The Fallen Angel

‘I’d have to say no on both fronts. How do you know he was reading that chapter?’

‘Bookmark,’ Peroni replied, and showed him the page.

There was what looked like a postcard in it with a line in Italian, the script in a cursive, elegant hand, ‘E pur si muove.’

Peroni stared at the words in front of him.

‘Now I’m an uncultured oaf. But the way I’d spell that is “eppure si muove”. Maybe these foreign academics aren’t as clever as they think. Funny thing to write on a bookmark, though. “And yet it moves”. What moves?’

‘No idea,’ Costa said. He picked up the bookmark, stared at it, thinking about the words. Then he turned it over, saw what was on the back, and felt his heart sink.

‘That’s unusual,’ Peroni said, his broad, pale face wrinkling with puzzlement.

This wasn’t a real postcard but a black and white photo from a domestic printer. It showed a naked girl writhing on an off-white crumpled sheet, her slight frame posed artfully, the way a sculptor might have placed it. There was a visible stain next to her thigh. Her willowy body was that of a teenager, with pale, perfect skin, thin legs crossed and turned, so that the lens saw only her thighs and a side view of her navel, nothing else. It was if she was struggling to hide. As if some inner sense of shame or shyness wished to protest, to say that what was happening felt wrong.

The picture was cut off at her neck — decapitated, he thought for a moment. In the topmost portion of the image two taut sinews stretched up towards the smooth white skin of her throat, as if extended by pain or guilt. There was a tantalizing lock of hair in shadow cast by a light or an object out of view. It was light hair, fair or blonde perhaps.

‘Is that the daughter?’ Peroni asked.

‘It could be.’

‘Could be?’

‘Yes,’ he said with audible impatience. ‘Could be.’

The American woman had stopped talking to her workmen. She was watching them and Costa didn’t like the curiosity in her face.

‘Let’s talk about this outside,’ he suggested.

SEVEN

It was a brief conversation. The narrow street was empty, with barricades at both ends and pedestrians allowed through only down a narrow route on the far side. Costa looked up at the scaffolding and the broken balcony, understanding the form of the building better than he had before. The place looked different in the bright light of day. More ordinary. More unremarkable.

They talked briefly about what they’d seen and the options.

‘I’ll call Leo and get things started,’ Costa said, reaching for his phone.

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. We didn’t agree to that.’

He bridled.

‘May I remind you I’m the senior officer here?’

Peroni beamed, placed a huge hand round Costa’s shoulders and squeezed.

‘By all means. When you’re on duty. But you’re not, are you? Right now you’re nothing more or less than my dear friend, Nic, casting around for something to do. If this is going to turn formal it’s best it’s kicked off by a working police officer, not someone who’s just got nosy all of a sudden. And if it turns out to be a wild goose chase and we find ourselves accused of picking on some unfortunate grieving family. .’

‘I don’t need protecting, thank you,’ Costa protested, though he found himself talking to the big cop’s retreating back.

There was nothing to do but wait. Wait and look at the building, grey and grim, like some empty shell of a fortress. He couldn’t shake from his head the photo Peroni had found, the bookmark for the chapter Malise Gabriel was reading before he tumbled to his death just a few steps away, to a street now swept and washed clean by the city workers struggling to reopen it to the public.

Costa wondered what bothered him most. The evidence that was already being lost under the feet of the building inspectors. Or the pale, thin body in the photo.

Peroni came back, his face devoid of expression.

‘Something has to happen,’ Costa said, assuming the worst.

‘Tomorrow we’ll talk to the mother and the girl. Teresa will look at the body. We’ll quietly examine what we’ve got to see if a more formal investigation is justified. Leo doesn’t want to rush into anything and I agree with him.’

‘And today?’

‘Today we’re going to have dinner together.’ Peroni brightened. ‘I get to choose the place.’

‘Dinner? We’re going to discuss a potential investigation in a restaurant?’

‘No. We’re going to discuss. . what was the phrase in that book? “Non-overlapping magisteria”. Or rather Malise Gabriel, who’s rather more interesting than I assumed. Sora Margherita in the Piazza delle Cinque Scole at eight o’clock.’ He pointed up the street. ‘It’s just round the corner.’

‘I know where Cinque Scole is.’

‘Good. It’ll be Leo, me and Teresa, who may still be a little bad-tempered what with this heat and our non- existent air conditioning. I’ve warned you so don’t get snappy with her.’ Peroni glanced at his watch. ‘I’d best be off. Got to check something at the Questura.’

He peered at Costa then pulled two plastic evidence bags out of his jacket.

‘The book and the postcard please.’

Costa handed them over without protest.

After a few steps he turned, remembering something.

‘Oh yes,’ he said, walking slowly backwards. ‘Agata’s going to be there this evening too. Best go home and change into something decent. You look as if you slept in that suit. In a garage.’

PART THREE ONE

He didn’t go home. Costa bought a bottle of mineral water and wandered the ghetto, renewing his memories of an area he’d had little reason to visit professionally over the past few years. Then he walked into the open space of Largo Torre Argentina, a chaotic, semi-excavated pile of temples and imperial-era buildings next to a line of busy bus and tram stops. This was one place he did know well. He recalled the day he’d taken his late wife there and pointed out the columns of Pompey’s Theatre near the tram stops where Julius Caesar was assassinated. Nothing marked the location of this momentous murder. In the modern world the area, which was once as important as the Forum itself, was best known to many for the cat sanctuary that resided between the pillars and shattered headstones through which emperors once walked.

He was leaning on the railing, staring down into the walled-off area of the refuge when he saw her. Mina Gabriel was there in a T-shirt and jeans, crouching down feeding three strays near the furthest wall, close to the columns associated with Caesar. Two women in their thirties were talking to her, with grave and sympathetic faces. The girl got up, turned, smiled briefly, kissed them both, smiling gently, and said something that looked like ‘grazie’. Then she came back to the entrance, picked up a leather music case and began to walk up the steps to the street level.

Costa strode quickly over and met her.

‘Mina?’