apologize. Take her out for a coffee.’
‘She’s busy.’
‘I’m persistent. I told you. It’s August. Drives you mad. And what happened at La Sapienza — it still gets to me after all these years.’
‘Do you have a case?’ Costa asked Falcone straight out.
The inspector smiled and patted him fondly on the shoulder.
‘Thanks for coming to dinner, Nic. You must excuse us. We’ve a busy day tomorrow. Enjoy your holiday. Any plans yourself?’
He thought about it and said, ‘Not really. I thought I might mess around with the Vespa. I can show you if you like. She’s round the corner.’
Falcone gazed at him in horror.
‘Quite. Sadly I have to go now,’ the inspector said. ‘Good evening.’
PART FOUR
ONE
There was a knack to bringing to life the little engine on the thirty-year-old Vespa. It involved depressing the kick-start halfway, hesitating a second before pumping hard twice, sometimes three times. Then he would wait for the pop-pop of the primitive ignition to kick in and light the fire that would despatch a brief blue-grey cloud of two- stroke smoke into the atmosphere. After that the machine would settle into a dyspeptic rumble, kept alive by blips on the throttle. This all required care. One pump too many and the carburettor filled with fuel, demanding a wait of up to five minutes, or, if he became impatient and tried again too soon, a messy strip-down.
All the same he loved the little beast and the sense of freedom it brought. On its worn plastic saddle, wearing a pair of thick-rimmed sunglasses, he could almost ignore the sweltering heat that was Rome. Costa had bought two brand-new helmets and, on this bright, humid Monday, picked out some old casual clothes — a polo shirt and some ancient jeans — for the trip into the city, weaving through the traffic with ease, making the journey in half the time it took by car.
Mina was in the refuge already, placing dishes of food on the ground near the shattered columns of Pompey’s Theatre, talking to the older women who ran the place.
He watched her, asking himself why he was doing this. Leo Falcone was intrigued by what had happened in the Via Beatrice Cenci in the early hours of the previous Saturday. That much was obvious from the sly way the inspector had been extracting opinions about Malise Gabriel the night before, exploring the background to the English academic who, twenty years ago, had been something of a brief and controversial sensation. If Falcone saw signs of a criminal act then a swift investigation would follow, even in the enervating heat of summer. But it occurred to Costa that Mina Gabriel would, perhaps, be the key, and there Falcone’s robust and conventional approach might fail. The solitary inspector was never at home in cases that involved family, children in particular. They depressed and embarrassed him, more than they did most officers. And Costa couldn’t shake from his mind the impression he’d gained in those first moments when he saw Mina Gabriel next to the shattered corpse of her father. The idea that she wanted to speak out, to reveal something that troubled her. Surrounded by strangers, with no one to talk to and Leo Falcone pressing for answers, she might be lost. Unless he established some bond, some measure of trust.
This strategy concerned him nevertheless. It was a dangerous trick to play with a witness who might turn into a suspect should it be proved that Malise Gabriel’s death was not the accident it seemed. He wondered what lawyers would make of his attempt to get close to a girl who had just turned seventeen, barely beyond the age at which she could be interviewed formally — and even then only in the presence of her mother.
‘There’s no case and I’m on holiday,’ Costa told himself as he sat on the scooter, waiting for her. ‘I can do what I like.’
Then step away should anything untoward emerge, he thought.
He was still trying to convince himself of this when she climbed up the steps and smiled at him, the two helmets in his hand, and then at the little machine, mostly turquoise paint, though with a modicum of rust and restorative plain grey primer, parked on its foot-stand by the pavement.
‘A scooter?’ Mina asked, wide-eyed.
Another cheap T-shirt, perhaps the same pair of jeans. Her long blonde hair hung loose over her shoulders. She looked like any of the thousands of foreign students who wandered Rome all year long. Perhaps prettier, more engaged than most though. Her eyes had an acuity he hadn’t noticed before. They were no longer touched by recent tears. The scratches on her hands were beginning to fade too.
With them, perhaps, evidence, he thought, and felt immediately guilty.
‘It was my father’s,’ he said without thinking.
She took the helmet from him.
‘What do I do?’
He showed her the footrests and said, ‘You hang on. Where are we going first?’
‘To see the painting,’ she said. ‘To the Barberini. You know the way?’
‘I think I can find it,’ he said, and climbed on the machine.
The Vespa started after two kicks and then they were threading through the hectic traffic and the back streets, crossing the busy shopping street of the Corso, heading uphill towards the Barberini, Mina Gabriel clinging tightly to his waist.
TWO
Costa flashed his police ID and was allowed to park the battered Vespa in a staff area next to the patio of the imposing marble palace on the hill, though not without a few raised eyebrows from the security officers at the gate. They entered through the porticoed entrance and marched up Borromini’s winding helicoidal staircase into the stately residence of the Barberini. He followed the girl as she strode through the vast halls and glittering corridors of a palazzo with which she was clearly familiar. In Rome it was impossible not to stumble over an unexpected nexus in places like this, some snaking, unforeseen connection between events that were, on the surface, unrelated. The most famous member of the Barberini family was Maffeo, Urban VIII, the very Pope who had forced Galileo to recant his beliefs on pain of death. He was a despot, pillaging Rome for his own purposes, removing the precious bronze girders from the portico of the Pantheon in order to make cannons for his army. Knowledgeable Romans still muttered a cynical Latin saying that had been repeated in the city for nearly four centuries:
Mina walked as if he wasn’t there, heading straight for the early seventeenth-century portraits. It all came back. Guercino’s
She was as he remembered, a solitary figure mainly in white, set against shadow, staring back at her audience over a shoulder wrapped in pale material like a shroud, her face luminous, sad, dark eyes intent on the viewer, unyielding. Over the centuries this image had become Beatrice Cenci, for the public, for an army of poets and writers and artists. These features had come to sum up the very essence of the young woman’s character: defiant yet submissive to her fate, an innocent forced to resort to the ultimate sin in order to defend her own dignity and independence.
Just then he glanced at Mina. The resemblance between her and the portrait was, he now saw, fleeting,
