“That’s right,” I said, “but we have to avoid this looking like an attack on the police. Apart from obvious cases of abuse, which we don’t have here, judges don’t like that. And some jurors even less. We have to treat the matter as objectively as we can.”

“Of course. Anyway, here’s the list of what wasn’t done. Firstly, no footage from security cameras in the area was submitted in evidence – unless, which I doubt, they viewed the footage, thought it was irrelevant and didn’t inform the Prosecutor’s Department. In any event, we’ll have to call the head of the Flying Squad or the head of Homicide and question them about that.”

“Then there’s the matter of the apartment being on the mezzanine,” Tancredi said.

“Right,” Consuelo said. “There’s no mention of that in the documents relating to the investigation, apart from a few words in the transcript of the inspection, when they describe the apartment. It’s obvious they didn’t consider the possibility that the killer might have gained access from the 161inner courtyard. There’s no mention of them checking the windows for signs of a break-in or anything like that. We’ll have to point this out, too. It’s quite a suggestive argument.”

“All right, so which witnesses will we need to call, Carmelo?”

“The man who used to be head of Homicide. He was transferred somewhere else a while ago. He isn’t a particularly pleasant guy and I don’t think he was directly involved in drafting any of the reports. If you ask him why he didn’t do this or that, it’s likely you’ll fluster him and he’ll get on his high horse. So if you want to sow a few doubts, he’s our man.”

“Now listen, all of you: in my last interview with Cardace, something interesting came out. He remembered that, as he was being taken to Headquarters, one of the officers asked him informally if he’d seen Gaglione that afternoon, and he said yes. At this point nobody had yet said anything to him about the murder. It’s unlikely that a guilty person would admit so calmly that he’d been in the victim’s apartment. Maybe we can do something with that. ‘I had nothing to hide, I didn’t even know there’d been a murder.’”

“This doesn’t appear anywhere,” Consuelo said.

“Precisely. It’s something new, and in my opinion it’s quite significant.”

“How are you planning to proceed?” Annapaola asked.

“Cardace will definitely mention it in his testimony – we’ve agreed he’ll appear as a witness. And we’ll also examine the officer concerned. Why would he deny it?”

“You want to ask a police officer to testify about a statement made by the accused?” Consuelo said. “That’s forbidden.”