I didn’t know what to do. I was already drunk and thought seriously that I should continue drinking. The party ended and somebody scooped me up from the sofa and took me home. Maybe Verio and Antonello, but I couldn’t swear to it.

I spent a disturbed night, about which I’d rather not go into details. The following morning, I couldn’t stand on my feet. I called the office and said I was ill and would have to stay home that day.

83

8

Judge Marinelli was not known as a great jurist, let alone a tireless worker.

He smoked a pipe. That was one of the few things that could be said about him with any certainty. He always had one in his hand as he wandered the corridors of the courthouse, and there was a rack full of them in his office, as if to avoid the risk of not being able to choose a different pipe for every smoke.

Pipe smoking and its rituals have never attracted me, but I must admit there was a pleasant smell of tobacco in the room. You just needed to be careful not to get too close to Marinelli, to avoid his breath.

When I put my head round his door he was sitting at his desk. Obviously with a pipe in his hand. He told me to come in. The way he acted, the way he spoke, the way he conducted hearings displayed all the superciliousness of someone who’s convinced he is the legitimate holder of an absolute power but likes to show a magnanimous, almost sympathetic face. In all that he said, did and wrote – including his rulings – there was a hint of condescension. And so it was in a condescending tone that he motioned me to sit down in one of the two fake leather armchairs facing him.

As a start, I pretended to be interested in his pipes.

“There are always more of them,” I said, just to say something.84

“Have you seen the new one?” he said enthusiastically, as if talking about a newly born grandchild. He pointed to one in the middle of the rack. To me there was nothing remarkable about it, but he told me he’d gone all the way to London to buy it from a specialist shop. I smiled without making any comment. I didn’t want to run the risk of letting him see what I really thought of someone who could make a journey from Bari to London just to purchase a pipe.

“So, Avvocato Guerrieri, tell me, what’s the reason for your visit?”

“Before anything else, thank you for finding the time to see me.”

He made a gesture of magnanimous, regal casualness.

“I’m here to talk about the Cardace appeal. The Gaglione murder. The hearing is in ten days’ time, and there’s a problem.”

“What is it?”