A Walk in the Dark (10 page)

“Everything’s fine, then. We’ll talk again tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll tell you how it went.” I said that as I was walking them to the door.

I wasn’t at all convinced everything was fine.

When they’d left, I went and opened the windows wide, even though it was cold outside. To get a change of air.

I didn’t want the sharp smell of fear to linger in the room too long.

I closed the office, returned home, had dinner with Margherita and just as we were going to bed I told her I was going down to my apartment. I had to work, to check some papers for the trial next day, and I’d be up late. I didn’t want to disturb her, so it was better if I slept downstairs.

The only true part of this was that I didn’t want to disturb her. There are nights when you know you’re not going to get any sleep. It’s not that there’s any particular, striking, unmistakable signal. You just know it. This evening I knew it. I knew I’d go to bed and lie there, wide awake, for an hour or more. Then I’d have to get up, because you can’t stay in bed when you can’t sleep. I’d have to walk around the apartment, I’d read something in the hope it would make me feel sleepy, I’d turn on the TV, and all the rest of the ritual. I didn’t want that to happen at Margherita’s. I didn’t want her to see me ill, even if it was just from occasional insomnia. I was ashamed.

When I told her I was going to my apartment to work, she looked me in the eyes. “You’re going to work now?”

“Yes, I told you. I’ve got a trial starting tomorrow. There’ll be a lot of preliminary issues, it’s a tricky case, I really have to go over everything.”

“You’re one of the worst liars I’ve ever met.”

I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Really bad, eh?”

“One of the worst.”

I felt a tightness in my shoulders, thinking that I used to be quite good at telling lies. With her, though, I hadn’t kept in practice.

“What’s your problem? If you want to be alone, you just have to say so.”

Yes, I just have to say so.

“I don’t think I’m going to get any sleep tonight and I don’t want to keep you awake too.”

“You’re not going to sleep. Why?”

“I won’t sleep. I don’t know why. It sometimes happens. I mean, that I know in advance.”

She looked me in the eyes again, but with a different expression now. She was wondering what the problem was, since I hadn’t told her and maybe didn’t even know. She was wondering if there was something she could do. In the end, she came to the conclusion she couldn’t do anything tonight. So she put her hand on my shoulder and gave me a quick kiss.

“All right then, good night, I’ll see you tomorrow. And if you feel sleepy, don’t stay awake just to be consistent.”

I went away with a vague, troubling sense of guilt.

After that, everything went as predicted. An hour spent tossing and turning in bed, in the forlorn hope that I’d been wrong in interpreting the premonitory signs. More than an hour in front of the television, watching a film to the end:
Lure of the Sila
, with Amedeo Nazzari, Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman.

Many interminable minutes reading Adorno’s
Minima Moralia
. In the hope, which I tried to keep hidden from myself in order for the trick to work, of boring myself so much that I couldn’t fail to fall asleep. I got bored all right, but sleep was as elusive as ever.

By the time I dozed slightly – a kind of laboured
half-sleep – a sickly light and the soft, methodical, remorseless sound of rain was already filtering through the shutters, announcing that it was almost day.

It was still raining as I walked across the city, trying to protect myself with a pocket umbrella I’d bought a few weeks before from a Chinese woman. As usually happens the second time you use an umbrella – and that morning was the second time – it broke, and I got wet. By the time I got to the courthouse, just before nine-thirty, I wasn’t in a good mood.

The courtroom where Caldarola was due to preside was in the middle of a very busy corridor. As usual on trial days, the place was completely chaotic. There was a real mixture of people: the defendants, their lawyers, policemen and carabinieri who were due to testify, a few pensioners who spent their interminable mornings watching trials instead of playing
briscola
on park benches. Everyone knew them by now and they knew and greeted everyone.

A few yards from this group, there were other people with pieces of paper in their hands, looking lost, or like people who’d rather they weren’t there. They were right. They were witnesses in the various trials, usually crime victims, and the pieces of paper told them they were obliged to appear before a judge and “in the event of non-appearance not due to a legitimate impediment would be liable to be forced to appear, accompanied by the police, and would be subject to a fine of . . .” and so on, and so forth.

Even in the best of cases, they were about to live through a surreal experience. One that wouldn’t increase their faith in justice.

Between the two groups, the passing crowd moved in a constant stream. Assistants with trolleys and heaps of files, defendants looking for their own courtrooms or their own lawyers, prison warders escorting prisoners in chains, bewildered black faces, tattooed villains – obviously regular clients of the courts and police
stations – other villains who you realized after a few moments were police officers from the street crimes squad, young lawyers with unseasonable tans, big collars and big knotted ties, and normal people scattered through the courts for the most varied reasons. Almost never good ones.

All of them would have liked to get out of here as quickly as possible. Me too.

Sister Claudia was sitting on a bench, staring at a grimy wall. In the usual leather jacket, and militarystyle trousers with big pockets. Nobody had sat down next to her. Nobody was standing too close to her either. For a second or two, the written words
Keep your distance
flashed through my mind.

I don’t know how it was that she saw me, because she really did seem to be staring at that wall in front of her and I was coming from the side, through the crowd. The fact is, when I was about six yards away from her, she turned her head as if obeying a silent command and immediately stood up with that sinuous, dangerous, predatory movement of hers.

I stopped in front of her, not much more than a foot away. Encroaching into that bubble where nobody else dared enter. I nodded my head in greeting and she responded in the same way.

“What are you doing here?”

For a fraction of a second, I thought I saw something like embarrassment on her face, even a slight blush. It was only a fraction of a second, and maybe I only imagined it. When she spoke, her voice was the way it had been the other times: grey, like the steel of a knife.

“Martina isn’t coming. You told her not to. So I’ve come to see how it goes and then tell her about it.”

I nodded and told her we could go into court. The
hearing would be starting soon, and it was a good idea to be there to hear what time our case would be dealt with. As I said it, I realized I hadn’t yet seen Scianatico, or even Delissanti.

Sister Claudia sat down behind the rail separating the space intended for the public from that reserved for the lawyers, the defendants, the public prosecutor, the clerk of the court and the judge. In other words, where the trial takes place.

After briefly explaining to her what was about to happen, I went over to the clerk of the court, who was already in his place. In front of him he had two stacks of files: the cases that were due to be dealt with during the hearing.

In theory, at least. In practice, there would be adjournments, annulments, postponements, either at the request of the defence attorneys or else “due to the excessive number of cases in today’s hearing”. In practice, by the end of the hearing, the judge would only have ruled on three or four of the cases at the most.

Caldarola didn’t think it was dignified for a judge to do too much work.

I asked the clerk of the court if I could see the file. I wanted to check the list of prosecution and defence witnesses. I hadn’t submitted a list because I took it for granted that Alessandra Mantovani had indicated all the relevant witnesses.

The clerk of the court gave me the file and I went and sat down on one of the lawyers’ benches. All still empty, despite the crowd outside.

Alessandra, as predicted, had listed all the requisite
witnesses. Martina, obviously. The police inspector who had been in charge of the investigation. A couple of girls from Safe Shelter. Martina’s mother. The doctors. No surprises.

The surprises – unpleasant ones – were in the defence list. There were a dozen witnesses, who would testify:

But the real problem wasn’t those witnesses. They were only there to make an impression. The problem was the last name on the list. Professor Genchi, professor of legal medicine and forensic psychiatry. He was listed as an expert witness who would testify “as to the conditions of mental health of the plaintiff in relation to the witness statements and the documents whose admission will be requested, with the purpose of ascertaining the plaintiff’s mental fitness to testify and, in any case, with the purpose of ascertaining the admissibility of said testimony”.

I knew the professor: I had seen him in a lot of trials. He was a man you could trust, not like some of his colleagues, who produce accommodating – and well-paid – evaluations of defendants. Claiming that
they have serious mental illnesses, that being ill they absolutely cannot remain in prison and must therefore be transferred as soon as possible to house arrest. Needless to say, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, these gentlemen are as healthy as can be. Needless to say, these expert witnesses are perfectly well aware of that, but with a nice fee in sight they prefer not to make fine distinctions.

Genchi, though, was someone you could trust, someone judges listened to. Quite rightly. He would never lend himself to coming into court and talking nonsense or giving false testimony. Delissanti had chosen someone who would never let his hand be forced to exaggerate his evaluation. Which meant that he must be feeling very confident.

As I was reading, and getting increasingly worried, I felt a presence behind me. I turned and looked up. Alessandra Mantovani, already wearing her robe. She greeted me in a professional manner –
Good morning, Avvocato
– and I replied in the same way,
Good morning, Dottoressa
.

Then she went and sat down in her place. Her face was a touch tense. Small lines at the corners of her mouth, her eyes partly closed. I was certain she’d already read Delissanti’s list.

The assistant who was with her placed two dusty folders on her desk, full of files with discoloured covers. A few minutes passed, and at last Delissanti came in, with his usual retinue of secretaries, assistants and trainees. Almost immediately after, the bell sounded to signal the start of the hearing.

They’d arrived virtually at the same time. The defence attorney and the judge.

It had to be a coincidence.

The preliminaries did not take too long.

The judge declared the proceedings open and asked the clerk of the court to read the charges – in full, as required by law. In practice, it isn’t usually done. The judge asks the parties, “Shall we take the charges as read?” Then he usually doesn’t even listen to the answer, and carries on. He takes it for granted that nobody is interested in hearing the charges read out, because they already know them perfectly well.

That day, Caldarola didn’t take the charges as read, and so we had to listen to all of them in the nasal voice of Clerk of the Court Filannino from Barletta, with his strong accent. A thin man, with greyish skin, not much hair, and a sad, unpleasant grimace at the corners of his mouth.

I didn’t like that. Caldarola was someone who, more than anything else, liked to get on with things. It was a bad sign that he should waste time on formalities. It must mean something, but I wasn’t sure what.

After the charges had been read out, Caldarola asked the public prosecutor to make her requests for the admission of evidence. Alessandra stood up, her robe dropping perfectly along her body as she did so, without her needing to pull it up over her shoulders. Unlike almost everyone else, including me.

She didn’t speak for very long. Basically, all she said was that she would prove the offences indicated in the charges by means of the witnesses on her list and the
documents that would be shown in evidence. From the way she looked at the judge, I realized she was thinking the same thing as me. That something was going on behind our backs.

Then it was my turn, and I said even less. I referred to the public prosecutor’s requests, asked for the defendant to be examined, if he consented, and reserved my observations on the defence’s requests until I had heard them.

“Counsel for the defence.”

Delissanti stood up.

“Thank you, Your Honour. Here we all are, even though we shouldn’t be. The fact is, there are some cases that should never be brought to trial. This is one of them.”

First pause. He turned his head to the bench where Alessandra and I were sitting. Trying to provoke us. Alessandra’s face was devoid of expression: she was looking into space, somewhere behind the judge’s bench.