The Measure of Time

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  All this was the introduction. She hadn’t yet got on to the reason she was now sitting in front of me, in my office.

  Less than three years previously, Iacopo had been arrested and charged with having killed a guy, in all likelihood his usual narcotics supplier.

  There had been a trial in the high court and, in May of the previous year, he had been sentenced to twenty-four years’ imprisonment, plus costs. This, in very broad terms, was the gist of the case.

  “Before going into details,” I said, “I have to ask you a question. If Iacopo has already been tried, that means he had a lawyer. We have ethical obligations towards our colleagues and —”

  “He died.” I thought I caught a hint of impatience in her voice. “He died a few weeks ago. So I don’t think there are any ethical problems.”

  “Who was he?”

  He was – had been – Michele Costamagna, an excellent professional, until disease had eaten his brain. Apart from being competent, he had always been able, at least in the days when he’d been at the top of his game, to pull the right strings whenever possible. In the last few years, even before the disease, he’d lost some of his appeal because many of his friends – judges, prosecutors, high-ranking officials, senior civil servants – had started to retire and the new ones, especially the judges, were less malleable and not so likely to be members of the city’s exclusive clubs. But in the years when I was a young lawyer, Costamagna was one of the people you had to go to if a case was particularly serious. In most cases, he could patch things up. I’d never heard about anything definitely illegal, but all in all, Costamagna was like The Wolf in Pulp Fiction: he solved problems. And that was why he’d always made sure he was well paid. Beyond the limits of greed, according to some.

  A couple of years earlier he had fallen ill, and his decline, which had already started, had grown rapid and increasingly obvious. He would lose the thread during closing arguments, would get confused in cross-examinations and in general throughout hearings; he would sometimes forget the name of his client or that of the judge. In his final weeks, he hadn’t even managed to get to court. He had died just after Christmas, and it was now the beginning of February.

  In short, it could be assumed that, at least in his final year, Costamagna’s client hadn’t received – to put it euphemistically – adequate representation. Of course there was the whole apparatus of his practice, the trainees, his daughter, but a murder trial in the high court was the old man’s exclusive prerogative.

  So if Iacopo had been represented in the high court by Avvocato Costamagna – by the shadow of what Avvocato Costamagna had been, for good or ill – he certainly hadn’t had the best possible defence.

  All this was easy to assume, and it was basically what Lorenza told me. They had gone to Costamagna due to his old reputation and on the advice of a relative. He had asked for a whole lot of money, but the defence had been weak, if not actually non-existent, both during the preliminary investigation and in court. After the sentence, he had assured them that things would go differently at appeal. As they always did, he’d added with a flash of his old arrogance. And he had asked for a further advance payment. Costamagna – or more likely one of the colleagues in his practice – had written a motion of appeal a few pages long. Lorenza was no expert, but it had struck her as really weak.

  “Then his condition got worse. A couple of appointments were cancelled, and he was admitted to hospital and died.”

  “Has the date for the appeal hearing already been set?”

  “The first one’s in two weeks.”

  “What?” I was aware of a high pitch in my voice that I hadn’t managed to moderate. “Two weeks?”

  “Yes. A few days ago I went to Costamagna’s office. I spoke to one of his colleagues, who struck me as an idiot. He asked me for another advance payment. I told him I’d already paid a lot of money and he said that was for the original trial and the drafting of the appeal motion. Now they needed to prepare for the hearing, to evaluate new evidence and decide on what requests to make. He used technical expressions I couldn’t repeat to you. I didn’t understand, and I think he was using them specifically to make sure I didn’t understand.”

  “That’s not uncommon.”

  “I lost my cool. I told him that after what I’d paid the practice, a lot of it under the table, he couldn’t tell me it still wasn’t enough, and at such a difficult time, when the appeal was about to start.”

  “Do you remember who he was?”

  She said a name. A person for whom the definition of idiot was needlessly charitable. I wouldn’t even have given him the role of a lawyer in a school play. I avoided sharing this judgement of mine, just nodded and asked her to continue.

  “He told me if we weren’t satisfied with the service provided by the Costamagna practice, we could go elsewhere. Then I really raised my voice. I screamed at him, let out everything I felt. He turned red, and said that if that was the case it was best to suspend our professional relationship and he suggested I leave. Over the next few days I started wondering if it hadn’t been stupid on my part to react in that way. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. Then I thought of you.”

  An unpleasant thought wormed its way into my mind. She hadn’t come to me because she thought I was a good lawyer. She’d come to me because she didn’t know which way to turn. She was broke and obviously assumed, considering our shared past, that I would work on credit or, even better, for free. That annoyed me, and I decided to make things clear: I’d already worked as a lawyer for charity too many times.

  Dear madam (you’ll excuse the formal tone, which may seem strange to you given that we’ve been naked together in the same bed, but in view of the situation I prefer a certain degree of formality), I will gladly accept the task of examining the case file relating to the legal proceedings against your son. First, however, I would ask you to go to the office outside and pay the deposit indicated by my colleagues. The fact that many years ago we were … intimate for a few months is, unfortunately, irrelevant when it comes to work. Demanding work, I should add: a case that’s already quite compromised and that relates to a rather serious matter. In other words, a task that, were I to accept it, would require a great deal of time and effort.

  As I was making these rapid, unpleasant observations in my head, it struck me that we hadn’t talked even for a second about the substance of the proceedings. About what the boy was actually accused of, and if he was innocent or guilty.

  So I dropped the deposit – and my dignity, and my offended self-esteem – and asked her to sum up the facts of the trial. Basically, what was the charge? And above all, what was the evidence that had led to the conviction?

  She told me. And I didn’t like what I heard, didn’t like it at all. From what I understood of her account, which was quite thorough even though she wasn’t an expert, her son was in a bad position. The evidence against him may have been circumstantial, but it was also – in legal jargon – serious, specific and concordant.

  “Guido, I’ve come to you because I didn’t know who to turn to. Going to Costamagna was a mistake, I realize that now. But everyone told me he was good, and also well connected. You must know how it feels when you find yourself involved in something like that. It’s like suddenly discovering you have a serious illness. You start to panic, you look for help, you ask around about who might be the best choice and…”

  “I know, it’s not easy to see things clearly. And in fact Costamagna was a good lawyer. Maybe even an excellent lawyer. Unfortunately, in his last years, the disease compromised his abilities. What I mean,” I continued, “is that you mustn’t blame yourself for going to him. Quite simply, things deteriorated.”

  She nodded, as if to thank me for taking a weight off her shoulders: the feeling that she had made the wrong choice and was somehow partly responsible for the way things had turned out. Then she resumed.

  “I want to make it clear I’m not expecting you to work for free. It’s just that
I don’t have any money right now. To draw up the appeal motion, Costamagna stripped me of my savings, and I’ve even got into debt. I’m only a substitute teacher, and I also make do with other jobs, but it isn’t easy. I promise, though, I’ll pay you what I owe you, I just need some breathing space.”

  Strange how our minds work. I’d been annoyed at the idea that she’d come to me because she was broke. And now that she’d said it explicitly, my annoyance had vanished. Once freed from the semi-darkness of my susceptible ego, the whole thing became quite normal, with nothing offensive about it at all.

  So, in total contradiction to what I’d been thinking just a little while earlier, I made a gesture with my hand as if to clear the air between us.

  “Don’t worry about the money. We can talk about that later. Right now there are a couple of things we need to clarify: one urgent and important, the other very important although less urgent. The urgent one concerns the first appeal hearing. Do you remember the exact date?”

  It was only sixteen days away. The legal limit for adding new grounds to the appeal motion and for formulating requests for the submission of new evidence not submitted at the original trial is fifteen days, so there was no time to prepare. Among other things, new counsel still had to be formally appointed, for which the person concerned would have to make a request directly to the prison administration. All we could do was ask for an extension. In certain situations, you can ask the judge not to insist on a time limit that has been missed and to assign a new one. But then you need to show that unforeseen circumstances have made it impossible to observe the time limit previously established. In this case, we would have to show that the death of Avvocato Costamagna was the force majeure on which to base our request. It couldn’t be taken for granted that we’d get our extension. Which meant we had an uphill struggle right from the start. I was just in the middle of these thoughts when Lorenza resumed speaking.

  “Guido, Iacopo’s innocent. He’s got into a lot of trouble, he’s a difficult boy, some of which may be my fault, but he didn’t commit that murder.”

  They all say that, the parents or friends or lovers. My child, my colleague, my lover can’t have done anything like that. Trust me, I know him. If we always believed the nearest and dearest, the crime of homicide (and many others, to be honest) would vanish from the statistics.

  I nodded without commenting. Commenting on certain subjects is inadvisable – especially to the lovers, friends and mothers of defendants. But she must have read my thoughts.

  “I’m not saying that because I’m his mother. I’m saying it because when the murder was committed Iacopo was with me, at home. You’ll see it in the file: what I said in my testimony is the truth, even though the judges didn’t believe me.”

  Okay, this was a little different from the usual statements, like “My son’s a good boy, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” It remained for me to find out if it was the truth.

  A lot of those who are suspected of murder are guilty; many of those who are tried for murder are guilty; very many – the vast majority – of those who are convicted of murder are guilty. That doesn’t mean there aren’t innocent people who are suspected, tried and even convicted. But I can assure you there aren’t many of these, not many at all, irrespective of the fact that in many cases they’re acquitted. They’re acquitted because of flaws in the investigations, because of procedural irregularities, even because the defence counsel has been really good. Only in a small number of cases because they’re innocent.

  So if Lorenza’s son had been convicted of murder, he was probably guilty.

  These were not reflections to share with the mother of an accused man.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll need copies of the papers as soon as possible, tomorrow even. And your son will have to appoint me as his counsel and revoke any previous appointment. Before doing anything I’ll have to call Costamagna’s practice and inform them that I’ve been entrusted with the case.”

  “Why?”

  “Professional courtesy. That way we pretend to respect each other. Then I’ll go straight to the head of the appeal court and discuss the need to extend the time limit. It isn’t an easy situation, it’s only right you should know that. If the judge won’t bend, we’re in real trouble. Is there anything you’d like to ask me?”

  “No thanks,” was all she said.

  I shrugged. “Then I’d say that’s all for now.”

  3

  The next morning I went to court with my colleague, Consuelo Favia. She was born in Peru and was adopted by a friend of mine, a civil lawyer, when she was four. Her features – olive complexion, very mobile dark eyes, plump cheeks with high cheekbones – clearly show she’s from the Andes, but in every other respect she’s unmistakably a citizen of Bari, and that includes her accent, typical of the downtown area, and her ability to speak in impeccable dialect when necessary. She came to work with me when she was a girl and had just passed her professional exams. Now she’s the senior lawyer in the practice. Every time I think about that – to me she’s still a girl – I feel an unease that I have to dismiss in order to avoid other thoughts flooding in.

  As we walked to the courthouse, I told her about my meeting with Lorenza. I omitted telling her that we’d known each other before, I’m not quite sure why.

  “What was your impression?”

  “Of her or her story?”

  “Both.”

  I didn’t reply immediately. In reality I wasn’t sure what my impression had been, either of her or of what she’d told me.

  Usually in such cases – and in this more than in others – I have two conflicting feelings. One derives from my natural, naive tendency to believe people: the reason why, as a young boy, it was easy for people to get me to drink. The other, mistrust, is an intellectual fact, and derives from my knowledge of how things usually are.

  “I don’t know,” I replied at last. “She says that when the murder was committed the boy was with her at home. If it’s true…”

  “Obviously she testified to that, and obviously the judges didn’t believe her.”

  “Yes. We’ll need to examine everything very carefully. When the papers arrive I’ll have copies made of the ruling so that you, Tancredi and Annapaola can read it immediately. Then we’ll meet and decide what to do.”

  “You’ll have to ask Judge Marinelli for an extension, otherwise there won’t be much to assess.”

  We parted at the entrance to the courthouse. I went off to handle a couple of exciting trials for fraudulent bankruptcy and she to bring a civil action against a stalker. Consuelo is a defence lawyer, but she has the soul of a prosecutor. It’s a lot of effort for her to defend people of whose innocence she isn’t convinced. So we share the tasks in a fairly natural way: I mostly defend accused people, she defends mostly victims, in particular victims of crimes like sexual violence, stalking and abuse. No defendant and no defence counsel is ever pleased to have her on the plaintiff’s side.

  When I got back to the office early in the afternoon, a complete copy of the file relating to the case of Lorenza’s son was waiting for me on my desk. Iacopo Cardace, the young man was called. The surname didn’t mean anything to me, so the father probably wasn’t somebody I’d known when the mother and I had been going out together – going out together? What a banal expression, I thought.

  There was also an envelope with a handwritten note.

  This is the case file. Today I went to see Iacopo and told him to appoint you and revoke all previous appointments. You should get the message from the prison as soon as possible.

  Thank you.

  L.

  The handwriting was sharp-edged, elegant, slightly hard to read.

  I went out to have a bite to eat in the health food store with canteen attached near the office, resisting the impulse to also have a glass of wine. Then I paid a brief visit to the Feltrinelli bookshop, which was also close by. I wandered between the shelves, which for me is a kind of sedative, nodded to a few
people who were often in the shop in the early afternoon, and bought a volume of Kafka’s aphorisms and fragments after reading some of them. Number thirty-eight said: “A man was amazed at how easily he went along the road to eternity; the fact was, he was rushing along it downhill.”

  I went back to the office and drew up a plan of action. I’m very good at drawing up plans in order to buy time and put off the moment when I have to really get down to work.

  I would get through the dull afternoon chores – mostly appointments, because it was Friday and there were no court hearings the next day – then phone Costamagna’s practice and inform them of developments. I was sure they wouldn’t tear their hair out: a very weak case, and a client unable to make further exorbitant down payments, which were completely unjustified anyway now that the old man was no longer around.

  Then I would take the file home with me and take a look at the case. Annapaola had gone to London with two friends. She would be back the following Monday. I had no desire to call other people to go out with and I had no desire to go out on my own. It was an ideal evening for starting to figure out what I was getting into.

  When I called the Costamagna practice I asked for his daughter, who’d inherited it. She resembled her father only in appearance, which wasn’t a compliment – he’d always been on the large side.

  I informed her of the fact that their client Cardace had probably appointed me that morning, even though the message from the prison hadn’t arrived yet.

  “I hope everything’s sorted with the payments,” I said, more than anything to see how she reacted.