We went in. It was a small but attractive apartment. She quickly showed me around. You went straight into a living room filled with shelves, lots of books and a table with a Lettera 32 typewriter in the middle; on either side of the typewriter, two reams of extra-strong paper: blank pages on one side, on the other, pages already written on and placed face down.

In the only other room, a bed with a brightly coloured Peruvian blanket.

The apartment was tidy, but not obsessively so, there was a nice smell in the air, and yet – I know I run the risk of applying to the memory a judgement I only formed later – there was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, something that produced a kind of dissonance. As if the place wasn’t 102really inhabited. Used, but not inhabited. I don’t know what it was, I’m not capable of saying what produced that feeling in me, nor can I say for sure that I actually had it at that moment. The fact remains that my memory of the episode is associated with a subtle but tangible unease. Almost a sense of latent danger.

“Do you mind if we don’t waste time playing at being polite and have the beer and a cigarette later?”

“I’ve never been polite,” was all I managed to say.

Later, she asked me if I wanted a lift home.

“Thank you, I’ll walk, I don’t live far.”

“Then I’m going to sleep,” she said, turning over in bed. “It’s been a rough day, and I’m very tired.”

She might already have been asleep by the time I closed the door behind me.

103

10

I went back to the prison, this time with Annapaola.

When they brought Cardace into the lawyers’ room she was leaning against the window. She didn’t move, either to say hello or to introduce herself. Cardace looked around, nodded at me and came and sat down opposite me. Only at that point did Annapaola take her place at the table, next to Cardace.

“Are you a lawyer too?” he asked, hesitantly. He wasn’t sure who he was talking to.

“Do I look like a lawyer?” Annapaola replied before I could intervene.

“No.”

“Actually I’m not a lawyer.” It was an apparently neutral phrase, but it had been uttered in an obvious tone of menace. Cardace looked at me, ever more perplexed.

“Signorina Doria is a private investigator. She’s going to help us find some new evidence we can present at the appeal hearing.”

“Actually, our idea is that you help us find something to help you.”

“What can I tell you? I —” Iacopo said. He was about to continue, but Annapaola interrupted him.