What had been one of the strengths of the anti-mafia pool? Communication. They conducted an all-out blitz, and the newspapers talked about it. There was a chance to communicate and Falcone went for it. They never forgave him for the fact that these stories weren’t relegated to the shadows in prosecutors’ offices, or confined to the local news, but reached everyone. Paolo Borsellino reported that Falcone once said: ‘I have a feeling that people are rooting for us, that things are changing.’ For that he was not forgiven.

There is an episode that explains better than any other Falcone’s state of mind during this period. It occurs on the day of his death, 23 May 1992. Falcone is in the car with his wife and driver on the road leading from Punta Raisi airport to Palermo. They’ve returned from Rome to go to Favignana, to see the mattanza, the traditional tuna slaughter. Falcone likes to drive and this time he himself is at the wheel, with an escort car in front and one behind. His usual driver says, ‘Afterwards you can give me the car keys, Sir, or take them up to the house with you.’ Falcone is so lost in thought that he takes the keys out while the car is running, killing the engine. The car stalls. ‘We’ll get ourselves killed this way,’ the driver tells us he said. Meanwhile Giovanni Brusca, thinking that they have noticed something, pushes the button ahead of time and sets off the bomb. Over a thousand pounds of TNT wipes out the first car, the one carrying the escort. The second car is sent flying against the asphalt, which has heaved up. Only the driver is saved and it is from him that we know the details about the last moments of Falcone’s life.

For the first time the critics stop. Falcone’s death does away with the controversy. He becomes a hero. Almost as though death were the only possible evidence of the authenticity of his battle against the Mafia. But we must not forget. We must not forget that they slandered him, delegitimized him. When we realize that power delegitimizes, let’s not fall for it. All we have to do is say: ‘This is mud, it doesn’t interest me, I won’t listen to it.’

In an interview in La Repubblica marking the tenth anniversary of Falcone’s death, Milan prosecutor Ilda Boccassini recalled how greatly Giovanni Falcone had been attacked in life and how greatly eulogized after his death: