The Fallen Angel

by David Hewson

  ‘Let’s talk about this outside,’ he suggested.

  SEVEN

  It was a brief conversation. The narrow street was empty, with barricades at both ends and pedestrians allowed through only down a narrow route on the far side. Costa looked up at the scaffolding and the broken balcony, understanding the form of the building better than he had before. The place looked different in the bright light of day. More ordinary. More unremarkable.

  They talked briefly about what they’d seen and the options.

  ‘I’ll call Leo and get things started,’ Costa said, reaching for his phone.

  ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. We didn’t agree to that.’

  He bridled.

  ‘May I remind you I’m the senior officer here?’

  Peroni beamed, placed a huge hand round Costa’s shoulders and squeezed.

  ‘By all means. When you’re on duty. But you’re not, are you? Right now you’re nothing more or less than my dear friend, Nic, casting around for something to do. If this is going to turn formal it’s best it’s kicked off by a working police officer, not someone who’s just got nosy all of a sudden. And if it turns out to be a wild goose chase and we find ourselves accused of picking on some unfortunate grieving family . . .’

  ‘I don’t need protecting, thank you,’ Costa protested, though he found himself talking to the big cop’s retreating back.

  There was nothing to do but wait. Wait and look at the building, grey and grim, like some empty shell of a fortress. He couldn’t shake from his head the photo Peroni had found, the bookmark for the chapter Malise Gabriel was reading before he tumbled to his death just a few steps away, to a street now swept and washed clean by the city workers struggling to reopen it to the public.

  Costa wondered what bothered him most. The evidence that was already being lost under the feet of the building inspectors. Or the pale, thin body in the photo.

  Peroni came back, his face devoid of expression.

  ‘Something has to happen,’ Costa said, assuming the worst.

  ‘Tomorrow we’ll talk to the mother and the girl. Teresa will look at the body. We’ll quietly examine what we’ve got to see if a more formal investigation is justified. Leo doesn’t want to rush into anything and I agree with him.’

  ‘And today?’

  ‘Today we’re going to have dinner together.’ Peroni brightened. ‘I get to choose the place.’

  ‘Dinner? We’re going to discuss a potential investigation in a restaurant?’

  ‘No. We’re going to discuss . . . what was the phrase in that book? “Non-overlapping magisteria”. Or rather Malise Gabriel, who’s rather more interesting than I assumed. Sora Margherita in the Piazza delle Cinque Scole at eight o’clock.’ He pointed up the street. ‘It’s just round the corner.’

  ‘I know where Cinque Scole is.’

  ‘Good. It’ll be Leo, me and Teresa, who may still be a little bad-tempered what with this heat and our non-existent air conditioning. I’ve warned you so don’t get snappy with her.’ Peroni glanced at his watch. ‘I’d best be off. Got to check something at the Questura.’

  He peered at Costa then pulled two plastic evidence bags out of his jacket.

  ‘The book and the postcard please.’

  Costa handed them over without protest.

  After a few steps he turned, remembering something.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, walking slowly backwards. ‘Agata’s going to be there this evening too. Best go home and change into something decent. You look as if you slept in that suit. In a garage.’

  PART THREE

  ONE

  He didn’t go home. Costa bought a bottle of mineral water and wandered the ghetto, renewing his memories of an area he’d had little reason to visit professionally over the past few years. Then he walked into the open space of Largo Torre Argentina, a chaotic, semi-excavated pile of temples and imperial-era buildings next to a line of busy bus and tram stops. This was one place he did know well. He recalled the day he’d taken his late wife there and pointed out the columns of Pompey’s Theatre near the tram stops where Julius Caesar was assassinated. Nothing marked the location of this momentous murder. In the modern world the area, which was once as important as the Forum itself, was best known to many for the cat sanctuary that resided between the pillars and shattered headstones through which emperors once walked.

  He was leaning on the railing, staring down into the walled-off area of the refuge when he saw her. Mina Gabriel was there in a T-shirt and jeans, crouching down feeding three strays near the furthest wall, close to the columns associated with Caesar. Two women in their thirties were talking to her, with grave and sympathetic faces. The girl got up, turned, smiled briefly, kissed them both, smiling gently, and said something that looked like ‘grazie’. Then she came back to the entrance, picked up a leather music case and began to walk up the steps to the street level.

  Costa strode quickly over and met her.

  ‘Mina?’

  She looked tired. Her guileless brown eyes were pink and watery, her young, intelligent face drawn. She’d tied back her hair into a simple ponytail so that she now looked much younger than he recalled. With the music case slung over her shoulder like a satchel she could have been one more Roman schoolgirl.

  Head cocked to one side, a little wary, she looked at him and said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nic Costa. I was the police officer. The other night . . . Your father. I wish I could have done more.’

  She thought for a moment and asked, ‘The man in the street? You carried him across the road?’

  ‘The man in the street.’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘You carried me too. When I wouldn’t get out of the way. I’m sorry if I behaved badly.’

  ‘You’ve nothing to apologize for.’

  She looked around, as if trying to work out whether he was alone. He couldn’t help but notice there were scratches on her hands. Old ones, the blood dark red.

  ‘Are you here to interview me?’

  ‘No, no. I was just passing. I’m on holiday at the moment. I saw you. I wanted to say . . . to offer my condolences.’

  ‘Everyone’s so kind here,’ she said, staring at him, her eyes very steady and focused. ‘Even though they don’t know us. The women at the sanctuary. The people at the church.’ She held up her music bag. ‘They’re going to let me play there. In front of the public. At five o’clock.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’

  ‘Why not?’ she replied with a shrug. ‘I can’t sit at home all the time, thinking about what happened, wondering if I could have changed something. My brother’s still out there somewhere, I don’t know where. Mummy’s talking to Uncle Simon about organizing a funeral in Berkshire. Not that that’s going to be an easy conversation. He hated Daddy.’

  ‘Why would your father’s brother hate him?’

  She shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know. We’ve never met Simon. I just hear what goes on. He’s a banker in London. Filthy rich and materialistic. Nothing matters to him except money. Exact opposite to us. It doesn’t matter. Mummy wants to deal with all that. I can’t sit around moping. Daddy wouldn’t. He was always doing something.’

  She had forty minutes before the appointment in the nearby church of Aracoeli.

  ‘Would you like a coffee? We can talk if you want.’

  Mina Gabriel stared at him more intently, and he was aware of being judged, perhaps by a child, perhaps by someone with an older, more informed intelligence.

  ‘A Coke would be nice,’ she answered. ‘It’s so hot here in August. I never expected it to be like this. None of us did.’

  ‘It’s hot,’ he agreed. ‘A Coke. An ice cream if you like.’

  She smiled and said, ‘Just a Coke, thanks. I’m not a kid.’

  They began to walk towards the piazza.

  ‘Your hands,’ Costa said. They were fine and slim, with long, musician’s fingers. The scratches extended from the knuckle almost to the wrist on
her right. ‘You’ve hurt yourself. Can you play?’

  ‘Cats,’ she replied. ‘Horrible little things, sometimes. Ungrateful. It’s nothing. I can play.’

  TWO

  He let her do the talking. About her father, about life in a family led by an academic gypsy, moving from post to post, in America, Canada, the UK and Australia, never staying anywhere long. Costa didn’t ask why they never settled down. As he listened to her chatting, noting the way the conversation came round to Malise Gabriel with almost every turn, the answer seemed to become obvious. It had to do with his obdurate, independent character, the way the man would always stand up for what he believed in, whatever the cost. Mina simply called them ‘the arguments’.

  Then came Rome.

  ‘This was supposed to be the last place,’ she said. ‘Somewhere we settled down. We had connections. Daddy’s maternal grandmother was Italian. She was called Mina too. I’m sort of named after her. In Italian it’s short for Wilhelmina. Daddy put Minerva on my birth certificate. The goddess of wisdom. Don’t ask me why. There’s no one in the family left here, I don’t think. It was supposed to be a good move for Daddy, not working inside a university ever again. Just some little academic institution. Fewer people to fall out with.’

  ‘What did he do?’ he asked.

  ‘Write. Talk. Edit academic papers.’ She picked at a discarded napkin on the counter. ‘I think it was beneath him, really. But he had to do it. There was nowhere left to go, really. We had to live.’

  ‘I talked to Joanne Van Doren,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you said you were on holiday?’

  ‘I am. But I was a witness. I had to be involved a little.’

  He didn’t like lying to her, and he wasn’t sure it had worked.

  ‘Joanne’s very kind. She bought me some musical stuff we couldn’t afford.’

  ‘She said you did a lot of research about Beatrice Cenci.’

  ‘You know Beatrice?’ Her face lit up for the first time.

  ‘I was born here. It’s one of those Roman stories you pick up if you read a lot of books. But foreigners . . .’

  ‘How could I not know? We were almost opposite the palace where she lived. The street. The name of the vicolo, the piazza. Do you think they’d still be called Cenci if it weren’t for her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We had a plan. When Joanne had the apartments ready she’d use the Beatrice connection to sell them. Not that the building had anything to do with her, but . . . Business, I suppose.’

  ‘What did your father think?’

  She looked briefly guilty.

  ‘I never told him. He’d have been cross. He hated business. “Filthy lucre”, he called it. We were an academic family. We were supposed to be above that.’ She glanced at him. ‘Joanne would have paid me. There’s nothing wrong in that, is there?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, and this seemed to reassure her. ‘What would you have done?’

  ‘The Beatrice tour. All the places in Rome that were connected to her. The Barberini. Montorio.’ Her face grew serious. ‘A few others too. You’re a Roman. You must know.’

  ‘I don’t actually.’

  He remembered how he’d held back from visiting the sites when he was younger, which was against his nature. He loved his native city. Normally he wanted to know the history of every last corner, every brick and cobble. But with Beatrice Cenci, the interest seemed prurient, wrong somehow.

  ‘Is your mother coping? Does she need help?’

  The girl scowled.

  ‘How would I know? Mummy thinks I’m a child. I need to be protected from all that. There’s no point in arguing. We’re not a . . . conventional family. Also . . .’ There was a subtle though noticeable change in her expression, a coolness he had not seen before. ‘She’s got Bernard to help her. She doesn’t need me.’

  ‘Bernard?’

  ‘Bernard Santacroce. He runs the organization Daddy worked for. Filthy rich. Our benefactor. He gave Daddy the job in the first place. I imagine we’re dependent on his generosity now.’

  ‘He’s Roman?’

  She frowned.

  ‘Bernard’s English really. Of Italian stock, as he puts it. He claims he’s one of the old Santacroces. They hated the Cenci. He bought the palazzetto off a relative, I think, and got the Brotherhood of the Owls running again. It had fallen apart a bit.’ She wriggled upright on her little stool in the cafe, looking like a schoolgirl who’d found the right answer. ‘The Santacroce claimed they were descended from Valerius Publicola, one of the original founders of the Roman republic. They even added the word “Publicola” to their full name. The Cenci had to retaliate, of course, so they said they were descendants of the Cincii, another famous republican family. Seems a bit petty to me. You live, you die. Who cares except the people who knew you? Your parents. Your children. Then they’re gone too.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ he asked.

  She looked at him as if the question were stupid.

  ‘I read books, of course.’

  ‘I know that, but . . .’ He’d felt this way himself at her age. Then something got in the way, something he didn’t want to mention to her. His own mother’s illness had pushed him towards the Beatrice Cenci story. Her premature death had made it too painful to pursue his curiosity all the way, to visit those last mournful places that marked the young girl’s end. ‘But why?’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘Dunno really. When we came here it just seemed the natural thing to do. It’s not like America. Or Canada. Or anywhere else. Rome’s a little world, all its own.’ She glanced out of the window of the cafe by the Piazza Venezia, at the busy square beyond, and its monumental buildings, Aracoeli, the Capitoline museums, the hideous Vittorio Emanuele monument the locals called ‘the typewriter’, the ‘wedding cake’ and much worse. ‘All that history . . . it sort of swallowed me. I felt at home, and I’d never felt that about anywhere before.’

  Mina sucked on the straw of her Coke.

  ‘I talked to Daddy. I told him this was what I wanted to do when I grew up. To write about Rome. To tell people about all the things they never saw. To open their eyes. He said . . .’ Mina Gabriel seemed to be trying to recall his exact words. ‘He said I should let this place infect me as much as I possibly could. Haunt me. Like a ghost. Or a . . .’ One more hunt for the correct term. ‘. . . succubus. Something that possesses you. You won’t understand. If you grew up here you’d take it for granted. I know I would.’

  Costa didn’t say anything. He was stealing a glance at her right hand again, wondering if the scratches there were really the work of a cat.

  She leaned forward and looked up into his face.

  ‘I could show you if you like,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Show me?’

  ‘Yes. The places. Beatrice’s places.’

  ‘You’ll have things to do.’

  ‘I told you. Mummy won’t let me. We could go on the tour I invented for Joanne. It would be good to get out. To talk to someone new. I hate sitting around doing nothing. I get that from Daddy. Everyone said we were alike. Peas from the same pod. There were two things he loathed more than any other. Idleness and hypocrisy. Please.’

  Costa couldn’t think of a way to say no. In his head he was trying to frame a different question.

  ‘How did you get on with your father?’ he asked.

  She stared straight into his face, her wide, young eyes unblinking, and said, ‘I loved him. And he loved me. That’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  THREE

  Mina Gabriel checked her watch then picked up the music case.

  ‘I’ve got to go to the church now. I’m doing this for him. Daddy adored this piece. Odd really. It’s religious. Everything Messiaen did was. Look.’

  Mina opened the bag and showed him the music: Transports de joie d’une âme devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne.

  �
�Ecstasies of a soul before the glory of Christ, which is its own glory,’ Mina translated. ‘A very long title, if you ask me. Ridiculously so. We just call it Transports de joie.’

  She finished her Coke then went to the counter and bought a chocolate bar, ripping off the wrapping, taking a big bite.

  ‘Want to come and listen?’ she asked, mouth half-full.

  ‘I’m not a Catholic.’

  ‘Me neither. It’s just music. Got to feed the cats at ten thirty tomorrow. We can meet afterwards if you want. Up to you. I don’t mind being on my own. Honest.’

  They crossed the Piazza Venezia together, dodging the fractious traffic, then ascended the broad sweep of steps that led up to Santa Maria in Aracoeli, St Mary of the Altar of Heaven. It was one of his favourite Roman churches, in part because its name alluded to another, pagan past. Perched on the Capitoline hill overlooking the Forum, this was once the site of an important imperial-era temple. Images of the Emperor Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl still stood on the high altar, commemorating the legend that Augustus had received a vision of the coming of the Catholic Church from the Sibyl herself, in his temple on this very spot. Rome’s distant and near pasts, two different though related kinds of superstition, converged in the darkness of this quiet and holy place, and lived there happily, side by side.

  The organ stood in a dark corner of the cavernous church. Mina Gabriel disappeared behind some nearby curtains and returned wearing an ecclesiastical gown that made her look like a choir girl. Then she climbed onto the long bench in front of the instrument. He watched how she positioned herself easily over the keyboard, the stops and the vast array of pedals beneath her feet, as if coming home.

  He took a seat at the end of a row, half-hidden in the shadows. The low, sonorous growl of the instrument grew out of the persistent gloom of the nave, seeming to come from everywhere. The music was like nothing he’d ever heard, both harmonious and discordant, free-flowing, without the conventions of time and melody which he expected. There was something ethereal yet disturbing in its clashing tones. As he watched, the girl seemed to become a part of the device, one more complex component of the vast, incomprehensible machine in front of her.