The Fallen Angel (38 page)

He stabbed a finger at the vile shots of Mina.

‘It’s the same, isn’t it?’ the girl said. ‘You can see it’s the daughter. You can’t see who the man is.’

‘It’s not the same at all,’ Costa replied. ‘These are rushed shots taken by hand. Look.’

He held up his arm and pretended he was snapping off shots of himself.

‘He’s doing this while he’s having sex with her. Camera in hand. Arm up here, just firing away. It’s secret and squalid, as if he’s capturing some kind of conquest,
not something that’s meant to be erotic. This is just for him. Or them.’

Di Capua was nodding. He could see this.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘And he’s bound to get his own face in there at some stage. Has to happen. So he goes through the shots afterwards, deletes the ones that identify him,
copies the rest onto the memory stick then keeps it safe in her mattress.’

‘Why would he do that?’ Maria asked. ‘It seems an unnecessary risk.’

It did too, Costa thought. One more unanswered question.

Teresa told Di Capua to get a team looking at the prints, trying to find some features that would enable them to identify any second individual in the frames.

Costa shook his head.

‘We’ve been racing round Rome, yelling at Mina Gabriel and her mother. We didn’t even look at what was here, right in front of us.’

‘I said I’m sorry,’ Teresa told him.

‘I wasn’t trying to blame anyone. We’re as guilty as you. It’s as if . . .’ He wasn’t sure what he was saying himself. ‘As if we were meant to be
chasing these ghosts.’

Maria had her hand up, like a schoolgirl with a bright idea.

‘Yes?’ Teresa said.

‘I got a tweet about the Ducati a couple of minutes ago. The company never got back to me. Some geek dealer in Milan’s got the records database.’

‘Tweet?’ Peroni asked, aghast.

‘Don’t ask,’ Teresa told him. ‘And?’

‘It’s not Italian at all.’ They waited.

‘It’s an export model,’ Maria said. ‘Made for the British market. Never sold here or anywhere else.’

By eleven the teams were in place and looking at the details that Costa had ordered them to explore: the red Ducati, the photographs found in the basement of the house in the
Via Beatrice Cenci and the ones secreted in Mina Gabriel’s mattress.

Peroni was heading up the police group pressing the UK authorities for more information. Di Capua had brought in a photographic expert he knew to help with the pictures. No one had even
mentioned Falcone’s name in a while. There was too much work to do, too much interest in what was beginning to emerge.

The expert turned out to be a gruff and burly individual from the city’s paparazzi pack. After twenty minutes spent poring over the prints through an eyeglass the man stood up, massaged
his back, casually inquired whether it was OK to smoke, grunted when this was refused and said, ‘Don’t you people take your clothes off sometimes? These shots . . .’ He indicated
the prints from the basement. ‘They’re two different men. Isn’t it obvious?’

Peroni walked in, looking busy.

‘Am I interrupting something?’ he asked.

‘Bear with us,’ Costa told him.

‘Yes,’ Teresa said, glaring at the paparazzo and Di Capua in turn. ‘We do know that. Is there nothing else you have to tell us?’

‘He’s hiding his identity. The second man. Not
him
, obviously.’ He placed a fat thumb on the face of Malise Gabriel, hovering over the naked and rather drowsy-looking
Joanne Van Doren. ‘The other one. He doesn’t want to be seen. I’ve done a little porn in my time, who hasn’t?’

Teresa put up her hand and smiled at him.

‘What I meant was, who in the business hasn’t? Sometimes you have to keep people’s faces out of the picture for obvious reasons. Men usually. Women don’t mind too much.
Or if they do, they don’t say. It’s not easy either. If they’re pros, maybe. They know how to pose. But when you’ve got amateurs performing, and this woman
is
an
amateur, trust me, it’s difficult to stop them getting carried away.’

He leaned down and looked at the picture again.

‘Though not her. She looks drunk to me. Or stoned or something. Not good. Where’s the joy? Where’s the passion? You could never sell these.’

‘Are we learning anything here?’ Teresa asked.

‘You’re learning what I think, lady,’ the paparazzo said. ‘Two different men, one of them doesn’t want to be seen. Miserable woman. Though quite hot on a good day,
I’d say.’

‘And the other pictures?’ Costa asked, indicating the ones of Mina Gabriel.

The photographer’s face wrinkled with disgust.

‘Please. There are standards, you know? This is different. Horrible, dirty stuff. No self-respecting photographer would get involved in something like that. It’s just plain grubby.
The kind of thing kids take with their phones. Sexting, they call it. Yuk.’

Teresa put a finger on the earlier prints, the ones from the Hasselblad.

‘So you’re saying these are good?’ she asked.

‘Pretty good, yes. They’re well posed. They do the job. No face except the woman. No obvious identification. You’ve got all the frames?’

The pathologist glared at Di Capua and said, ‘Most. There was a little accident.’

‘Well, if he managed to shoot a roll of film without any obvious identification in there, he knew what he was doing. An amateur wouldn’t manage that. Even a good one. Of course,
someone set up this guy for the first shot.’ He pointed at Malise Gabriel. ‘Then changed places for the rest.’

‘You mean this man,’ Costa pointed to Gabriel, ‘could have taken the rest of the pictures? Even if he didn’t know what he was doing?’

‘Fix a tripod and a monkey could use a camera. That kind of shot, it’s focus, lighting, frame. The real guy screwing the woman could just shout out when he wanted, I guess. Odd thing
to do.’

He scratched his head.

‘You know the worst thing?’ He picked up the shots of Mina Gabriel. ‘Someone
would
pay money for these. Some creep somewhere. That’s the kind of world we live
in.’

‘I suppose,’ Teresa said glumly.

‘That’s all I can tell you,’ the man added.

‘Not much, is it?’ Costa complained. ‘I hope we’re not paying you well.’

‘I do it as a public service,’ the paparazzo said. ‘Just a hundred euros will do.’

He held out his hand. No one took any notice.

‘Well?’ Costa asked Peroni.

‘Robert was adopted. The story about the kid who died? It’s all true. We found the inquest.’

‘It could still be Robert on those sheets,’ Teresa suggested. ‘Let’s wait for the DNA.’

‘We’ll have to, won’t we?’ Costa said. ‘At least we know Mina Gabriel told us the truth about him.’

‘Seems so,’ Teresa agreed.

Costa looked at Peroni. He was remembering the conversation with Mina at Montorio, the story about St Peter and a dead magician. Simon Magus. A story that came from her father.

‘Mina said she had an uncle in England,’ he said. ‘A banker. She thought he was called Simon. Didn’t get on with Malise. She’d never even met the man. See if you
can track him down.’

Peroni’s face creased.

‘The police in London didn’t say anything about any relatives. I asked them if they’d been to see next of kin. You’d expect it in a violent death. They said there
wasn’t any.’

‘Simon Gabriel,’ Costa repeated. ‘Go back to them. Ask.’

‘Will do.’

‘Anything else?’

Peroni looked at his notes and frowned.

‘The Ducati was bought from a dealer in London nine months ago. Reported stolen one month later. The Metropolitan police said there’d been a lot of thefts of fancy motorbikes
recently. Some kind of ring operating.’

Costa wasn’t convinced.

‘A ring stealing Italian motorbikes and shipping them back here? Why?’

‘When it’s stolen,’ Di Capua said, ‘who knows where’s it’s going?’

‘Doesn’t work like that,’ Costa said. ‘Who did it belong to in the first place?’

‘Some . . . Englishman . . .’ Peroni stuttered, checking his pad. ‘Name of Julian Urquhart. Lived in Hampstead. No current address. He moved not long after he reported the bike
stolen.’

Costa took fifty euros out of his wallet, gave it to the paparazzo, and said, ‘Thank you.’

‘Fifty?’ the photographer asked.

‘On an hourly rate you’re still beating any of us. Good day. Sir.’

He waited until the man had left.

‘Urquhart was Cecilia Gabriel’s maiden name,’ Costa told them. He looked at Peroni and asked, ‘Are you in the mood for coincidences?’

‘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.’

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.