I was on the ground, curled up to protect myself from the blows, when someone made them run away.
What happened next is clearer and more vivid in my memory.
A man helps me to my feet and asks me in a strong local accent if I want to go to casualty. I say no, I want to go home. I have my house keys, I add, as if he’d be interested, or as if it meant anything to him.
I walk away, and my friends aren’t there any more, and I don’t know when they disappeared. On the way home, I start crying. Not so much because of the pain I’m still feeling, but because of the humiliation and the fear. Few things leave such a strong impression as humiliation and fear.
Fucking Fascists.
And as I cry, and blow my nose, I say to myself out loud that despite everything I didn’t take off my anorak. This thought makes me stiffen my spine and stop crying. I didn’t take off my anorak, you fucking Fascists. And I remember your faces.
One day I’ll get my own back on you.
When Paolicelli entered the lawyers’ room, it all came back to me, in a rush. Like a sudden violent gust of wind that throws the windows wide open, causes the doors to slam, and scatters papers.
He held out his hand, and I hesitated for a moment before shaking it. I wondered if he noticed. Memories – vague things, noises, boys’ voices, girls’ voices, smells, cries of fear, songs by Inti-Illimani, the face of someone whose name I couldn’t remember and who’d died of an overdose in the school toilets at the age of seventeen – crowded into my head like creatures suddenly released from a spell that has been keeping them prisoner in the basements or the attics of memory.
It was obvious he didn’t remember me.
I waited a few moments, in order not to be too abrupt, before asking him why he had appointed me and why he was inside.
“They arrested me a year and a half ago for cross-border drug trafficking. I opted for the fast-track procedure in court and was given sixteen years, plus a fine so huge I can’t even remember what it was.”
You deserved it, you Fascist. You’re paying the price now for all the things you did then.
“I was on my way back from a holiday in Montenegro. At the harbour in Bari the customs police were doing random checks on cars. They had dogs with them to sniff out drugs. When they got to my car the dogs seemed to go crazy. The customs police took me to their barracks and dismantled the car, and under the bodyshell they found forty kilos of high-quality cocaine.”
Forty kilos of high-quality cocaine was certainly enough to justify the sentence he’d received, even with the fast-track procedure. But I didn’t believe that the customs police had been doing random checks. Someone had tipped them off that a courier was bringing in a consignment, and they’d acted by the book in making it look as if the check was random. In order not to blow their informant’s cover.
“The drugs weren’t mine.” Paolicelli’s words broke into my thoughts.
“What do you mean, they weren’t yours? Was there someone else in the car with you?”
“My wife and daughter were with me. We were on our way back from a week’s holiday by the sea. And the drugs weren’t mine. I don’t know who put them there.”
So that’s it, I thought. He’s ashamed that he was carrying the drugs in the same car where his wife and daughter were travelling. Typical of you Fascists: you’re not even capable of being criminals with any dignity.
“I’m sorry, Paolicelli, but how could someone have planted those drugs without you knowing? I mean, we’re talking about forty kilos, quite a lot to pack under the bodyshell of a car. I’m no expert on these things, but that must have taken time. Did you lend the car to anyone in Montenegro?”
“No, but for the whole of the holiday it was in the hotel car park. And the hotel porter had the keys; I had to leave them with him because the car park was full and sometimes a car had to be moved to make room. Someone, with the porter’s knowledge, must have planted the drugs during the night, probably the night before we left. I assume they planned to retrieve them once we’d got through customs. Perhaps they had accomplices in Italy who’d do that for them. I know it sounds absurd, but the drugs weren’t mine. I swear they weren’t mine.”
He was right. It did sound absurd.
You hear a lot of absurd stories like that in courtrooms, barracks, prisons. The commonest one is the one invariably told by people who’ve been found in possession of guns in full working order, with the hammer cocked. They all say they only just found the gun by chance, usually under a bush, or under a tree, or in a dustbin. They all say they’ve never handled a gun in their lives and that they were just on their way to hand it in to the police. That’s why they were carrying it in their belt with the hammer cocked, somewhere near a jeweller’s shop, for example, or the house of a gangland rival.
I felt like telling him that I didn’t give a damn that he’d brought forty kilos of cocaine from Montenegro to Italy, and that I didn’t give a damn if he had done it before, or how many times. So he might as well tell me the truth. It would make things a whole lot simpler. I was a criminal lawyer and it was my job to defend people like him. What would happen if I suddenly took it into my head to pass judgement on my clients? I felt like telling him these things, but I didn’t. I suddenly realized what was happening in my head, and I didn’t like it.
I realized that I wanted him to confess. I wanted to be absolutely certain that he was guilty, so that I could help him to get the long gaol sentence he deserved, without any problems of conscience or professional ethics.
I realized that I wanted to be his judge – and maybe also his executioner – rather than his lawyer. I had an old score to settle.
And that wasn’t right. I told myself I ought to think about it, because if I didn’t think I could control that urge, then I ought to give up on the idea of defending him. Or rather, I shouldn’t agree to it in the first place.
“What happened after you were arrested?”
“After they found the drugs, they tried to get me to cooperate with them. They told me they wanted to do a… what’s it called?”
“A controlled delivery?”
“That’s it, a controlled delivery. They told me they’d let me drive the car away with the drugs still in it. I would deliver the drugs as if nothing had happened. They would follow me and when the moment was right they would arrest the people who were waiting for the consignment. They told me I would get a greatly reduced sentence, maybe as little as three years. I told them I had no idea where to take the drugs because they weren’t mine. So then they said they were arresting me and they were also arresting my wife because it was obvious we were in cahoots. I started to panic and I told them, yes, the drugs were mine, but she didn’t know anything. They phoned the prosecutor and he told them to take my statement and arrest me, but only me. So they took down my confession, arrested me and let my wife go.”
He was speaking calmly, but with an undercurrent of desperation.
He asked me for a cigarette and I told him I didn’t have any because I’d quit a couple of years ago. He hadn’t smoked for ten years either, he said. He’d started again the day after he went into prison.
Who had he appointed as his defence counsel when he was arrested? And why had he decided to change now? From the way he looked at me before replying, it was clear he’d been expecting the question.
“When they arrested me, they asked me who my lawyer was, so that they could inform him. I didn’t have a lawyer and I told them I didn’t know who to appoint. My wife was still there-a friend had come to collect our daughter – and I told her to get advice from someone about finding a good lawyer. The next day she appointed someone.”
“And who did she appoint?”
This was where the really strange part of the affair started, if Paolicelli was telling the truth.
“My wife was just leaving home when she was approached by a man who said he was acting on behalf of some friends who wanted to help us. He told her to appoint a lawyer from Rome
named Corrado Macri, who would sort things out for me. He gave her a piece of paper with this lawyer’s name and a mobile number and told her to appoint him straight away, so that he could visit me in prison before I was interrogated by the examining magistrate.”
“And what did your wife do?”
Paolicelli’s wife, who was at her wits’ end and didn’t know any lawyers, appointed this Macri. A few hours later, he arrived from Rome, as if he’d been waiting to be appointed by her and didn’t have any other work at the moment. He visited Paolicelli in prison and told him not to worry, he’d sort it all out. When Paolicelli asked him who had engaged him and who the man was who had approached his wife, he again told him not to worry; as long as he heeded his, Macri’s, advice, everything would be fine. His first piece of advice was to exercise his right to remain silent at that first interview with the examining magistrate or he might make the situation worse.
I wondered by what stretch of the imagination the situation could have been made worse, but I didn’t say that to Paolicelli.
They appealed the arrest, but the custody order was confirmed.
I didn’t see how there could have been any other decision. But I didn’t say that either.
Macri then appealed against the decision on the grounds that there had been a procedural irregularity – he didn’t specify what it was – which gave him high hopes that he could have the proceedings declared invalid.
His high hopes turned out to be unfounded because the custody order was confirmed again. But that didn’t dent Macri’s optimism. He told Paolicelli and his wife not to worry, to be patient, and he would sort everything out. According to Paolicelli, he said this in a knowing tone, like someone who has the right cards up his sleeve and will play them when the time is right.
When they got to the preliminary hearing, Macri again advised Paolicelli not to say anything, and they opted for the fast-track procedure. The result of that, I already knew.
“And what did Macri say then?”
“Again he told me not to worry, he would sort everything out.”
“Was he joking?”
“No. He said he wasn’t surprised at the result – after weeks of telling me that at worst I’d only get four or five years – and that the appeal court would be sure to reduce the sentence. It was when I read the appeal he prepared-a one-page document with almost nothing written on it – that I blew my top.”
“What happened?”
“I told him he was gambling with my life. I told him I knew perfectly well who had sent him. And then I told him I was pissed off and that I’d call the examining magistrate and tell him everything.”
“What was it you were going to tell the magistrate?”
“There wasn’t anything specific. I only said it in the heat of anger, to shake him up a bit. The fact is, I have no idea who sent him. But he must have believed me, he must have thought I really did have something important to tell.”
“And what did he say?”
“He turned really nasty. He told me I should be very careful about what I did, and especially about what I said. He said accidents sometimes happen in prison to people who can’t keep their mouths shut.”
I noticed that he was panting a little. He had to take a breath before starting again.
“I didn’t have anything to tell the magistrate. Apart from the fact that the drugs weren’t mine. He wouldn’t have believed me. You haven’t.”
I was about to reply. Then I told myself that he was right. So I said nothing and let him continue.
“Anyway, he told me that if I didn’t trust him any more there was no reason for him to continue as my lawyer. He was dropping the case, but I should remember what he’d said. If I asked to speak to a magistrate, they would know immediately. Then he left.”
Now I was the one who needed a cigarette. It didn’t happen often – usually only when things were getting complicated. And if Paolicelli was telling the truth, this whole business was complicated, to say the least.
“Oh, I nearly forgot something.”
“What?”
“He didn’t ask me for money. Despite all the times he came to Bari, all the expenses he must have incurred, he didn’t want to be paid. I said I wanted to pay him something and he told me not to worry, that when we had sorted everything out – he always talked about sorting everything out – I could buy him a present. Then, when he got the prosecutor to lift the sequestration order on the car, which is in my wife’s name, he offered to collect it personally. I don’t think that’s normal conduct for a lawyer.”
No, it wasn’t normal conduct for a lawyer at all.
This whole business of the lawyer was strange. Too convoluted to have been made up. I didn’t know what I was dealing with. I was thinking hard, and he must have realized that, because he didn’t interrupt me. Was it possible that the drugs really weren’t his? Could someone really have thought up this method of transporting large quantities of cocaine? The more I thought about it, the more schizophrenic my reflections became. On the one hand, I told myself this was just meaningless speculation, things like that only happened in films or novels. On the other hand, the idea that Paolicelli could be telling the truth seemed both appalling and very plausible. The whole affair was like one of those magic cards I used to find in the packets of processed cheese when I was a child: depending on how you moved them the image changed, the figure moved, and other figures appeared. This case was like a magic card, with murky figures and a vague feeling of rottenness as soon as you go too close to it.
I told him this was enough for the moment. I had to look at the papers, to get a better idea of the case. He said his wife had a copy of the whole file and she would bring it to my office before the end of the week.
He asked me how much he should pay me as an advance and I replied that I had to look at the papers before I could agree to take on the case, especially as a colleague was involved. He nodded and didn’t ask me any more questions.
I had already stood up and was recovering my raincoat when I thought of something I needed to know before I left.
“Why me? I mean, why did you choose me?”
He gave me a strange smile. He’d been expecting the question. “People talk a lot in prison. They talk a lot about judges, and about prosecutors. Which ones are good, which ones are stupid, which ones are clever, or dangerous, or corrupt. And they talk about defence lawyers.”
He broke off and looked at me. He could tell from my face that he had me hooked.
“Which ones are efficient but stupid. Which ones are honest but incompetent and never stand up to the judges. Which ones are arse lickers. Which ones can cut corners – or claim that they can – to get what they want. They say a lot of things about defence lawyers.”
Another pause, another look. My face hadn’t changed. He was searching for the right words.
“What they say about you is that you aren’t afraid.”
“In what way?”
“They say that if you believe in something, you don’t give up. They say you’re a good person.”
I felt a slight tingling in my scalp and down my back.
“And they say you’re very good at your job.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Get me out of here,” he went on, and his voice cracked, as if he no longer had the strength to control himself. “I’m innocent, I swear it. I have a daughter. She’s the only thing that matters in my life. I haven’t seen her since I was arrested. I didn’t want her to visit me in prison, so I haven’t seen her since that damned morning.”
The last words were halfway been a gasp and a whisper.
I had to go. I had to get out of there. I told him I would study the papers as soon as I got them, and then we would meet again and talk about them. We shook hands and I left.
3
I didn’t even have to look at the papers, I told myself that evening, at home.
I couldn’t defend Fabio Rayban. All the things that had gone through
my head when I’d recognized him should have set alarm bells ringing. I couldn’t ignore them.
I had to act maturely and professionally.
Paolicelli was probably guilty and had been given the right sentence. But that was why he had a right to be defended professionally, by someone who didn’t have my inner reservations and didn’t have an old score to settle with him.
I had to turn down the case without even reading the papers. It would be better for everyone.
It would be right.
In a few days’ time, I’d go back to the prison and tell him I couldn’t defend him. I would either tell him the truth, or invent an excuse.
But one thing was certain. I couldn’t take the case.
4
Maria Teresa knocked at my door, put her head round it, and told me Signora Kawabata was here.
“Who?”
She came in, closed the door, and said that Signora Kawabata had come about the Paolicelli case.
“But Kawabata is a Japanese name.”
“I guess so. She looks Japanese, anyway.”
“And what has she got to do with Paolicelli?”
“Quite a lot, she’s his wife. She says she has copies of the documents.”
When she came in, I recognized her immediately.
She said good afternoon, shook hands with me, and sat down in front of the desk without taking off her coat or even undoing it. I could smell perfume, essence of amber, with a hint of something more pungent that I couldn’t quite identify. Close up, she looked a bit older and even more beautiful than she had a few days before in the courtroom.
“I’m Fabio Paolicelli’s wife. I’ve brought you all the papers relating to the trial and the sentence.”
Bizarrely, she had a slight Neapolitan accent. She emptied her bag, placed a bundle of photocopies on the desk and asked me if we could talk for a few minutes. Of course we could talk. That’s what I’m paid for, after all.
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