about it.’
‘The kid?’
‘The English kid. The one who got killed.’ The Turk was getting a little braver. Peroni removed his arm. ‘He was taking us all for a ride, if you ask me. Working both sides. Not a team player. Here’s something else too.’ Cakici leaned forward. ‘The kid came to us.
He shook his head as if still unable to believe it.
‘You know how we recruit these morons? Feed ’em a little dope. Wait till they owe enough money. Turn ’em round, send ’em back on the streets selling the junk. Pretty soon you’ve got an army of them. They make a little dough and steal what they want on the side. That’s fine. We take the big margin. It’s been like that for years. The system works. Why screw with it?’
‘You’re saying Robert Gabriel recruited Riggi in the first place?’ Costa asked.
‘That’s what Gino said it felt like. He loved money, that kid. That was all it was about. Gino said he never even saw him using stuff. Always straight. Didn’t even drink much. Got into a little trouble now and again. Arguments in bars. That goes with the turf. But he wasn’t like the rest. Not at all.’
Cakici leaned forward. His cuffs rattled as he pointed a finger at Costa.
‘You want to know who killed Gino Riggi and that English kid? Find this Italian guy. You do that and I’ll take care of him. That’s a promise. No footprints home. Guaranteed.’
The two cops exchanged glances.
‘You’ve nothing to worry about from my end,’ the Turk insisted. ‘Not a thing. I won’t say a word. They won’t pin Gino and the kid on me either. I got an alibi. A genuine one. My auntie was over from Istanbul. I was with her.
‘Then why in God’s name did you run?’ Costa asked.
Cakici shrugged.
‘I didn’t like the feel of what was going on here. Gino called me on Tuesday. He was getting jumpy. About things. About the English kid. All this publicity. That kid murdering his old man. Something about his family. Gino had good instincts. If he felt this was all about to go bad, it probably was. Time to take a holiday back home and see what happens.’
He held out his hands and smiled.
‘Now. Let me out of these then put me in a car back to the city with a couple of dummies. I can call someone. They can get me loose. You get me the name of that Italian, I’ll deal with it. Then we’re back in business. Whatever Gino passed on to you, I’ll double it. You’re the kind of guys I can work with.’ He smiled and held out a hand. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think one way or another you’re going to jail,’ Costa said and they left the room.
The immigration officer was outside on a stool, with a bottle of San Pellegrino and a sandwich.
‘Some interesting noises in there,’ he said.
‘We had a frank exchange of views,’ Peroni told him.
‘When do you want to send a van?’ he asked.
‘We don’t,’ Costa said. ‘His auntie says he’s innocent. Bust him for the passport. We’ve got nothing else.’
The immigration man’s eyebrows lifted in an expression of surprise.
‘All that shouting and screaming? And you got nothing?’
‘You heard,’ Costa murmured, wondering what was happening back in the Questura, wishing he could have been there instead.
NINE
Not long after the Gabriels and Bernard Santacroce left the morgue Falcone took a call from Costa. Teresa waited, watching, and could see the disappointment in his face.
‘Well,’ he said when it was finished. ‘One more blind alley to add to the rest.’
‘Meaning?’
She listened as he explained what Costa and Peroni had discovered from the Turk at Ciampino.
‘We’ll check the alibi,’ Falcone said. ‘I’ll get narcotics to search his home. There won’t be anything there, of course. And the alibi will stack up. If it was him on the bike. .’ He scowled and shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t have said a word.’
‘Drugs. Complicated business. Is it really surprising there’s some grubby little war going on around the Campo? Or that our stupid little English friend on the table here put his own neck on the line by bringing all this attention to himself?’
Falcone muttered something foul and didn’t answer.
Teresa Lupo came and stood next to him. In his own way the man had tried to be sensitive towards the Gabriel family, as best he could. But the job, the need to ask awkward questions, and his own difficult personality all intervened in the end. It wasn’t his fault. This was who he was.
‘You know,’ Teresa Lupo said, ‘it is just possible that everything here really is as simple as it seems. Robert realized what a creep his father was and killed him. Then the American too when she found out. Toni Grimaldi’s right. Proving Malise Gabriel was having sex with his own daughter won’t bring anyone to justice. It could just cause a lot more pain to people who’ve had more than their fair share. Gabriel was a very sick man, Leo. Whether he told his family or not, they will have felt the burden. Should we really add to it?’
‘I know all this!’ he replied, seemingly hurt by her accusation.
‘I appreciate that.’
‘I’m not here to spare their feelings. I’m here to find out the truth. If they’d sit down, look me in the eye, and tell me something I could believe. .’
‘They don’t want to talk about it, Leo,’ she said. ‘Would you?’
He scowled. ‘What have they got to lose? You know the way public opinion is at the moment. Even if I could prove they knew Robert intended to kill his father I doubt I’d get them in court.’
‘Their dignity?’ she suggested.
He took a deep breath and looked into her eyes.
‘I’ve taken that from them already, haven’t I?’ he murmured.
She waited. He’d recovered himself again, was once more the maddening individual she’d grown to admire, to love in a way, over the years.
‘I don’t believe they’re murderers,’ he insisted. ‘Not directly. The brother, yes. Not them. I don’t see that they could have been involved in the American woman’s death. But Malise Gabriel’s? If they’re innocent why don’t they
‘Perhaps they feel you’re intruding into a part of their lives where you don’t belong. Besides, if you could prove they weren’t entirely innocent, that they somehow knew, would that be justice? Who’d benefit?’
He bristled and said, ‘That’s not my job. I don’t make those decisions.’
‘But you do. We all do. That’s why we’re here. Beatrice Cenci had the Pope’s inquisitors. Mina Gabriel has us. We’re kinder, I think. But are we really any different?’
‘You can’t pick and choose,’ Falcone insisted. ‘We’re all equal under the law.’
‘Unless you’re rich or a politician or the friend of someone who knows someone.’
‘They’re all the same as far as I’m concerned. This is the first time you’ve seen Mina and her mother. You tell me. Am I mistaken? Do you really feel I’m chasing some ghost here?’
No, she thought. His misgivings were entirely understandable, the reaction of an intelligent, experienced detective. Mina Gabriel was genuinely distraught at her brother’s death. But the mother with her cold indifference to everything, even the incriminating photographs. .
‘Grief isn’t a predictable emotion,’ she said. ‘It shows itself in very different ways, and at different times, because that’s how people are. They’re not machines or Pavlov’s dog.’
He pointed at the door through which the Gabriels had left and asked, ‘Have you seen that way before?’
She felt so sorry for Leo Falcone at times. He had an insight into dark places, a sympathy with the pain of
