Gianrico Carofiglio - A Walk in the Dark

“Who’s the judge?”

“Caldarola.”

“Great.”

Judge Cosimo Caldarola was a sad, colourless bureaucrat. I’d known him for more than fifteen years, that is, ever since becoming a trial lawyer, and I’d never seen him smile.

“Give me some good news. Who’s our friend’s lawyer?”

“Guess.”

“Delissanti?”

“Congratulations. You’ll see, we won’t be bored in this trial.”

Delissanti was a bastard. But good, bloody good. A kind of 240-pound pitbull. Nobody was keen to have him as an opponent. I’d seen him cross-examine prosecution witnesses, making them say one thing and then immediately afterwards the exact opposite. Without their even realizing it. For a few seconds I had a disturbing vision of my frail client struggling with Delissanti. It occurred to me we were really in the shit.

I asked if I could see the papers and Alessandra told me they were in the secretariat. I could go along there, take a look at the file, and whatever I needed I could get photocopied.

After all this good news, I stood up to shake off my unease.

“Wait,” she said, and started rummaging in her desk drawers. After a while she took out a small wad of photocopies pinned together. She put them in an envelope and held it out to me.

“For copies of the documents, go to the secretariat and pay the fees. These I’m giving you for free. They make for interesting reading, I think. If you want to get an idea what kind of man our friend is.”

I took the envelope and put it in my briefcase. We said goodbye and I went off to the secretariat to make copies of the file. Thinking that everything was going really wonderfully.

I went to the secretariat, started selecting the documents I might need, and after a while realized I was wasting time, just to save a bit of money on photocopies and chancery fees. So I told the clerk I wanted a complete copy of the file and I needed it before the end of the morning. I paid the fees, with a supplement to get it done quickly, and that reminded me that I hadn’t even got an advance from Signorina Fumai and her friend Sister Claudia.

I went back to the office at lunchtime, with a whole folder full of photocopies.

I told Maria Teresa to order me a couple of rolls and a beer for lunch from the bar on the ground floor, and when they arrived I started working and eating.

There was nothing of particular interest in the file. I already knew the gist of it.

As Alessandra had said, the evidence against Scianatico consisted basically of my client’s statements. There were some corroborating testimonies, two medical reports, and the phone records. In a normal trial that might even have been enough. But this wasn’t a normal trial.

It took me no more than an hour to examine the whole file. Then I opened my briefcase, took out the yellow envelope and looked at what it contained.

The photocopies were of a book on criminology by an American psychiatrist, about a kind of criminal I’d never had to deal with since becoming a lawyer. Or maybe I had, without realizing it. The stalker.

In the first pages, the author, quoting US laws, a large number of studies, and the FBI manual of criminal classification, defined a stalker as a predator who furtively and obstinately follows a victim according to a specific criterion and acts in such as way as to cause emotional distress and arouse a reasonable fear of being killed or suffering physical abuse, or who in a constant, voluntary and premeditated fashion follows and harasses another person.

In essence, the author wrote, stalking is a form of terrorism directed at a single individual, with the aim of obtaining contact with that individual and dominating him. It is often an invisible crime, until it erupts into violence, or even murder. That’s when the police intervene, but by then it’s usually too late.

The book went on to explain that many men classified as stalkers hide their own sense of dependency behind a stereotypical, ultra-masculine image, and are chronically oppressive in their dealings with women.

Many stalkers of this kind have suffered traumas in childhood. The death of a parent, sexual, physical or psychological abuse, etc. In other words, stalkers usually have an affective imbalance, reflecting situations in their childhoods that have disturbed their ability to deal with relationships. They are incapable of experiencing the pain of separation in the normal way, of letting go and looking for another relationship. Often their anger at abandonment is a defence against a reawakening of the intolerable pain and humiliation of childhood rejection, which may add to their more recent sense of loss.

It is difficult, the author wrote, to imagine the intensity of the fear and anguish felt by the victim. The terror is so intense and so constant that it is often beyond the understanding of anyone not directly involved.

There was a passage run through with an orange highlighter. As the terrorism escalates, the life of the victim becomes a prison. The victim hurries from the protective cover of home to that of the workplace, then home again, just like a prisoner being transferred from one cell to another. But often not even the workplace is a refuge. Some victims are too terrified to leave home. They live confined and alone, peeking out at the world from behind barred shutters.

I let out a brief whistle, not much more than an almost soundless breath of air. This was exactly what Sister Claudia had said. She stays at home, shut in, as if she’s in prison. That’s what she’d said, and at the time I hadn’t paid too much attention.

Now I realized it was more than just a line.

I picked up the file again and had another look at the charges, which I’d just skimmed through before. The most interesting was that for the offence of threatening behaviour, that is, to all intents and purposes, for stalking. Apart from the abuse, the bodily harm and the telephone harassment, Scianatico was charged: with the offence as under articles 81, 610, 61n. 1 and 5 of the penal code, in that with a number of actions carried out with one and the same criminal intention, acting for base and yet senseless motives, and taking such advantage of circumstances of time, place and person as to reduce the possibilities of self-defence, he forced Martina Fumai (after the end of the period during which they were cohabitating more uxorio, in which environment the offence of domestic abuse as described in the preceding charge was noted) using violence and threats, both explicit and implicit, as described in greater detail in the charges which follow: (1) to endure his constant, persistent, persecutory presence in the vicinity of her place of habitation, place of work and places of usual frequentation; (2) to gradually abandon her usual occupations and social relations; (3) to live in her home in a state of substantial deprivation of personal freedom, unable to go out freely without being subjected to harassment, as described above and also in greater detail in the charges which follow; (4) to go to and from her place of work substantially restricted in her personal freedom and with the necessary accompaniment (intended to prevent or resist the attacks of Signor Scianatico) of third parties…

It struck me that this was a kind of situation I’d never really thought about. Obviously there had been times when I’d had to deal with marriages or relationships that had ended badly. Obviously I’d had to deal with the violence and harassment that often followed these endings. I’d always considered them minor deeds. A mere coda to failed relationships. Small acts of violence, insults, repeated harassment.

Minor offences.

I’d never thought about the extent to which these minor offences could devastate the victims’ lives.