She looked tired. Her guileless brown eyes were pink and watery, her young, intelligent face drawn. She’d tied back her hair into a simple ponytail so that she now looked much younger than he recalled. With the music case slung over her shoulder like a satchel she could have been one more Roman schoolgirl.
Head cocked to one side, a little wary, she looked at him and said, ‘Yes?’
‘Nic Costa. I was the police officer. The other night. . Your father. I wish I could have done more.’
She thought for a moment and asked, ‘The man in the street? You carried him across the road?’
‘The man in the street.’
The girl nodded.
‘You carried me too. When I wouldn’t get out of the way. I’m sorry if I behaved badly.’
‘You’ve nothing to apologize for.’
She looked around, as if trying to work out whether he was alone. He couldn’t help but notice there were scratches on her hands. Old ones, the blood dark red.
‘Are you here to interview me?’
‘No, no. I was just passing. I’m on holiday at the moment. I saw you. I wanted to say. . to offer my condolences.’
‘Everyone’s so kind here,’ she said, staring at him, her eyes very steady and focused. ‘Even though they don’t know us. The women at the sanctuary. The people at the church.’ She held up her music bag. ‘They’re going to let me play there. In front of the public. At five o’clock.’
‘Are you sure you want to do that?’
‘Why not?’ she replied with a shrug. ‘I can’t sit at home all the time, thinking about what happened, wondering if I could have changed something. My brother’s still out there somewhere, I don’t know where. Mummy’s talking to Uncle Simon about organizing a funeral in Berkshire. Not that that’s going to be an easy conversation. He hated Daddy.’
‘Why would your father’s brother hate him?’
She shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know. We’ve never met Simon. I just hear what goes on. He’s a banker in London. Filthy rich and materialistic. Nothing matters to him except money. Exact opposite to us. It doesn’t matter. Mummy wants to deal with all that. I can’t sit around moping. Daddy wouldn’t. He was always doing something.’
She had forty minutes before the appointment in the nearby church of Aracoeli.
‘Would you like a coffee? We can talk if you want.’
Mina Gabriel stared at him more intently, and he was aware of being judged, perhaps by a child, perhaps by someone with an older, more informed intelligence.
‘A Coke would be nice,’ she answered. ‘It’s so hot here in August. I never expected it to be like this. None of us did.’
‘It’s hot,’ he agreed. ‘A Coke. An ice cream if you like.’
She smiled and said, ‘Just a Coke, thanks. I’m not a kid.’
They began to walk towards the piazza.
‘Your hands,’ Costa said. They were fine and slim, with long, musician’s fingers. The scratches extended from the knuckle almost to the wrist on her right. ‘You’ve hurt yourself. Can you play?’
‘Cats,’ she replied. ‘Horrible little things, sometimes. Ungrateful. It’s nothing. I can play.’
TWO
He let her do the talking. About her father, about life in a family led by an academic gypsy, moving from post to post, in America, Canada, the UK and Australia, never staying anywhere long. Costa didn’t ask why they never settled down. As he listened to her chatting, noting the way the conversation came round to Malise Gabriel with almost every turn, the answer seemed to become obvious. It had to do with his obdurate, independent character, the way the man would always stand up for what he believed in, whatever the cost. Mina simply called them ‘the arguments’.
Then came Rome.
‘This was supposed to be the last place,’ she said. ‘Somewhere we settled down. We had connections. Daddy’s maternal grandmother was Italian. She was called Mina too. I’m sort of named after her. In Italian it’s short for Wilhelmina. Daddy put Minerva on my birth certificate. The goddess of wisdom. Don’t ask me why. There’s no one in the family left here, I don’t think. It was supposed to be a good move for Daddy, not working inside a university ever again. Just some little academic institution. Fewer people to fall out with.’
‘What did he do?’ he asked.
‘Write. Talk. Edit academic papers.’ She picked at a discarded napkin on the counter. ‘I think it was beneath him, really. But he had to do it. There was nowhere left to go, really. We had to live.’
‘I talked to Joanne Van Doren,’ he said.
‘I thought you said you were on holiday?’
‘I am. But I was a witness. I had to be involved a little.’
He didn’t like lying to her, and he wasn’t sure it had worked.
‘Joanne’s very kind. She bought me some musical stuff we couldn’t afford.’
‘She said you did a lot of research about Beatrice Cenci.’
‘You know Beatrice?’ Her face lit up for the first time.
‘I was born here. It’s one of those Roman stories you pick up if you read a lot of books. But foreigners. .’
‘How could I not know? We were almost opposite the palace where she lived. The street. The name of the
‘No.’
‘We had a plan. When Joanne had the apartments ready she’d use the Beatrice connection to sell them. Not that the building had anything to do with her, but. . Business, I suppose.’
‘What did your father think?’
She looked briefly guilty.
‘I never told him. He’d have been cross. He hated business. “Filthy lucre”, he called it. We were an academic family. We were supposed to be above that.’ She glanced at him. ‘Joanne would have paid me. There’s nothing wrong in that, is there?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, and this seemed to reassure her. ‘What would you have done?’
‘The Beatrice tour. All the places in Rome that were connected to her. The Barberini. Montorio.’ Her face grew serious. ‘A few others too. You’re a Roman. You must know.’
‘I don’t actually.’
He remembered how he’d held back from visiting the sites when he was younger, which was against his nature. He loved his native city. Normally he wanted to know the history of every last corner, every brick and cobble. But with Beatrice Cenci, the interest seemed prurient, wrong somehow.
‘Is your mother coping? Does she need help?’
The girl scowled.
‘How would I know? Mummy thinks I’m a child. I need to be protected from all that. There’s no point in arguing. We’re not a. . conventional family. Also. .’ There was a subtle though noticeable change in her expression, a coolness he had not seen before. ‘She’s got Bernard to help her. She doesn’t need me.’
‘Bernard?’
‘Bernard Santacroce. He runs the organization Daddy worked for. Filthy rich. Our benefactor. He gave Daddy the job in the first place. I imagine we’re dependent on his generosity now.’
‘He’s Roman?’
She frowned.
‘Bernard’s English really. Of Italian stock, as he puts it. He claims he’s one of the old Santacroces. They hated the Cenci. He bought the palazzetto off a relative, I think, and got the Brotherhood of the Owls running again. It had fallen apart a bit.’ She wriggled upright on her little stool in the cafe, looking like a schoolgirl who’d found the right answer. ‘The Santacroce claimed they were descended from Valerius Publicola, one of the original founders of the
