Reasonable Doubts gg-3

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  At this point I had to resist the impulse to turn round and see who was still in the courtroom. To check if there were any unknown or suspicious-looking faces. Anyone sent by Macri to keep an eye on what I was saying, to see just how stupid I’d been and how great a risk I liked to take. To anyone listening, it must have seemed a purely technical pause, the kind you use to keep people’s attention.

  Obviously, I didn’t turn round. But when I resumed, I still felt an unpleasant undercurrent, a sense of unease. A creeping fear.

  “Is it a fanciful story? Perhaps, in the sense that it’s the result of a series of reasonable hypotheses. Is it an absurd story? Certainly not. Above all, it is a story which – at least as far as the transporting of drugs in the ways we are hypothesizing is concerned – has already been told in the past, in other investigations. There have been other cases in which our investigators and those of other countries have discovered similar illegal operations involving the transporting of narcotics by the same means.

  “It could be objected: That’s what you say, Guerrieri.

  “It’s true, it is what I say, but, if you have any doubts about the existence of such a modus operandi, you still have time, even after you retire to deliberate, to arrange for further evidence to be admitted, for example a statement by the head of the narcotics section of the Bari Flying Squad, or any other officer in a narcotics unit, who will be able to confirm that this particular criminal practice has indeed been known to take place.”

  It was at this point that I glanced at my watch and realized that I had been speaking for an hour. Too long.

  I could see from their faces that they were still following me, but I wouldn’t be able to keep their attention much longer. I had to try and bring my speech to a conclusion. I quickly returned to more general topics: the question of method, my interpretation of the evidence as opposed to the assistant prosecutor’s.

  “Whenever it is possible to construct a multiplicity of stories capable of encompassing all the evidence within a coherent narrative, we must conclude that the evidence is doubtful, that there is no legal certainty, and that therefore we must acquit.

  “Needless to say, in this area it is not a question of a competition between the degrees of probability of the various stories. To put it another way: it is not enough for the assistant prosecutor to propose a more probable story to win the case.

  “In order to win the case, in other words, to make sure that the sentence is upheld, the assistant prosecutor must propose the only acceptable story. In other words, the only acceptable explanation of the facts of the case. All the defence has to do is propose a possible explanation.

  “I repeat: this is not a contest between degrees of probability. I know perfectly well that the assistant prosecutor’s story is more probable than mine. I know perfectly well that the law of experience on which the assistant prosecutor’s story is based is stronger than mine. But this law of experience is not life. It is, like all laws of experience, a way of interpreting the facts of life, an attempt to make sense of them. But life, especially those areas of life which result in legal proceedings, is more complicated than our attempts to reduce it to classifiable rules and to well-ordered, coherent stories.

  “A philosopher has said that facts and actions have no meaning in themselves. The only thing that can mean anything is the narrative we make out of those facts and actions.

  “We all of us – and not only in court – construct stories to give meaning to facts which in themselves have none. To try and bring order out of chaos.

  “When we get down to it, stories are all that we have.”

  I stopped. A thought had suddenly crossed my mind. Who was I saying these things to? Who was I really talking to?

  Was I talking to the judges in front of me? Or to Natsu, who was behind me even though I couldn’t see her? Or Paolicelli, who – however things ended up – would never know the meaning of this story? Or was I talking to myself and was everything else – everything else – just a pretext?

  For a few moments, I thought I knew what it all meant, and I gave a slight, melancholy smile. Just for a few moments. Then that meaning, if I really had found one, disappeared.

  I told myself that I had to start speaking again, had to bring my argument to a conclusion. But I didn’t know what else to say. Or rather, I didn’t feel like saying anything. All I wanted was to get out of there.

  Still I didn’t speak. I saw a questioning look on the faces of the judges. They were starting to get impatient.

  I had to bring my argument to a conclusion.

  “Life does not work by selecting the likeliest, most believable or most well-ordered stories. Life isn’t well ordered and doesn’t always tally with the laws of experience. In life there are sudden strokes of good luck and bad luck. You may win the lottery; you may contract a rare, fatal disease.

  “Or you may be arrested for something you didn’t do.”

  I took a deep breath. I felt as if all the exhaustion in the world had descended on my shoulders.

  “The assistant prosecutor and I have told you many things. The kind of things that help us to debate cases and to come to conclusions. The kind of things that help us to justify our arguments and our decisions, to give us the illusion that they are rational arguments and decisions. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t, but that’s not really the most important thing. The most important thing is that at the moment of making the decision you are – we are – alone, faced with the question: am I sure this man is guilty?

  “We are alone, faced with the question: what is the right thing to do? Not in the abstract, not according to any method or theory, but specifically, in this case, in relation to the life of this man.”

  I had said these last words almost under my breath. I stood there in silence. Pursuing a thought, I think. Perhaps searching for a closing phrase. Or perhaps searching for the meaning of what I had said, and leaving the words to hang in the air.

  “Have you finished, Avvocato Guerrieri?” Mirenghi’s tone was polite, almost cautious. As if he had realized something and didn’t want to appear intrusive or tactless.

  “Thank you, Your Honour. Yes, I’ve finished.”

  He then turned to Paolicelli, who was standing there with his hands together, his head against the bars.

  He asked him if he had anything he would like to say before the court retired to deliberate. Paolicelli turned to me, then back to the judges. He seemed to be about to say something. In the end he just shook his head and said no, thank you, Your Honour, he had nothing to say.

  It was at that moment, as the judges gathered their papers to retire to their chamber, that I was struck by a feeling that I was hovering between dream and reality.

  Had the events of the past four months really happened? Had Natsu and I really made love, twice, in my apartment? Had I walked in the park with Natsu and little Midori, taking unfair advantage of those few minutes to play father, or had I only imagined it? And was the defendant Fabio Paolicelli really the Fabio Rayban I’d been obsessed with during my teenage years? And did it still matter to me to find out the truth about that distant past, supposing there had ever been a truth to find out? On what basis can we say with any certainty that an image in our head is the result of something we’ve actually seen or an act of the imagination? What really distinguishes our dreams from our memories?

  It lasted a few seconds. When the judges disappeared into their chamber my thoughts went back to normal.

  Whatever the word means.

  47

  That day there were several hearings involving prisoners, in various courtrooms, and not many guards. So the head of the escort had asked Mirenghi for permission to take Paolicelli back down to the holding cells so that he could use his men in other courtrooms. When the judges were ready to give their decision, the clerk of the court would call the head of the escort and Paolicelli would be brought back up to the courtroom for the ruling to be read out.

  Only Natsu and I wer
e left in the courtroom. We sat down behind the prosecution bench.

  “How’s Midori?”

  She shrugged, a forced smile on her lips. “Well. Quite well. She had a nightmare last night, but it didn’t last long. They’ve become shorter and less violent lately.”

  We looked at each other for a few moments and then she stroked my hand. Longer than was advisable, if we wanted to be careful.

  “Congratulations. It wasn’t an easy speech, but I understood everything. You’re very good.” She hesitated for a moment. “I didn’t think you would go to so much trouble.”

  It was my turn to give a forced smile.

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “Impossible to predict. Or at least I can’t. Anything can happen.”

  She nodded. She hadn’t really expected any other answer.

  “Can we get out of here, go for a coffee or something?”

  “Of course; it’ll be a while before the decision.”

  I was about to add that if they came to a decision straight away it wasn’t a good sign. It meant that they had upheld the sentence without even taking into account the things I’d been trying to say. But I stopped myself. It was pointless information, at this stage.

  We left the courthouse, had a coffee, then had a little stroll and went back. We didn’t talk much. Just enough to give a bit of direction to the silence. I don’t know what she was feeling. She didn’t tell me and I couldn’t figure it out. Or maybe I didn’t want to. I felt great tenderness for her, but it was a sad, resigned, distant, intangible tenderness.

  At five, the courthouse emptied. Doors closing, voices, hurried footsteps.

  And then silence, the strange, unmistakable silence of deserted offices.

  It was just before six that we saw the escort coming back into the courtroom with Paolicelli. They passed close to us. He looked at me, searching for a message in my eyes. He didn’t find one. In all my years as a lawyer, I’ve rarely felt so unsure of the result of a case, so incapable of making predictions.

  I went back to my seat, while the guards put Paolicelli back in the cage, the prosecutor came back into the courtroom, and Natsu returned to the now deserted public benches.

  Then the judges came out, without even ringing the bell.

  Mirenghi read out the decision quickly. Before I’d even had time to adjust the robe on my shoulders. He read it with a very tense expression on his face, and I was sure that they hadn’t been unanimous. I was sure that Mirenghi had fought for the sentence to be upheld, but that the other two had outvoted him.

  The court overturned the previous sentence and acquitted Fabio Paolicelli of the charge against him on the grounds that the act does not constitute an offence.

  In our jargon the expression the act does not constitute an offence can mean many different things. In this case it meant that Paolicelli had indeed physically transported the drugs – that was a fact, there was no doubt – but without being aware of it. There was no motive, and an absence of criminal intent.

  The act does not constitute an offence.

  Acquittal.

  Immediate release of the defendant if not held for other reasons.

  Mirenghi caught his breath for a moment and then resumed reading. There was something else.

  “The court asks that the ruling and the transcripts of the appeal hearing be sent to the regional anti-Mafia department for examination.”

  That meant the affair wasn’t over. It meant that the anti-Mafia department would deal with my colleague Macri and his friend Romanazzi.

  It might mean trouble for me. But I didn’t want to think about that now.

  Mirenghi declared the hearing over and turned to leave. Girardi also turned.

  But Russo hesitated for a moment. He looked at me and I looked at him. His back was straight and he seemed ten years younger. I’d never seen him like that before. He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  Then he, too, turned and followed the others into the chamber.

  48

  They let Paolicelli out of the cage. He still had to be taken back to prison to go through the formalities of release, but they didn’t put his handcuffs on, because he was a free man now. He came towards me, surrounded by the guards. When he came level with me, he embraced me.

  I responded graciously to the embrace, patting him on the back and hoping it would soon be over. After me, he embraced his wife, kissed her on the mouth, and told her he would see her at home that evening.

  She said she would come and pick him up but he said no, he didn’t want her to.

  He didn’t want her to go near that place even for a moment. He would come home alone, on foot.

  He wanted to prepare himself for seeing his daughter, and a walk would be the ideal way of doing that.

  Besides, it was spring. It was a nice thing to walk home, free, in the spring.

  His lower lip was trembling and his eyes watery, but he didn’t cry. At least not while he was still in the courtroom.

  Then the head of the escort told him, gently, that they had to go.

  One of the guards, a tough-looking old character with very blue eyes and a scar that started under his nose and went across his lips all the way down to his chin, came up to me. He had a voice roughened by cigarettes and thirty years spent among thieves, dealers, traffickers and murderers. He was a prisoner, too, who wouldn’t finish his sentence until the day he retired.

  “Congratulations, Avvocato. I listened to you and understood everything.” He pointed to Paolicelli, who was already walking away with the other two guards. “You saved that man.”

  And then he rushed off to join his colleagues.

  Again, Natsu and I were alone. For the last time.

  “And now?”

  “Goodbye,” I said.

  It came out well, I think. Goodbye is a hard word to say. You always run the risk of sounding pathetic, but this time I hit the right note.

  She looked at me for a long time. If I let her image go slightly out of focus and replaced her eyes with two big blue circles, I could see her daughter Midori as she would be in twenty years’ time.

  In 2025. I tried not to think about how old I would be in 2025.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone else like you.”

  “Well, I should hope not,” I said. It was meant as a kind of joke, but she didn’t laugh.

  Instead, she looked around, and when she was sure the courtroom was really deserted, she gave me a kiss.

  A real kiss, I mean.

  “Goodbye,” she said and walked out into the deserted corridor.

  I gave her five minutes’ head start and then left.

  49

  All the windows in my apartment were open, but the sounds coming in from the street were curiously muffled. They were like sounds I used to hear many years ago, when I was a child and we went to the park on May afternoons to play football.

  I put on a CD, and it wasn’t until I’d already played several songs that I realized it was the same one I’d played that first night Natsu had come home with me.

  These days miracles don’t come falling from the sky.

  As I listened to the music, I poured myself a whisky on the rocks, and drank it, and ate corn chips and pistachio nuts. Then I had a long shower in cold water. Without drying myself, I walked round the apartment enjoying the smell of the bath foam on my skin, the music, the slight dizziness I felt because of the whisky, the cool breeze that came in through the open windows and made me shiver.

  Once I was dry I got dressed, put on some pointless scent, and went out.

  It was mild in the streets. I decided that before having dinner I would walk as far as the Piazza Garibaldi, where my parents and I used to live when I was a child.

  When I got there, I was seized with the kind of intangible, all-consuming joy you feel sometimes when you’re sucked back into the past. The gardens of the Piazza Garibaldi, that late afternoon in May, looked the way they had all those years ago, and in among the boys
playing football were the ghosts of myself and my friends as children, in short trousers and braces, licking the Super Santos ball we’d all chipped in to buy.

  I sat down on a bench and sat there looking at the dogs and children and old people until it was dark and almost everyone had gone. Then I left, too, to look for somewhere to eat. I was heading in the direction of the seafront when my phone rang. A private number, the screen said.

  “Hello.”

  “You did it. I really wouldn’t have bet on it this time.”

  I didn’t recognize Tancredi’s voice immediately, so it took me a couple of seconds to reply.

  “Who told you?”

  “What’s the matter, friend? Don’t you know who I am? I’m the police, I know everything that happens in this town. Sometimes I know about it before it even happens.”

  As Tancredi spoke, it occurred to me that I didn’t really feel like walking around, having dinner, maybe getting drunk alone.

  “Are you still in your office?”

  “Yes. But I think I’m going to shut up shop now and go.”

  “Do you fancy having dinner together? I’m paying.”

  He said he’d like that and we arranged to meet in half an hour in the Piazza del Ferrarese, at the start of the old city wall.

  We were both punctual, and arrived at the same time from different directions.

  “So you were right. I really must congratulate you.”

  “You knew perfectly well I was right, otherwise you wouldn’t have helped me. And if you hadn’t helped me I wouldn’t have got anywhere.”

  He was about to say something, but then probably thought he didn’t have a witty enough remark. So he shrugged and we started walking.

  “The judges have asked for the documents to be sent to the regional anti-Mafia department. In connection with Macri and Romanazzi, obviously. As of tomorrow I’m asking for a permit to carry a gun.”