Reasonable Doubts Read Free Page A

the customs police were doing random checks on cars. They had dogs with them to sniff out drugs. When they got to my car the dogs seemed to go crazy. The customs police took me to their barracks and dismantled the car, and under the bodyshell they found forty kilos of high-quality cocaine.”
    Forty kilos of high-quality cocaine was certainly enough to justify the sentence he’d received, even with the fast-track procedure. But I didn’t believe that the customs police had been doing random checks. Someone had tipped them off that a courier was bringing in a consignment, and they’d acted by the book in making it look as if the check was random. In order not to blow their informant’s cover.
    “The drugs weren’t mine.” Paolicelli’s words broke into my thoughts.
    “What do you mean, they weren’t yours? Was there someone else in the car with you?”
    “My wife and daughter were with me. We were on our way back from a week’s holiday by the sea. And the drugs weren’t mine. I don’t know who put them there.”
    So that’s it, I thought. He’s ashamed that he was carrying the drugs in the same car where his wife and daughter were travelling. Typical of you Fascists: you’re not even capable of being criminals with any dignity.
    “I’m sorry, Paolicelli, but how could someone have planted those drugs without you knowing? I mean, we’re talking about forty kilos, quite a lot to pack under the bodyshell of a car. I’m no expert on these things, but that must have taken time. Did you lend the car to anyone in Montenegro?”
    “No, but for the whole of the holiday it was in the hotel car park. And the hotel porter had the keys; I had to leave them
with him because the car park was full and sometimes a car had to be moved to make room. Someone, with the porter’s knowledge, must have planted the drugs during the night, probably the night before we left. I assume they planned to retrieve them once we’d got through customs. Perhaps they had accomplices in Italy who’d do that for them. I know it sounds absurd, but the drugs weren’t mine. I swear they weren’t mine.”
    He was right. It did sound absurd.
    You hear a lot of absurd stories like that in courtrooms, barracks, prisons. The commonest one is the one invariably told by people who’ve been found in possession of guns in full working order, with the hammer cocked. They all say they only just found the gun by chance, usually under a bush, or under a tree, or in a dustbin. They all say they’ve never handled a gun in their lives and that they were just on their way to hand it in to the police. That’s why they were carrying it in their belt with the hammer cocked, somewhere near a jeweller’s shop, for example, or the house of a gangland rival.
    I felt like telling him that I didn’t give a damn that he’d brought forty kilos of cocaine from Montenegro to Italy, and that I didn’t give a damn if he had done it before, or how many times. So he might as well tell me the truth. It would make things a whole lot simpler. I was a criminal lawyer and it was my job to defend people like him. What would happen if I suddenly took it into my head to pass judgement on my clients? I felt like telling him these things, but I didn’t. I suddenly realized what was happening in my head, and I didn’t like it.
    I realized that I wanted him to confess. I wanted to be absolutely certain that he was guilty, so that I could help
him to get the long gaol sentence he deserved, without any problems of conscience or professional ethics.
    I realized that I wanted to be his judge - and maybe also his executioner - rather than his lawyer. I had an old score to settle.
    And that wasn’t right. I told myself I ought to think about it, because if I didn’t think I could control that urge, then I ought to give up on the idea of defending him. Or rather, I shouldn’t agree to it in the first place.
    “What happened after you were arrested?”
    “After they found the