‘Semen,’ Teresa’s assistant said. ‘That’s the problem. We expected-’
‘Don’t tell me what you expected,’ Costa ordered. ‘Tell me what you found.’
The forensic officers glanced at one another.
‘Perhaps we won’t miss Leo after all,’ Teresa mused. ‘The honest truth is we’ve found nothing. Because of the holidays and the stinking budget cuts we’ve got to use an outside lab for DNA sampling. Takes time. Saves money. The latter seems more important than the former, at least to the bean-counters upstairs.’
‘On with it, on with it,’ Peroni urged, waving a hand at her.
She took a deep breath then said, ‘We don’t have a positive ID for any of the semen yet. The reports that came back from the outside lab aren’t usable. I’ve rejected them and said they need to be carried out again. They won’t get round to that until tomorrow.’
‘Wonderful,’ Costa muttered under his breath.
‘The best case you can come up with will still fall in court if the defence can question the DNA,’ Teresa said. ‘It’s happening more and more. I can’t take chances.’
‘We’ve been waiting days!’
‘I know.’ She paused to add a little drama, the way she always liked on such occasions. ‘The problem is the data we’ve got back doesn’t match. It’s close. But it’s not identical, as it should be. I think this is because it’s been handled badly. But there is an alternative explanation.’
She took another deep breath then said, ‘It’s just possible that we have semen specimens from two men, not one.’
The two cops didn’t say anything.
‘We didn’t look at the results until this morning,’ Di Capua said. ‘It’s probably a mistake.’
Costa looked at Teresa Lupo and said, ‘Probably?’
She frowned.
‘Look, I hate this as much as you do. I want certainties. We don’t have them. The most likely answer is that the lab screwed up. If they didn’t. .’ She shrugged. ‘Then we have two men involved in sexual encounters. One of them, I assume, is Malise Gabriel. But I can’t tell you which yet. Or who the other might be.’
‘The son?’ Peroni asked.
‘That was my first thought,’ Teresa replied ‘It seems logical. As logical as anything else in this case. I’ve sent off a sample to check. Tomorrow. .’
‘I don’t want to wait till tomorrow,’ Costa insisted.
‘Well, you’ll have to,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Go shout at the bean-counters. There is a problem with the son, though. These two samples are different but similar, which is why we assume there’s been some mistake and really it’s two samples from the same man, contaminated somehow.’
Peroni growled and said, ‘Make this simple.’
‘If these do turn out to be from two different men, then I’d hazard a guess that they’re probably related.’
That pause again. She gazed at Costa.
‘Are you absolutely sure Robert Gabriel was adopted?’
‘Mina said so. The mother too.’
‘Quite. Are you
He thought about it and said, ‘There’s no physical resemblance. Robert was nothing like her. His habits. His personality.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll get someone to check.’
Everything needed to be re-examined. Every last piece of evidence they’d lazily taken for granted.
‘While we’re at it,’ he said, ‘let’s look at those photographs again, shall we?’
THREE
‘A deal?’ Toni Grimaldi asked. ‘What kind of deal?’
They sat at a quiet table outside the Caffe della Pace, not far from the small temple-like church of Santa Maria. When the place was quiet Falcone liked to use it for such meetings. It was close to his old home near the Piazza Navona, a pleasant, ancient establishment with an atmosphere conducive to the kind of frank conversation that was, on occasion, impossible inside the formal corridors of the Questura.
He’d called the lawyer that morning, catching him on the train in from Ostia as Falcone had hoped. Timing was important in such matters. It was vital to plant the seed of this idea early, outside the office.
‘A deal that suits us all,’ Falcone said, picking at his breakfast pastry. ‘This case is damaging everyone. The Questura. The family. The judiciary, if we allow it to get that far. .’
‘You sound very different from yesterday,’ Grimaldi noted. ‘Then you wanted me to give you carte blanche to throw these two women into a cell and leave them there until they signed a confession to murder.’
‘Yesterday was yesterday.’
‘And today you have firm proof the girl was involved in the death of her own father! Now you wish to pardon her! Please.’
That was not what Falcone was suggesting. He repeated the idea. Grimaldi listened, nodding. He was a good, decent man, one who would stop at nothing to put a criminal in the dock. But a solid Catholic, with a large family and a happy home life too. An honest, hard-working citizen with an open mind. The kind of individual the Questura depended upon.
‘I want this to go away,’ Falcone continued. ‘We all do. Unless that happens, we’ll have those people demonstrating outside the Questura every day of the week. Headlines in the newspapers. Officers engaged in fruitless inquiries.’
‘Fruitless? You still have two unsolved murders. That’s if we apportion the brother and our friend Riggi to this drugs gang. You’re not suggesting we forget them, are you?’
‘Not for a moment. The deaths of Malise Gabriel and Joanne Van Doren are not unsolved. Robert was responsible for both. That’s what I’ll put in my report. But this new evidence. The email linking the daughter to her father’s death. Much as I’d like to, I can’t bury it. She, perhaps the mother too. . there needs to be a statement. An admission of some prior knowledge. She can say she never knew why he wanted the information. I don’t want an admission of guilt, but I do require an explanation. In return. .’
Grimaldi finished his coffee. His walrus moustache bristled.
‘In return what?’
‘An agreement that the case will go no further. You tell me. You’re the lawyer.’
The man opposite thought about this for a while.
‘If there was a prosecution she’d never go to jail, you know. The daughter. Even if you could gain an accessory conviction on the basis of a simple email. And the mother? You’ve nothing, have you?’
‘Nothing. I know all this, Toni. Why do you think we’re having this conversation?’
It was a beautiful morning. The air had the first breath of autumn in it, a subtle chill beneath the heat that had pervaded Rome night and day for weeks. This harsh summer would come to an end.
‘There are four people dead, Leo. Even if one of them was a crooked cop. Another a murderer. The third some kind of monster.’
Falcone wished Grimaldi hadn’t said that. Mina Gabriel did love her father in some way, he believed. This was one reason, an unspoken one, why he didn’t wish to pursue the case. He feared what else it might uncover, to no one’s benefit.
‘All the more reason I’ll be happy if we can close this for good today,’ Falcone said. ‘That would be best for all of us. No one need suffer more.’
Grimaldi nodded.
‘So be it.’
‘What? A pardon? A caution? What?’
The lawyer laughed.
‘A pardon? I’m a Questura lawyer. Not a judge. I can’t hand those out. Besides, I want this girl, the mother too, to understand we know they’ve been less than frank with us. That we’re choosing not to take this any further. I
