Free Involuntary Witness by Gianrico Carofiglio Page B

beginning of a trial that the newspapers had dubbed “Dogfighting”.
    To be exact, it was not the papers which called it that, but the police who had carried out the operation some ten months previously. The papers had confined themselves to repeating the code name for investigations into organized dogfights and the related clandestine betting ring.
    It had all started with a denouncement by the Anti-Vivisection League and had continued because the inquiries had been entrusted to a truly exceptional policeman, Chief Inspector Carmelo Tancredi.
    Inspector Tancredi had succeeded in infiltrating the clandestine betting ring, had attended the dogfights, made recordings, managed to find out where the breeders kept their animals, and noted how and where the bets changed hands. In short, he had nailed them.
    He was a small man with a gaunt face and a large black moustache that looked completely out of place on it. He seemed the most innocuous person on earth.
    He was, in fact, the most intelligent, honest and deadly cop I have ever met.

    He worked in the sixth section of the flying squad. The one that dealt with sexual offences and everything that the other sections – the more important ones – wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.
    He had always refused to leave that job, even though they had often tried to induce him to transfer to the Criminalpol, the anti-drug section or even the Secret Service. All jobs in which he would have worked less for more pay.
    On one occasion I’d had a visit from the parents of a nine-year-old child who had been sexually abused by his swimming instructor.
    They wanted advice on whether or not to report the incident, on what they would be up against if they did, and especially what the child would be up against. I took them to Tancredi and saw how he spoke to the child, and saw how the child – who until then had answered in monosyllables, never raising his eyes – spoke in turn to Tancredi, looked him in the face and even began to smile.
    The swimming instructor ended up behind bars and, what’s more, stayed there. Just as ending up behind bars and staying there was the fate of most of the maniacs, rapists and child abusers who had had the bad luck to cross the path of Inspector Tancredi.
    The organizers of the dogfights were similarly unlucky.
    The first strike of the operation led to the seizure of eight pit-bull terriers, five Fila Brasileros, three Rottweilers and three bandogs, these last being a deadly cross between Alsatian and pit bull. They were all champions, each worth between twenty and a hundred million. The most priceless was a three-year-old bandog called Harley-Davidson. He had won twenty-seven fights, invariably killing his opponent. He was
considered a sort of champion of southern Italy, and the inquiries established that there were preparations in hand for a contest for the All-Italy title against a pit bull which fought in the Province of Milan. A contest worth over half a billion lire in bets.
    Dozens of videos of dogfights, not to mention fights between dogs and pumas, and even dogs and pigs, were confiscated as well. The owners of a kennels, where not only the animals but also arms and drugs were found, were arrested. Among those charged were a very well-known vet, a number of breeders and three people who had previously been arrested and found guilty on charges of association with the Mafia and trafficking in drugs. Needless to say, they had all been released, because the length of time for which they could be held had run out.
    Anyway, that late March morning the trial resulting from Operation Dogfighting was scheduled to begin. The Anti-Vivisection League planned to start civil proceedings and had appointed me to represent them.
    There were only two precedents of trials concerning cruelty to animals in which the Anti-Vivisection League and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dogs had been admitted as civil parties. The matter was anything but a walkover, so