“Okay. Let’s face one problem at a time. In the meantime, let’s see if we can find out who he is, what’s become of him, etc. Who knows? If we’re lucky, he might even have been arrested for possession of that gun. That would simplify things a bit.”

“Yes, it’d be a real stroke of luck. So it’s bound not to happen. I’ve never had a stroke of luck like that. And anyway, no.”

“No, what?”

“I don’t want to ride in front. The bike makes me nervous in town. And sometimes not just the bike.”

111

11

I had been asked to give a talk to young trainee magistrates. Their official title is “ordinary magistrates in apprenticeship”. When I was young, they were known by a term that’s rather archaic but that I liked: “legal auditors”. Obviously, this nostalgic observation is an unmistakable symptom of galloping senility.

The title of the lecture was “Verification of the facts and function of the defence in criminal proceedings”. The morning they called me from the offices of the appeal court to tell me about it and ask if I was available, I was surprised and even quite flattered: it was some kind of recognition, I thought. Immediately afterwards, though, the thought hit me that they were calling me because, having passed the age of fifty, I was classified as a senior lawyer, and it’s the seniors who usually get assigned such tasks. At this point, I stopped thinking, which is often a good idea.

In my odd moments of free time, though, I had pondered how to transform a vague title into the starting point for a talk of an hour or slightly more about something worthwhile.

I arrived a few minutes early and, outside the lecture hall where the talk was due to take place, I discovered that one of the magistrates in charge of coordinating the traineeships of these young people, and the person who would introduce me, was Cotturri. That is, the assistant prosecutor 112who had supervised the Cardace investigation and handled the prosecution in his original trial. He was a man of about forty – I find it a little disturbing that these days courtroom prosecutors are all younger than me – intelligent-looking, slightly overweight, smartly dressed. We had met a few times in court, but always for minor cases.

Once we’d greeted each other, it was he, to my surprise, who brought up the subject.

“I hear you’ve taken on the Cardace appeal.”

I was about to ask him how he knew, until it struck me as a really stupid question to ask an assistant prosecutor.

“He wasn’t very well defended at his trial,” he went on.

“I’m afraid he wasn’t,” I agreed cautiously. “Costamagna wasn’t well, he didn’t have the clarity and edge he used to have.”