CB19 A Question of Belief (2010) Read Online Free PDF Page A

when it entailed getting around a law which he judged to be unjust or a situation he thoughtoutright insane. When traffic lights were deliberately programmed to change more quickly than dictated by law so that the police could divide the extra money paid in fines with the men setting the timing devices, who but a lunatic would think bribing a policeman a crime? When scores of indicted criminals sat in Parliament, who could believe in the rule of law?
    It would be difficult to say that Brunetti was shocked by the purported behaviour of Judge Coltellini, but he was certainly surprised, not least because the judge in question was a woman. Though Brunetti used statistics to support his conviction that women were less criminal than men, his belief was really based on his upbringing and experience of life. What he thought to be the right order of things – should Brusca’s insinuations be true – had been doubly overturned.
    With Brusca’s suggestion in mind, Brunetti spread the papers on his desk and studied them anew. Centring his attention on Judge Coltellini’s name, he saw that it appeared numerous times on each of the four pages, and that her name stood beside six case numbers. He opened his desk and pulled out some coloured highlighting pens. He started at the top of the first page with the green and highlighted her name the first time it appeared in the first case, then used the same colour to go through the entire list, using it to indicate all of the times she held hearings in that case. He did the same with the next case, using pink this time. The third, yellow; the fourth, orange, and then he had to circle the fifth case number with pencil, and the last with red pen.
    The Greens had come before her only three times: the second appearance took place on the date listed in the ‘Result’ column of the first appearance, and the third on the date scheduled in the second: but still the entire process had taken two years. The Pink case respected all of the dates set for each subsequent hearing, though there had been six of them, each separated by at least half a year. Brunetti was curious to knowwhat the case had been about; what had it taken three years to decide?
    The Yellow trail was more suggestive. The first hearing, which had taken place more than two years before, ended with an unexplained six-month postponement, and when that hearing was held, a new date was set, without explanation, more than five months ahead. When the third hearing was held, the ‘Results’ box contained a new date, six months away, and the phrase, ‘Missing documents’. 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