I well remember the day – or rather the afternoon – before it all began.

I’d been in the office for a quarter of an hour and had absolutely no wish to work. I had already checked my e-mails and the post, straightened a few stray papers, made a couple of pointless telephone calls. In short, I had run out of pretexts, so I’d lit a cigarette.

I would just quietly enjoy this cigarette and then start work.

After the cigarette I’d have found some other excuse. Maybe I’d go out, remembering a book I had to get from Feltrinelli’s that, one way or another, I’d too often put off buying.

While I was smoking, the telephone rang. It was the internal line, my secretary ringing from the waiting room.

She had a gentleman there who had no appointment but said it was urgent.

Practically no one ever has an appointment. People go to a criminal lawyer when they have serious, urgent problems, or at least are convinced they do. Which comes to the same thing of course.

In any case, in my office the routine went as follows: my secretary called me, in the presence of the person who urgently needed to see a lawyer. If I was busy – for example, with another client – I made them wait until I was finished.

If I was not busy, as on that afternoon, I made them wait all the same.

I wanted them to know that this office is for working in, and that I receive clients only if the matter is urgent.