that leads to that particular group of villas from the Capitolo Provincial Road, went the length of that lane as far as the main road and then stopped. That is, at a point corresponding to the intersection of the lane with the main road the dogs lost the boy’s scent. We took them to the other side of the road, then for some hundreds of yards in one direction and the other, with no result. The last point at which they gave a sign of picking up the boy’s scent was the intersection between the lane and the main road. From this fact we deduced that the boy had boarded a motor vehicle.”

  “When was the boy found? And how?”

  “Yes. We found the body of the boy in the vicinity of Polignano, down a well, out in the country near the coast. An anonymous message had been received by the carabinieri station at Polignano.”

  “What did the person say on the telephone?”

  “He said that the child we were looking for was in a well, in the locality of San Vito, in the territory of the Commune of Polignano. He stated exactly at what point the well was to be found, that is, he said something in the nature of ‘at such and such a milestone’ ... I don’t now remember which. In any case, he mentioned State Road Number 16.”

  “Can you tell us if this person had any particular accent?”

  It was time to intervene.

  “Objection, Your Honour. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that we are concerned with an anonymous telephone call, I point out that, as I understand it, the lieutenant did not receive the call in person. These questions regarding the tenor of the telephone call – granted for the sake of argument that they are admissible, but this we will discuss later – should be put to the carabiniere who received the call.”

  The judge said I was right and did not admit the question. The examination went on monotonously about the history of the investigations up to the moment of Abdou’s arrest. The lieutenant had confined himself to coordinating operations, had not taken part in the searches, had not interrogated the chief witnesses, and was therefore from my point of view of secondary importance.

  The judge said I could now put questions, if I had any.

  In point of fact I had very little to ask the lieutenant, and could easily have done without cross-examining him at all. But I had to make the jury aware of my existence. I therefore said yes, I did have a few questions to ask the witness.

  “So, Lieutenant, you have said that the telephone call reporting the boy’s disappearance reached your operations room at ...”

  “At 19.50 hours.”

  “At 19.50. Thank you. And the patrol you sent out, when did that arrive at the grandparents’ villa?”

  “The time it takes to get from our station in Monopoli to Capitolo. I should say a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes at most.”

  “At what time did the child disappear?”

  “How can I give an exact time ...”

  “Look here, Lieutenant, I have asked you that question because you, in replying to the prosecution, said that the patrolmen realized the child had already been missing for two hours.”

  “Yes, of course, I mean to say that it was my men who informed me of this circumstance.”

  “Would you therefore kindly tell the court, on the basis of the data in your possession, at roughly what time the child disappeared?”

  “A couple of hours before, as I said.”

  “And therefore ...”

  “At about six, more or less.”

  “The child disappeared at about 18.00 and the grandfather called at 19.50. Is that correct?”

  “They are approximate times.”

  “Yes, the child disappeared at approximately 18.00 and the grandfather telephoned at 19.50. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you, even informally, asked the grandfather what reason he had for waiting nearly two hours before giving the alarm?”

  “I don’t know why he waited. They probably went hunting around—”

  “Forgive me for interrupting, Lieutenant. I did not ask you for your opinion in this regard. I asked you to state whether the grandfather said for what reason he waited for those – nearly – two hours. Can you answer that question?”

  “I don’t remember if he mentioned it.”

  “Do you remember having asked him, even informally?”

  “No, I don’t remember.”

  “It is therefore correct to say that you do not know what happened during the two hours between the child’s disappearance and the report of it on the telephone.”

  “Excuse me, Avvocato, at that time we were busy looking for the boy, organizing search parties and so on, not concerned with how and why the grandfather delayed reporting it, always supposing he did delay.”

  “Certainly, no one is disputing the correctness of your actions. I want to ask you only a few more questions. Before the public prosecutor interrupted you, you hinted at the fact that the boy’s parents are separated—”

  Now the public prosecutor interrupted me too.

  “Objection, Your Honour. I do not see what the fact that the parents are separated has to do with the proceedings.”

  Cotugno also put his oar in.

  “The civil party supports the objection. This is a family which has suffered a tragedy, and I cannot see what motive there may be for introducing private matters with no bearing on the question before the court.”

  As a rule I would not have persisted. I had asked the question simply to feel out the ground and because Cervellati had interrupted the lieutenant on that point. But now the reactions from the other side seemed to me excessive. So I thought I would push the matter a little further. To see what happened.

  “Your Honour, I do not understand the strong reactions of the public prosecutor and the civil party on this point. I intend absolutely no lack of respect for the family of the child and the tragedy that has struck it. In any case, I fail to see how my question could have such an effect. My only interest is in understanding what happened during the minutes and hours after the disappearance and whether the child’s parents took part in the search.”

  “Within these limits you may continue, Avvocato.”

  “Thank you, Your Honour. So we were saying that the boy’s parents were – or are? – separated. Is that so?”

  “So I believe.”

  “When did you learn of this circumstance?”

  “When I went to the house.”

  “The child’s parents were there?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where they were?”

  “No ... that is, I think the mother was away on a few days’ holiday, and I don’t know where the father was.”

  “How did you learn of these facts?”

  “They were reported to me on my arrival by Signor Abbrescia, the grandfather on the mother’s side.”

  “Did Signor Abbrescia tell you whether the parents had been informed of the disappearance?”

  “Yes, he told me that he had got in touch with his daughter on her mobile and that she was on her way back, I don’t remember where from. Or perhaps they didn’t tell me. In any case, late on in the evening I saw the boy’s mother, there at the villa, which we were using as a base for our search.”

  “And the father?”

  “Look, I can’t tell you about the father. I saw Signor Rubino the following day, but I don’t know when he arrived or where from.”

  “Do you know if he was on holiday too?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know if
the grandparents telephoned the father, as well as the child’s mother?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “In more general terms, do you know who informed the boy’s father?”

  “No.”

  “In any case, on the evening of the disappearance the mother had arrived and the father not. Is that correct?”

  “It is.”

  “Thank you, I have no more questions.”

  In actual fact these were pointless questions. The separation of the parents had nothing to do with the child’s disappearance, with the trial or any of the rest of it. The prosecution and the civil party were probably right in objecting.

  But I had very little room to move. Very little indeed. So I had to do something, even loose off shots at random, in the hope of hearing some sound, learning if in that direction there might be some way. Some track to follow.

  Handbooks for lawyers would have said that this was the wrong way to set about it.

  Never ask questions for which you cannot foresee the answer. Never cross-examine blindly, without having a precise object in mind. Your cross-examination must be punctiliously planned, nothing left to improvisation, because otherwise you might even strengthen the position of your adversary. And so on and so forth.

  I’d really like to see the fine fellows who write such manuals conduct a damned trial. I’d like to see them in the thick of the noise, the dirt, the blood, the shit of a real trial. I’d like to see them apply their theories then.

  Never cross-examine blindly.

  I’d like to see them at it! Me, I was forced to go ahead blindly. And not only in the trial either.

  That hearing continued with several other witnesses. There was the carabiniere who had received the call which enabled them to find the boy’s body. He said that the anonymous voice was strange. The prosecutor wanted to know more. He would probably have liked the witness to say that the accent was Senegalese. The carabiniere, however, did not help him out. The accent, for him, was simply strange, which meant everything and nothing.

  Then there were the dog handlers, who added nothing to what the lieutenant had said. Then the fireman who had gone down the well to fasten the sling around the boy’s body and haul it up. A distressing, useless account.