Carofiglio A Fine Line

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-912242-74-0
Verlag: Bitter Lemon Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

Reihe: Guido Guerrieri

“A FINE LINE is a terrific novel, a legal thriller that is also full of complex meditations on the life of the lawyer and the difficult compromises inherent in any system of criminal justice. A book that is intensely rewarding at many levels.' Scott Turow The fifth in the best-selling Guido Guerrieri series. When Judge Larocca is accused of corruption, Guerrieri goes against his better instincts and takes the case. Helped by Annapaola Doria, a motorbike-riding bisexual private detective who keeps a baseball bat on hand for sticky situations, he investigates the alleged links to the mafia. Of course Guerrieri cannot stop himself from falling for Annapaola's exotic charms. The novel is a suspenseful legal thriller but it is also much more. It is the story of a judge who, to quote Dostoevsky, 'lies to himself and listens to his own lies, so gets to the point where he can no longer distinguish the truth, either in himself or around himself.'

Gianrico Carofiglio is now a full time novelist. He was previously a member of the Senate in Italy and before that, an anti-Mafia prosecutor in Bari, a port on the coast of Puglia. He has been involved with trials concerning corruption, organized crime and the traffic in human beings. He is a best-selling author of crime novels, literary fiction.This is the fifth Guerrieri novel is in this best-selling series. Howard Curtis lives in Norwich and is a prize winning translator from Italian and French. He has translated two other Guerrieri novels for Bitter Lemon Press as well as fiction by Flaubert, Luis Sepúlveda, Giorgio Faletti, Puerto Grossi and Georges Simenon.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Carofiglio, Gianrico

Weitere Mitwirkende

Curtis, Howard

Leseproben

1

It was around the tenth of April. The air was cool and clean. A fragrant breeze, rare for this city, was blowing, and the sun spattered liquid light over us and the grey façade of the courthouse. Carmelo Tancredi and I were standing near the entrance, chatting.

“Sometimes I think about quitting,” I said, leaning against the wall. The plaster was flaking, and a spider’s web of small cracks spread worryingly upwards.

“Quitting what?” Tancredi asked, taking his cigar from his mouth.

“The law.”

“Are you kidding?”

I shrugged. At that moment, two judges passed. They didn’t notice me, and I was pleased I didn’t have to greet them.

“Do you know them?” I said, nodding towards the glass door behind which the judges had just disappeared.

“Ciccolella and Longo? I know who they are, but I wouldn’t say I know them. I once had to testify in court before Ciccolella, but it was all over pretty quickly.”

“A few days ago, I was in a lift with Ciccolella. There were also two trainees and that female lawyer who always dresses as if she’s on her way to a Chinese New Year party.”

Tancredi laughed. He knew immediately who I was talking about. “Nardulli.”

“That’s right, Nardulli. She’s weird but she’s a good person, I find her almost endearing. She defends all kinds of hopeless cases for free.”

“True. Whenever we need a public defender and can’t find anyone, she always shows willing, even when there’s no money in it for her. So what happened?”

“The lift reaches the ground floor and I step aside to let her pass – she was the only woman there. She’s just about to get out, tottering on those ridiculous heels, when Ciccolella barges past her, almost knocking her down, then looks at her for a few seconds and cries Avvocato! in an angry tone, as if to say: you should have moved aside, you shouldn’t even have tried to go before me. I’m a judge, in case you didn’t know. Then he turns and walks off without saying goodbye to anyone.”

“Nice man.”

“He did it on purpose, barging into her like that. I felt really bad. I should have intervened, told him that was no way to behave, that he’d been rude. But of course I didn’t. Just brooded over it later. In the office, they saw me talking to myself at least three times that day. That’s happening increasingly often.”

“Your clients know you’re crazy anyway. What came out of these broodings of yours? Is ‘broodings’ even a word?”

“I don’t think so.”

A police car drew up, and two suspicious-looking guys got out, greeted Tancredi, who replied with a nod, and went inside.

“I was thinking how different it was before,” I resumed, “how there wasn’t that rudeness, that level of vulgarity when I started, more than twenty years ago. I seemed to remember that relations in the profession were less brutal, less… yes, vulgar’s the word. Then I stopped and pinched myself. I told myself I was going soft, doing what I’d always found pathetic in other people.”

“Feeling nostalgic?”

“That’s right. Feeling nostalgia for the past as if it were a golden age. Missing your own youth even though when you were in the middle of it you thought everything was terrible. You know the opening of that novel by Paul Nizan: ‘I was twenty. I won’t allow anyone to say that these are the best years of our lives.’”

“I know the quotation, but I haven’t read the book. What did you say the author’s name was?”

“Paul Nizan, a French writer.”

I shifted a little, sliding along the wall so as to get the sun on my face. I looked for the most comfortable position I could find to support myself and half-closed my eyes.

“Sometimes I think about when I used to imagine what would happen to me in the future. Travel, graduation, marriage, my first hearing at the Supreme Court, a whole lot of things. Those moments when I imagined the future seem very close to me. Whereas the things I imagined that really happened appear very far away. My future is sunk in the past.”

“I’ve heard clearer explanations.”

“But you understand, don’t you?”

“Only because of my superior intelligence.” He also moved his face into the sun and took a couple of puffs on his cigar.

“How would you describe the smell of a cigar?” I asked him.

“Don’t tell me it bothers you. I’m constantly reducing my circle of friends through incompatibility: my incompatibility with their intolerance towards cigars.”

“It doesn’t bother me. Not too much, anyway.” Tancredi lifted his hand to his face and passed it the wrong way over the short beard he’d had for a few months now. “Experts say that the smell – or as they put it, the aroma – of a cigar is a mixture of wet leather, pepper, an old brandy keg and seasoned wood. I’ve heard this so many times, I’ve ended up convinced I’m also aware of these smells. Apart from the old brandy keg, of course. I’ve never seen one or smelt one.”

“Pepper, seasoned wood, brandy keg, leather…”

“Wet leather.”

“Wet leather… That kind of thing. Like the descriptions you get from wine waiters. I always feel like an idiot when I’m having dinner and someone says things like: a fruity feel, a hint of chocolate and liquorice, tannins. I drink wine, but I can’t taste these things.”

“Haven’t you ever smoked cigars?”

“Never. You may remember I smoked cigarettes for many years. Then nothing. Never cigars, never a pipe, thank God.”

It felt good leaning against that wall, with that sense you’re cleansing your soul that only certain spring days are capable of reawakening. How good it would be, I thought, to go somewhere in the country, lay a blanket on the grass, read, eat sandwiches, close my eyes and listen to the murmurs of nature.

“Do you want to hear a story?”

He made a gesture with his hand as if to say: sure, go ahead.

“A month ago I had some tests done. Routine stuff, my doctor says it’s fine to do them every two or three years. A few days after taking the samples the doctor called me – I’d just finished a hearing and was on my way out of here – and told me he had to talk to me. There was something too neutral in his tone. I didn’t like it at all. I asked him if anything was wrong and he replied that it’d be better if I came to see him. So I went to his clinic, not in a very calm state of mind.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He’s a friend, he was very ill at ease. He told me some of the results were slightly skewed, but that there are often false alarms in this kind of check-up, so we ought to repeat the tests immediately before starting to get worried. But if the results were confirmed, I’d need an appointment with a haematologist. I asked him if he could please be a bit more specific, and as I said that I realized I’d put my hands on his desk because they’d started to shake badly.”

“And what did he say?” Tancredi asked in a thin voice.

“He beat about the bush a bit more, then told me it might be a form of leukaemia. There are many different kinds, he said, and many can be cured nowadays. But it was pointless to say anything until we’d repeated the tests.”

Tancredi didn’t move a muscle, seemed almost to have stopped breathing.

“We redid the samples. He assured me he would talk to the lab to make sure the results came back within a day. He called me next morning, about eight. He couldn’t find the right words, all he could think of was: Congratulations. ‘I told you there are often false alarms. Actually not so often, I exaggerated a bit, but it does happen. Fortunately, it’s what happened this time. Go out tonight and raise a toast to your second birthday.’ He also said a few more things, but by now his voice had become distant and I didn’t hear them properly. In any case I don’t remember. It was one of the most unreal situations I’ve ever been in.”

I heard the sound of the breath being expelled by Tancredi. “So everything’s OK?”

“Yes.”

“Fucking hell. For a day you thought you had leukaemia?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I thought about it, but I was ashamed.”

“Ashamed? To call a friend? You need a psychiatrist, not a haematologist. What does that mean?”

“I felt inferior. Suddenly I’d ended up on the side where the sick people are, while the healthy people, those who carry on with their normal lives, who eat, drink, work, travel, make love, make plans, were on the other side, the one I’d just been excluded from. I felt inferior and I was ashamed. I know it may seem strange, but that’s the way it was.”

Tancredi took a deep breath and screwed up his eyes. He made...