“Customs and Excise, Pupuccio, Customs and Excise. They’re all over us lawyers at this time of year. We have to be careful. They hang around outside our offices, and when they see a client coming out, they check if he has an invoice. If he doesn’t, they come into the office and start an audit. And I end up out of a job. I prefer not to run the risk.”

Pupuccio seemed relieved. I was a bit of a coward, but I was only paying taxes to avoid worse problems. He wouldn’t have done the same, but he could understand it.

He gave me a kind of military salute, lifting his hand to an imaginary visor. Bye, Avvocato. Bye, Pupuccio.

Then he turned and went out.

When at least a minute had passed and I was sure he was out of the office, I said out loud, “I’m an idiot. OK, so I’m an idiot. Is there any law against it? No, so I’ll be as much of an idiot as I like.”

Then I laid my head against the back of my chair and stayed like that, looking up at some vague point on the ceiling.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that. Then the phone rang.

5

Maria Teresa answered as usual, after the third ring.

After a few moments I heard the buzz of the intercom.

“Who is it?”

“Inspector Tancredi, of the Flying Squad.”

“Put him on.”

Tancredi was almost a friend. Although we’d never spent any time together outside work, I felt – and I think he felt too – that we had something in common. He was the kind of policeman you’d like to meet if you were the victim of a crime, the kind you’d avoid like the plague if you were the one who had committed the crime. Especially certain kinds of crime. Tancredi dealt with perverts, rapists, paedophiles, that kind of criminal. None of them had been very happy to have Tancredi on their case.