In any case, Lorenza continued, ever since he was in high school he’d never stopped getting in trouble. Petty incidents with drugs, fights, stealing from supermarkets, 16two exam failures, beating up the new boyfriend of a girl who’d dumped him. One way or another, she’d managed to help him graduate from school, and he’d even enrolled at university – law, just to be original – but hadn’t done any exams. Instead, he’d been involved in a robbery for which he had been arrested. At that point he didn’t have an actual criminal record and had got away with a suspended sentence. But he hadn’t learned his lesson: Lorenza was sure he sold drugs in discos, and for a long time she’d wondered how to keep him away from bad company.

All this was the introduction. She hadn’t yet got on to the reason she was now sitting in front of me, in my office.

Less than three years previously, Iacopo had been arrested and charged with having killed a guy, in all likelihood his usual narcotics supplier.

There had been a trial in the high court and, in May of the previous year, he had been sentenced to twenty-four years’ imprisonment, plus costs. This, in very broad terms, was the gist of the case.

“Before going into details,” I said, “I have to ask you a question. If Iacopo has already been tried, that means he had a lawyer. We have ethical obligations towards our colleagues and —”

“He died.” I thought I caught a hint of impatience in her voice. “He died a few weeks ago. So I don’t think there are any ethical problems.”

“Who was he?”

He was – had been – Michele Costamagna, an excellent professional, until disease had eaten his brain. Apart from being competent, he had always been able, at least in the days when he’d been at the top of his game, to pull the right strings whenever possible. In the last few years, even before 17the disease, he’d lost some of his appeal because many of his friends – judges, prosecutors, high-ranking officials, senior civil servants – had started to retire and the new ones, especially the judges, were less malleable and not so likely to be members of the city’s exclusive clubs. But in the years when I was a young lawyer, Costamagna was one of the people you had to go to if a case was particularly serious. In most cases, he could patch things up. I’d never heard about anything definitely illegal, but all in all, Costamagna was like The Wolf in Pulp Fiction: he solved problems. And that was why he’d always made sure he was well paid. Beyond the limits of greed, according to some.