On Monday morning, I went to the Public Prosecutor’s department.
I entered the courthouse through the entrance reserved for magistrates, staff and lawyers. A young carabiniere I’d never seen before asked me for my papers. I said I was a lawyer and he asked again for my papers. Of course I didn’t have my pass with me, so the young carabiniere told me to go out and come back in through the public entrance. The one equipped with a metal detector, in case I had a submachine gun under my jacket.
Or an axe. They’d installed metal detectors after a madman had entered the court with an axe stuffed down his trousers. Nobody had checked him, and once inside he’d started to smash things up. When he was finally cornered and disarmed by the carabinieri, he said he’d come to talk to the judge who’d found against him in an inheritance case. That must have been his idea of an appeal.
I was just about to turn round and do as the carabiniere had said, when I was spotted by a marshal who was on duty in court every day and knew me. He told the young man I was indeed a lawyer and he could let me pass.
The entrance hall was packed: women, young men, carabinieri, prison warders and lawyers, most of them provincial. It was the first day of the trial of a group of drug dealers from Altamura. The background noise was the kind you hear in a theatre before the show starts. The background smell was the kind you often smell in railway stations, or on crowded buses. Or in the entrance halls of law courts.
I made my way through the crowd, the noise and the smell, reached the lift, and went up to the Public Prosecutor’s department.
Assistant Public Prosecutor Alessandra Mantovani’s office was in the usual mess. Files heaped up on the desk, on the chairs, on the sofa and even on the floor.
Every time I entered a public prosecutor’s office, I thought how glad I was to be a lawyer, not a magistrate.
“Avvocato Guerrieri.”
“Prosecutor.”
I closed the door, and Alessandra stood up, walked around the desk, avoiding a huge heap of files, and came towards me. We greeted each other with a kiss on the cheek.
Alessandra was my friend, a beautiful woman, and probably the best magistrate in the Prosecutor’s department.
She was from Verona, but a few years before had requested a transfer to Bari. She had come on a oneway ticket, leaving behind her a rich husband and an easy life. To come and live with a guy she thought was the love of her life. Even very intelligent women do very stupid things. The guy wasn’t the love of her life, just an ordinary man no different from any other. And just like an ordinary man, after a few months he’d simply left her. So she stayed on, alone, in a city she didn’t know, without friends, without anywhere else to go. And without complaining.
“Is this a social call or have you started defending perverts?”
Alessandra was in the section of the Public Prosecutor’s department dealing with sex crimes. As a rule, I didn’t defend that kind of client, and there weren’t many civil cases in that section, so Alessandra and I had few opportunities to meet for professional reasons.
“Yes, your colleague next door was picked up in the park wearing a black raincoat, and nothing underneath. He was arrested by a special team from the public hygiene department and he’s asked me to defend him.”
The colleague next door didn’t have what you’d call a spotless reputation. All sorts of amusing stories were told about him. And about the many secretaries, female bailiffs, typists – mostly quite advanced in years – who passed through his office outside working hours.
We joked a while longer and then I told her the reason for my visit.
The first thing she said was that I’d taken on a difficult case. Thanks, but I’d already figured that.
Obviously, I knew who the defendant was, and his father. Obviously, yes, thanks again for the reassuring tone. When I have a problem and need moral support, I know where to come in future.
What kind of case did we have? A disaster, which I already knew. A disaster, from every point of view. Basically her word against his, at least as far as the worst of his actions were concerned. The annoying phone calls were proved by the records, but that was a minor offence. There were a couple of medical reports from the casualty ward, but they didn’t show any serious injuries. When the worst offences had been committed, she hadn’t sought medical help. She was ashamed to say what had happened. It was always like that. They’re beaten up and then they’re ashamed to say that their husbands or partners are animals.
“If you want my opinion, I think the Fumai girl was also raped during the period they were living together. It happens a lot, but it almost never comes to trial. They feel ashamed. It’s incredible, but they feel ashamed.”
“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.