Gianrico Carofiglio - Reasonable Doubts

“This story is constructed on the basis of a single significant fact: the discovery of the drugs in Paolicelli’s car at the border post. To go from an established fact – the presence of drugs in Paolicelli’s car – to the unestablished sequence of events which constitute the story told in the sentence from the original trial, it is necessary to go through a logical process.

“How do I know that the story I have told is a true account of past events? By applying to the established fact – the finding of the drugs in Paolicelli’s car-a law of experience, which we could summarize like this: if someone has a quantity of drugs in his car, those drugs are his.

“This is a highly reliable law of experience. It tallies with common sense. Normally, if I have something in my car – especially if it’s something of great value – then that something belongs to me. It’s a law of experience. But it isn’t a scientific law, and it allows for alternatives.

“The assistant prosecutor says, quite rightly, that the new evidence that has emerged during this appeal hearing is not incompatible with this story.”

I glanced at Montaruli before I continued.

“But now let’s see what other story it is possible to tell on the basis of the evidence we have.

“A family spends a week’s holiday in Montenegro. At night their car stays in the hotel car park and – in case it needs to be moved – the keys are left with the porter. The night before they are due to leave someone takes those keys.

“Someone who knows that Paolicelli and his wife are going back to Italy the next day, in that same car.

“This someone, with his accomplices, strips the bodyshell from Paolicelli’s car – his wife’s car, to be more precise – and fills it with drugs. Then they put everything back where it was, the car and the keys. It’s a good way to carry out an extremely lucrative operation with the minimum of risk. An operation set up by an organized group, which goes about things in a highly professional way, involving a division of roles and tasks. One of these tasks must be to check that everything goes well on the journey, to follow the unwitting courier and make sure the drugs are retrieved once they are in Italy. This retrieval probably to be carried out through a targeted theft of the car itself.

“At the border post in Bari, something goes wrong. The customs police find the drugs and arrest Paolicelli, who makes a confession without a lawyer being present-a confession which is therefore completely unusable – with the sole purpose of avoiding his wife being arrested.

“Immediately after the arrest, someone, in circumstances which are bizarre to say the least, suggests to Paolicelli’s wife that she appoint a lawyer from Rome. This lawyer has previously had a nasty brush with the justice system himself, in which he was arrested, charged and then acquitted for the offence of criminal conspiracy to traffic drugs. This same lawyer has a private relationship, the nature of which is unclear, with a man who – as Macri himself says – has also been charged with drug trafficking. By a curious coincidence, this man was travelling on the same ferry as Paolicelli.

“Of course it could be, as the prosecutor hypothesizes, that Paolicelli and this man were accomplices in the illegal operation.

“I must point out, however, that there exists at least one important piece of evidence which contradicts this hypothesis. The file contains printouts of the defendant’s mobile phone records, and those of his wife, during the week immediately prior to the arrest. They were acquired, quite correctly, in an attempt to identify possible accomplices, but when they were examined nothing significant emerged. There weren’t many calls that week, almost all of them between Paolicelli and his wife, and none to numbers in Montenegro. And none to any phone users related to Romanazzi. If the customs police had found any, they would surely have highlighted it, given that Romanazzi had previously been charged with drug offences. Instead, the note that was sent to the Prosecutor’s Department with these printouts simply states that nothing significant emerged from an examination of the phone records.

“We can therefore explain the presence of Romanazzi on board that ferry by saying that he was there to keep a close watch, without any risk to himself, on the transporting of the drugs by the unwitting Paolicelli, and to make sure that the next phase, the retrieval of the drugs, went well.

“And it could be that it was in fact Romanazzi who suggested to Paolicelli’s wife, through a go-between, that she appoint Macri.

“Why would he do that? To follow as closely as possible, through a person he trusted completely, the development of proceedings. To make sure that Paolicelli didn’t tell the investigators anything that might compromise the organization, for example anything about the hotel in Montenegro, the person with whom he left the keys, and so on. Indeed, Macri advises Paolicelli to exercise his right to remain silent and the whole process goes through without the defendant making a single statement, apart from the false confession he made immediately after the arrest.

“Let us also remember that when the sequestration order on the car is lifted-a car which is the property of Paolicelli’s wife – Macri is anxious to go personally and pick up the car from the police pound.

“What lawyer does something like that? And why does he do it? As a rule, as we all know, the lawyer gets the sequestration order lifted and then the client is the one who goes to pick up the car.

“Macri acts in a very unusual way, for which we must find a reasonable explanation, even if only a hypothetical one. Isn’t it possible that there was something in the car which the investigators had not found and which those responsible for the illegal operation had a major interest in retrieving? More drugs, perhaps. Or else a GPS tracker that had been planted in the car at the same time as the drugs. I’m sure you know what a GPS tracker is.”

Of course I was sure they didn’t know.

“A GPS tracker is a satellite signaller. It’s used as an anti-theft device in luxury cars, and is also used by the police to keep track of the cars of suspects under investigation. With a GPS it’s possible, from a long distance, to track down the location of a car to within a few yards. And it’s all done using mobile phone networks. If the device installed in the car is found, then it’s possible to trace those phones. Do I need to add anything more? Is it really absurd to hypothesize that the gang which planted the drugs in Paolicelli’s car also installed a GPS tracker to be on the safe side, and the customs police did not find it? Is it absurd to hypothesize that Macri personally collected the car in order to retrieve any remaining drugs and that compromising device? That device which, if found by the investigators, would have made it possible for the police to trace the traffickers’ phones? How else can we explain the actions of a lawyer who not only gets the sequestration order lifted, which is perfectly normal, but also goes personally to collect the car, which is quite abnormal?”

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.