As soon as she walked in, Detective Bianchi hurried to meet her. He looked excited.
“Good morning,” he greeted her. “I have been on the phone, and online, since early this morning, and I have found information on the suspect Cassandra Vale.”
Falcone felt a surge of excitement. This could provide the breakthrough she needed, or at least get the investigation onto the right track. It could reveal a pattern of behavior which would help her to link the disjointed puzzle pieces together.
“Tell me, please,” she said, eagerly following Bianchi as he headed to his small office.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Falcone took a seat opposite Bianchi, noting as she always did how tidy his desk was; the reflection of a highly organized and methodical mind. That wasn’t his greatest strength, though. She thought that would have to be his likeability. This had allowed him to work as a respected international investigator in three countries outside of Italy, and maintain close relationships with his teams even after he moved on.
“My French colleagues informed me about a current case. You may even have heard of it. Pierre Dubois, accused of murdering his fiancée. It’s currently being heard.”
Falcone nodded slowly.
“I think I remember it being mentioned, or perhaps I read about it. The name sounds familiar.”
“It’s an interesting case. There is circumstantial evidence but a lack of concrete proof, and the prosecutor is doubtful that they will find him guilty. Though in court, who knows? It is always unpredictable.”
“How was Cassie Vale involved?”
“She was working as the family’s au pair at the time. She had been there less than a week.”
Falcone drew in her breath sharply.
“In his testimony, Pierre Dubois said that he had personally witnessed Cassie Vale physically fighting with the victim, Margot Fabron. She died later that night, falling from a high balcony.”
Or being pushed, Falcone thought, with a surge of excitement. This was sounding like an uncanny coincidence.
“Something else,” the detective added. “Pierre Dubois testified just a few days ago that somebody—and Cassie Vale was the only occupant of the family home at the time apart from the children—had searched his rooms, and had destroyed private security footage that he kept there. Apparently cameras were operational in his bedroom.”
“Why have they not called her to testify?” Falcone asked.
“Dubois only discovered the missing footage when he was released from jail. He was denied bail for a while as he became violent after his arrest, and tried to assault one of the detectives. By then, the police had cleared her and she’d left France.”
“And now, here she is.”
“Look, she’s not on their witness list. She’s no longer a suspect; her statement was used, but that was all. We could detain her on their behalf, but I thought I’d wait for your say-so first. In the unlikely event she’s permitted to testify, it might complicate our case if she’s shipped off to France.”
“Yes, that would set us back, and as you say, it’s unlikely the French courts would allow it at this late stage. I agree it’s very interesting, and the parallels in the two situations are uncanny. The footage in the Rossi home didn’t record at all, it was live feed only, but Cassandra Vale was in that office and looking for it. I can’t stop thinking about what she was trying to erase.”
Bianchi nodded.
“The moment when Ms. Rossi fell to her death, I should think. From what you say, everything points to a fight having occurred,” he said.
“Exactly. A violent fight, but why? Was Ms. Rossi abusing her children and Cassie Vale was standing up for them, or was it the other way round? Had the au pair transgressed—hit the children, stolen from her employer—and did this cause the fight? Which was it?”
Falcone felt the old frustration boiling inside her, the awfulness of not knowing the truth, of having to live with doubts and suspicions that could never be laid to rest because life was messy and uncertain, and even people’s motives were seldom easy to read, or clear-cut.
“It indicates, if nothing else, that this young girl is a magnet for trouble, that she attempts to obfuscate the facts, and also that she’s not scared to get into a physical fight,” Bianchi suggested.
Falcone nodded agreement as he continued.
“We still need proof, and there’s a glaring lack of it in this case so far. So, where do we go from here?”
“I’m going to make my calls to Social Services and the local police,” Falcone said. “Perhaps they can provide another piece of the puzzle.”
She headed down the corridor to her office. It was a cramped room—although she was an organized thinker, Falcone didn’t have the good habit of neatness, and she’d realized that the larger her space ended up being, the worse it looked, and the quicker it got to a stage where it seemed impossible to keep tidy at all.
So she’d opted for a compact space, where she could keep more rigorous control over the mountain of paperwork that seemed to constantly build.
As she walked into her office, her phone rang. Answering, she found herself speaking to the CEO of Rossi Shoes. She’d left a message for him last night, asking him to call her urgently. Now, Falcone imagined him sitting in a luxurious office, waving his arms in distress as she broke the news, with an untouched cappuccino resting on a silver tray in front of him.
“This is awful, a tragedy. Can you tell me what happened?” he cried.
“Ms. Rossi fell to her death last night, down her staircase at home.”
“This is beyond belief! How did such a thing happen?” the CEO asked.
“We are still investigating. It could have been an accident. The heel of her shoe broke.”
There was a resounding silence and Falcone realized, too late, that this theory would not be well received by Rossi stakeholders.
“You are saying the shoe broke, which caused her to fall to her death? Is there proof of this?” he asked, carefully.
“There is no proof,” Falcone reassured him. “The shoe
