i realised that i should have to try to outsmart him and i devised my own investigation system. the first thing was to make sure i always stayed at the same hotel for a race, and to have the room next to his so i could mount a surveillance. i would watch him leave with his mates, then i would tiptoe into the room which ten seconds earlier had been his headquarters. i would rush to the waste bin and the bedside table, go through the bottles, flasks, phials, tubes, cartons, boxes, suppositories – i swept up everything. i had become so expert in interpreting all these pharmaceuticals that i could predict how fausto would behave during the course of the stage. i would work out, according to the traces of the product i found, how and when he would attack me.