rolled into the hidden part of the camera back. And five more frames beyond that, each perfect, each depicting close up in negative the kind of physical act he associated with places like this.
Porn palace had turned out to be the right phrase, he thought, scanning the negatives, trying to imagine what they’d look like when he ran them through the enlarger at the end of the table and turned them into prints.
There was something else he’d forgotten too. How it was always impossible to recognize faces in negative, even people you knew very well, members of your own family. This inverse image was like a code, locking up the truth, scrambling it until you switched black to white and vice versa and finally got back to the image that the camera lens had seen some time before.
The individuals there were unidentifiable. The subject matter was easy to see.
‘Maria,’ he asked. ‘Are you. . er, religious? I mean when it comes to sex?’
There was an alarming sparkle in her keen brown eyes.
‘No. Not at all. Not one little bit.’
He still wasn’t sure. And this part of the process would be quick too. In a matter of minutes he’d have a result. He’d know who was in these photographs, would put faces to the entwined bodies that were anonymous in negative. Falcone had refused to return to the Questura. He was outside, poking around the building, annoying Teresa’s army of forensic officers in bunny suits. In half an hour or less the inquisitive inspector could have a set of prints in his hands.
Di Capua scratched his bald head and didn’t look at her when he said, ‘It’s just that. .’
‘Silvio,’ she interrupted, standing so close he felt her bunny suit rustle against his. ‘I just watched a dead woman, a murdered woman, get cut down from the ceiling. I know why I want to do this job. Honestly.’
She touched his arm. He wasn’t sure what he felt at that moment.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Well, in that case, turn out the lights again. Let’s find out what we’ve got.’
FOUR
There was a crowd outside the Questura. Women mainly, five, six deep. They were shouting and waving banners from one of the left-wing groups that campaigned against sexual violence. The day promised to be the hottest, most humid yet. The black shapes of a few wannabe storm clouds were beginning to dot a brilliant sky that seemed to weigh down on the city as if ready to fall. Rome could turn bad-tempered on mornings like this, though these people were there already.
Costa looked at the sea of faces blocking the Questura entrance and the gates to the car pound, turned to Prinzivalli, the old uniform sergeant who was monitoring the demonstration, and asked, ‘What the hell is going on?’
‘You haven’t turned on the TV recently, have you?’
‘We’ve all been a touch busy,’ Peroni said.
Prinzivalli glanced at his watch then led them back into the entrance hall and gestured at the TV in the side office with the words, ‘Just in time for the midday news.’
They listened in silence. The lead story concerned the deaths of Malise Gabriel and Joanne Van Doren. But the picture on the screen was a snatched shot of Mina, head down, tears in her eyes, striding into the Santacroce palazzetto, turning briefly to face the photographer’s lens. Costa felt his blood run cold. She looked so innocent, so damaged. Everything he’d come to feel about this young woman was captured in that single image: the mix of strength and vulnerability and, most of all, the impression that somewhere beneath her simple, beautiful features there lay a secret waiting to be uncovered. It was the kind of shot the media would seize upon, the kind of story too, one that mixed death and sex and mystery. And something unique.
He watched as the newsreader handed over to a reporter standing outside the Gabriels’ former home in the ghetto and listened to a phrase he knew would come to signify the investigation from this point on.
‘They are calling her,’ the female journalist said briskly, ‘the English Beatrice Cenci. How much did she know of her father’s suspicious death? What was her relationship with him? Did someone consciously copy the murderous plot of Beatrice, the young Roman girl who lived across the road from here, five hundred years ago? And if so, is her family also involved, as was Beatrice’s? These are the questions we understand the police are beginning to ask. For the people of Rome? Another reason, I think.’ A theatrical pause for the camera. ‘Four hundred years ago we executed a young woman for taking vengeance against the man who abused her. What would we do today? This is. .’
‘Turn it off,’ Costa ordered.
The uniformed
‘Turn it off!’
‘Nic,’ Prinzivalli said, putting a hand on his arm. ‘We have to watch the news. It’s the rule. Besides. .’ The grey-haired uniformed officer, a calm and sensible man, a rock inside the Questura at times, looked at him. ‘This is out there now. You have to deal with it. We all do.’
‘Where the hell did they get all that nonsense from?’ Peroni demanded. ‘I mean. .’
His words trailed off. The Questura was always leaky when there was a controversial case around. Cops, forensic people, civilians working the offices and the phones. . If the death of the Englishman did come to look like homicide it was always going to be difficult to keep the investigation quiet. The murder of Joanne Van Doren had perhaps simply accelerated a process that was inevitable.
The officer at the TV switched channels and got another long and detailed report, one that had taken up the selfsame line.
‘The English Beatrice!’ Peroni was outraged.
Yet it seemed logical to Costa, not that he liked to admit it. The media was an imitative beast, one that fed on itself. Mina Gabriel lived opposite the Cenci palace, a short walk from the private church at which the family had worshipped. She was a little younger but possessed the same air of youthful innocence. Somehow the media had picked up the gist of her response to the police too. They knew that she was refusing to discuss any sexual relationship with her father on the grounds, the reporter said, that this was an insult both to her and to him. Then there were the circumstances of Malise Gabriel’s death, which were remarkably similar to those of the dreadful Francesco Cenci.
‘Who the hell put this story out there?’ Peroni wondered. ‘Is this the mother getting her defence in first?’
‘What makes you say that?’ Costa replied. ‘It could be anyone. Someone here. Forensic. Those building inspectors, even. They must know something’s going on. We’ve been pressing them hard enough.’
‘You haven’t met her yet,’ Peroni muttered. He glanced at Costa. ‘There’s something. . calculating about her. Scared the life out of me. As hard as nails.’
Costa thought of the shouting when Mina called the previous night, and what sounded like a slap.
‘But why, Gianni? What possible advantage can she get from having an appalling accusation like that out in public?’
There was a moment of silence.
‘We’re on the defensive now, aren’t we?’ the old cop grumbled. ‘Let’s go ask her.’
‘You’ll need to walk,’ Prinzivalli said. ‘Since that story broke those nice people out front have been blocking the vehicle exit. I’m trying to reason with them. It would be best to avoid any arrests. If I can. .’
‘We don’t need a car,’ Costa said, as he walked across the corridor and took a spare police motorbike helmet from the cloakroom, then retrieved his own from the storage area. ‘Here.’
He threw the spare helmet at Peroni, who stared at the thing in horror.
Prinzivalli followed them outside, chatting with some of the women protesters in a friendly, almost supportive fashion. Costa listened for a while, then, when they were distracted, wandered over to the corner of the square where the Vespa was parked.
He climbed on, took great care to start it properly this time, then sat there with the little two-stroke engine rumbling happily as Peroni gripped his blue police crash helmet, standing to one side, staring at the machine, thinking.
‘The tyres are barely legal,’ he complained. ‘Does the horn work?’
Costa pressed it.
