Natsu stood up. I went up to her and shook her hand. It was a bit of a show. I could feel the eyes of the world on me, Paolicelli’s in particular. I held her hand for a very brief moment, but avoided looking in her eyes.
Then I asked her to excuse me because I had to talk to someone. As I walked towards Tancredi I noticed that the man who knew the score had vanished. Which made me feel both relieved and anxious in a new kind of way.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I had to go to the Prosecutor’s Department. But then I got through my business quicker than I’d expected, so, seeing as how you’ve involved me in this case anyway, I came to see what was happening. What do you think the judges will do? Will they order him to answer?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t know which is better for us, to tell the truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“If the judges order him to answer and he lies without contradicting himself too much, then it’s Paolicelli’s word against his.”
“And what if they say he can claim lawyer-client confidentiality?”
“I can make something of that in my closing argument. You saw, Your Honours, that the witness Macri refused to tell us about his conversations with his former client. He claimed lawyer-client confidentiality. Of course he was entitled to do so, in accordance with your order. But we have to ask: why? Why, when his client himself wanted him to talk about the substance of those conversations, did he refuse to do so? Obviously because there was information it wasn’t in his interest to reveal.”
Having got the technical explanation out of the way, I thought it might be a good idea to tell him about the henchman Macri had brought with him. “In any case, Signor Macri didn’t come on his own.”
Tancredi turned his head slightly, to inspect the courtroom. Macri’s friend had gone, however, so I told him what had happened before the hearing.
“I’m going to call some of my people now. When Macri’s finished on the witness stand we’ll put a tail on your pleasant colleague and his friend. If they leave by car we’ll have them stopped on the autostrada by the transport police. It’ll look like a random check; that way they won’t suspect anything. If they take a plane, we’ll alert our colleagues in the border police. We’ll be able to identify them and see if this man is only a driver and flunkey or something worse.”
That made me feel a whole lot better, I thought.
“That way,” Tancredi went on, “if anyone does bump you off, you can rest assured it won’t go unpunished. Those two will be the first people we arrest.”
I don’t know why, but I didn’t find the joke all that funny. I was looking for an effective retort when the bell rang and the judges came back into the courtroom.