The Fallen Angel (22 page)

Prinzivalli followed them outside, chatting with some of the women protesters in a friendly, almost supportive fashion. Costa listened for a while, then, when they were distracted, wandered over
to the corner of the square where the Vespa was parked.

He climbed on, took great care to start it properly this time, then sat there with the little two-stroke engine rumbling happily as Peroni gripped his blue police crash helmet, standing to one
side, staring at the machine, thinking.

‘The tyres are barely legal,’ he complained. ‘Does the horn work?’

Costa pressed it.

‘Sounds like an asthmatic duck. I could drown you in tickets right now.’

‘Only if you were a traffic cop. Which you’re not. Now get on,
agente
. And don’t squirm about back there. It may upset my balance.’

The scooter felt quite different with Peroni on the back. Costa navigated the piazza very carefully then headed for the ghetto. He couldn’t help notice Prinzivalli watching them leave, and
that the man in uniform seemed to be shaking with laughter.

Teresa Lupo walked out of the house in the Via Beatrice Cenci, glad of an excuse to get away from Falcone’s beady eyes, pushed her way through the barriers and the hordes
of newspaper and TV reporters, then headed round to the little cafe in Portico d’Ottavia that Peroni had told her about. The search of the building was in good hands. Silvio Di Capua had his
photographs. Slowly, steadily she was beginning to assemble some basic shreds of evidence. And one hour earlier she’d had the report from an outside specialist she’d brought in to take
a look at the corpse of Malise Gabriel. It confirmed what she’d begun to suspect the day before. So she’d called Adriano Negri, the oncologist who’d brushed off Di Capua’s
inquiries, and made it clear she wanted to see him, immediately.

He was waiting in the cafe already. Teresa kissed him on both cheeks then got a couple of slices of Jewish pizza for them both.

‘Is this healthy?’ asked Negri, a handsome man in his late thirties, tall with a distinguished academic face and long, dark hair.

‘How many sick Jews have you seen lately?’

‘Quite a few.’

‘Not through eating this stuff.’ She smiled at him from across the table. ‘You look well.’

‘Thanks. You too. I hear you’re . . . settled.’

‘Settled?’

‘With a cop. An old cop.’

She took a bite of the pastry and wondered why they’d never discovered this stuff before.

‘The man I love,’ Teresa said. ‘That’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?’

‘You could have been choosy.’ He hesitated. She could still picture him twenty years before, at La Sapienza, the university where they first met. He had long hair then, money and a
wonderful if unconvincing smile. ‘Maybe even me.’

‘You know, it was the constant presence of that “maybe” that was the problem, I think. Also, I
am
choosy.’

He shrugged, in that exaggerated way, with the downturned mouth, that had always annoyed her.

‘But a cop. An old cop . . .’

‘Malise Gabriel,’ she interrupted.

‘Can’t talk patients.’

‘He’s a dead patient. Probably a dead murdered patient.’

‘That doesn’t . . .’

‘Actually, it does make a difference. Legally, ethically, morally. If you withhold valuable information from us it would be inexcusable. Possibly rather difficult too, were I to make it
so.’

‘Don’t threaten . . .’

‘Malise Gabriel was suffering from pancreatic cancer. I know he saw you several times. I need to understand his condition. If there’s anything else you can tell me . . .’

The consultant drained his coffee and tried a little of the pastry. He was a decent-enough man. Arrogant, self-obsessed, destined to be single probably. But a talented doctor, one who wanted to
help people.

‘Am I to be quoted?’ he asked.

‘This is just a private conversation between the two of us, Adriano. If it came to a court case I can bring in an expert witness instead. Save me some time now, please. I will be
grateful.’

He didn’t look happy. But she watched the way he squirmed and knew she’d won.

‘It was diagnosed when he was living in America,’ Negri said. ‘The insurance wouldn’t cover him over there. I suspect that’s one reason he came to Rome. He thought
because he had a UK passport—’

‘That he was covered? He was, surely?’

Negri shrugged and said, ‘If only it were that simple. There are rules about residency. Malise hadn’t lived in Europe for two decades or more. He was effectively stateless, at least
as far as medical insurance was concerned. I did what I could for a while. He found money from somewhere. At first, I assumed paying for treatment wasn’t a problem. He had a manner about him.
Aristocratic. A little overbearing. One didn’t wish to ask. But . . .’ He seemed embarrassed. ‘Treating a disease like that is extraordinarily expensive if you have to pay
yourself. A few weeks ago he told me he had no more money left. Or rather no way of
finding
more. It didn’t come from him. He always paid cash, very large sums sometimes. I
didn’t pry.’

This puzzled her.

‘Do many private patients pay cash?’

He was squirming again.

‘No. Generally speaking only the ones from Naples or Sicily, if you know what I mean.’

Crooks, she thought, not that he wanted to say it.

‘I tried to find funds for him,’ Negri went on. ‘I suggested he approach his academic colleagues for support, but that was beneath him. I’m sorry.’

‘Are you telling me a dying man was refused treatment because he had no money?’

‘You sound surprised. Why? Oh yes. Now I remember. You haven’t worked in medicine for years, have you? That’s the regime we have now. Every last thing costed, justified,
analysed. Ten years ago I would have treated Malise Gabriel to the best of my ability without a second thought, knowing that someone, somewhere would have picked up the bill. Not today. We live in
mean times. Mean in spirit. Mean in other ways too. I’m sorry. I couldn’t treat him any longer. Even if I waived my charges, someone would have to pay for the rest of the treatment and
there was no one. So I had to tell him it was at an end. Not that I could have made much difference to his condition anyway.’

‘How long did he have?’ she asked.

‘I would guess six months. A year at most. Possibly less. Untreated, it’s difficult to tell.’ He laughed, without mirth or feeling. ‘You know the ridiculous thing?
I’d arranged for him to enter a hospice for palliative care close to the end. Getting money to keep him alive was impossible. Finding some altruistic sisters of mercy who would ease his
suffering – I had a dozen to choose from.’

He looked so mournful she felt guilty.

‘You know who he was?’ she asked.

‘You mean the books? Of course.’

‘He’d have gone into a church hospice?’

‘You’d be amazed how many rediscover God at the end,’ Adriano Negri said. ‘The pain, the fear.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Not that I saw much of that in
Malise. He was a remarkably easy patient, if I’m honest. A strong man. Opinionated. Angry, not about himself, I think, but about others. A terminal disease can manifest itself this way
sometimes. The sick take it out on the healthy, as if they’re to blame somehow. I can’t imagine Malise would have been easy to deal with at home.’

‘You’ve seen the news?’

‘I’d rather not think about it.’

‘Did you meet his wife?’

‘No. The girl came with him once or twice. Sat in the waiting room. Pretty kid.’

His eyes didn’t leave her.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘They seemed very close. Not like father and daughter.’

‘Like what then?’

‘Friends,’ he said after a while. Then he drained his coffee. ‘Are we finished here? I have patients to see.’

Negri had been at La Sapienza the year the then-Cardinal Ratzinger had visited. He was as incensed as everyone else about the statements that had been made, the implication that somehow a
scientist like Galileo had deserved his treatment at the hands of the Vatican.

‘Did he talk to you about his work? At the Confraternity of the Owls? About his attitude towards that?’

‘Of course. I read his book. Didn’t we all? I think this job he had troubled him. There was something he was being asked to do . . .’

‘He was being ordered to add his reputation to a paper that said Ratzinger had a point. I read it last night. Bernard Santacroce wanted Gabriel’s name on the front page. As joint
author, not just editor.’

Negri frowned. He seemed genuinely sorry.

‘I rather thought it must have been something like that. The work upset him. He obviously needed the money. I don’t think they had anything else. All the same I can’t imagine
Malise would have gone along with it.’

‘“
E pur si muove
”,’ she murmured.

‘What’s Galileo got to do with this?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps Malise Gabriel empathized with him. Believed he was being persecuted in a similar fashion.’

A short, dry burst of laughter.

‘And his daughter thought she was that poor, sad girl from the ghetto,’ he scoffed. ‘Or so the news would have us believe.’

‘How did she feel about his illness?’

The oncologist shook his head.

‘I doubt she understood how bad it was. Malise didn’t want anyone to know the seriousness of his condition. He was adamant about that. He seemed to care about them deeply, I must
say.’

‘Would he still be interested in sex?’

He thought for a moment and said, ‘Yes. We had that conversation. The condition may affect libido, of course. And the medication. But if the desire’s there . . .’ He sighed.
‘Malise was determined, as much as possible, that he would lead a normal life until the end. The daughter was under the impression he came to me for routine checkups for a condition that was
in remission. Work apart, he seemed cheerful, full of life. Active in every way as far as I could see.’

Negri recalled something.

‘One thing. He never mentioned the son. In fact I didn’t know there was a son until I heard the news. That surprised me.’

‘You’d be amazed what goes on inside families, Adriano.’

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘I wouldn’t.’ The handsome oncologist looked lost briefly. ‘Or what happened inside Malise Gabriel either. There was something . . .
dark there. I can’t put it any other way. I wanted to help the man. I admired him. His courage. His determination. But . . .’

He stopped and she had to prod him.

‘But what?’

Adriano Negri’s eyes met hers and she realized, for the first time, that there was a bleak, intense sadness in them. At that moment Teresa Lupo remembered why she’d never accepted
any of his advances. He was intelligent, charming, a decent, respectable man. But unlikeable too, detached from his own emotions and those of others. The very opposite of Gianni Peroni.

‘I was always glad when he left.’ He pushed away the coffee cup and the plate with the Jewish pizza on it. ‘I never really knew why. It was something to do with his presence.
Do you know what I mean?’

‘I think so,’ she said.

Costa pulled up close to the Palazzetto Santacroce and saw the nose of Falcone’s sleek Lancia saloon poking out from a nearby alley. There was a bad-tempered crowd of
photographers, TV crew and hacks outside the arched entrance to the building and a few uniformed cops to hold them back. He held the scooter tight as Peroni slowly got off the Vespa, grumbling all
the time, then popped the machine onto its stand next to a line of bikes and other scooters.

Falcone wandered over, eyebrows raised, the faintest of smiles on his face as Peroni struggled to get the motorbike cop’s helmet off his head.

‘I decided to string along,’ he said. ‘What took you?’

‘Not easy getting in and out of the Questura,’ Costa said by way of explanation. ‘There’s some kind of demo outside. You heard?’

‘Oh yes.’ He flourished a large brown envelope in his hands and seemed strangely energized. ‘Not to worry. And the brother?’

Peroni stowed the helmet beneath his arm.

‘Narcotics are being less than helpful. He was an informer.’

Falcone thought about this for a moment, then led them through the crowd of hacks, refusing to answer a single question, or rise to their aggressive taunts, and went up to the caretaker’s
window of the palace.

This was Costa’s first visit. The sunny open space beyond the confined entrance of the palace surprised him, as did the sight of the Casina delle Civette when they walked through into the
garden beyond, with its geometric flower beds and the gaudy colours of late summer: red and yellow and blue.

He looked up at the windows of the castellated tower. A single face was there, pale and young and beautiful. Mina Gabriel awaiting their arrival.

She looked scared.

They sat in Bernard Santacroce’s study, beneath the picture of Galileo and his accusers, players in another inquisition, one that, to Costa, seemed as nebulous in its
search for the truth as their own faltering inquiry into the deaths of Malise Gabriel and Joanne Van Doren. Mina’s eyes were pink with tears. Her mother said they’d heard about the
death of the American woman on the TV, and the rumours about the police investigation. Cecilia Gabriel seemed passive, stoic, unmoved by anything but anger. Santacroce wore a benevolent,
proprietorial gaze, the look of a reasonable man dragged into an awkward situation he’d rather avoid.

‘Are we accused of some kind of crime?’ Cecilia Gabriel demanded. ‘If so, what exactly? This nonsense on the news . . .’

‘I’m not responsible for the media, Signora,’ Falcone replied calmly. ‘Joanne Van Doren was murdered last night. Your son clearly knew she’d died and was in the
vicinity. It would be rash of me not to regard him as our most viable suspect.’

‘That’s not true!’ Mina cried. She was wringing her hands constantly, eyes damp and darting around the room. ‘Joanne was our friend. Robert would never . . . never . .
.’

Costa looked at her and said, ‘Mina. You spoke to him last night after you talked to me. That’s why he got in touch.’