Reasonable Doubts Read Free Page B

drugs, they tried to get me to cooperate with them. They told me they wanted to do a ... what’s it called?”
    “A controlled delivery?”
    “That’s it, a controlled delivery. They told me they’d let me drive the car away with the drugs still in it. I would deliver the drugs as if nothing had happened. They would follow me and when the moment was right they would arrest the people who were waiting for the consignment. They told me I would get a greatly reduced sentence, maybe as little as three years. I told them I had no idea where to take the drugs because they weren’t mine. So then they said they were arresting me and they were also arresting my wife because it was obvious we were in cahoots. I started to panic and I told them, yes, the drugs were mine, but she didn’t know anything. They phoned the prosecutor and he told them to take my statement and arrest me, but only me. So they took down my confession, arrested me and let my wife go.”
    He was speaking calmly, but with an undercurrent of desperation.
    He asked me for a cigarette and I told him I didn’t have any because I’d quit a couple of years ago. He hadn’t smoked
for ten years either, he said. He’d started again the day after he went into prison.
    Who had he appointed as his defence counsel when he was arrested? And why had he decided to change now? From the way he looked at me before replying, it was clear he’d been expecting the question.
    “When they arrested me, they asked me who my lawyer was, so that they could inform him. I didn’t have a lawyer and I told them I didn’t know who to appoint. My wife was still there-a friend had come to collect our daughter - and I told her to get advice from someone about finding a good lawyer. The next day she appointed someone.”
    “And who did she appoint?”
    This was where the really strange part of the affair started, if Paolicelli was telling the truth.
    “My wife was just leaving home when she was approached by a man who said he was acting on behalf of some friends who wanted to help us. He told her to appoint a lawyer from Rome named Corrado Macrì, who would sort things out for me. He gave her a piece of paper with this lawyer’s name and a mobile number and told her to appoint him straight away, so that he could visit me in prison before I was interrogated by the examining magistrate.”
    “And what did your wife do?”
    Paolicelli’s wife, who was at her wits’ end and didn’t know any lawyers, appointed this Macrì. A few hours later, he arrived from Rome, as if he’d been waiting to be appointed by her and didn’t have any other work at the moment. He visited Paolicelli in prison and told him not to worry, he’d sort it all out. When Paolicelli asked him who had engaged him and who the man was who had approached his wife, he again told him not to worry; as long as he heeded his,
Macrì’s, advice, everything would be fine. His first piece of advice was to exercise his right to remain silent at that first interview with the examining magistrate or he might make the situation worse.
    I wondered by what stretch of the imagination the situation could have been made worse , but I didn’t say that to Paolicelli.
    They appealed the arrest, but the custody order was confirmed.
    I didn’t see how there could have been any other decision. But I didn’t say that either.
    Macrì then appealed against the decision on the grounds that there had been a procedural irregularity - he didn’t specify what it was - which gave him high hopes that he could have the proceedings declared invalid.
    His high hopes turned out to be unfounded because the custody order was confirmed again. But that didn’t dent Macrì’s optimism. He told Paolicelli and his wife not to worry, to be patient, and he would sort everything out. According to Paolicelli, he said this in a knowing tone, like someone who has the right cards up his sleeve and will play them when the time is right.
    When they got to the