off by the print, turning as if to hide some shame.
‘Did your father ever make a sexual advance to you?’ Falcone went on.
‘Mummy told you about that photograph,’ she snapped. ‘Why don’t you believe her?’
‘Even if I do, the question still stands.’
‘Daddy loved me.’
‘Yes, but-’
‘I told you!’ Cecilia Gabriel interrupted. ‘That picture is me. This whole idea is ridiculous. Malise hadn’t felt well for some time. We didn’t. . Not often.’
‘He had sex the night he died,’ Falcone insisted. ‘There’s no possibility of a mistake.’ He glanced at Mina. ‘If we’d been able to examine anyone he’d been with-’
‘Don’t be disgusting,’ Bernard Santacroce spat at him. ‘This conversation is at an end, Inspector. If you wish to talk to Cecilia and Mina again it will be in the presence of my lawyers.’
Falcone reached into the envelope again and took out a set of large black and white prints, fanning them across his lap.
Bernard Santacroce’s eyes grew wide. Cecilia Gabriel gaped at them and swore, an Anglo-Saxon curse, beneath her breath.
Mina closed her eyes for a moment then stared at the window. Costa found himself looking at the prints, wishing he didn’t have to. Malise Gabriel was there, painfully thin, hollow-eyed, anxious, writhing on the bed with Joanne Van Doren, struggling awkwardly to get into the kind of position one associated with cheap pornography, staring at the lens from time to time as if trying to understand something, puzzled, unhappy. The monochrome pictures were utterly joyless, bleak and without any feeling whatsoever.
‘There’s a photographic studio hidden in the basement of your apartment block,’ Falcone went on. ‘Did you know that?’
Cecilia was shaking her head, glancing at her daughter.
‘It is at least possible,’ Falcone went on, ‘that the person your husband slept with on the night of his death was Miss Van Doren, which rather destroys the story being put around by the media. From my point of view it does, of course, provide motive.’ He stared at her. ‘Where were you last night? After we left?’
The woman didn’t answer. Her eyes were locked on her daughter.
‘Mina?’ she murmured.
‘Mummy,’ the girl replied, looking out of the window at the palms swaying in the soft, hot breeze, a distant, cold tone in her voice.
Cecilia Gabriel flew at her daughter in a flurry of fists and nails. Costa was there in an instant, separating them, getting his arm round the girl, turning his back to the furious woman screeching at her own daughter in a voice full of hatred and pain.
When he turned Peroni was holding back Cecilia Gabriel whose eyes were bright with anger and tears.
‘You knew?’ she shrieked across the room. ‘You knew he was screwing that dirty little American bitch all along?’
Mina was shaking in Costa’s arms. Bernard Santacroce got to his feet, going red in the face, worried, embarrassed, stuttering excuses and demands.
‘Daddy never wanted to hurt you,’ the girl cried. ‘Never!’
Costa looked at Falcone, then at Mina.
‘Did Robert know?’ he asked. She was staring at her mother, sobbing. ‘Mina?’
‘Yes,’ she said weakly.
‘Signora Gabriel,’ Falcone insisted. ‘Where were you last night?’
Bernard Santacroce’s face was puce with rage.
‘She was with me, Inspector. We had dinner together. Mina was here in the Casina, on her own. She was upset. So I kept Cecilia company. It seemed the kindest thing to do.’
‘Kindness,’ Falcone repeated. ‘Well. .’
Mina Gabriel huddled close to Costa. He could feel her sobbing breath, her tears against his neck.
‘Excuse us,’ Costa said, and took her over to the far side of the room. They stood by the window, just able to hear the continuing rumble of argument from behind. He held her shoulders, stared into her eyes.
‘This is important,’ he said. ‘Please tell me the truth. How did Robert react when he found out about your father and Joanne?’
She pulled back from him, her pale face puffy with tears, creased in a childish pout.
‘You’re just like the rest of them, aren’t you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not.’
She stayed stiff and still in front of him, face to the floor.
‘Is that what you wanted to tell me all along?’ Costa asked. ‘About the affair?’
‘Who said I wanted to tell you anything?’
‘Don’t play these games.’
She squeezed her eyes tight shut for a long moment then opened them and stared up at him. There was something about this child, this girl, this woman, that he found compelling. Some magnetic quality in her beautiful young face, a melding of innocence with some imminent sensuality that drew him to her.
Her lips came up to his ear and she whispered, ‘What game do you want me to play, Nic?’
He felt like shaking her, trying to make her see something outside herself, beyond the confines of this strange stone tower, an unreal folly hidden away in the seething core of the city.
‘One that involves the truth,’ he said.
‘“
Then she pulled herself from his grip and strode back to stand beside her mother.
EIGHT
Gino Riggi had never liked the Indian woman they’d given him. She’d worked with Falcone’s people too long and it showed.
The two of them were back in their dishevelled corner on the narcotics floor, running through the intelligence records she’d pulled to try to help in the Gabriel case. He looked into her dark, sceptical eyes and said, ‘What’s the problem now?’
‘We’re supposed to be on the same side.’
‘Did you tell them that?’
‘They know already.’
‘Here.’ He flipped the computer screen back to her and threw the keyboard across the desk. ‘You go through all this crap. It’s for your friends.’
‘Oh thanks, Gino! And you’re going to do what, exactly?’
‘Cop stuff,’ Riggi murmured then walked out and got in the lift.
The noisy crowd outside the Questura seemed to be getting bigger. They didn’t look twice at him. Dressed the way he was they’d never believe he was police.
‘What’s the deal?’ he asked some beefy-looking woman yelling obscenities into thin air. She had bright red hair and was waving a banner bearing the name of one of the far-left groups the Questura dealt with from time to time.
She looked him up and down a couple of times then rattled off some stupid story she’d heard on the news. Riggi listened carefully. This was interesting. Worrying.
‘So the cops are trying to fit up this poor girl?’ he asked.
The woman nodded and said, ‘Yeah.’
‘Bastards. And they really think she killed her old man? For messing with her?’
‘No,’ someone else cut in. ‘They think her brother did it. But maybe she egged him on. And the mother.’
‘Happy families,’ he said with a sardonic smile.
‘Violence against women. .’ she began.
