“I don’t know. We have to think about what you’ve told us. Of course, we won’t make any use of it without first agreeing it with you.” I became aware that my tone was a lot friendlier now. “In any case, what’s for sure is that at the appeal hearing you’ll have to go on the stand and be examined, not just make statements. In other words, I’ll question you and then the prosecution will cross-examine you. We’ll have to prepare for that. We’ll decide together what to say and what not to say.”

Ten minutes later we were outside the prison.

“Will you ride in front?” Annapaola said, almost chirpily, when we got to the motorbike.

“The next time you decide to beat up one of my clients,” I replied, “I’d appreciate it if you let me know in advance.”109

“Come on, don’t be so serious. We played good cop, bad cop. Nobody got hurt and now we know more than we did. You should be pleased.”

“It’d be interesting to hear Cardace’s opinion of the statement ‘nobody got hurt’. In any case, you played both the good cop and the bad cop. You kindly allowed me to watch your little number. By the way: thank you.”

“It was just a slap, it saved us a lot of time.”

I looked for something biting to say in reply, but couldn’t think of anything.

“What do we do now, boss?” she said, with the most fake air of submissiveness I’d ever seen in my life.

“I thought you’d taken command of operations. I assume you’d also like to decide on the defence strategy. Maybe you can go to court instead of me and, if the need arises, give the assistant prosecutor a slap, too. Or maybe the judge.”

“Yes, that’d be fun, wouldn’t it?”

“Anyway, I don’t know what we’re doing. Let’s see if we can track down this Cipriani, though, frankly, I don’t see how we’d be able to persuade him to come to court and testify. He’d have to accuse himself at the very least of the unauthorized possession and carrying of a gun with its serial number rubbed away. Even supposing – which is completely unrealistic – that he agrees to talk to us, owns up to what he did and comes to tell all in court, after he’d said just a couple of words the court would have to cut the testimony short, according to article 63 of the code.”

“Sorry, boss, remind me of article 63.”

“If before a legal authority a person other than the accused or a suspect makes statements which indicate criminality on his part, the aforesaid authority interrupts the examination, informs him that as a result of such statements he himself 110may be investigated and encourages him to appoint a defence counsel.”

“Oh, that rule.”

“Yes, that rule.”