The Fallen Angel (23 page)

‘I told him he could trust you!’ She cast a fierce glance at Falcone. ‘You’re not like . . . them.’

‘What did Robert say?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. He was upset. He wouldn’t tell me why. He sounded frightened. I—’

‘Your brother,’ Falcone interrupted, ‘may well have just murdered someone.’

‘No!’ Her voice was high-pitched, childlike. Cecilia Gabriel made not the slightest effort to comfort the girl next to her. Not a word. Not a touch. Instead Bernard Santacroce walked
out from behind his desk, pulled up a chair and placed an arm briefly round her hunched shoulders.

‘Inspector,’ Santacroce said. ‘Is this your idea of how to treat the bereaved? Malise . . . Joanne . . . We were all close to them in one way or another. Have some decency,
please.’

Falcone scowled.

‘It’s very difficult to talk about decency when we’re dealing with a murder, possibly two, sir. Signora Gabriel here was going to sue Joanne Van Doren. As to the relationship
between the dead woman and Signora Gabriel’s husband—’

‘This is unacceptable,’ Santacroce cut in. ‘If you wish to proceed in such a fashion I will bring in a lawyer. At my own expense. Perhaps that would be for the best in any
case.’

‘Do it now,’ Falcone agreed. ‘Then we can continue this interview at the Questura. Each of you in a separate room. If you’d prefer.’

‘Ask your damned questions,’ Cecilia Gabriel told him.

‘Where’s your son?’ the inspector demanded. ‘I need to speak to him and I must say I fail to understand why you show no apparent interest in his whereabouts.
Where is
he?
’

The Englishwoman closed her eyes. For once she seemed affected by the subject. Mina had spoken a little about her mother the previous day, and Costa had read the skimpy reports in the Questura.
Cecilia Gabriel was an only child in a fading and impoverished aristocratic English family. Her brief time as a student had shown great promise, but that had been removed by the needs of family.
She seemed, to Costa’s eyes, worn yet a little fiery too, like some lean bird of prey backed into a corner, ready to fight if necessary.

The woman was not prepared to speak at that moment. It was left to Mina, who looked across the room, directly at Costa, and said, ‘Mum.’ She took her mother’s hand. ‘Tell
them. You have to.’

‘It’s none of their business,’ Cecilia Gabriel muttered between gritted teeth. ‘Any of this.’ Her aquiline head came up. She glared at Falcone. ‘This is my
family you’re talking about, Inspector. You will not crucify them.’

‘Your son, madam.’

‘Robert’s my son in name only,’ she said simply and left it at that. The room went quiet. From the look in Bernard Santacroce’s eyes it seemed this was a revelation to
him too.

It was Peroni, typically, who broke the ice.

‘Signora Gabriel,’ he said. ‘We have to ask these questions in such circumstances. For your sake, for Robert’s sake. This is a criminal investigation. It’s
important we know the truth, especially if the boy’s innocent. Try to see this from our point of view. If that’s the case, where is he? Why doesn’t he come forward?’

The approach, calm and unthreatening, appeared to have an effect. She relaxed a little and said, ‘I can’t tell you. All I know is that he’s frightened of something. These
people he’s involved with. And . . .’ The briefest glimmer of regret crossed her angular features. ‘. . . I imagine I’m not the first person he’d choose to come to if
he needed help.’

Mina wound her fingers in her mother’s and whispered something.

The woman breathed a deep sigh and continued.

‘Our son, our
real
son, died when he was two years old. A swimming pool accident. In France.’ Her eyes were misty, unfocused. ‘Things weren’t going well in
Cambridge at that point. That book of Malise’s was too clever for our own good. The controversy. Then the scandal when I got pregnant. The baby was Robert.
Our
Robert. Then he was
gone. Malise blamed himself. He took his eyes away from the pool for a moment. It was enough. We were on the point of falling apart. There were arguments. There always were. The college dismissed
him. He found some work in Canada.’

‘I can’t imagine what it must be like,’ Peroni said honestly. ‘To lose a child. They talk about closure . . .’

‘Psychobabble. Claptrap,’ the Englishwoman muttered. ‘The death of your child’s an open wound, one that never heals. We were desperate. A little crazy, I think. So we
adopted a little boy and, since we were of good, academic stock, the authorities didn’t really notice the state we were in, didn’t care that we changed his name to that of the son
we’d lost.’ She looked at them. ‘Malise was always good at hiding his pain. Englishmen are, in case you haven’t noticed. Robert . . .’

The words drifted into silence.

‘Robert’s my brother,’ Mina said quietly. ‘And he’s still your son.’

The older woman patted her once on the back.

‘That’s true. But there was always a gap, some distance. I don’t know how but he knew it was there, almost from the beginning. He understood we wanted it to disappear, more
than anything, though I don’t think we ever managed to convince him of that for some reason. Inspector.’ She glanced at Santacroce. ‘We’ve told people, you perhaps, that
Robert was at college in England until he joined us here. That’s not strictly true. We tried to keep him at home. It was impossible. He’d run away. Get into fights. So we sent him to
boarding school, not that we had the money. He was expelled from there when he was seventeen. As far as I know after that he lived in squats in London. Earning money God knows how, when he
wasn’t begging off us. He came to Rome when Malise told him there was no more. Nothing left. He had the choice of living with us or . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Disappearing for good, I
imagine. We didn’t want that. We wanted to be a family. But there was no more money. He tried. We all did.’

‘And his relationship with your husband?’ Falcone asked.

‘They adored one another,’ she replied immediately. ‘Sometimes it was impossible to believe Robert wasn’t really Malise’s son. They had the same temper. The same
stupid enthusiasms, the same ridiculous, impetuous urges. And when they argued . . .’

Mina took her arm. The woman couldn’t go on.

‘You know the kind of people Robert mixed with?’ Costa asked.

She shook her head vigorously.

‘No. I didn’t want to know. They were criminals. Drugs were involved, I imagine. Not that Robert took them, as far as I knew. It was for the money. Nothing else.’

‘Is it possible Robert was in the apartment the night your husband died?’ Costa went on.

‘I told you!’ Mina cried. ‘I was there. Just the two of us. I saw Robert in the hall downstairs when I ran out to see Daddy. He was coming home. I think he was a bit drunk.
Scared. He didn’t want to come with me into the street. He didn’t know anything.’

Costa shook his head.

‘You were in your music room. Someone could have arrived without your knowing. That’s possible, isn’t it?’

‘No!’ she insisted. ‘I wasn’t listening to music all the time. I heard Daddy screaming when he fell, didn’t I?’

‘Do you know why the media are pushing this story about Beatrice Cenci?’ Falcone asked the Englishwoman straight out.

‘Because you leaked it to them,’ Bernard Santacroce interrupted. ‘As a way of placing pressure on Cecilia, I imagine. It’s obvious, isn’t it? I have to say I find
all this distasteful in the extreme.’

‘No,’ Costa told him. ‘We didn’t.’

He was puzzled by Santacroce’s intervention. It seemed misplaced.

‘Their interest – and I must confess I share it – stems from the fact your husband had sex shortly before he died,’ Falcone said without emotion. ‘The evidence is
very clear. If your daughter insists no one else was in the house, the only possible conclusion—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Cecilia Gabriel shrieked at him.

Falcone glanced at Mina and retrieved a print from the envelope. It was the photograph from the book Gabriel had been reading the night he died.

‘We found this in your father’s book, Mina.’

She glanced at the print, at her mother, went white and shook her head.

Falcone, perhaps out of embarrassment, flipped the photo over and showed her the brief written message, Galileo’s whispered denial of his recantation in front of the Vatican’s
Inquisition. A brief chill ran down Costa’s spine when he realized, from the history he’d been given, that the great man must once have been inside these very walls.

‘Do you know who wrote this?’ Falcone asked. ‘Do you recognize the writing?’

‘No.’

The curt, aggressive tone, that of a teenager, made him turn it over. She stared at the naked figure, head cut off by the print, turning as if to hide some shame.

‘Did your father ever make a sexual advance to you?’ Falcone went on.

‘Mummy told you about that photograph,’ she snapped. ‘Why don’t you believe her?’

‘Even if I do, the question still stands.’

‘Daddy loved me.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘I told you!’ Cecilia Gabriel interrupted. ‘That picture is me. This whole idea is ridiculous. Malise hadn’t felt well for some time. We didn’t . . . Not
often.’

‘He had sex the night he died,’ Falcone insisted. ‘There’s no possibility of a mistake.’ He glanced at Mina. ‘If we’d been able to examine anyone
he’d been with—’

‘Don’t be disgusting,’ Bernard Santacroce spat at him. ‘This conversation is at an end, Inspector. If you wish to talk to Cecilia and Mina again it will be in the
presence of my lawyers.’

Falcone reached into the envelope again and took out a set of large black and white prints, fanning them across his lap.

Bernard Santacroce’s eyes grew wide. Cecilia Gabriel gaped at them and swore, an Anglo-Saxon curse, beneath her breath.

Mina closed her eyes for a moment then stared at the window. Costa found himself looking at the prints, wishing he didn’t have to. Malise Gabriel was there, painfully thin, hollow-eyed,
anxious, writhing on the bed with Joanne Van Doren, struggling awkwardly to get into the kind of position one associated with cheap pornography, staring at the lens from time to time as if trying
to understand something, puzzled, unhappy. The monochrome pictures were utterly joyless, bleak and without any feeling whatsoever.

‘There’s a photographic studio hidden in the basement of your apartment block,’ Falcone went on. ‘Did you know that?’

Cecilia was shaking her head, glancing at her daughter.

‘It is at least possible,’ Falcone went on, ‘that the person your husband slept with on the night of his death was Miss Van Doren, which rather destroys the story being put
around by the media. From my point of view it does, of course, provide motive.’ He stared at her. ‘Where were you last night? After we left?’

The woman didn’t answer. Her eyes were locked on her daughter.

‘Mina?’ she murmured.

‘Mummy,’ the girl replied, looking out of the window at the palms swaying in the soft, hot breeze, a distant, cold tone in her voice.

Cecilia Gabriel flew at her daughter in a flurry of fists and nails. Costa was there in an instant, separating them, getting his arm round the girl, turning his back to the furious woman
screeching at her own daughter in a voice full of hatred and pain.

When he turned Peroni was holding back Cecilia Gabriel whose eyes were bright with anger and tears.

‘You knew?’ she shrieked across the room. ‘You knew he was screwing that dirty little American bitch all along?’

Mina was shaking in Costa’s arms. Bernard Santacroce got to his feet, going red in the face, worried, embarrassed, stuttering excuses and demands.

‘Daddy never wanted to hurt you,’ the girl cried. ‘Never!’

Costa looked at Falcone, then at Mina.

‘Did Robert know?’ he asked. She was staring at her mother, sobbing. ‘Mina?’

‘Yes,’ she said weakly.

‘Signora Gabriel,’ Falcone insisted. ‘Where were you last night?’

Bernard Santacroce’s face was puce with rage.

‘She was with me, Inspector. We had dinner together. Mina was here in the Casina, on her own. She was upset. So I kept Cecilia company. It seemed the kindest thing to do.’

‘Kindness,’ Falcone repeated. ‘Well . . .’

Mina Gabriel huddled close to Costa. He could feel her sobbing breath, her tears against his neck.

‘Excuse us,’ Costa said, and took her over to the far side of the room. They stood by the window, just able to hear the continuing rumble of argument from behind. He held her
shoulders, stared into her eyes.

‘This is important,’ he said. ‘Please tell me the truth. How did Robert react when he found out about your father and Joanne?’

She pulled back from him, her pale face puffy with tears, creased in a childish pout.

‘You’re just like the rest of them, aren’t you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not.’

She stayed stiff and still in front of him, face to the floor.

‘Is that what you wanted to tell me all along?’ Costa asked. ‘About the affair?’

‘Who said I wanted to tell you anything?’

‘Don’t play these games.’

She squeezed her eyes tight shut for a long moment then opened them and stared up at him. There was something about this child, this girl, this woman, that he found compelling. Some magnetic
quality in her beautiful young face, a melding of innocence with some imminent sensuality that drew him to her.

Her lips came up to his ear and she whispered, ‘What game do you want me to play, Nic?’

He felt like shaking her, trying to make her see something outside herself, beyond the confines of this strange stone tower, an unreal folly hidden away in the seething core of the city.

‘One that involves the truth,’ he said.

‘“
E pur si muove
”,’ she murmured. ‘There’s truth, of a kind.’

Then she pulled herself from his grip and strode back to stand beside her mother.

Gino Riggi had never liked the Indian woman they’d given him. She’d worked with Falcone’s people too long and it showed.

The two of them were back in their dishevelled corner on the narcotics floor, running through the intelligence records she’d pulled to try to help in the Gabriel case. He looked into her
dark, sceptical eyes and said, ‘What’s the problem now?’