I would get through the dull afternoon chores – mostly appointments, because it was Friday and there were no court hearings the next day – then phone Costamagna’s practice and inform them of developments. I was sure they wouldn’t tear their hair out: a very weak case, and a client unable to make further exorbitant down payments, which were completely unjustified anyway now that the old man was no longer around.

Then I would take the file home with me and take a look at the case. Annapaola had gone to London with two friends. 27She would be back the following Monday. I had no desire to call other people to go out with and I had no desire to go out on my own. It was an ideal evening for starting to figure out what I was getting into.

When I called the Costamagna practice I asked for his daughter, who’d inherited it. She resembled her father only in appearance, which wasn’t a compliment – he’d always been on the large side.

I informed her of the fact that their client Cardace had probably appointed me that morning, even though the message from the prison hadn’t arrived yet.

“I hope everything’s sorted with the payments,” I said, more than anything to see how she reacted.

“I didn’t deal with it. It was Dad and Pinelli” – the man Lorenza had rightly described as an idiot – “but I’m familiar with the paperwork.”

Paperwork. A man who’d been in prison for quite some time and who in all probability would be there for a long time to come. Paperwork. Vocabulary reveals a lot about people, I thought. Then I thought that maybe my reflections were banal. It often happens, I can’t help myself. Mariella Costamagna continued speaking.

“I think there’s still some money pending, but don’t worry. Considering the circumstances, we won’t insist.”

I had to hold back a few rude remarks. If Lorenza had told me the truth about the fees she’d been charged – and I didn’t have many doubts about that, knowing Costamagna – it was a lie to state that there was money pending. Even worse, it was actually obscene. More or less like the use of the word paperwork.

“Anyway, I don’t envy you,” she went on. “It’s an open-and-shut case, Dad said. The kid’s guilty, there’s not much 28you can do. At most try to limit the damage. Maybe, if he confesses, you could get a slightly reduced sentence.”

We hung up and the nasty feeling left by these last words remained with me the whole afternoon, like an unpleasant taste in my mouth. I was seized with a kind of urgency to read the case file and find out how things stood.

I asked Pasquale to make three copies of the ruling. One for Consuelo, one for Annapaola, one for Tancredi.