She stared at me for a few seconds, as if to catch a hidden meaning in my words. Then she said: all right, and went in and took her seat in the courtroom.

“Signor Cardace, you are charged with the murder of Cosimo Gaglione, known as Mino. Did you commit this murder?”

“No. I’m innocent. I’ve committed crimes in my life, but not murder.”

“Was Gaglione your friend?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have interests in common?”

“Yes. Drugs, and also sports.”

“Can you be more specific? Can you tell us first of all how you met?”230

“I was doing mixed martial arts, and so was Gaglione. In fact, he was an instructor, he had his own gym. He saw me in a competition, he said I was good and offered to train me.”

“And you accepted?”

“Yes, and we quickly became friends. We saw each other outside, too.”

“You mentioned drugs. Are you aware that in talking about certain things you could be incriminating yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Then continue.”

“What do you want to know?”

“About the drugs.”

“Well, Gaglione supplied me … that is, he managed to get hold of banned substances that are used to increase muscular mass.”

“Like anabolic steroids for bodybuilders?”

“Not just for bodybuilders. He got hold of them through doctors, I think, and I helped him to sell them in a few gyms.”

“Just that kind of substance?”

“At first. Then we started working with other things, like Ecstasy.”

“Were you partners?”

“Not really. He’d supply me and I’d sell the stuff to people I knew, in discos and clubs around the province.”

“I’d like you to tell us now how you spent the day Gaglione was killed.”

“All right. In the morning I woke up late. The first thing I did was phone Mino … Gaglione, but I couldn’t reach him.”

“Why did you call him?”

“There was a problem and I had to talk to him.”

“Was it a problem with drugs?”

“Not really drugs. A few days before, he’d given me some 231bodybuilding products and I’d sold them to a guy who had a gym. But he’d complained to me, because he’d had the pills analysed and he said they weren’t … I mean, they didn’t look like what he’d been promised. They’d got him into trouble and he asked me for his money back.”

“Did you give him his money?”

“Yes, and he gave me back the pills. I was looking for Mino to talk to him about it, about this problem.”

“You were angry.”

“It’s only natural. He’d supplied me with the stuff and he’d made me look bad.”

“When did you manage to talk to him?”

“In the afternoon.”

“How did the conversation go?”

“I told him what had happened and complained about the fact that I hadn’t been able to reach him that morning.”

“What did he say?”