Gianrico Carofiglio - A Walk in the Dark

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: (1) as to the relations between Professor Scianatico and the plaintiff Martina Fumai during the period of their cohabitation; (2) in particular, as to what they noticed on occasions during which they frequented the residence of Professor Scianatico and the plaintiff; (3) to the best of their knowledge, as to the physical and mental problems of the plaintiff and the behavioural implications of such problems; (4) as to the reasons known to them for the cessation of cohabitation.

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.