The Fallen Angel

by David Hewson

  Mina smiled at him and he wondered if she felt he was prying.

  ‘Do you want the truth? Or a nice, polite answer?’

  He smiled and said, ‘The truth, please.’

  ‘They hated one another. Daddy was supposed to edit some papers about science and religion. Put his name to something he didn’t believe for one moment. Just like Galileo.’ She glanced in the direction of the Tempietto. ‘One more martyr in Rome. We may have been broke but you couldn’t buy his principles. What else did he have left?’

  ‘He had his family,’ Costa said.

  ‘Suppose so,’ she said, then picked up her helmet and tripped off to the church without looking back.

  It was a compact, quiet place. Two people, a middle-aged man and an elderly woman, were on their knees in the shaft of light that illuminated the nave, praying. Mina came close to Costa and whispered, pointing with her right hand, ‘They never marked Beatrice’s grave. Some people say it was beneath the altar. Others in the chapel there.’ He caught the brief sign of an impatient expression on her young face. ‘I can’t believe they hated Beatrice so much they’d deny her that. Then the French came.’

  By the time Napoleon invaded, the Cenci story was part of Roman folklore. It was this that attracted the marauding soldiers to Montorio, and an orgy of destruction that, rumour had it, saw her remains disinterred then scattered across the hill where imperial Rome once crucified those it regarded as criminals.

  Mina sat down on a bench and stared at the altar. Costa joined her. They stayed there for a few minutes in silence. Then, without another word, she got up and marched outside, crossed the forecourt and climbed onto the perimeter wall overlooking the hill, perching there like any other teenager, hands round her knees, helmet strap gathered round her wrist, gazing at the view: the historical heart of the city stretching in front of them like a magical panorama with the ragged crown of the Sabine Hills beyond.

  He thought it best to leave her alone for a few minutes. Costa went and peered at Bramante’s Tempietto through the cloister’s bars. It resembled a monument that had escaped from Ancient Rome only to find itself locked in a beautiful prison for some reason. Finally he walked over to the wall and saw, as he reached her, that she was crying.

  The tears ran in two vertical streaks down each cheek, bright and viscous. After a little while she sniffed then wiped them away with a scrunched-up tissue dragged out of her jeans pocket.

  ‘Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea,’ he said. ‘I can run you home.’

  ‘I’m not crying for Beatrice,’ she spat at him with a sudden, childish petulance. ‘She’s been dead for four centuries.’

  ‘Of course not. If you want me to go . . .’

  ‘I didn’t say that, did I?’

  ‘No. If you want to talk about anything . . .’

  She stared at him with cold, glassy eyes.

  ‘That’s why you came, isn’t it? To interrogate me?’

  He hitched himself up onto the wall, sat a little way along from her and said, with a shrug and a wry smile, ‘Actually I came because you asked me. I nearly said no.’

  Her head went to the city again. She was silent for a while then she murmured, ‘I’m sorry for being hateful. It happens sometimes. Mina, the perfect child. Not so perfect really.’

  ‘I meant it. If you want to talk, fine. If not . . .’

  ‘I don’t.’

  He waited. For all the knowledge that Malise and Cecilia had crammed into this bright and unusual girl, for all her skill with words and languages, she was still a teenager. Sullen and joyful in turn, unpredictable, uncertain of herself and the world around her. Grieving inwardly for a father whose death she, perhaps, failed to understand too.

  ‘Somewhere there,’ she said finally. Her arm was sweeping the glorious panorama in front of them. ‘In that dip to the right of the Vittorio Emanuele monument . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  She wouldn’t look at him. She was uncertain of saying this somehow.

  ‘There’s another church, Santa Francesca Romana. Next to the Forum. It’s white. Pretty brick campanile. Somewhere behind the Palatine, close to the Colosseum. You know it?’

  ‘There are so many churches in Rome,’ he said, trying to recall that section of Mussolini’s broad and insensitive highway cutting through the core of the imperial city. Then it came: a small, elegant building perched on a ridge next to the fence marking off the Forum, and a memory of traffic jams in spring.

  ‘You mean the car drivers’ church?’ he said, remembering. Santa Francesca was the patron saint of motorists. On her feast day in March hundreds would converge on the area to have their vehicles blessed.

  She stared at him, full of doubt. Costa explained.

  ‘I suppose that’s the place,’ she said, listening to his description. ‘Daddy told me a story. About Simon Magus, the wizard, and St Peter. It’s as true as anything else.’

  She clasped her hands, fingers gripping one another tightly. Telling stories helped her somehow.

  ‘Nero,’ Mina Gabriel began, ‘was the emperor and ordered a debate, a contest of miracles, a trial of the powers of Peter and the wizard. Simon called on his masters and flew. Levitated.’ She gestured with her hands. ‘Right in front of everyone. The emperor. The people, thousands of them, because they’d come to see. It was magic, wasn’t it? Everyone wants to believe in magic. So Simon flew.’ Her hands unclasped, her fingers rose to the blue summer sky. ‘High up. Like a bird. Like an angel.’

  Her eyes went back to the distant line of steeples and towers.

  ‘Peter’s miracle was to kneel down and pray to God to bring the magic to an end. It wasn’t God’s magic, you see. It was someone else’s and that was not allowed. So Simon fell to earth, died on the stones in front of Nero. Broken. Gone.’

  Tears again. He waited. The tissue came out. She coughed, struggling to regain her composure. Then she gestured towards the city.

  ‘In Santa Francesca Romana, on the right, next to the main altar, there’s a stone with some hollows on it. They say they’re the marks that Peter’s knees made as he prayed to God, with such force he could move rocks, kill a man, do anything. This was God’s magic, wasn’t it? Nero was furious. He had Peter crucified.’ She nodded towards Bramante’s Tempietto. ‘Perhaps here. Who knows? But you see the point?’

  The story was new to him yet it seemed so Roman, so cruelly apposite.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  Mina’s round, liquid eyes, too sad, too worldly for someone of her age, held him. Costa felt he was being slow.

  ‘If you believe this story,’ she went on, ‘Peter wasn’t crucified for being a Christian. He was tried for murder. His prayers sent Simon crashing to his death. He killed someone because they were different. And now . . .’

  Her gaze strayed towards the Vatican, hidden by the hill.

  ‘. . . look where he is.’

  ‘Rome’s full of stories,’ Costa told her. ‘Full of beauty and barbarity too. That’s what we are. A kind of magnifying glass for humanity. All the best parts, all the worst, out there in the light of day for everyone to see. Not so much of the barbarity any more, though. Usually, anyway.’

  ‘Daddy told me that story. He said it comes from the Acts of Peter. They’re apocryphal but it’s the same source that says Peter was crucified upside down. If you believe that . . . and most of the world does.’

  She closed her eyes, remembering something, then, in a pure soprano, sang out loud the foreign words . . .

  ‘The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended

  The darkness falls at thy behest.’

  Mina watched him, her eyes dark with some inner fury.

  ‘At thy behest,’ she said, back in Italian again. ‘All Peter did was pray. He didn’t murder Simon Magus. God did.’

  Mina Gabriel wiped away her shining tears, snatched up the helmet and pulled it down over her golden hair.

  ‘There’s one place left,’ she said.

  FIVE

>   Bernard Santacroce was about fifty years old, perhaps a little more, shortish, fit and handsome in an expensive dark suit, pale pink shirt and grey tie. He had a full head of reddish hair and the tanned, unlined face of a banker or a surgeon, knowledgeable, confident, content with himself. The man sat behind a vast wooden desk, polished until it looked like a mirror, in a study at the summit of the tower that was the Casina delle Civette. Beyond the window stood two majestic palm trees, feathery fronds swaying in the light breeze. There was a glorious view down to the garden, and across the river to the Vatican. Peroni had never been anywhere so solitary and peaceful in the centre of Rome. The tower was magnificent and unique, one reason, perhaps, why Santacroce looked so pleased with himself as Cecilia Gabriel led them in.

  Falcone’s cheek had lost a little of its colour. The heat was still inside him, though. Whether she knew it or not, the Gabriel woman had guaranteed that he would not turn aside from what she presumably believed was merely a tentative inquiry into a death in suspicious circumstances. He had his pride too.

  Santacroce waited for her to leave then bade them sit down.

  ‘I don’t need to be a genius to understand what this is about,’ he said ruefully. ‘It’s Malise, isn’t it?’

  ‘Some simple questions, sir,’ Falcone replied.

  ‘Nothing was simple with that man, unfortunately. Odd really. He was constantly telling me God was dead. Now God says the same of Malise. One wonders who to believe.’

  Peroni took his chair and engaged Falcone with a raised eyebrow, nothing more.

  ‘Mind you, I’m a Catholic. So I won’t have to wonder for long,’ Santacroce added with a smile. ‘And an Oxford man. Fortunate to have acquired all this . . .’ He swept his arm around the room. ‘. . . as well as the palazzetto, which furnishes both a home and an income. I imagine it was inevitable that Malise, being a vitriolic atheist, of Cambridge, and now dirt poor, would despise the likes of me. Though given the generosity I showed him and his family, it still seems a touch ungrateful. I’m sorry he’s dead, Inspector, but I’m afraid I’m rather too old and comfortable to pretend I much care. Cecilia and Mina deserved rather better than he gave them but please keep that to yourselves. They’re both rather tender at the moment.’

  Falcone made a few scribbles in his notebook then asked, ‘Where were you exactly around midnight on Friday?’

  Santacroce stiffened, as if astonished by the question, placed his chin on his hands and stared across the desk, like a professor considering some weighty problem.

  ‘Why on earth would you want to know that?’

  ‘I’m trying to understand the precise circumstances of Malise Gabriel’s death,’ Falcone said. ‘It’s important we establish the whereabouts of those who knew him.’

  The man toyed with a well-chewed fingernail, watching them, then pointed back to the main building.

  ‘I was in my apartment. Alone. From the close of play here, around six o’clock, until early the next morning when Cecilia phoned me with the terrible news. I immediately agreed that she and Mina could come and stay in their old apartment in the Casina. They were not the reason I asked them to leave in the first place.’

  ‘The son? Robert?’ Peroni asked.

  ‘Never met him. He arrived in Rome, from London I think, after they moved into Joanne Van Doren’s place.’

  Santacroce’s bland face creased in a frown.

  ‘I must confess I don’t understand the reason for these questions. Malise’s death was a shocking accident. Why the interest?’

  They didn’t respond. Falcone pushed, instead, for information on Gabriel’s recruitment to the small academic institution which Santacroce headed. This was obviously a subject the man enjoyed; it allowed him to display his knowledge and magnanimity, and to boast about an organization which one of his own ancestors had created four centuries before, and he himself had revived after a successful career in the City of London.

  Peroni listened and made notes, realizing that in such circles he was hopelessly out of his depth. The Confraternita delle Civette, as far as he understood it, was a self-elected brotherhood of scientists from around the world whose primary function was to pat each other on the back and hold the odd meeting in exotic locations. Its stated purpose was to promote the importance of science, and the role of Italy and Rome in the field particularly. There was no budget for actual research, no formal set of focused principles. From time to time the organization would publish papers by its members, but these would normally be philosophical works on the nature of science itself, not academic reports. It was, it seemed to the old cop, a rather intellectual and upper-class dining club, one paid for through Santa-croce’s generosity and bequests from members over the years, with a small staff and, latterly, Malise Gabriel to handle the lazy flow of publications that emerged from the Confraternita and its members.

  ‘Was he good at his job?’ Peroni asked.

  The man behind the desk stared out of the window for a good ten seconds before answering.

  ‘Malise was a very capable man. He had a fixed idea of his role. It did not always coincide with mine. Since I was his employer, my opinion was bound to prevail.’

  ‘What was he working on?’ Peroni asked.

  ‘Most recently? Principally a paper of mine. Preparing it for publication. Checking facts. Establishing arguments. Proofreading.’

  They waited.

  ‘About what?’ Falcone asked when Santacroce said no more.

  ‘Inspector. Do not take this the wrong way. These are very specialized intellectual issues. I really don’t have the time to try to explain them to people who, through no particular fault of their own, cannot possibly understand them.’

  ‘Such as . . .’ Falcone began.

  ‘Such as non-overlapping magisteria. I’m sure you take my—’

  ‘Malise Gabriel wrote about them in that book of his,’ Peroni said. ‘He thought they were a bad thing. How about you?’

  There was a sour smile on Santacroce’s face. He didn’t like being caught out.

  ‘I think there’s room for us all to get along. Church and science. Provided we keep our noses out of each other’s business.’ He leaned forward. ‘Which is, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, a poor and clumsy summary of what non-overlapping magisteria actually means.’

  Peroni nodded and caught Falcone’s eye.

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘you wrote a paper saying this and asked Malise Gabriel to edit it, even though he believed the exact opposite? Wouldn’t that have been a bit demeaning in the circumstances? Though very welcome for you.’

  Santacroce stared at the large grandfather clock by the wall. It was next to an impressive painting of a bearded man standing defiantly in front of three angry-looking clerics, a dramatic scene, full of motion and imminent danger.

  ‘Is this really relevant?’ Bernard Santacroce asked eventually.

  ‘Probably not,’ Falcone replied. ‘But send us the draft of your paper, please. We have a colleague who is very interested in these matters. I’m sure she’d be delighted to read it.’

  ‘How did Gabriel get on with his wife?’ Peroni asked.

  ‘I really think that’s a question for her, officer.’

  ‘In time. Right now I’m asking you.’

  The smile and apparent good nature that had greeted them were gone.

  ‘There’s a word in English,’ Santacroce said. ‘Uxorious. You don’t have a direct equivalent in Italian, which is odd since the derivation is Latin, of course. I suppose the closest translation would be along the lines of “sottomesso alla moglie”, though it’s not quite the same. Malise was uxorious in the sense that he was utterly devoted to her, and to his family, to the extent that he was almost beneath their thumb. Not literally. He could shout and rant for England when he chose. Nevertheless he was consumed by a fear that he would somehow fail them. Understandable really. He’d done it often enough in the past. The idea that he might stumble one last time – and, trust me, this was hi
s final chance of any gainful academic employment – made him a little weak, to be frank. Call me old-fashioned but I believe a man should be the head of his family in all matters. Had he fulfilled that role, perhaps his unfortunate son wouldn’t now be running round Rome in the company of drug dealers.’

  Santacroce picked up a pen and made a note to himself on a pad on the desk.

  ‘Let me be candid with you. I’m no fool. I’ve no illusions about my own talents. Without . . .’ A glance around the room. ‘. . . all this I’d be nothing. A middling degree from Oxford gets you nowhere. Malise was a genius of a kind. A somewhat diverted one, but a genius nonetheless. Had he kept good counsel and his hands to himself, he’d probably be master of a college by now. Instead he was little more than an itinerant and very intelligent beggar dependent upon the mercy of lesser men like me. He had no discipline. No sense of politics. His emotions got the better of him and he, and his family, suffered the consequences. I did my best to help and found myself threatened as a result. They had to go. There was no option. How Cecilia coped with him . . .’ For the briefest of moments he appeared almost regretful. ‘. . . I really can’t begin to imagine.’

  ‘Was he violent towards her?’ Peroni wanted to know.

  ‘I’ve no idea. Nor do I wish to know. Ask her. I will send you this paper of mine provided you agree to keep it private. It’s not yet ready for publication. Malise never finished the task I gave him. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?’

  Falcone put away his notebook.

  ‘You can direct us to the office Gabriel used when he worked here. We’d like to look around.’

  ‘The ground floor,’ Santacroce said. ‘Where you came in. They were the servants’ quarters originally. It was the only place I could put him.’

  Peroni stood up and eyed the large canvas next to the grandfather clock.

  ‘It’s Galileo, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘When they called him to the Inquisition?’

  Santacroce nodded.

  ‘What cultured policemen we have these days. It’s a little over-dramatic for my taste but there you go. Galileo Galilei was a greatly misunderstood man. He was much more than a scientist. A philosopher too. Without him mathematics, astronomy, physics . . . none would have been the same, perhaps for centuries.’