He didn’t raise any further objections. They came back and sat down again and Iacopo told us who the gun belonged to – a petty criminal like him, one Giovanni Cipriani – where they had gone shooting and what things they had done together, he and Cipriani. Armed robberies. Mostly of pharmacies and supermarkets.

God knows if Lorenza had imagined any of this, I wondered.

“When you and Cipriani went shooting at the quarry, did you leave the cartridges there?” I asked him.107

“No. We collected them so there was no trace left and also because he took them to someone who has the equipment to recharge and reuse them.”

“Was Cipriani ever arrested?”

“No. I don’t think so. Not while I was still free. I don’t know if since then … but no, I would have known. They would have brought him here.”

“Were you ever stopped together?”

“How do you mean?”

“Did the police or the carabinieri ever stop the two of you when you were together? Even just to check your papers when you were in the car?”

He shook his head. “No. But what difference would that make?”

“If there was a police report in which you appeared together we could get hold of it and use it to pull in Cipriani without you being the one to tell us his name. Well, it was an idea. Were there others involved in the things you did together? The robberies, I mean.”

“No.”

“Or anybody who went shooting with you?”

“We always went alone.”

“When did you last see Cipriani?”

“When we went shooting, a few days before Gaglione was murdered.”

“What does Cipriani do for a living, apart from the robberies of course?”

“He’s enrolled at the university, although he hasn’t done any exams for ages.”

A pleasant couple, I thought. Your parents’ pride and joy.

“You haven’t forgotten anything that might be useful to us?” Annapaola asked.108

“No. I don’t think so…” He hesitated a few seconds, then added: “Maybe one thing. I don’t know if it’s important, but when I had coffee with Sabino I gave him a couple of the pills I’d been given by Gaglione.”

“Did you tell this to the other lawyer?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Apart from the fact that it only just occurred to me, he kept saying that I had to keep quiet, talk as little as possible. That the more defendants say, the worse they make things for themselves.”

“All right,” Annapaola said, putting her cigarette end in a piece of paper which she then carefully screwed up and threw in the waste basket.

“What are you going to do now?” Iacopo asked, again looking at me.