Gianrico Carofiglio - A Walk in the Dark

Ever since, at recurring intervals, the boy has dreamed of climbing over the railing of a terrace and jumping off. Directly and without hesitation. Sometimes he dreams of jumping on the railing and walking along it like a kind of mad tightrope walker, certain not that he can do it, but that he’ll fall at any moment – which promptly happens. At other times, he dreams about his two friends making fun of him, and then he runs to the railing, places a hand on it, and vaults over it, while they look on in amazement and alarm.

That’ll teach them to make fun of me, he thinks as he wakes up, gripped by an overwhelming sadness, because his childhood is over, and because he could have been so many things. So many things he’ll never be.

When I wake up, I always think that. I could have been so many things I’ll never be, because I haven’t had the courage to try.

Then I open – or close? – my eyes, get up, and go to face the day.

“Guido, are you listening to me?”

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry, I was a bit distracted. While you were talking I thought of something.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Just something to do with work. Something I left unfinished.”

“Something important?”

“No, no, something stupid.”

A single hearing wasn’t enough to get through all the other witnesses for the prosecution. The police inspector who’d been assigned to the investigation and who, among other things, had obtained Martina and Scianatico’s phone records. The doctors from casualty who simply confirmed what they had written in their reports, of which they obviously didn’t remember a word. A couple of girls from the community, who had escorted Martina on a few occasions, and in whom she had confided.

Martina’s mother.

She was a sad, overweight, lacklustre woman. She and her daughter didn’t look anything like each other. She spoke in a monotonous, lifeless voice about how Martina had returned home, the phone calls at night, the calls on the entry phone. She was careful to point out that she didn’t know anything else, that she had never been present at any quarrels between her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend. That her daughter wasn’t in the habit of confiding in her.

It was obvious she wasn’t happy that she’d been forced to appear, and wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

While giving her evidence, she never once looked in her daughter’s direction. When she was dismissed by the judge she hurried away. Without a gesture towards Martina, without even looking at her.

It took two hearings to get through these witnesses. They were calm hearings, with no more clashes, because everyone – Alessandra, Delissanti, myself – knew perfectly well that the outcome of the trial didn’t depend on any of these testimonies. They just provided the background. Basically, the trial came down to Martina’s word against Scianatico’s. Nobody had been present when he’d beaten her. Nobody had been present when he’d humiliated her. Nobody we could locate had been present when he’d attacked her in the street.

And nobody had been present at other things. Things Martina told me about only a few days before the hearing at which Scianatico was due to be examined. We met in my office and I asked her all kinds of questions. Including some very embarrassing ones, because I needed every bit of information I could find to prepare my cross-examination.

These other things, which came out in the course of the meeting in my office, might turn out to be very useful. If I could find a way of getting Scianatico to admit them, in court, in front of the judge.

The hearing was scheduled for 20 April. It was then that the outcome of the trial would probably be decided.

As long as it hadn’t already been decided somewhere else, outside the courtroom. In rooms where I wasn’t admitted.

The phone call came into my office about half past eight in the morning, just as I was about to leave for court. Maria Teresa told me there was a call from the Public Prosecutor’s department, from Dottoressa Mantovani’s office.

“Hello?”

“Avvocato Guerrieri?”

“Yes?”

“Assistant Prosecutor Mantovani’s office. Hold the line, please, I’ll pass you Dottoressa Mantovani.”

I started to feel worried. Bad news. Anxiety.

“Guido, it’s Alessandra Mantovani. I’m sorry I had the secretariat call you, but this isn’t the best of mornings. I’m on call and all sorts of things are happening.”

“Don’t worry, what’s going on?”

“I wanted to talk to you for five minutes, so if you’re coming to court today maybe you could drop by.”

“I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

As I left my office and walked towards the courts and then along the corridors thick with the smell of papers and humanity, I felt my anxiety growing. The kind of anxiety you feel about things that are out of your control. An unpleasant, limp sensation, situated, for some reason, on the right-hand side of my abdomen.

I had to wait a few minutes outside Alessandra’s office. She was dealing with the carabinieri, her secretary told me in the outer room. When they came out – some of them I knew well – they were carrying sheets of paper, and their faces were tense, as if they were ready for action. I was certain they were off to arrest someone.

I entered the room just as Alessandra was lighting a cigarette. On the desk was a newly opened packet of Camels.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I quit… I mean I did quit six years ago,” she said, taking a greedy drag. I felt almost dizzy with the desire to take one myself and the effort of resisting. If she’d offered me one I’d have accepted, but she didn’t.

“Two months ago a request came in from the Senior Board of the Judiciary. Asking me if I would agree to being assigned to the Public Prosecutor’s department in Palermo.” Another drag, almost violent.

“This isn’t a good time for me. At work and especially outside. If I were inclined to dramatize, I’d say I can’t go on. But I don’t want to inflict my problems on you. If I wanted to unburden myself, I could write a letter to a women’s magazine – using a false name obviously. You know the kind of thing: forty-year-old woman in such and such a career, life an emotional desert, burned all her bridges, growing realization that she’ll never be a mother, etc, etc.”

What a strange sensation. Alessandra Mantovani had always given me an impression of invulnerability. Now, suddenly, here she was, a normal woman, looking with alarm at the passing years, and the years to come, and trying desperately not to go to pieces.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t call you to cry on your shoulder.”

I made a gesture as if to say, no problem, if she wanted to cry on my shoulder, or whatever, she could. She didn’t even see the gesture.

“I told them I agreed to the assignment. Almost without thinking. Because right now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I want. .. Anyway, it’s OK. I told them I was available and yesterday morning this arrived.”

She handed me a fax. The letterhead was in somewhat antiquated cursive writing. Senior Board of the Judiciary. The text said that Dottoressa Alessandra Mantovani, magistrate of the court of appeal, working as an assistant public prosecutor at the law court of Bari, had been assigned, having given her agreement, for a period of six months, renewable for further periods of six months, to the Public Prosecutor’s department of Palermo. Dottoressa Mantovani had to present herself to the Public Prosecutor’s department of Palermo within six days of the order being communicated.

The rest was technical details. Pure jargon. I stopped reading and looked up.