A couple of years earlier he had fallen ill, and his decline, which had already started, had grown rapid and increasingly obvious. He would lose the thread during closing arguments, would get confused in cross-examinations and in general throughout hearings; he would sometimes forget the name of his client or that of the judge. In his final weeks, he hadn’t even managed to get to court. He had died just after Christmas, and it was now the beginning of February.

In short, it could be assumed that, at least in his final year, Costamagna’s client hadn’t received – to put it euphemistically – adequate representation. Of course there was the whole apparatus of his practice, the trainees, his daughter, but a murder trial in the high court was the old man’s exclusive prerogative.

So if Iacopo had been represented in the high court by Avvocato Costamagna – by the shadow of what Avvocato Costamagna had been, for good or ill – he certainly hadn’t had the best possible defence.

All this was easy to assume, and it was basically what Lorenza told me. They had gone to Costamagna due to his old 18reputation and on the advice of a relative. He had asked for a whole lot of money, but the defence had been weak, if not actually non-existent, both during the preliminary investigation and in court. After the sentence, he had assured them that things would go differently at appeal. As they always did, he’d added with a flash of his old arrogance. And he had asked for a further advance payment. Costamagna – or more likely one of the colleagues in his practice – had written a motion of appeal a few pages long. Lorenza was no expert, but it had struck her as really weak.

“Then his condition got worse. A couple of appointments were cancelled, and he was admitted to hospital and died.”

“Has the date for the appeal hearing already been set?”

“The first one’s in two weeks.”

“What?” I was aware of a high pitch in my voice that I hadn’t managed to moderate. “Two weeks?”

“Yes. A few days ago I went to Costamagna’s office. I spoke to one of his colleagues, who struck me as an idiot. He asked me for another advance payment. I told him I’d already paid a lot of money and he said that was for the original trial and the drafting of the appeal motion. Now they needed to prepare for the hearing, to evaluate new evidence and decide on what requests to make. He used technical expressions I couldn’t repeat to you. I didn’t understand, and I think he was using them specifically to make sure I didn’t understand.”

“That’s not uncommon.”