by David Hewson
‘Like what then?’
‘Friends,’ he said after a while. Then he drained his coffee. ‘Are we finished here? I have patients to see.’
Negri had been at La Sapienza the year the then-Cardinal Ratzinger had visited. He was as incensed as everyone else about the statements that had been made, the implication that somehow a scientist like Galileo had deserved his treatment at the hands of the Vatican.
‘Did he talk to you about his work? At the Confraternity of the Owls? About his attitude towards that?’
‘Of course. I read his book. Didn’t we all? I think this job he had troubled him. There was something he was being asked to do . . .’
‘He was being ordered to add his reputation to a paper that said Ratzinger had a point. I read it last night. Bernard Santacroce wanted Gabriel’s name on the front page. As joint author, not just editor.’
Negri frowned. He seemed genuinely sorry.
‘I rather thought it must have been something like that. The work upset him. He obviously needed the money. I don’t think they had anything else. All the same I can’t imagine Malise would have gone along with it.’
‘“E pur si muove”,’ she murmured.
‘What’s Galileo got to do with this?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps Malise Gabriel empathized with him. Believed he was being persecuted in a similar fashion.’
A short, dry burst of laughter.
‘And his daughter thought she was that poor, sad girl from the ghetto,’ he scoffed. ‘Or so the news would have us believe.’
‘How did she feel about his illness?’
The oncologist shook his head.
‘I doubt she understood how bad it was. Malise didn’t want anyone to know the seriousness of his condition. He was adamant about that. He seemed to care about them deeply, I must say.’
‘Would he still be interested in sex?’
He thought for a moment and said, ‘Yes. We had that conversation. The condition may affect libido, of course. And the medication. But if the desire’s there . . .’ He sighed. ‘Malise was determined, as much as possible, that he would lead a normal life until the end. The daughter was under the impression he came to me for routine checkups for a condition that was in remission. Work apart, he seemed cheerful, full of life. Active in every way as far as I could see.’
Negri recalled something.
‘One thing. He never mentioned the son. In fact I didn’t know there was a son until I heard the news. That surprised me.’
‘You’d be amazed what goes on inside families, Adriano.’
‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘I wouldn’t.’ The handsome oncologist looked lost briefly. ‘Or what happened inside Malise Gabriel either. There was something . . . dark there. I can’t put it any other way. I wanted to help the man. I admired him. His courage. His determination. But . . .’
He stopped and she had to prod him.
‘But what?’
Adriano Negri’s eyes met hers and she realized, for the first time, that there was a bleak, intense sadness in them. At that moment Teresa Lupo remembered why she’d never accepted any of his advances. He was intelligent, charming, a decent, respectable man. But unlikeable too, detached from his own emotions and those of others. The very opposite of Gianni Peroni.
‘I was always glad when he left.’ He pushed away the coffee cup and the plate with the Jewish pizza on it. ‘I never really knew why. It was something to do with his presence. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I think so,’ she said.
SIX
Costa pulled up close to the Palazzetto Santacroce and saw the nose of Falcone’s sleek Lancia saloon poking out from a nearby alley. There was a bad-tempered crowd of photographers, TV crew and hacks outside the arched entrance to the building and a few uniformed cops to hold them back. He held the scooter tight as Peroni slowly got off the Vespa, grumbling all the time, then popped the machine onto its stand next to a line of bikes and other scooters.
Falcone wandered over, eyebrows raised, the faintest of smiles on his face as Peroni struggled to get the motorbike cop’s helmet off his head.
‘I decided to string along,’ he said. ‘What took you?’
‘Not easy getting in and out of the Questura,’ Costa said by way of explanation. ‘There’s some kind of demo outside. You heard?’
‘Oh yes.’ He flourished a large brown envelope in his hands and seemed strangely energized. ‘Not to worry. And the brother?’
Peroni stowed the helmet beneath his arm.
‘Narcotics are being less than helpful. He was an informer.’
Falcone thought about this for a moment, then led them through the crowd of hacks, refusing to answer a single question, or rise to their aggressive taunts, and went up to the caretaker’s window of the palace.
This was Costa’s first visit. The sunny open space beyond the confined entrance of the palace surprised him, as did the sight of the Casina delle Civette when they walked through into the garden beyond, with its geometric flower beds and the gaudy colours of late summer: red and yellow and blue.
He looked up at the windows of the castellated tower. A single face was there, pale and young and beautiful. Mina Gabriel awaiting their arrival.
She looked scared.
SEVEN
They sat in Bernard Santacroce’s study, beneath the picture of Galileo and his accusers, players in another inquisition, one that, to Costa, seemed as nebulous in its search for the truth as their own faltering inquiry into the deaths of Malise Gabriel and Joanne Van Doren. Mina’s eyes were pink with tears. Her mother said they’d heard about the death of the American woman on the TV, and the rumours about the police investigation. Cecilia Gabriel seemed passive, stoic, unmoved by anything but anger. Santacroce wore a benevolent, proprietorial gaze, the look of a reasonable man dragged into an awkward situation he’d rather avoid.
‘Are we accused of some kind of crime?’ Cecilia Gabriel demanded. ‘If so, what exactly? This nonsense on the news . . .’
‘I’m not responsible for the media, Signora,’ Falcone replied calmly. ‘Joanne Van Doren was murdered last night. Your son clearly knew she’d died and was in the vicinity. It would be rash of me not to regard him as our most viable suspect.’
‘That’s not true!’ Mina cried. She was wringing her hands constantly, eyes damp and darting around the room. ‘Joanne was our friend. Robert would never . . . never . . .’
Costa looked at her and said, ‘Mina. You spoke to him last night after you talked to me. That’s why he got in touch.’
‘I told him he could trust you!’ She cast a fierce glance at Falcone. ‘You’re not like . . . them.’
‘What did Robert say?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. He was upset. He wouldn’t tell me why. He sounded frightened. I—’
‘Your brother,’ Falcone interrupted, ‘may well have just murdered someone.’
‘No!’ Her voice was high-pitched, childlike. Cecilia Gabriel made not the slightest effort to comfort the girl next to her. Not a word. Not a touch. Instead Bernard Santacroce walked out from behind his desk, pulled up a chair and placed an arm briefly round her hunched shoulders.
‘Inspector,’ Santacroce said. ‘Is this your idea of how to treat the bereaved? Malise . . . Joanne . . . We were all close to them in one way or another. Have some decency, please.’
Falcone scowled.
‘It’s very difficult to talk about decency when we’re dealing with a murder, possibly two, sir. Signora Gabriel here was going to sue Joanne Van Doren. As to the relationship between the dead woman and Signora Gabriel’s husband—’
‘This is unacceptable,’ Santacroce cut in. ‘If you wish to proceed in such a fashion I will bring in a lawyer. At my own expense. Perhaps that would be for the best in any case.’
‘Do it now,’ Falcone agreed. ‘Then we can continue this interview at the Questura. Each of you in a separate room. If you’d prefer.’
‘Ask your damned questions,�
�� Cecilia Gabriel told him.
‘Where’s your son?’ the inspector demanded. ‘I need to speak to him and I must say I fail to understand why you show no apparent interest in his whereabouts. Where is he?’
The Englishwoman closed her eyes. For once she seemed affected by the subject. Mina had spoken a little about her mother the previous day, and Costa had read the skimpy reports in the Questura. Cecilia Gabriel was an only child in a fading and impoverished aristocratic English family. Her brief time as a student had shown great promise, but that had been removed by the needs of family. She seemed, to Costa’s eyes, worn yet a little fiery too, like some lean bird of prey backed into a corner, ready to fight if necessary.
The woman was not prepared to speak at that moment. It was left to Mina, who looked across the room, directly at Costa, and said, ‘Mum.’ She took her mother’s hand. ‘Tell them. You have to.’
‘It’s none of their business,’ Cecilia Gabriel muttered between gritted teeth. ‘Any of this.’ Her aquiline head came up. She glared at Falcone. ‘This is my family you’re talking about, Inspector. You will not crucify them.’
‘Your son, madam.’
‘Robert’s my son in name only,’ she said simply and left it at that. The room went quiet. From the look in Bernard Santacroce’s eyes it seemed this was a revelation to him too.
It was Peroni, typically, who broke the ice.
‘Signora Gabriel,’ he said. ‘We have to ask these questions in such circumstances. For your sake, for Robert’s sake. This is a criminal investigation. It’s important we know the truth, especially if the boy’s innocent. Try to see this from our point of view. If that’s the case, where is he? Why doesn’t he come forward?’
The approach, calm and unthreatening, appeared to have an effect. She relaxed a little and said, ‘I can’t tell you. All I know is that he’s frightened of something. These people he’s involved with. And . . .’ The briefest glimmer of regret crossed her angular features. ‘. . . I imagine I’m not the first person he’d choose to come to if he needed help.’
Mina wound her fingers in her mother’s and whispered something.
The woman breathed a deep sigh and continued.
‘Our son, our real son, died when he was two years old. A swimming pool accident. In France.’ Her eyes were misty, unfocused. ‘Things weren’t going well in Cambridge at that point. That book of Malise’s was too clever for our own good. The controversy. Then the scandal when I got pregnant. The baby was Robert. Our Robert. Then he was gone. Malise blamed himself. He took his eyes away from the pool for a moment. It was enough. We were on the point of falling apart. There were arguments. There always were. The college dismissed him. He found some work in Canada.’
‘I can’t imagine what it must be like,’ Peroni said honestly. ‘To lose a child. They talk about closure . . .’
‘Psychobabble. Claptrap,’ the Englishwoman muttered. ‘The death of your child’s an open wound, one that never heals. We were desperate. A little crazy, I think. So we adopted a little boy and, since we were of good, academic stock, the authorities didn’t really notice the state we were in, didn’t care that we changed his name to that of the son we’d lost.’ She looked at them. ‘Malise was always good at hiding his pain. Englishmen are, in case you haven’t noticed. Robert . . .’
The words drifted into silence.
‘Robert’s my brother,’ Mina said quietly. ‘And he’s still your son.’
The older woman patted her once on the back.
‘That’s true. But there was always a gap, some distance. I don’t know how but he knew it was there, almost from the beginning. He understood we wanted it to disappear, more than anything, though I don’t think we ever managed to convince him of that for some reason. Inspector.’ She glanced at Santacroce. ‘We’ve told people, you perhaps, that Robert was at college in England until he joined us here. That’s not strictly true. We tried to keep him at home. It was impossible. He’d run away. Get into fights. So we sent him to boarding school, not that we had the money. He was expelled from there when he was seventeen. As far as I know after that he lived in squats in London. Earning money God knows how, when he wasn’t begging off us. He came to Rome when Malise told him there was no more. Nothing left. He had the choice of living with us or . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Disappearing for good, I imagine. We didn’t want that. We wanted to be a family. But there was no more money. He tried. We all did.’
‘And his relationship with your husband?’ Falcone asked.
‘They adored one another,’ she replied immediately. ‘Sometimes it was impossible to believe Robert wasn’t really Malise’s son. They had the same temper. The same stupid enthusiasms, the same ridiculous, impetuous urges. And when they argued . . .’
Mina took her arm. The woman couldn’t go on.
‘You know the kind of people Robert mixed with?’ Costa asked.
She shook her head vigorously.
‘No. I didn’t want to know. They were criminals. Drugs were involved, I imagine. Not that Robert took them, as far as I knew. It was for the money. Nothing else.’
‘Is it possible Robert was in the apartment the night your husband died?’ Costa went on.
‘I told you!’ Mina cried. ‘I was there. Just the two of us. I saw Robert in the hall downstairs when I ran out to see Daddy. He was coming home. I think he was a bit drunk. Scared. He didn’t want to come with me into the street. He didn’t know anything.’
Costa shook his head.
‘You were in your music room. Someone could have arrived without your knowing. That’s possible, isn’t it?’
‘No!’ she insisted. ‘I wasn’t listening to music all the time. I heard Daddy screaming when he fell, didn’t I?’
‘Do you know why the media are pushing this story about Beatrice Cenci?’ Falcone asked the Englishwoman straight out.
‘Because you leaked it to them,’ Bernard Santacroce interrupted. ‘As a way of placing pressure on Cecilia, I imagine. It’s obvious, isn’t it? I have to say I find all this distasteful in the extreme.’
‘No,’ Costa told him. ‘We didn’t.’
He was puzzled by Santacroce’s intervention. It seemed misplaced.
‘Their interest – and I must confess I share it – stems from the fact your husband had sex shortly before he died,’ Falcone said without emotion. ‘The evidence is very clear. If your daughter insists no one else was in the house, the only possible conclusion—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Cecilia Gabriel shrieked at him.
Falcone glanced at Mina and retrieved a print from the envelope. It was the photograph from the book Gabriel had been reading the night he died.
‘We found this in your father’s book, Mina.’
She glanced at the print, at her mother, went white and shook her head.
Falcone, perhaps out of embarrassment, flipped the photo over and showed her the brief written message, Galileo’s whispered denial of his recantation in front of the Vatican’s Inquisition. A brief chill ran down Costa’s spine when he realized, from the history he’d been given, that the great man must once have been inside these very walls.
‘Do you know who wrote this?’ Falcone asked. ‘Do you recognize the writing?’
‘No.’
The curt, aggressive tone, that of a teenager, made him turn it over. She stared at the naked figure, head cut off by the print, turning as if to hide some shame.
‘Did your father ever make a sexual advance to you?’ Falcone went on.
‘Mummy told you about that photograph,’ she snapped. ‘Why don’t you believe her?’
‘Even if I do, the question still stands.’
‘Daddy loved me.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘I told you!’ Cecilia Gabriel interrupted. ‘That picture is me. This whole idea is ridiculous. Malise hadn’t felt well for some time. We didn’t . . . Not often.’
‘He had sex the night he died,’ Falcone insisted. ‘There’s no possi
bility of a mistake.’ He glanced at Mina. ‘If we’d been able to examine anyone he’d been with—’
‘Don’t be disgusting,’ Bernard Santacroce spat at him. ‘This conversation is at an end, Inspector. If you wish to talk to Cecilia and Mina again it will be in the presence of my lawyers.’
Falcone reached into the envelope again and took out a set of large black and white prints, fanning them across his lap.
Bernard Santacroce’s eyes grew wide. Cecilia Gabriel gaped at them and swore, an Anglo-Saxon curse, beneath her breath.
Mina closed her eyes for a moment then stared at the window. Costa found himself looking at the prints, wishing he didn’t have to. Malise Gabriel was there, painfully thin, hollow-eyed, anxious, writhing on the bed with Joanne Van Doren, struggling awkwardly to get into the kind of position one associated with cheap pornography, staring at the lens from time to time as if trying to understand something, puzzled, unhappy. The monochrome pictures were utterly joyless, bleak and without any feeling whatsoever.
‘There’s a photographic studio hidden in the basement of your apartment block,’ Falcone went on. ‘Did you know that?’
Cecilia was shaking her head, glancing at her daughter.
‘It is at least possible,’ Falcone went on, ‘that the person your husband slept with on the night of his death was Miss Van Doren, which rather destroys the story being put around by the media. From my point of view it does, of course, provide motive.’ He stared at her. ‘Where were you last night? After we left?’
The woman didn’t answer. Her eyes were locked on her daughter.
‘Mina?’ she murmured.
‘Mummy,’ the girl replied, looking out of the window at the palms swaying in the soft, hot breeze, a distant, cold tone in her voice.
Cecilia Gabriel flew at her daughter in a flurry of fists and nails. Costa was there in an instant, separating them, getting his arm round the girl, turning his back to the furious woman screeching at her own daughter in a voice full of hatred and pain.
When he turned Peroni was holding back Cecilia Gabriel whose eyes were bright with anger and tears.
