The Fallen Angel (16 page)

‘Mina, Mina,’ he said quickly, loudly too, against his own wishes. ‘Enough. Let’s get out of here.’

‘Not yet,’ she insisted, and dragged him back towards the exit, towards the thing that had stolen the breath from him a decade or more before.

It was about a metre long, a specialist weapon, unsuited for warfare or any conventional purpose. Behind the glittering steel stood a black and white photograph of Reni’s portrait of
Beatrice, eyes turned to the beholder, even in this tiny print. By its side was an old book, the page open at the story of the weapon – the ‘Sword of Justice’ – that
historians were convinced was used to behead Beatrice Cenci and her stepmother Lucrezia on that September day in 1599.

Mina stood stiff and upright in front of the display case, neither girl nor woman at that moment, her dark eyes full of outrage, fixed on the weapon, her breath shallow and irregular.

‘Let’s go outside,’ Costa said. ‘I promised you ice cream.’

‘Ice cream!’ she spat at him.

‘Mina . . .’

‘“The Sword of Justice”?’ she asked, her voice full of heat. She was a child again at that moment. Full of the simple outrage that children possessed, the rudimentary
innocence that classified all cruelty and hurt and neglect as wrong, never seeking to understand the reasons behind them.

‘They may have meant that in the sixteenth century,’ he said. ‘Not today. If anything it’s ironic.’

‘Because we’re so much more civilized now? More reasonable? More kind?’

‘Next to this,’ he said, nodding at the shaft of old stained steel behind the glass. ‘Yes. We shouldn’t bury our horrors. We should find the courage to face
them.’

‘That depends on the horrors, doesn’t it? If Beatrice was alive now . . . if all this happened today?’

He found his mind wouldn’t think straight for a moment. She was looking directly at him, demanding an answer.

‘How would you torture a confession out of her, Nic?’ she persisted.

‘I wouldn’t,’ he said immediately. ‘Nor would anyone. We’re not perfect but we’re better than we were.’

There was an expression on her pretty, pale face that could have been the pout of a ten-year-old. He placed a hand gently on her arm and guided her to the door. It was almost six. The place
would close soon anyway.

Outside the fierceness of the day was beginning to abate. The Via Giulia looked as quiet and as beautiful as ever.

‘I promised you a
gelato
. . .’

‘Don’t patronize me,’ she interrupted without looking at him. ‘I want to go home.’

Cecilia Gabriel printed out a copy of Bernard Santacroce’s academic paper then left Falcone and Peroni alone to poke around her husband’s gloomy office on the
ground floor of the Casina delle Civette.

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.

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.’