Annapaola is a private investigator who used to be a crime reporter, and even before that all kinds of other things, not all of them as clear as day. It’s thanks to her that I overcame my entrenched scepticism towards her profession. Until I entrusted her with an investigation and saw the results, I was convinced that private investigators were basically good at three things: finding evidence of marital infidelity, in all its varied and often imaginative forms (they’re almost all good at that); getting defence lawyers in trouble, so that they end up on trial for aiding and abetting; and earning large sums of money without producing any results other than verbose and pointless reports.

Annapaola also deals with investigations into marital infidelity – she has to make a living – but whenever she gets to investigate more serious (sometimes very serious) matters, she’s capable of making the most unexpected discoveries, of getting the most unlikely people to talk. Whether she’s working for the accused or – which, like Consuelo, she prefers – for the victim.

Incidentally, she’s also my girlfriend. More or less. The jury’s still out on the definition. A few months earlier we happened to talk about it one evening at my place, after dinner.

“But do you tell other people I’m your girlfriend, Guerrieri?”29

“I thought you’d forbidden me. So: no.”

“Oh yes. You’re right. Good. I like it when you obey me.” She paused then continued: “But it also bothers me a bit.”

“What does?”

“I thought that if you’d replied yes I’d have been upset. Now that you tell me no I’m more upset. Am I consistent?”

“You’re consistency personified. That’s why you’re my girlfriend but also my non-girlfriend. Scott Fitzgerald said the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time is the test of a first-rate intelligence.”

“Have I ever told you your quotations are a bit tiresome?”

“I think you have.”

“Anyway, getting back to the whole girlfriend thing. I’d like you to say it and not say it. It’s not so complicated. You’re a lawyer, it’s your job to say one thing and mean the opposite. Find a way.”

“This conversation reminds me of the joke about the Jewish mother who gives her son two ties for his birthday.”

“I know I won’t be able to stop you telling me it.”

“No, you won’t. So, there’s this Jewish mother who gives her son two ties. The next day he puts one of them on and goes to see her. She looks at him sadly. ‘I knew it – you don’t like the other one.’”