Lorenza had aged in the many years during which we hadn’t seen each other and had aged even more in that year 277and a half that had passed between the moment she’d come into my office to ask me to defend her son and the moment I called her to tell her that the Supreme Court had rejected our appeal. She greeted even that news without visible upset. She’d expected it, she said.

A few days later, she came to the office with an envelope full of banknotes. She wanted to pay me for my work.

I told her I didn’t want to be paid.

For once the words meant exactly what they said.

I didn’t want to be paid.

I didn’t want the money and I didn’t want to argue about it. I was blunt, maybe even brusque, and she didn’t insist.

She put the envelope back in her bag and left. Outside, it was raining hard.

It was raining again that afternoon two years later when Tancredi came to the office with the news. He arrived about seven. The days were getting longer, and it was still light outside. Light and rain.

He had a strange expression on his face.

“I have something to tell you.”

“What’s happened?” I pushed my chair back and stretched my legs.

“Maybe it’s best we go out and walk a bit.”

“Walk? It’s raining.”

“Let’s go and have an aperitif or whatever you like.”

There was a hint of impatience in his tone. Something that meant: Don’t ask pointless questions.

“All right.”

I grabbed my jacket and an umbrella and we walked down into the street. A few minutes later we slipped into the Laterza bookshop.278

“Why all this mystery? Are you afraid our phones are being tapped?”

I said it as a joke, then realized I’d hit the nail on the head. He’d wanted to come outside in order not to run the risk, even if it was a remote one, that our conversation might be listened in on.

He shrugged. “Don’t be alarmed. I don’t think – I don’t have any reason to think – that you have bugs in your office. But you never know.”

“You’re making me nervous, Carmelo.”

“The Flying Squad is mounting a big operation tonight. I didn’t get this information legally. I shouldn’t know about it. And you definitely shouldn’t.”

“Why should we be so interested in this information?”

“Because basically they’re arresting the whole Amendolagine clan.”

It took me a few seconds to remember and to put things together. “Amendolagine… That Amendolagine?”

“That one.”

I felt a shudder go through me, the kind you get when you have a high fever and you can’t think any more, you can’t read, you may even rant and rave a little. It happened to me sometimes as a child.