Gianrico Carofiglio - Reasonable Doubts

The basketball courts were all full. On a level stretch of grass, a group of girls in kimonos, all black belts in karate, were performing a kata. It was a beautiful sight.

I went all round the park three times, to kill time. Then at last I saw Natsu, dressed much the same way I was. Her daughter was near her, in a pink down jacket, puffing away on a bike.

I waved at her and she waved back, cheerfully.

“You remember Guido, Anna?”

I wondered if she remembered that night. Then I realized how stupid that was. She hadn’t even woken up. How could she remember anything?

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello, Anna, how are you?”

“I’m fine. Do you like my bike? Mummy bought it for me and I can already do without the stabilizers.”

“You’re very good. At your age I didn’t even try to take off the stabilizers.”

She looked at me closely for a few seconds, to see if I was pulling her leg. Then she must have decided that I did in fact look like the kind of person who would have had difficulties removing the stabilizers from his bicycle.

“And why did you come to the park? Did you bring your children?”

“No, I don’t have children.”

“Why?”

Because I was too much of a coward to have them, when I had the chance.

“Guido isn’t married, sweetheart. When he decides to get married, he’ll have children, too.”

That’s right. Guaranteed.

The girl set off on her bicycle again. Natsu and I walked slowly after her.

We passed a little stand selling ice cream and drinks.

“Mummy, will you buy me an ice cream?”

“Sweetheart, if I buy you an ice cream you won’t eat it.”

“Please, mummy. A little ice cream. The littlest one they have. Please.”

Natsu was about to say something. She looked as if she was giving in. So I asked her if I could buy Midori an ice cream. She shrugged. “Just a little one.”

“OK. A little one.”

I told the little girl to come with me and she followed me docilely. Natsu didn’t come after us.

For a few seconds – the time it took for us to go together to the little stand, for her to choose the ice cream, and for me to pay for it, take it, and give it to her-I felt an absurd, commonplace, perfect emotion.

I was that little girl’s father. We had come here together – the girl, her mother and her father – for a walk in the park. I was buying her an ice cream.

I was going mad, I told myself. And I didn’t give a damn. I was happy to be there, happy that we were there, and I didn’t give a damn.

The little girl took the ice cream and asked me to carry her bicycle for her, and so we resumed walking along the avenues, all three of us. Like a family.

“Anna has a party this afternoon,” Natsu said.

“Uh-huh,” I said, with the most stolid of my expressions.

“If you don’t have anything else to do, I could come and pick you up after I drop her at her friend’s house. What do you think?”

What I thought was that the appeal hearing was in three days’ time.

I told her I didn’t have anything else to do.

I visited Paolicelli the day before the hearing. When he came into the interview room I noticed that he looked particularly depressed.

“I’ve come to go over things with you. Before anything else, we have to decide once and for all what we’re going to do. We can still choose to plea-bargain tomorrow morning.”

“I’m being stupid, right? I should plea-bargain and limit the damage, shouldn’t I? Otherwise the sentence will be upheld, and then God knows when I’ll be out of here.”

“Not necessarily. But as I’ve already said many times, if we plea-bargain you can be certain you’ll be out in a few years, or at least on day release.”

“For weeks I couldn’t wait for the hearing to start and I felt really confident. Now I don’t know what to do and I’m fucking afraid. What should I do?”

Don’t ask me, I can’t tell you that. I’m just a professional, I’m here to suggest alternatives, in a detached way, from a technical point of view. I have to present you with the likely outcome of each option. Then the choice has to be yours. I can’t take that responsibility.

I didn’t say any of that shit. I was silent for just a few seconds, before replying. And when I did reply, neither my voice nor the words I was saying seemed to be coming from me.

“I say: let’s go ahead and appeal. If the drugs weren’t yours – and I believe they weren’t – it isn’t right for you to be in prison and we have to get you out. We have to try every possible way. If the drugs were yours, this is the very last moment for you to tell me. I’m not here to judge you. Tell me and tomorrow we’ll do the best plea bargain possible.”

He looked me in the eyes. I returned his gaze and it seemed to me that his eyes had become watery.

“Let’s appeal.”

That was all.

I gave him a brief rundown on what would happen the next day and told him his examination would take place during the following hearing. Then I asked him if he had any questions, and fortunately he didn’t. So I said goodbye – see you tomorrow in court – and left.

As I left the prison I was about to switch my mobile on again. Then I had second thoughts. Better to avoid any risk, any temptation, at least tonight. For what it was worth.

I didn’t even feel like the punchball and so, when I got home, I made myself a roll, ate it, and went straight out without bothering to change.

I soon found myself in the streets of the Liberta neighbourhood. Places full of memories of a period of my life, around twenty years ago, when things seemed simpler.

Lost in thought, I stopped in front of the entrance to a kind of private club. From inside came a voice speaking dialect. Seven or eight men were sitting around a table. They were talking loudly, interrupting each other, waving their arms. To the side, two crates of Peroni beer.

They were playing for beer. It was an old game, halfway between a game and a tribal ritual, involving a pack of Neapolitan cards and several bottles of beer. The winner of each round had to drink a bottle of beer.

“Avvocato Guerrieri!”

Tonino Lopez, a fence well known in the Liberta, with a police record as long as your arm. My client for about ten years.

Officially, in the intervals between one arrest and another, he was a greengrocer, and – since for some reason he was particularly fond of me – every two or three months he’d send a crate of fruit to my office, or artichokes, or a jar of olives in brine, or two bottles of rustic wine. Every time, I would phone him at his shop to thank him, and every time, without fail, he would reply in the same way.

“At your service, Avvocato. Always at your service.”

Tonino stood up from his folding wooden stool, came up to me and gave me his hand.

“We’re playing for beer, Avvocato. Why don’t you come in and sit down?”

I didn’t even think twice. I said thank you and went in. The air was thick with the smell of alcohol, cigarette smoke and men. Lopez introduced me to the others. I recognized most of them by sight. I’d seen them either on the streets of the neighbourhood or in the corridors of the courthouse. Some said good evening, others nodded. None of them seemed surprised that I was there, in my grey lawyer’s suit and tie.

Tonino took another folding stool from where it was propped against the wall, opened it and put it down next to me.

“Take a seat, Avvocato. Have a beer?”

I took a beer and drank half of it in one go. Tonino liked that, I could see it in his face. I had drunk like a man. I thought it would be better to remove my tie. I did so, and looked around.