The Advocate

The incident occurred in N-oro, Sardinia, about a hundred years ago. A prosperous farmer was shot dead in his olive grove, and his hired hand, a young man called Zenobi, was found guilty In absentia - he had gone to ground already after being accused of theft and was now a bandit with a price on his head. An open-and-shut case. Only the lawyer was willing to see whether the evidence for either charge stood up against the facts. Neither the courts nor the police wanted to reopen the case; the boy had effectively admitted his guilt by absconding. The lawyer's only recourse was to set up a trap of his own-