Her eyes were glassy. She wiped them carefully with a tissue from her sleeve.
‘That was the name of the project he was working on for Bernard. It upset him for some reason. He wouldn’t tell me why. These last few months. . I sometimes felt I hardly knew him. I hated seeing him depressed. The night before he died I found him rereading his own book, using that photograph as a bookmark. I wrote those words on the back of that picture. It was my way of saying the same thing as Galileo. In spite of all the pain and heartache, in spite of the fact Malise was very ill, this I still believed. That I loved him and he loved me.’
She took a deep breath and then looked at each man in turn.
‘A few weeks ago Malise told me that he’d given up on the treatment for his cancer. I knew already, I think, in my own heart. It was written in his face. The way he acted. The sadness. What little money we had was gone, which was what troubled him more than anything. The idea he would leave us alone, to fend for ourselves. He had a few months left, perhaps less. At some stage he would have to enter some kind of charity hospice. He wanted to spend his last few weeks rereading his own book, pointing out all the errors, all the statements he wanted to correct, to improve, to expand, and never would. He hoped I could sell it after his death.’ She smiled. ‘A ridiculous idea, of course, not that I told him so. All I wanted to say to him was that he was loved and always would be.’
‘You could have told us that in the beginning,’ Falcone pointed out.
‘I could,’ she said with a smile. ‘But I thought it was none of your bloody business, Inspector. And I was right.’
Grimaldi shrugged and said with a wry smile, ‘Signora, the bookmark is not a piece of evidence that concerns us any more.’
‘Shouldn’t it?’ she asked. ‘Doesn’t it tell you something? What do you want of me? Ask. If it will bring this to an end. .’
‘There were photographs taken in your daughter’s room,’ Falcone went on. ‘Evidence of sexual activity.’
‘Not Malise,’ she insisted. ‘That’s impossible. Mina’s seventeen. I don’t own her. I never did. Besides, when they’re that age these days. .’ She laughed at herself, lightly, briefly. ‘Who am I fooling? I was sleeping with Malise when I wasn’t much older. Everything happens so quickly. One moment you feel this life will never end. The next it’s running through your fingers like dust.’
The two men glanced at one another. This had to be said. Falcone wanted the words to come from Grimaldi.
‘We need your daughter to make some kind of statement,’ the lawyer told her. ‘It will never be made public. But the evidence that exists requires some kind of clarification.’
Cecilia Gabriel shook her head and stared at them.
‘You still believe my son and daughter conspired to murder their own father, don’t you? That this Beatrice Cenci nonsense in all the papers is true?’
‘Your daughter knew all about the Cenci girl,’ Falcone reminded her.
‘That was for Joanne! Nothing else. Some childish fantasy, perhaps. Mina’s a dreamy girl, not quite one thing or the other. It’s impossible.’
‘Signora Gabriel,’ Grimaldi interrupted. ‘We cannot sit here arguing forever. The fact is this. If your daughter is willing to tell us the truth, and it’s a truth I can bury, then I shall do so. If, for instance, she confirms the abuse by her father. .’
She swore, an English word, a common one.
‘If she does this,’ Grimaldi went on, ‘and says, merely, that she passed on this building information to Robert because he asked for it, that she knew nothing of any conspiracy, well. .’
He watched her wringing her hands, waiting for the woman to calm down.
‘Then,’ he went on, ‘we’re finished here. I can write honestly that this is a family tragedy with an unfortunate conclusion. One with several victims. One that should not waste the time of the courts, since the principal perpetrator, Robert, is now dead.’
‘You’re asking her to tell a lie! To make out her own father was some kind of animal!’
They waited for a moment.
‘We can only help the living,’ Toni Grimaldi said eventually. ‘I don’t know if you honestly believe Mina has told you the truth. From what you say, I suspect not. Understand me, please. We’re not here for her confession. We’re here to beg her for sufficient information to allow us to declare this case closed in spite of the evidence that exists. Surely you understand it would be better, for you and for her, that this bleak episode is laid to rest? A brief conversation is all I ask. Just us, you, your daughter. No lawyers, no friends. No notes, no. . commitments. Simply something I may use as a justification to end this once and for all.’
‘Even if it’s a lie?’ she asked.
Grimaldi didn’t answer. Falcone found himself looking into Cecilia Gabriel’s clear blue eyes and admiring what he saw there. This woman wished to protect her daughter more than anything. As an individual he was deeply uncomfortable with the relentless bonds of family, the ties of closeness, which so often seemed unbreakable, resolute. From time to time Falcone had privately wondered what kind of parent he would have made. A bad one, surely, willing to abandon a wayward child in the end. In Cecilia Gabriel’s stiff and determined face he saw something he could never possess: a fiery sense of protective loyalty, whatever the circumstances. In terms of the law this was awkward and problematic. Yet it seemed to him that there was, in such blind, unthinking devotion, a degree of decency and love that no law, no court, no sentence could possibly deliver. It was a private judgement, and one he would never commit to paper, but he was now convinced that no good would come of dragging any of these people into court if that eventuality could be avoided.
‘Even if you feel it’s a lie,’ he responded. ‘It’s of no consequence. We cannot ignore the evidence we have. If Mina will give us reason to tell our own superiors that there is insufficient material to continue with the investigation. .’
He waited for her reaction.
Cecilia Gabriel stared at him candidly.
‘I’m rather sorry I slapped you, Inspector,’ she said. ‘We’ve all got a temper in this family unfortunately. Except Mina, of course.’
‘I’ve had much worse,’ he confessed, and found himself wondering if he would encounter this woman again. Some time beyond the black mist of mourning and despair that had hung around her on every occasion they’d met, and would stay there until the moment Toni Grimaldi caused the fog to lift.
‘I imagine you have.’
She then did something which struck Falcone as curiously English. Cecilia Gabriel clapped them both simultaneously on the knee, palms down, like some schoolmistress from a period movie who had come to some momentous decision.
‘I’ll ask Mina to talk to you,’ she declared, standing up, stretching, a long, lean athletic figure under the sun. ‘Just us. But I warn you now. I doubt she’ll agree to some convenient fabrication. Not even to save herself.’
SEVEN
They were back in the squad room. Costa stood behind one of the intelligence officers working a couple of huge computer screens simultaneously. Teresa and Silvio Di Capua were with him, liaising with forensic on the phone. Peroni was calling the UK, trying to locate Malise Gabriel’s brother. Finally, Costa thought, they might be on the brink of finding a way into this case.
The young woman officer on the desk had just come off the phone to Scotland Yard. She looked at them and said, ‘There’s no one called Julian Urquhart at the address where the bike was registered. The police in London say they went back two months after the theft was reported. The apartment was rented to someone else. The new people didn’t know anything about the previous occupant. There was no mail, no forwarding address.’
‘Why would someone with a false identity want an expensive new motorbike?’ Costa demanded.
She peered at the screen. Emails kept coming in almost by the second.
‘A crook with money doesn’t steal any old junk off the street. You buy something new under a false ID then fake a theft to get it off the register. Take it abroad. Use it without running the risk of getting stopped for driving something hot. Also. .’ She tugged at her short dark hair. ‘Crooks are normal too. They like nice cars. Nice bikes.
