The next postponement, this one for another six months, was explained by ‘Illness’, though whose illness was not explained. This next hearing, on the twentieth of December, appeared to have served only to postpone things a further four months, this explained by ‘Holidays’ in the last column. The new date, in the second half of April, convinced Brunetti that it had been scheduled during the Easter holidays, but Judge Coltellini surprised him by apparently holding a hearing and then setting a new date — seven months ahead — to allow herself to ‘Question new witnesses’.

Brunetti wondered what new witnesses there could be in a case that had been moving — though he immediately chided himself for having so precipitously chosen that verb — through the courts for almost three years. No wonder people dreaded being caught in the wheels of Juggernaut: it was axiomatic that the worst thing that could befall a person, short of serious illness, was to become embroiled in a court case. Indeed.

The judge managed to surprise Brunetti again by having resolved the Orange case in less than a year, though the Pencil and the Red Pen cases were still dragging their slow lengths along, each of them for more than two years.

He searched in his desk for a list of numbers and then dialled Brusca’s telefonino.

‘Yes?’ Brusca inquired in a calm tone, quite as though he were still in Brunetti’s office, that same tone Brunetti had heard him use in history class during their first year of middle school. In all these years, Brunetti had never known his friend to display surprise at human behaviour, no matter how base, though, God knows, working in the offices of the city administration would have exposed him to a bellyful of it.

‘I’ve taken a closer look at those papers,’ Brunetti said. ‘Have you shown them to anyone else?’

‘For what purpose?’ Brusca asked, his tone suddenly as serious as Brunetti’s.

‘If it’s true, then it should be stopped,’ Brunetti said, knowing that the idea of retribution was absurd.