The Fallen Angel

by David Hewson

  There were books aplenty, an office computer, some manuscripts, a music player with a collection of classical CDs, mostly Beethoven, and, on the cheap, utility desk where he worked, photographs of Gabriel’s family.

  The pictures sat in a line next to the computer. Peroni stared at them, wondering, aware of Falcone’s judgemental gaze from behind him.

  ‘You’re the family man,’ the inspector said in the end. ‘Tell me.’

  There were eight photographs in all. Mina Gabriel appeared in every one. The oldest showed her little more than five or six, the one next to it as a plain, somewhat gawky, very serious-looking kid, taller, staring straight at the camera. Gabriel’s wife was in four pictures and didn’t seem to want to smile much in any. The son appeared once, as a scowling boy of fourteen or so, tall and skinny, half-hidden behind his mother, with a head of curly brown hair that needed attention and doubtless wasn’t going to get it. None of the photographs bore any obvious visual context: a holiday destination, a birthday party, a picnic. Every picture bar one depicted the subjects seated on mundane, often slightly scruffy furniture, stiff, as if posing.

  The exception was a photograph of Mina alone, recent, Peroni guessed. The girl was pictured from the waist up at a stone window. She appeared to be wearing nothing but a coloured bra or a skinny bikini top and a giggly, girlish smile. Her hair was a mess, as if she’d just climbed out of bed. She looked happy in a way it would be hard to fake. Peroni guessed the shot was taken upstairs, in the apartment Cecilia Gabriel had now reoccupied. But it dated from summer. He could see that from the full, verdant palm trees, the tone of the sun and the girl’s scant clothing by the open window. Given the timing of their stay in Rome this shot could only have been after they had moved out. Mina must have returned here with her father, got into a bikini or stripped to her underclothes, then . . .

  The big old cop winced. He hated cases like this.

  ‘Tell you what?’ he muttered.

  ‘Would you have a photograph like that on your desk?’ Falcone asked. ‘Of your own daughter?’

  It was so easy to misread the signs, and the consequences for doing so could be terrible.

  He looked Falcone in the eye and said, ‘If you manage to peek behind the scenes of any family you’ll find something that looks funny from the outside. A photo. A slap. A cross word spoken in the heat of the moment. You can’t judge people’s lives on the basis of a snapshot. If you did we’d all be guilty of something. The girl’s probably just sunbathing. Kids do. Even smart kids who belong to academic freaks on the slide. It could be nothing more than that. Everyone takes pictures of their family when they’re happy, having a nice time.’

  There was a cold, disbelieving expression on Falcone’s chiselled face.

  ‘Sunbathing?’

  ‘Why not?’ Peroni pleaded. ‘Can’t anything be innocent any more? At what point did we start to tell people they couldn’t take pictures of their kids messing about being kids without someone snooping around to take a look and asking if it’s something worse?’

  Falcone pointed at the picture.

  ‘At the point they look like that. Anyone can understand . . .’

  Peroni fought to keep a handle on his temper.

  ‘Not if you’re a parent! A normal one. The photo’s sitting on his desk. His wife must have seen it a million times. If there was something wrong, something going on, don’t you think she’d have realized?’

  Falcone scowled and muttered something about how relationships could cloud someone’s vision, make them vulnerable.

  ‘I don’t remember anyone ever accusing you of that when you still had a wife,’ Peroni snapped back, and regretted his outburst immediately. His colleague’s marriage had been a protracted nightmare of recriminations and infidelities on both sides, one that had marked Falcone, perhaps helped make him the solitary man he was.

  ‘No,’ Falcone agreed, picking up the photo of the half-naked girl and looking at it very closely. ‘They didn’t. Perhaps the mother did find out in the end. Perhaps that’s what happened. The mother, the brother . . . the girl maybe. I don’t know. They told him to stop. He didn’t. So finally they got together and killed him. Just like Nic said. They borrowed the idea from the Cenci girl, trying to make it look an accident.’

  ‘Nic didn’t say that. And besides, the Cenci all wound up dead, didn’t they? Great idea to copy, I must say . . .’

  ‘There’s something very wrong here,’ Falcone insisted. ‘Do you really not see it?’

  Peroni took one more look at the photo of the girl and issued a long, unhappy sigh.

  ‘I don’t know what I see if I’m honest. Families are just the world in miniature. Imperfect. Miserable as hell at times. Wrong too.’ He had to say it. ‘If you’d understood that maybe you’d still be married. Everyone’s got their secrets. You have to learn to live with them and keep them to yourself. It’s best for everyone.’

  Again he regretted his clumsy words, which were meant to inform, not accuse. Yet Falcone’s face bore a brief mark of hurt. This was getting too personal, too close, for both of them. The inspector was his friend as much as a colleague and he hadn’t recovered completely from the unexpected and vicious slap he’d got from the girl’s mother. It wasn’t the violence that shocked him. Peroni knew that. It was the hatred, the force behind it. Falcone was a decent man, trying to do a difficult, sometimes impossible, job, one that society demanded without ever asking the cost. He didn’t want thanks. But he didn’t expect to be detested either.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Peroni said. ‘That was uncalled for. I should never have said it. I simply feel we may be getting ahead of ourselves.’

  Or was he really trying to convince himself of all this? He knew what Falcone meant. He just wasn’t sure they were looking in the right place. Meeting Bernard Santacroce had bothered him, for one thing. The man was a stuck-up bastard who hadn’t made the slightest effort to hide how he felt about Malise Gabriel.

  ‘Why wouldn’t that toffee-nosed bastard upstairs write out the name of his stupid academic paper for me?’ Peroni wondered.

  ‘I imagine he thought it was beneath him. Besides, we’ve got the paper already, haven’t we? If you think that’s evidence and this – ’ Falcone waved the photograph of Mina Gabriel in Peroni’s face – ‘isn’t, then God help us all.’

  There were times when Peroni wanted to give Leo Falcone a piece of his mind. The truth, the whole truth, nothing but. It wasn’t rank that stopped him. It was simple human concern. He knew how much the man would be hurt if his fragile and lonely façade was punctured.

  ‘May I offer a word of advice?’ he said instead.

  Falcone replaced the photograph then folded his arms, saying nothing.

  ‘We’re walking on eggshells here,’ Peroni told him. ‘If I remember correctly the only way they broke down the Cenci family was by torturing the brother. We don’t have that option, even if we knew where he was. If there’s a case here it may well depend on someone – the wife, the daughter, maybe even the son – deciding to tell us the truth. We won’t get that out of them easily. Or by shouting.’

  ‘I never shout!’ Falcone objected, then added, more quietly, perhaps with a little regret, ‘Well, rarely these days.’

  Peroni opened the door to the Casina delle Civette. Evening was on its way, a lazy golden one, still full of heat.

  He took Falcone by the arm, looked into the man’s lined face, with its silver goatee, which was now, with age, beginning to look a little vain and said, ‘Come on. Let me buy an old friend a beer. It’s August, Leo. We don’t need to rush things. No one’s going anywhere. A little time. A little patience. Who knows how this will look in the morning?’

  The inspector’s phone trilled. Peroni picked up Bernard Santa-croce’s academic paper, placed it under his arm, and waited.

  Falcone listened for a moment then hit the speaker button and turned the handset so he could hear. It was Teresa. She had news and it changed everything.

&n
bsp; TEN

  The Vespa wound its way back along the Via Giulia then, under Mina’s shouted guidance from the back, Costa turned left into a narrow side street he didn’t know and brought the scooter to a halt outside an imposing Renaissance palace. To his amazement – and some embarrassment – Falcone and Peroni were walking out of the entrance arch, talking rapidly to one another with a serious intent that usually meant something had happened.

  Before he could drag the little machine into the shadows Falcone’s sharp eyes caught them and he was over, Peroni following in his wake.

  The inspector glared intently at Costa then, as if ignoring him, spoke directly to the girl.

  ‘Mina Gabriel?’ he asked, showing his ID.

  She got off, removed her helmet, shook her long, blonde hair free and said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘We need you to come to the Questura. If you want to bring your mother, please call her now. The choice is yours. It isn’t necessary. There’s no legal requirement.’

  ‘What’s this about?’ Costa asked, to Falcone’s obvious displeasure.

  Falcone turned to Peroni and said, ‘This has nothing to do—’

  ‘I want him here!’ Mina yelled at him. ‘You can’t order me around. Who do you think you are?’

  ‘Signora!’ It wasn’t the right word and it was obvious from Falcone’s face he knew it. She looked like a girl again, with an angry pout contorting her pale and pleasant northern features. ‘I need you to come to the Questura for interview.’ He glowered at Costa. ‘We have our reasons.’

  ‘Reasons?’ she said. ‘What reasons?’

  ‘At the Questura—’

  ‘Are you arresting me?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘So you can’t make me?’

  ‘I’m asking—’

  ‘I’ll talk to Mummy,’ she said, and passed the helmet back to Costa. ‘If she says I should come, I’ll come.’

  ‘Leo,’ Costa interrupted. ‘Can we please talk about this calmly? I’m sure Mina will do everything she can to help.’

  ‘I want to talk to my mother,’ she insisted.

  ‘Fine,’ Falcone snapped. ‘Then let me ask one simple question. I wouldn’t normally broach this in a public street but since it appears I have no choice—’

  ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘Your father had sexual intercourse the night he died. That is beyond doubt.’ He didn’t look happy having to say this at all. Falcone seemed mournful, and deeply upset. ‘You said there was just the two of you in the apartment all evening. So I need to know. Was it with you?’

  She looked as if she’d suffered some kind of invisible, physical blow. Her slim shoulders hunched forward, her mouth fell open. Tears, of grief and indignation, began to fill her bright young eyes.

  Mina Gabriel shot a glance of unadulterated hatred in Costa’s direction.

  ‘I thought you said you couldn’t torture people any more,’ she told him.

  ‘You don’t have to answer,’ he said, in spite of Falcone’s growing fury. ‘We can arrange an appointment at the Questura. Tomorrow, say. With your mother. A lawyer. I can come if you want—’

  ‘You’re a police officer!’ Falcone bellowed.

  ‘Right now I’m on holiday,’ Costa replied.

  Mina took two steps forward until she stood directly in front of the inspector.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I told Nic,’ she said briskly. ‘I loved my father. And he loved me. Read that how you will, you grubby little man.’

  She shook her head, dashed forward and kissed Costa briefly on the cheek, the way any young Roman girl might have done with a friend at the end of the day. Then she whispered in his ear, ‘I’m sorry. Thanks for listening to me.’

  The girl half-walked, half-ran into the building. Costa wondered whether he’d done the right thing, and not just because Falcone seemed beside himself with anger.

  ‘I could get a warrant right now,’ the inspector stormed. ‘We could go through every last thing they own. I can take her into custody this instant. Her and the mother.’

  Costa waited for a little of the heat to abate.

  ‘If you do that,’ he said quietly, ‘she’ll never tell you a thing. I can’t believe what I just saw here. How could you do that? How?’

  ‘What choice did I have?’ Falcone roared.

  ‘Some,’ Costa replied quietly. ‘Why the rush, Leo?’

  ‘I thought that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? You’re the one who brought us into this case.’

  ‘If it is a case,’ Costa said. ‘And if it is you’re going to have to take this very carefully indeed. You’re dealing with a family here. Not some street crook who’s thrown a brick through a jeweller’s window.’

  Peroni added mildly, ‘I tried to explain that to him. Also, to be perfectly frank, I’m not sure you could do any of those things you suggest, Leo. Not on the little we have.’

  Falcone shook his fists, exasperated, and Costa realized he understood this last point too.

  ‘So what do we do?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘How about that beer?’ the big man suggested cheerily. He caught Costa’s eye. ‘And some explanations.’

  PART SIX

  ONE

  Falcone loathed the idea of an ordinary cafe or bar so they found themselves in an enoteca he knew called Angolo Divino on a corner near the Campo dei Fiori. It was early. They were the only customers. The inspector lost a little of his fury as the three of them walked there from the Palazzetto Santacroce, Peroni making discreet and inconclusive calls back to the Questura and Teresa Lupo along the way. The position was not improving. Robert Gabriel, Mina’s elusive brother, remained missing. The magistrate approached for a search warrant for the apartment in the Via Beatrice Cenci had thrown out the request on the grounds of insufficient cause, and maintained her refusal even when forensic added the evidence of Malise Gabriel’s recent sexual activity. It was, accordingly, clear that, without fresh evidence, any bid to seize the Gabriels’ belongings in the Casina delle Civette would be refused too.

  Costa recognized this mood in the man who was both his superior and his friend. Insular reflection did not come naturally. He preferred to act inside the moment, to work with the rhythm of the case. In the absence of such motion he felt lost, powerless. Whatever had occurred during this difficult day had left him stranded with few options. This was never a position likely to generate harmony.

  There was also something personal here. Families made Falcone nervous. No one knew much about the man’s own. The inspector’s past was not so much secret as invisible. Even his ill-fated marriage, which had ended years before Costa came to know him, remained a topic to be avoided. The prospect of dealing with the intimate intricacies of the Gabriel clan perhaps amplified this sense of isolation. Falcone’s one attempt at some kind of familial bond had occurred years ago when, as a newly divorced officer determined never to commit himself to a direct relationship again, he had sponsored Agata Graziano through school and college, which was how she had come to be involved in the earlier police investigation that introduced her to Costa. Now even that tie, fond and awkward in the same breath, seemed a little tenuous as his former ward struggled to make a life of her own outside the enclosed world of the Church.

  ‘Explanations,’ Falcone said again as they sat down.

  Three glasses of beefy primitivo from Puglia and a plate of cheese and cold meat appeared then Costa told them about his day. When he was done Falcone looked at him and said, ‘You might have mentioned last night that you’d arranged to meet Mina Gabriel.’

  ‘Last night it was difficult to get a word in edgeways. Also I was rather more concerned with Agata’s state of mind, to be honest. She didn’t appreciate being dragged into things like that. Besides, I’m on holiday. I can do what I like. There didn’t appear to be a case. Mina looked like a sad and lonely kid in need of company. She asked me to provide it. How could I say no?’

  ‘Funny way to sp
end the day,’ Peroni noted. ‘Following in the footsteps of that poor Cenci girl.’

  ‘She said she planned to earn some money taking Joanne Van Doren’s customers on a history trip. Softening them up for the purchase. I was her guinea pig for when that happens.’

  ‘Don’t you mean if?’ Falcone asked. ‘That place is months away from being saleable. Years even. The way the woman kept going on about the bank . . .’

  ‘I thought that was genuine,’ Peroni intervened. ‘She looked very upset.’

  Falcone scowled.

  ‘Or guilty. She’d just cleared out the last trace of any possible evidence of a crime. Do you think the Gabriel girl was genuine, Nic? That’s all this Cenci connection is? A hobby?’

  Costa thought back on the day, and the deep discomfort he’d felt at times.

  ‘Up to a point. Perhaps she believes that herself. But I’d say its clear she’s obsessed with Beatrice for some reason. The detail she knows . . .’ He remembered her standing stiffly in front of the sad, accusing face on the wall in the Barberini, the tantrum at Montorio, the way she stared avidly at the sword in the museum, drawn to its ancient, stained blade. ‘It’s . . . morbid. Abnormal. She must have spent weeks, months researching it.’

  ‘Why?’ Falcone interrupted.

  Peroni played with a slice of the fatty Florentine salami called finocchiona. Costa could smell the fennel in it from across the table. His own father had adored the stuff.

  ‘Teenagers get obsessions,’ Peroni said. ‘That is one obsessive story. Someone like you wouldn’t . . .’

  He stopped, aware of the sudden chill.

  ‘I wouldn’t understand, naturally,’ Falcone replied with an acid smile. ‘I don’t have feelings, do I?’

  ‘Gianni wasn’t saying that,’ Costa cut in quickly. ‘Besides, I don’t understand Mina Gabriel either. Sometimes she’s astonishingly bright and confident. Then, at others, quite unworldly and unsure of herself. Mature one moment, juvenile the next. And . . .’