“If you want to understand the dark side that’s in each one of us,” she said, “reread the classic fairy tales. Just under the surface you’ll find things that’ll leave you stunned. The ambiguity of love, for example, which is never pure but always mixed up with anger, resentment, even hate. Think of all the stories in which the mother isn’t there any more and her place is taken by a wicked stepmother on whom the child can vent its anger without fear of destroying the object of its love. Think of the stories about abandoned children. ‘Tom Thumb’, or ‘The Little Match Girl’, which for me is the cruellest. They’re all about poverty, illness, death. They’re 169anything but kids’ stories. Read fairy tales and you’ll find the most powerful key to understanding the nature of the evil and fear enclosed in the human heart.”

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16

The seventh of April was a sharp, bright spring day. I woke early and decided to take a stroll before going to court.

The seafront was metaphysically beautiful. The air was limpid, at once weightless and tangible. The perspective of the cast-iron lampposts suggested an army of spirit guides placed there to defend the city. On a day like this, if I’d had more time and gone a few miles further south, I’d have been able to see, clear in the distance, the outline of the Gargano promontory.

At eight, after having breakfast in a little bar where they make you brioches with the filling of your choice, I returned home, had a cold shower, put on my regulation charcoal-grey suit, went out again and headed for the appeal court.

Consuelo was waiting for me outside the main entrance with my briefcase, the papers we couldn’t do without, and my robe.

We walked into the courtroom at a few minutes to 9.30 and, to my surprise, I saw that the assistant prosecutor was already there. That meant that the judges were ready to come out, didn’t want to waste any time and had asked the Prosecutor’s Department to guarantee punctuality.

“Good morning, Dottoressa,” I said to Gastoni, who was absorbed in reading the case file. She replied to the greeting without any warmth.171

Looking her in the face I thought I noticed something different about her compared with the last time I’d seen her, though I couldn’t remember when that had been.

“Strange, she looks … younger. That is, not exactly younger. Different,” I said under my breath to Consuelo, once we had taken our seats.

“She must have spent a couple of months’ salary to ‘look younger’,” Consuelo whispered. Needless to say, she didn’t particularly like Gastoni.

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes I think you men are stupid. The plastic surgeon must have had a heavy hand. Can’t you see she looks like a carnival mask?”

I didn’t have time to reply. The bell rang and the court entered.