The Fallen Angel

‘No,’ the big man said.

‘Good. Me neither.’

There were so many questions that should have been asked. A stray thought occurred to him: Falcone had allowed his own personality, his distaste for the idea that the girl had been abused by her own father, to intrude into this case. That mistake had coloured everything.

‘Forget about the DNA and the Ducati for the moment,’ Costa ordered. ‘The answers are in that family. Find out everything you can. Everything.’

He stopped. A memory came back to him. Mina Gabriel, pretty and distraught, pale-faced in the cafe near the Piazza Venezia, getting ready to play that haunting piece by Messiaen, one that brought tears to her eyes in the darkness as the organ of Aracoeli seemed to enfold her like a mechanical beast.

Before that happened she’d talked about herself and the Gabriels. Her father’s maternal grandmother was Italian. Their arrival in Rome was not entirely by chance.

‘Get someone who can work the births and deaths database,’ he added. ‘I want to know who these people really are.’

SIX

Falcone and Toni Grimaldi walked to the Casina delle Civette, talking amicably all the way. Their route crossed the centro storico, from the Piazza Navona through the busy open space of the Campo dei Fiori, where tourists and locals alike were wandering through the market stalls, onto the back lane where the Palazzetto Santacroce lay. The lawyer was pleasant company as usual, frank, intelligent, interesting, and always willing to offer an alternative point of view. It was men and women like these, Falcone felt, who made working life in the Questura tolerable. The two were of the same age, on the cusp of retirement. The lawyer spoke openly about the country cottage he’d bought in Puglia to restore. Grimaldi was sufficiently sensitive not to ask Falcone about his plans for life after the Questura. No one could imagine that eventuality, certainly not the man himself.

The press pack had gone, bored by the lack of opportunities. So they were able to walk into the place unhindered, and deal with the caretaker in his cabin, Grimaldi making flattering noises about the beautiful building, which was in truth more palazzo than palazzetto. Then Cecilia Gabriel came out to meet them and the three of them strolled beneath the courtyard arch into the garden with its palm trees, shady corners and gaudy beds of canna lilies.

She seemed a little more amenable than on the previous afternoon. The lawyer’s charm could be considerable, Falcone realized. The woman was, perhaps, easier when she was not in the presence of her daughter too.

‘Your home is so lovely, Signora Gabriel,’ Grimaldi declared, sweeping his hefty arm across the green space in front of them. ‘I’ve lived in Rome most of my life. I never imagined there was so much beauty hidden away in this grey corner by the river.’

He was smiling at her narrow, lined face. She wore a green shirt and dark slacks, more elegant than before.

‘I’m sure you gentlemen didn’t come here to talk about the garden,’ she said in good Italian. ‘This affair is growing very tiresome, Inspector. How many times do we have to have this argument?’

‘Never again,’ Falcone said. ‘At least I hope not.’

‘You mean you’re not here to arrest me? Or accuse us of some terrible crime?’

‘Signora Gabriel.’ There was an old wooden bench in the shade beneath a well-trimmed orange tree, its branches heavy with fruit. ‘Please. May we sit down and speak frankly? My colleague here is a lawyer, not a police officer, though he works for the Questura. However, this visit. . I would wish you to regard it as private. We’re not here on official duty, or official time even. Should nothing come of our discussions, no record will be made, no report written. I would like this dreadful affair to be brought to an end. Just as much as you.’

She beckoned them to the seat. Falcone was glad to take the weight off his feet after the long walk.

‘I can assure you there’s nothing I’d like more,’ Cecilia Gabriel responded. ‘But how? Whatever I tell you, you seem to reject it immediately.’

Falcone nodded. The two men sat either side of the Englishwoman. It was a beautiful day in this hidden little corner of Rome, a fragrant, private place, the air rich with the scent of orange and oleander.

‘There are facts we cannot ignore,’ he began. ‘What I would like to do is find a way in which we can deal with them, set them to one side, and allow this case to be closed.’

He took her through the primary issues: the clear evidence that Malise Gabriel had abused his own daughter, and the new information he’d received from Silvio Di Capua the previous evening, about the scaffolding plans that Mina Gabriel had sent to her brother’s phone by email.

The latter part was new. It didn’t surprise him she rejected the idea immediately as ridiculous. Still Cecilia Gabriel listened, her eyes a little moist, with no small measure of repressed anger in her taut face.

When he was done she sighed and said, ‘Inspector. The first time we met you brought out a private photograph of me, naked. An old and personal photograph taken when I was eighteen years old. One intended for my husband’s eyes only. One you regarded, quite stupidly I must say, as evidence that my husband was having sex with our daughter. On the second you told me Malise was having an affair with Joanne Van Doren. Now some nonsense about an email. My daughter doesn’t have an email address as far as I know. She’s not like other teenagers. Haven’t you realized that yet?’

The last part threw him. Di Capua was adamant the night before. The message had come from the girl.

‘The evidence,’ he began.

‘What evidence? I’ve slapped you in the face twice now. I’m not proud of that, if I’m honest. But are you surprised?’

‘I have a job to do,’ he insisted.

‘What you resolutely fail to appreciate,’ she went on, ‘is that I still do not believe any of these things. I knew my husband. I knew Joanne Van Doren. They were friends, acquaintances. Nothing more.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘My husband was very ill. He had been for some time. Sex wasn’t easy for him, not without a little help.’

She stared at the tower of the Casina delle Civette rising from the lawn, checking to make sure that her daughter wasn’t at the window, Falcone assumed.

‘There,’ Cecilia Gabriel added. ‘You have an intimate confession. I trust it pleases you. Whatever your photographs say I find it impossible to believe that Malise was engaging in some squalid tryst with Joanne.’

Yet Falcone remembered well the moment he’d suggested this.

‘You turned on your own daughter and asked her if it was true,’ he pointed out.

‘I did. I was being an idiotic mother. Mina’s a secretive girl sometimes. The way she doesn’t look you in the eye. I don’t know. It’s probably me. Probably what any mother feels. Left out.’

She turned and stared at him intensely.

‘I don’t believe for one moment Malise abused Mina in any way. It’s impossible. He could be a difficult man. An argumentative one. He had a terrible temper. But he was incapable of cruelty. The very thought of it appalled him. He loved her. He loved all of us. He adored Robert above all others, I think, because he was the most difficult of all to love. And now you’re telling me he was some kind of a monster, and that Mina and Robert conspired to kill him.’

Grimaldi leaned forward and peered into her eyes.

‘Signora Gabriel,’ he said. ‘You must understand. It will be difficult for me to end this case without some answers to these very real questions.’

‘Answers?’ she interrupted. ‘Very well. Malise printed that first photograph of me from an older picture that was fading. He said he wanted to keep me that way. The way I was when I was eighteen or so.’

Her fingers toyed nervously with a twig of sprawling oleander falling over the back of the bench.

‘The words on it, “E pur si muove” — I wrote them. You know where they come from already.’ Her eyes fell briefly on the tower again. ‘Galileo. You know the circumstances. It was Galileo’s way of saying, “This I still believe, in spite of all the violence and pain you may bring to bear.”’