I smiled weakly. “What do you think?” Defence lawyers who’ve just finished speaking in a difficult hearing are like writers who’ve just finished a novel and give it to somebody to read. Desperate for encouragement. Terribly desperate.

“You did a great job,” she said. “I’d acquit him.”

Consuelo and Tancredi told me more or less the same thing. I’d done a great job. They thought we had a good chance. Even the fact that the judges didn’t know how long they would be deliberating was positive: they weren’t sure, they had to think it over. It was all good.

So why did I feel so insecure? So scared?269

I went over to Iacopo, who was waiting for me with his hands gripping the bars.

“Thank you.” He hesitated. “What’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fifty–fifty?”

“Fifty–fifty, yes.”

Iacopo nodded.

“I have to go now,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

Lorenza was just outside the courtroom.

“What do we do now, just stay here and wait for the verdict?”

“Best not to. Go home, try to distract yourself. I’m going too. When the clerk of the court calls me I’ll let you know.”

“They can’t convict him, can they?”

I felt like hugging her, but held back.

“We did what we could. It’s pointless making predictions.”

On my way out of the courthouse, I told everyone I was going for a walk, left Consuelo the briefcase with the papers, took off my tie and headed for the sea.

I walked for half an hour, unaware of my own thoughts. And I ended up walking barefoot on the long, deserted beach of San Francesco; I rolled up my trouser legs and went into the cold, very clear water, almost up to my knees. It’s nice that there’s water like this in a city, I told myself, maybe it means something. As I was looking at the slight ripples on the surface of the sea, I remembered a quotation by Elias Canetti that suggested you shouldn’t believe in anybody who always told the truth: “The truth is a sea of grass bending in the wind, it needs to be felt as movement. It is a rock only for those who do not feel it and do not breathe it.”

I got to the end of the beach, put my shoes back on and continued as far as the pine grove.270