A Fine Line (22 page)
Authors: Gianrico Carofiglio
I left too, almost immediately after Annapaola, thinking that however this thing ended, being a lawyer would never be the same again. Maybe now was the time to quit, as I had said a few weeks earlier to Tancredi. A lifetime seemed to have gone by since that morning when we had stood talking in the sun, leaning on the wall of the courthouse. And maybe it had, because the true measurement of time isn't days, weeks, months, years. The true measurement of time is the unexpected events, the kind that change everything and make you realize how many other things happened before that you weren't aware of and should have been, and how many things you took for granted will never happen again.
Once again, I asked myself how I would remember the events of these days in a few years' time, or even when I was old. I couldn't find an answer.
And naturally I thought about what would happen after Annapaola had dropped the two envelopes into a postbox.
They would reach their destination in a couple of days and in all probability, in spite of precautions, nobody would think of looking for fingerprints. Instead, the prosecutors and the customs police would immediately ask themselves how to use this statement. In theory, anonymous letters should not be used; the law forbids it. In theory they should be thrown away immediately.
In theory.
In practice, all prosecutors' departments find a way to make use of them, employing the most diverse arguments to interpret the law.
I hadn't the slightest doubt that would happen in this case, too. Within a few weeks they would send letters rogatory to Switzerland, and within a few months the reply would arrive. Then Larocca really would be in trouble, and there was little chance he'd be able to squirm out of it. An account in Switzerland filled with millions from cash transactions or bank transfers doesn't exactly look good for a judge accused of corruption.
I thought these things and many others all of Friday evening and the whole of Saturday. An interminable Saturday, spent in solitude. Annapaola hadn't called me back. She had taken it upon herself to do what I should have done. This probably hadn't increased her respect for me, and I assumed she had no desire to speak to me, let alone see me. I didn't feel up to disagreeing with her: at this point I wouldn't have enjoyed Guido Guerrieri's company either.
It certainly wasn't anything new â a solitary weekend, I mean â but with all these things to mull over, it was very hard, at times unbearable. I considered the people I would have liked to speak to. I thought of calling Tancredi, Nadia, Consuelo. I even thought of calling my old friend Alessandra Mantovani, now a prosecutor in Palermo, who I hadn't seen for years and hadn't spoken to for months. I didn't call anybody. I've always been reluctant to ask for help.
The day passed, as certain days pass, after certain other days.
Those
after
days. They drag slowly, and in the end you feel as if only a few minutes have passed since you got up,
rolling out of bed with every muscle and joint aching. Aches you didn't have the day before.
About nine, after wandering through the city; after going shopping for such indispensable products as nacho rolls, cassava chips, a jar of fruit mustard, a yogurt cake mix and a box of soluble cocoa â purchases a psychiatrist might have found intriguing; after going out again and again wandering through the city; after buying a few books and a few CDs; after eating a vegetarian sandwich and drinking a small bottle of grape juice at an organic fast food place, I returned home. I put on a CD of golden oldies, took off my jacket, my shoes, my trousers and my shirt, took the rope that was as always on a shelf, next to the works of Bertrand Russell, and did a couple of rounds of skipping. The short, dull, rhythmical sound of my feet hitting the floor started to relax me. Just for me, David Gray was singing “Please Forgive Me”.
I took the bandages and the punching gloves, which I kept on the shelf, near some old books from when I was a child. The very few I had kept. Among them, my favourite,
Tell Me Why
: five hundred questions and five hundred answers on the most varied aspects of science and modern life. It was a present to me when I was eight years old. Some of the happiest moments of my existence have been spent leafing through that thick volume.
I carefully bandaged myself, watching the bandage turning around my wrist, the back of my hand, between my fingers, over the knuckles and again around the wrist, the back of my hand, between the fingers, over the knuckles, around the wrist.
I put on the gloves. I opened and closed my fists three or four times.
Neither I nor Mr Punchbag had any desire to talk. It was one of those evenings. So I gave him a push, starting him
swaying and, to the tune of “Against the Wind” â which had started at that exact moment as if by chance, assuming the concept of chance had any meaning â I started boxing and forgetting myself.
At first, I thought it was the alarm on my phone. Why the hell had I set the alarm on a Sunday morning? Apart from anything else, for once I hadn't opened my eyes wide at the first light of dawn and was sleeping as peacefully as I used to, many years ago.
Recovering a modicum of contact with the world, I realized it couldn't be the alarm. It was a very different sound, an antiquated, petulant buzzing. A sound I'm not very used to hearing at home. The entryphone.
“Who is it?”
“Annapaola.”
Annapaola. It's a nice name. I like the sound of it, both when I say it, and when she does. Annapaola.
“Hi, has anything happened?”
“No, I don't think so.”
“I haven't looked at my watch. What time is it?”
“7.35.”
“Oh, 7.35. Do you want to come up?”
“Can you come down for a minute?”
“All right. I'll put my trousers on.”
“That's a good idea.”
Three minutes later I was downstairs, in faded jeans and a white T-shirt with the words
Call me Ishmael.
“I tried to call you last night, but your phone was off.”
“It had run out of battery. I should change it.”
“You're not bad in the morning. You're much better scruffy than in a jacket and tie.”
“Are you going away again?”
“For a couple of days.”
The street was deserted, the shadows were long and friendly, the air fresh. It was like a morning when I was a boy. Annapaola looked away for a moment.
“Are you coming with me?” she said.
“Where?”
“Let's just get out of the city, then we'll decide.”
“That's a bit random, as a plan.”
“I'm happy with random.”
Me too, I thought. “I have to take a shower,” I said.
“I agree. Throw something in a rucksack. We'll have breakfast on the way.”
“Will you also teach me to ride?” I said, pointing to the motorbike.
“If we find an empty enough road.”
“I need about twenty minutes. Want to come up?”
“No, I'll wait for you here. I like this breeze.”
“Then I'll be right back.”
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“It's been quite a while since I liked a man.”
“That hasn't happened to me for some time either.”
She stifled a laugh. “Why do I laugh at these stupid jokes?”
“I really don't know.”
“I have an awful feeling I do.”
The lines on pp. 181â2 are taken from the songs “Balla”, sung by Umberto Balsamo, “Anima mia”, sung by I Cugini di Campagna, and “Ti amo”, sung by Umberto Tozzi.
TEMPORARY PERFECTIONS
Gianrico Carofiglio
It all began with an unusual assignment, a job better suited for Marlowe than for defence counsel Guido Guerrieri. Could he find new evidence to force the police to reopen their investigation of the disappearance of Manuela, the daughter of a rich couple living in Bari? The stories of Manuela's druggy university friends don't quite add up. Her best friend, Caterina, too beautiful and certainly too young for Guerrieri, is a temptation he doesn't need. He fights his loneliness by talking to the punchbag hanging in his living room and by walking the streets of Bari late at night, activities that somehow lead to solving the riddle of Manuela's vanishing.
PRAISE FOR
TEMPORARY PERFECTIONS
“This is not only a fascinating panorama of Bari's neon-lit underworld. It's a fine literary achievement: a study of angst and the efforts of a disillusioned hero to find some integrity in a shady world.”
Independent
“When the Italian defense lawyer isn't doing something, he is thinking, and what goes on in his doubt-stuffed head is nearly always captivating.”
Washington Post
“Carofiglio's legal thrillers (this is the fourth) stand out for me as being among the very best of the slew of European crime books to hit our shelves.”
Daily Mail
“
Temporary Perfections
is a first-rate thriller, stylish, witty and suspenseful. I am looking forward to many more from Carofiglio.”
Kathy Reichs
A WALK IN THE DARK
Gianrico Carofiglio
When Martina accuses her ex-boyfriend â the son of a powerful local judge â of assault and battery, no witnesses can be persuaded to testify on her behalf, and one lawyer after another refuses to represent her. Guido Guerrieri knows the case could bring his legal career to a premature and messy end, but he cannot resist the appeal of a hopeless cause. Nor deny an attraction to Sister Claudia, the young woman in charge of the shelter where Martina is living, who shares his love of martial arts and his virulent hatred of injustice.
A Walk in the Dark
, Carofiglio's second novel featuring defence counsel Guerrieri, follows on from the critical and commercial success of
Involuntary Witness
.
PRAISE FOR
A WALK IN THE DARK
“Carofiglio is a prosecutor well known for his courageous anti-mafia stance, which has attracted death threats.
A Walk in the Dark
features an engagingly complex, emotional and moody defence lawyer, Guido Guerrieri, who takes on cases shunned by his colleagues. In passing, Carofiglio provides a fascinating insight into the workings of the Italian criminal justice system.”
Observer
“Part legal thriller, part insight into a man fighting his own demons. Every character in Carofiglio's fiction has a story to tell and they are always worth hearing. As the author himself is an anti-mafia prosecutor, this powerfully affecting novel benefits from veracity as well as tight writing.”
The Daily Mail
“At one level an exciting courtroom thriller, but what places it in a superior league is the portrayal of a slice of Italian society not normally encountered in crime fiction and an immensely appealing flawed hero.”
The Times
REASONABLE DOUBTS
Gianrico Carofiglio
Counsel for the defence Guido Guerrieri is asked to handle the appeal of Fabio Paolicelli, who has been sentenced to sixteen years for drug smuggling. The odds are stacked against the accused: not only the fact that he initially confessed to the crime, but also his past as a neo-Fascist thug. It is only the intervention of Paolicelli's beautiful half-Japanese wife that finally overcomes Guerrieri's reluctance.
Reasonable Doubts
, Carofiglio's third novel featuring Guerrieri, follows on from the critical and commercial success of
Involuntary Witness
and
A Walk in the Dark
.
PRAISE FOR
REASONABLE DOUBTS
“The role of lawyer Guido Guerrieri is to take on impossible cases that have little chance of success. The lawyer accepts this case only because he's fallen in lust with the prisoner's wife; his efforts to prove his client's innocence bring him into dangerous conflict with Mafia interests. Everything a legal thriller should be.”
The Times
“This novel is hard-boiled and sun-dried in equal parts. Guerrieri stumbles into a case involving old enmities, a femme fatale and a murky conspiracy. But where Philip Marlowe would be knocking back bourbon and listening to the snap of fist on jaw, Guerrieri prefers Sicilian wine and Leonard Cohen⦠The local colour is complemented by snappy legal procedural writing which sends the reader tumbling through the clockwork of a tightly wound plot.”
The Financial Times
“Carofiglio, until recently an anti-Mafia prosecutor in southern Italy, is particularly well placed to write legal thrillers, and he does so with considerable brio, humour and skill.”
The Daily Mail
INVOLUNTARY WITNESS
Gianrico Caroï¬glio
A nine-year-old boy is found murdered at the bottom of a well near a popular beach resort in southern Italy. In what looks like a hopeless case for Guido Guerrieri, counsel for the defence, a Senegalese peddler is accused of the crime. Faced with small-town racism fuelled by the recent immigration from Africa, Guido attempts to exploit the esoteric workings of the Italian courts.
More than a perfectly paced legal thriller, this relentless suspense novel transcends the genre. A powerful attack on racism, and a fascinating insight into the Italian judicial process, it is also an affectionate portrait of a deeply humane hero.
PRAISE FOR
INVOLUNTARY WITNESS
“A stunner. Guerrieri is a wonderfully convincing character; morose, but seeing the absurdity of his gloomy life, his vulnerability and cynicism laced with self-deprecating humour. It is the veracity of the setting and the humanity of the lawyer that makes the novel a courtroom drama of such rare quality.”
The Times
“Involuntary Witness raises the standard for crime ï¬ction. Caroï¬glio's deft touch has given us a story that is both literary and gritty â and one that speeds along like the best legal thrillers. His insights into human nature â good and bad â are breathtaking.”
Jeffery Deaver
“A powerful redemptive novel beautifully translated.”
Daily Mail
