The Fallen Angel nc-9

by David Hewson

  ‘Drugs. Complicated business. Is it really surprising there’s some grubby little war going on around the Campo? Or that our stupid little English friend on the table here put his own neck on the line by bringing all this attention to himself?’

  Falcone muttered something foul and didn’t answer.

  Teresa Lupo came and stood next to him. In his own way the man had tried to be sensitive towards the Gabriel family, as best he could. But the job, the need to ask awkward questions, and his own difficult personality all intervened in the end. It wasn’t his fault. This was who he was.

  ‘You know,’ Teresa Lupo said, ‘it is just possible that everything here really is as simple as it seems. Robert realized what a creep his father was and killed him. Then the American too when she found out. Toni Grimaldi’s right. Proving Malise Gabriel was having sex with his own daughter won’t bring anyone to justice. It could just cause a lot more pain to people who’ve had more than their fair share. Gabriel was a very sick man, Leo. Whether he told his family or not, they will have felt the burden. Should we really add to it?’

  ‘I know all this!’ he replied, seemingly hurt by her accusation.

  ‘I appreciate that.’

  ‘I’m not here to spare their feelings. I’m here to find out the truth. If they’d sit down, look me in the eye, and tell me something I could believe. .’

  ‘They don’t want to talk about it, Leo,’ she said. ‘Would you?’

  He scowled. ‘What have they got to lose? You know the way public opinion is at the moment. Even if I could prove they knew Robert intended to kill his father I doubt I’d get them in court.’

  ‘Their dignity?’ she suggested.

  He took a deep breath and looked into her eyes.

  ‘I’ve taken that from them already, haven’t I?’ he murmured.

  She waited. He’d recovered himself again, was once more the maddening individual she’d grown to admire, to love in a way, over the years.

  ‘I don’t believe they’re murderers,’ he insisted. ‘Not directly. The brother, yes. Not them. I don’t see that they could have been involved in the American woman’s death. But Malise Gabriel’s? If they’re innocent why don’t they look innocent? Why do they act this way?’

  ‘Perhaps they feel you’re intruding into a part of their lives where you don’t belong. Besides, if you could prove they weren’t entirely innocent, that they somehow knew, would that be justice? Who’d benefit?’

  He bristled and said, ‘That’s not my job. I don’t make those decisions.’

  ‘But you do. We all do. That’s why we’re here. Beatrice Cenci had the Pope’s inquisitors. Mina Gabriel has us. We’re kinder, I think. But are we really any different?’

  ‘You can’t pick and choose,’ Falcone insisted. ‘We’re all equal under the law.’

  ‘Unless you’re rich or a politician or the friend of someone who knows someone.’

  ‘They’re all the same as far as I’m concerned. This is the first time you’ve seen Mina and her mother. You tell me. Am I mistaken? Do you really feel I’m chasing some ghost here?’

  No, she thought. His misgivings were entirely understandable, the reaction of an intelligent, experienced detective. Mina Gabriel was genuinely distraught at her brother’s death. But the mother with her cold indifference to everything, even the incriminating photographs. .

  ‘Grief isn’t a predictable emotion,’ she said. ‘It shows itself in very different ways, and at different times, because that’s how people are. They’re not machines or Pavlov’s dog.’

  He pointed at the door through which the Gabriels had left and asked, ‘Have you seen that way before?’

  She felt so sorry for Leo Falcone at times. He had an insight into dark places, a sympathy with the pain of those he suspected of terrible deeds. This awkward, intuitive wisdom was beyond the ordinary men and women within the Questura. They were lucky not to have it.

  ‘No,’ Teresa Lupo agreed. ‘Not that way. Do you really want to pursue this further, Leo? Toni Grimaldi doesn’t. But you’re the boss.’

  ‘What about you?’ he asked hopefully.

  She shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know. If you asked the man in the street. .’

  ‘Then half the time they’d want to bring back hanging, and the rest they’d let the guilty walk away free,’ he interrupted.

  ‘Quite,’ she agreed. ‘It’s so much easier to define crime than it is to put your finger on justice, isn’t it?’ She observed him, thinking. ‘You’re letting this get to you and I don’t like watching that. You need to step back a little. See it from the kind of perspective we had in the beginning. When it was a dead man in the street, an intellectual man, a genius some might say. A man who loved science and reason and Galileo. And loved women and arguments and. . life, I guess too.’

  Teresa Lupo tried to crystallize her thinking. It was so woolly, so vague it was impossible. But doubts led to certainties sometimes, if only they could be viewed in the right light.

  She took Falcone by the arm and said, ‘You know the most illuminating conversation we’ve had about this curious little affair was last Sunday, in the ghetto, in Gianni’s little restaurant.’

  ‘True,’ Falcone replied. ‘We’re in the middle of a murder inquiry. I don’t have time for social events.’

  She looked at her watch.

  ‘We still have to eat. Listen to me. It’s nearly four thirty. I doubt anything’s going to happen our end today. I’d put money on it not happening yours. Why not?’

  A thought had clouded his face. He glanced anxiously at his watch.

  ‘Oh lord,’ Falcone said. ‘I forgot what date it was.’

  He scratched his head.

  ‘Dinner,’ he said. ‘That’s a good idea. Very good idea, actually. Eight o’clock. I’ll book a place I know.’

  He was pointing at Silvio Di Capua and the work experience kid, who were head down in the corner going through some papers.

  ‘Bring them along too.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ she asked.

  ‘Why not? I’m paying. Finding that mattress deserves something.’

  Teresa put it to the pair of them. They looked surprised. Horrified, more like.

  ‘We’re busy,’ Di Capua said. ‘The Ducati from Tuesday night’s supposed to turn up any minute downstairs.’

  Maria waved her gloved hands in their faces.

  ‘We’re going to rip it apart,’ she said gleefully.

  ‘But thanks for asking,’ Di Capua said, and went back to work.

  ‘Eight o’clock,’ Teresa agreed. ‘And now?’

  Falcone scooped up his papers. He looked a little calmer, almost happier for some reason.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said. ‘Some fresh air. I need to get out of this place for a while. Call Costa and Peroni. I’ll meet you all there. And persuade Nic to go home and get a change of clothes for once. He’s only ten minutes from that place of his. It ought to be easy enough.’

  TEN

  ‘Leo? Gone for a walk?’ Peroni asked, amazed.

  They sat on the porch of Costa’s villa near the Via Appia Antica, sipping Pellegrino, watching the birds pick at the black grapes on the vines. Netting, Costa thought. That might be what he needed if he ever got round to trying to put the vineyard back in order.

  ‘He never goes for a walk,’ the big cop went on. ‘And this dinner? What’s he playing at?’

  ‘We don’t know what Leo does when he’s off duty, do we?’ Costa said.

  There’d been a time, once. When he was briefly in love with the woman from Venice. But then that fell apart, as his affairs usually did after a while. And Leo Falcone was back to being the man they knew: a dedicated and talented police officer whose life revolved around the Questura, and barely seemed to exist outside it.

  ‘Suppose not,’ Peroni replied.

  He turned and looked at Costa.

  ‘Is he happy, Nic? I mean, just a little bit. I’d never expect Leo to be rea
lly happy. Not like a normal human being. But a little bit. It would worry me if he didn’t have even that.’

  Some more birds — finches, he thought — had begun to descend on the crop of grapes. They looked better than usual this year. He ought to be making wine, inviting people round to pick the crop, take part in the entertaining ceremony of crushing them, turning the juice into bad wine, just as his father had done with his friends a generation ago when Costa was a child. But those times, that way of life, seemed gone now. Everyone was so busy. The hectic round of work and duty never seemed to offer the space, the opportunity for leisure, time with the people you loved. Then the seasons turned once more, summer to autumn, autumn to winter. Another year gone, lost forever, haunted by the ghosts of words unspoken, promises never kept.

  ‘He’ll be happy when this is over,’ Costa said. ‘Something about this case. .’ He knew what it was, and so did Peroni. There was no need to say it out loud. Falcone was haunted by the thought of Mina Gabriel’s damaged innocence, and the idea that she might be punished for defending herself against the brutish attentions of her own father. ‘It gets to him, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Gets to all of us,’ Peroni said. ‘Can I take the car? I need to change too. You can make your own way there?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The big man stood up and stretched a little painfully. Both he and Falcone faced retirement in a few years. Neither, Costa thought, would find it easy to leave the Questura behind. It wasn’t just the job. It was the people, the companionship, the notion of some shared sense of direction. The idea that, in some small way, their mutual efforts represented a glimmer of hope, a trace of humanity, in a world going bad.

  ‘We need to get Leo out more,’ Costa said without thinking. ‘We need to go back to the way we were. When Emily was alive. When we felt like. .’ There was no other word, and he was a Roman so it was not difficult or embarrassing for him to use it. ‘. . like a family.’

  Peroni nodded.

  ‘We do,’ he agreed. ‘Starting tonight.’

  Costa watched him go, thinking all the time about Agata, what to say, how he might help her through this difficult transition. He became lost in his thoughts after a while. So much so that, when the time came to go, he simply walked upstairs, threw on the first set of clean clothes he found, then came back down, fell on the Vespa and kicked it into life on the first try.

  ELEVEN

  They assembled at the restaurant just before eight, Agata coming directly from work. Falcone had picked Al Pompiere back in the ghetto, just a few steps away from Sora Margherita, the humble little hole-in-the-wall they’d visited a few nights before. He arrived in a fresh grey suit, a carnation in his lapel, a smile on his face, looking so calm, so at one with himself, Costa wondered why, a few hours earlier, he’d been worried about the man.

  They went up the staircase to the first floor of the restaurant, one of the best in the ghetto. A reserved sign stood on a secluded window table with a view back to the Piazza delle Cinque Scole and, on the small mound opposite, one face of the gloomy, sprawling Palazzo Cenci. Costa found the sight distracting: this tragedy was somehow rooted in the buildings around here. In the history of the Cenci family, in the rundown apartment block that Joanne Van Doren had been trying, unsuccessfully, to resurrect and turn into a gold mine, creating instead a bleak fortress of secrets, some of them still hidden.

  The waiters danced around the inspector obediently. He was known here, though he’d never so much as mentioned the place. Falcone was a private individual, even as he went about his business in the throng of the city. There was a duality to the man, in the way he could be personable, and show great care and courtesy to those around him, then retreat into his own thoughts in an instant.

  Sparkling Franciacorta arrived, followed by plates of zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella, battered salt cod, crunchy fried artichokes and bitter puntarelle shoots with anchovies. Finally the head waiter entered carrying a small gift box wrapped in beautiful velvet and placed it in front of Agata.

  Falcone clapped, alone. The rest of them stared at him, wondering, until Teresa asked, ‘Are we celebrating something?’

  ‘A birthday!’ he cried. ‘I’m too much of a gentleman to reveal the age, naturally.’

  Agata bent over her present, creased with laughter, hiding her mouth with her hand.

  ‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ she said.

  ‘As if!’ he retorted. ‘You should tell a few more people, though. You’re out here with the rest of us now. Not hidden in some cloister.’

  ‘I was an orphan! After that a sister.’ She watched as Falcone, then the rest of them, raised their glasses in a toast. ‘Birthdays were never so important. One year older. What does it matter?’

  ‘It matters,’ Teresa interjected, ‘because you get free food and drink, and presents. Or rather one present. Of course. .’ She glared at Falcone. This was why the cunning old fox had gone for a walk. ‘Had we known. .’

  He squirmed on his seat at the head of the table as Agata opened the velvet box. She found herself holding a very ornate gold necklace. One, Costa judged, a little too ostentatious for her taste.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she declared. ‘Thank you. You don’t need to do this, Leo.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Falcone replied. ‘I was your sponsor when you were a child in that orphanage. These ties come with duties. As does friendship.’

  He gestured at the waiters. They came out with more gifts: boxes of expensive chocolates from a fancy store in Via Condotti.

  ‘What exactly is going on?’ Teresa began, in a tone that was only just short of being cross.

  ‘It’s my way of saying sorry,’ Falcone said quickly. ‘To all of you. I’ve behaved badly of late and I know it. I took my anger out on the people around me. That was wrong. I want to apologize. Come on.’ He pointed a lean index finger at the menu. ‘Pick the best they have. Lamb and artichokes. Wonderful. Beef with citron. Fish. Nic, they’ll cook anything a vegetarian can want.’

  Peroni was staring at Costa from the other side of the table, a meaningful and deeply suspicious expression clouding his customarily friendly face. They all knew Falcone well by now.

  ‘This is very kind of you,’ the big cop said in clipped, measured tones. ‘Given that we’re in the middle of a rather nasty murder investigation.’

  ‘Happy birthday to me!’ Agata announced with a touch of despair, raising her glass to them. ‘Why did I end up with police officers for friends?’

  ‘Because you were lucky,’ Falcone told her. ‘Who better to help you find your way into the real world?’

  ‘Who indeed?’ she murmured. Agata looked almost as doubtful about this impromptu party as Peroni did.

  ‘Tell us about work,’ Costa said quickly, trying to change the conversation. ‘Yours. How is the college? Your students?’

  ‘My students,’ she said, laughing. ‘Is that what they are? Most are just children and don’t know it. Children with parents who’ve more money than sense and think that, by sending their offspring to Bella Italia, they will come back transformed. Adults. Civilized. Made into the human beings they should be, by strangers like me.’

  No one said anything. The mood, her mood, seemed terribly fragile.

  ‘Being a teacher’s never easy,’ Teresa suggested.

  ‘I imagine not,’ Agata replied. ‘But the truth is, I don’t like some of them. They’re coarse. They come late into class in the morning. Hung over. You can see the alcohol in their eyes. The drugs. The lazy licentiousness. That’s their response to being given their freedom. To throw it away in some bar in the Campo.’

  ‘Drugs?’ Costa asked.

  ‘The other teachers talk about it as if it were nothing. I’m sorry.’

  ‘And the director? Bruno? He knows?’

  She put down her glass and toyed with the beautiful necklace.

  ‘This is my night, isn’t it?’ Agata Graziano asked.

  ‘Every second of it,’
Falcone declared with a theatrical flourish.

  ‘Then let’s not talk about the Collegio Raffello. It’s. . boring. I have to go to some convention on Sunday evening. Four nights. I didn’t expect this. Milan.’ Her dark face became still and thoughtful. ‘With Bruno.’

  ‘Milan has its beautiful parts,’ Peroni suggested.

  ‘No,’ Agata insisted. ‘Enough. Tell me something. The truth, now. I have to ask, since it’s in all the papers. On the TV. This awful story has my students, such as they are, more enthralled than any old paintings I can throw at them. . The Gabriel family. Well?’

  Falcone smiled at her very pleasantly and asked, ‘Well what?’

  ‘When will it come to an end, Leo? When can I open a newspaper or turn on the TV and not see that poor girl’s face staring back at me? Soon, please. Tell me that.’

  ‘Soon,’ he agreed. ‘Tomorrow, in fact.’

  They all stopped and looked at him.

  ‘Yes,’ he went on. ‘Tomorrow. I’ve decided. This has gone far enough. I shall file my report to the commissario. It will say no more than the obvious. Malise Gabriel was the monster the papers have been painting him to be. He was murdered, with some guile, by the son, who also killed the American woman. Perhaps because she was involved somehow. Or she found out. We’ll never know. Only the dead could tell us that. The brother himself was murdered by this unknown Italian drugs outfit we learned about today from the Turks, as was his crooked policeman friend. This is not unrelated. Had he not killed his father and brought such publicity on himself. .’

  A thought crossed Falcone’s mind, one he kept to himself.

  ‘That side of the case I shall pass to another inspector who can attach himself to narcotics in order to pursue it fully. I’ve seen enough of this tragedy, as I’m sure have you. So.’ He chinked his glass with Agata’s. ‘Consider it done with. Despatched, all neat and tidy.’

  ‘And Mina?’ she asked. ‘Her mother?’

  He paused for a moment.

  ‘I shall say that, while we have plenty of evidence to suggest both of them had good reason to fear and hate Malise Gabriel, there’s no evidence to implicate them in his death, or that of anyone else. The case will be closed.’