The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia Page B

... a for arson, b for battery, c for corruption ... the lot. Fortunately the dossier vanished ... No, don't look at me like that; I'd no hand in it. Other friends, bigger fry than me, did the three-card trick with that dossier. From this office to that, from that to the other, until it vanished under the very nose of the Public Prosecutor, a terror, I recall. He flew right off the handle, I remember, threats right and left, and those who were under the deepest suspicion were those who had nothing to do with it, poor things. Then the Public Prosecutor was transferred elsewhere and the storm passed. The truth of the matter is this: Attorney-Generals, Public Prosecutors, judges, officers, chiefs of police, corporals of carabinieri, they all pass ... '
    'Corporals! I like that!'
    'There's nothing to laugh at, my good fellow. I hope with all my heart that your face never gets impressed on the memory of a corporal... Anyhow, even corporals pass and we stay ... a jolt or two, an occasional scare, but we're still here.'
    'But Don Mariano ...?'
    'Don Mariano, too, has had his little jolt, his little scare.'
    'But he's still inside. What he must be going through ... '
    'He's not suffering physically at all. If you imagine that they are keeping him tied on top of two drawers or giving him electric shocks, forget it. All that sort of thing's in the past; nowadays even carabinieri have to obey the law ... '
    'The law be damned! Only three months ago ... '
    'Forget it; we're talking about Don Mariano. Nobody would dare lay a finger on him, a man who's respected, enjoys protection, a man who can afford to pay for defence lawyers like De Marsico, Porzio and Delitala, the lot... Certainly he'll have a bit of hardship to put up with. The guardroom isn't exactly a grand hotel: its plank bed is hard, its bucket stinks and he'll miss his coffee. Poor old fellow, he used to drink a strong double every half-hour ... But in a few days they'll let him out, shining with innocence like the Archangel Gabriel. And his life will settle down again and his affairs will go on prospering ...'
    'A moment ago you were being alarmist, making me give up hope; now ...'
    'A moment ago it was heads; now it's tails. I say tails should come up and things go well; but it just might come up heads.'
    'We must see it's tails.'
    'Well, then, listen carefully to my advice. We must pull the first ring out of that wall, we must get Diego freed.'
    'Only if he wasn't the one to commit the disgrace ... '
    'Even if he was, get him out. Let the investigation go ahead - it's in the hands of those two polenta-eaters anyway and no one can stop it. Let it go ahead, let it finish, let it all come before the Examining Magistrate and, meanwhile, prepare for Diego such a cast-iron alibi that anybody who tries to bite it will break his teeth.'
    'How d'you mean?'
    'I mean that on the day Colasberna was killed, and at the very same hour, Diego was a thousand miles from the scene of the crime, and in the company of highly respectable persons without a police record among them, honest men whose word no judge'd have the right to doubt.'
    'But if he's confessed ...?'
    'If he's confessed, he must take back all he's said: declare that either under physical or moral torture -there are moral tortures too - he made statements to the carabinieri which do not correspond to the truth. The proof that these statements are quite untrue, sheer fantasy, is that certain persons of the utmost integrity bear witness to the material impossibility of Diego having committed the crime. Only saints possess the gift of bi-location and I doubt whether any judge would credit Diego with sanctity ... Now just take a look at this newspaper, this little item of news: "In the S. murder cases, one line of inquiry has been neglected by the carabinieri ... "'
    Captain Bellodi was reading about the line of inquiry which the Sicilian paper - usually extremely cautious and not at all addicted to criticisms of the 'forces of law