It was Saturday, 1 July. The Palace of Justice was deserted and the atmosphere slightly surreal.

The door to the Assize Court chancellery was closed. I opened it and found no one inside, but at least the air-conditioning was working. I therefore entered, closed the door behind me and waited for someone to come back and let me see those records.

After a quarter of an hour a clerk arrived at last, a little titch of about sixty whom I didn’t know. He gave me a vague look and asked if I needed anything. I did need something and told him what. He appeared to reflect upon the matter for a while before nodding thoughtfully.

The search for the documents was a laborious business and pretty exasperating, but one way or another the little man finally managed to unearth them.

From the mobile-phone records it emerged that Abdou had certainly told the truth about his trip to Naples. The first call was at 9.18. It was an outgoing call from Abdou’s mobile to a number in Naples, and had lasted two minutes fourteen seconds. At the time of the call Abdou was already in Naples or the immediate vicinity. There followed four other calls – to Naples numbers and to mobiles – always from within the Naples area. The last was at 12.46. Then nothing happened for more than four hours. At 16.52 Abdou received a call from a mobile. At that time the area was Bari city. The call after that was at 21.10. It was an outgoing call from Abdou’s mobile, still from Bari. Then nothing more.

I sat there thinking over the result of that inquiry. Certainly it was not decisive and it failed to sew up the trial. There was a gap of more than four hours, and smack in the middle of those four hours the child had disappeared. What emerged from the phone records did not exclude the possibility that Abdou, returning from Naples, had gone on to Monopoli, reached Capitolo, kidnapped the boy and done God knows what else.

I got up to leave and noticed that the little man had sat himself down on the other side of the chancellery, with his chin on his hands, his elbows on the desk and his gaze lost in space.

I wished him good day. He turned his head, looked at me as if I had said something extraordinary, then turned away again and gave a vague nod. Impossible to say if he had replied to my greeting or had still been elsewhere, talking to some ghost.

The air outside was scorching. It was midday on Saturday, 1 July and I was bound for the office to shut myself in and prepare my speech for the defence.

I was in for a long weekend of it.