laziness, generous to those she admired, kind and sympathetic to the bereaved who passed through her department. The relationship with Peroni, almost fifteen years her senior, had mellowed her somewhat. But no one would dare take her for granted.
‘You’re sure of that?’ the inspector asked.
She was a cautious worker, never one to rush to judgement. It was unusual for her to reach a conclusion before returning to the Questura and a careful consideration of all the options.
‘Absolutely. See for yourself.’
Peroni coughed and went to stand by the doorway leading back to the lift cage. Falcone and Costa joined her by the gurney. She was pointing at Joanne Van Doren’s neck. The insubstantial white nylon noose, washing line he guessed, had been removed to reveal a mass of livid bruises, more than Costa would have expected.
‘The technical term is “ligature furrow”,’ she said. ‘The mark the rope makes on skin, under pressure. If this woman had committed suicide by hanging herself I would have expected to see just one. Diagonal, like an inverted V. It’s there.’ Her gloved fingers traced the lines of some pinkish marks on the American woman’s neck running from her throat back into her scalp. ‘But it’s not alone, is it? She was already dead when she got that.’
Another strip of bruising ran horizontally around her neck, joining the fainter one at the front, separate as it ran round to the back of her head, the two lines joined by what looked like grazed skin.
‘Horizontal furrows are what you get from strangulation. Someone. .’ She stood up, turned her assistant Silvio Di Capua round, and made to slip an imaginary noose over his head. ‘. . came up behind her, dropped the rope over her head, tightened it on her neck.’ A brief demonstration. ‘And pulled till she was gone. Then he ran the rope over that heating pipe in the ceiling and suspended her next to the chair he’d kicked over. That’s why we’ve got abrasions running from the original furrow to the one she got from being hanged like that. The rope dragged when she was hauled upright.’
‘He?’ Peroni asked.
‘Well,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Someone with a lot of strength, anyway. I’d guess a man. Asphyxiation is a man thing. Women tend to be either more direct or more subtle.’
Costa couldn’t quite work this out.
‘And then he tried to make it look like suicide?’
She nodded.
‘Pathetic, isn’t it? I can give you more proof once I have her back in the morgue. Really, you don’t need it. How anyone could think they’d get away with a trick like that, I can’t begin to imagine. I’ll take a look at the Englishman later on today and see what we can come up with there. But this one, I guarantee, is murder, pure and simple. I’d guess he wore disposable surgical gloves. You can smell the latex on the rope. If we’re lucky he dropped them somewhere around here. If we find them I can give you something from the lining.’
Falcone didn’t look terribly hopeful.
‘I want to go through this whole building,’ Teresa told him. ‘Floor by floor, room by room. Top to bottom. If we’d done that yesterday we’d have found this little secret studio of hers. Perhaps things would have turned out differently.’ She frowned at the corpse on the gurney. ‘Maybe if our American friend had been a little more co- operative and candid she’d still be alive.’
‘Do whatever you think is necessary,’ Falcone said, then glanced at Costa. ‘We need to find the brother.’
‘I can understand that,’ Costa agreed.
‘Seeing that you managed to let him go last night. .’
‘Managed? He had a gun on me. I tried to call you, Leo.’
‘You might have left a message. Since you didn’t see fit to tell any of us you were meeting him. .’
‘It was one of his conditions!’ Costa felt embarrassed, on shaky ground. He shouldn’t have agreed to the meeting without telling someone, even if he was off duty, on holiday, at something of a loose end. ‘I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I should have told you. It was a long day. I was tired. Confused.’ He recalled the brief meeting with Agata and the way she disappeared with her slick boss inside his silver Alfa Romeo. ‘Not thinking straight.’
Falcone allowed himself the briefest of smiles then patted him on the shoulder.
‘Well, now you can make amends. The holiday’s over,
Costa sighed.
‘Why would Robert Gabriel bring me here in that case? He was trying to tell me something.’ He glanced at the bed, which was now being pored over by men and women in white suits. ‘He wanted to say this was nothing to do with them. His father’s death too. Joanne Van Doren gave them a home when Santacroce kicked them out. She was Mina’s friend.’
Peroni was at the door, watching, listening, expressionless.
‘She wasn’t the mother’s friend from what I saw,’ he said. ‘Someone needs to tell the Gabriels this has happened, by the way. Someone sympathetic.’
Falcone brightened.
‘Good idea. Go back to the Questura and get what you can out of narcotics about Robert Gabriel. Then break the news about this to his mother and sister. The two of you. See what their reaction is. I want the brother.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ Costa murmured. He still couldn’t reconcile what he was seeing in this strange subterranean lair with the family who’d been the only people to live there, several floors above. ‘What is this place?’
‘Porn palace,’ Silvio Di Capua announced cheerily. ‘A very well-appointed one too, I’d say. The darkroom out the back is fully functioning and ready to go. Used very recently. Popular place. Look.’ The young pathologist got them to bend down and peer at the bed, showing them the promising signs — stains, traces of hair, possible tissue. ‘It’s like Christmas down there.’
‘When will you know whose it is?’ Falcone demanded.
‘A day. Two maybe. Matching it, well. . We’ve got a couple of bodies we can check. When it comes to the living, that’s down to you.’
‘Precisely,’ Teresa added with a smile. ‘Now, unless you have some other questions, I’d be grateful if you could get out of the way.’
Falcone instructed some of the other officers to pressure narcotics about Robert Gabriel’s contacts. Teresa issued a series of orders to her own people then looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘This is a big place, Leo. We’re going to need a few days to go through every floor. Can you find us some help?’
He stared at her. She shrugged and said, ‘OK. It’s that time of year.’
In the far corner of the room, near some metal filing cabinets, someone squealed with glee. They all looked. Costa recognized one of the young work-experience trainees, the same girl who’d been alone on duty at the weekend when the dead Malise Gabriel was taken into the morgue and tagged as a simple accident victim.
She was plump with a ponytail and a bright, happy face.
‘Look what I found in the cupboard!’ she said, full of juvenile pride.
In her gloved hands was a large old-fashioned camera, black and box-like, the type with a pop-up viewfinder. Unusual, which was why she was playing with it in an injudicious way, flicking up the top, turning the big eye of the lens.
Di Capua wandered over, making admiring noises on the way.
‘Oh. . my. . God,’ he sighed. ‘Pornographers with taste. How often do you see that?’
‘What is it, Silvio?’ Teresa asked. Then, somewhat testily, ‘Maria, will you kindly stop messing with the thing like that?’
The trainee seemed fascinated by the object, as if it had come from another age. In a sense, Costa thought, it had. He hadn’t seen anything like it in years.
‘Hassy 503,’ Di Capua crooned, holding out his hand. ‘Hassel-blad to you. Pentaprism with a one-twenty back. The Americans used adapted versions of this to take pictures on moon-shots, for pity’s sake. Though if I’m honest. .’ He stopped and scratched his bald head. ‘I’d imagine it’s pretty damned perfect for a porn studio too. And. .’
Costa caught a glimpse of something yellow on the back. A memory returned.
‘It’s got film inside,’ he said.
Silvio Di Capua looked at him and grinned.
‘Film! I love film!’
