The Fallen Angel (8 page)

Then came Rome.

‘This was supposed to be the last place,’ she said. ‘Somewhere we settled down. We had connections. Daddy’s maternal grandmother was Italian. She was called Mina too.
I’m sort of named after her. In Italian it’s short for Wilhelmina. Daddy put Minerva on my birth certificate. The goddess of wisdom. Don’t ask me why. There’s no one in the
family left here, I don’t think. It was supposed to be a good move for Daddy, not working inside a university ever again. Just some little academic institution. Fewer people to fall out
with.’

‘What did he do?’ he asked.

‘Write. Talk. Edit academic papers.’ She picked at a discarded napkin on the counter. ‘I think it was beneath him, really. But he had to do it. There was nowhere left to go,
really. We had to live.’

‘I talked to Joanne Van Doren,’ he said.

‘I thought you said you were on holiday?’

‘I am. But I was a witness. I had to be involved a little.’

He didn’t like lying to her, and he wasn’t sure it had worked.

‘Joanne’s very kind. She bought me some musical stuff we couldn’t afford.’

‘She said you did a lot of research about Beatrice Cenci.’

‘You know Beatrice?’ Her face lit up for the first time.

‘I was born here. It’s one of those Roman stories you pick up if you read a lot of books. But foreigners . . .’

‘How could I not know? We were almost opposite the palace where she lived. The street. The name of the
vicolo
, the piazza. Do you think they’d still be called Cenci if it
weren’t for her?’

‘No.’

‘We had a plan. When Joanne had the apartments ready she’d use the Beatrice connection to sell them. Not that the building had anything to do with her, but . . . Business, I
suppose.’

‘What did your father think?’

She looked briefly guilty.

‘I never told him. He’d have been cross. He hated business. “Filthy lucre”, he called it. We were an academic family. We were supposed to be above that.’ She
glanced at him. ‘Joanne would have paid me. There’s nothing wrong in that, is there?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, and this seemed to reassure her. ‘What would you have done?’

‘The Beatrice tour. All the places in Rome that were connected to her. The Barberini. Montorio.’ Her face grew serious. ‘A few others too. You’re a Roman. You must
know.’

‘I don’t actually.’

He remembered how he’d held back from visiting the sites when he was younger, which was against his nature. He loved his native city. Normally he wanted to know the history of every last
corner, every brick and cobble. But with Beatrice Cenci, the interest seemed prurient, wrong somehow.

‘Is your mother coping? Does she need help?’

The girl scowled.

‘How would I know? Mummy thinks I’m a child. I need to be protected from all that. There’s no point in arguing. We’re not a . . . conventional family. Also . . .’
There was a subtle though noticeable change in her expression, a coolness he had not seen before. ‘She’s got Bernard to help her. She doesn’t need me.’

‘Bernard?’

‘Bernard Santacroce. He runs the organization Daddy worked for. Filthy rich. Our benefactor. He gave Daddy the job in the first place. I imagine we’re dependent on his generosity
now.’

‘He’s Roman?’

She frowned.

‘Bernard’s English really. Of Italian stock, as he puts it. He claims he’s one of the old Santacroces. They hated the Cenci. He bought the palazzetto off a relative, I think,
and got the Brotherhood of the Owls running again. It had fallen apart a bit.’ She wriggled upright on her little stool in the cafe, looking like a schoolgirl who’d found the right
answer. ‘The Santacroce claimed they were descended from Valerius Publicola, one of the original founders of the Roman republic. They even added the word “Publicola” to their full
name. The Cenci had to retaliate, of course, so they said they were descendants of the Cincii, another famous republican family. Seems a bit petty to me. You live, you die. Who cares except the
people who knew you? Your parents. Your children. Then they’re gone too.’

‘How do you know all this?’ he asked.

She looked at him as if the question were stupid.

‘I read books, of course.’

‘I know that, but . . .’ He’d felt this way himself at her age. Then something got in the way, something he didn’t want to mention to her. His own mother’s illness
had pushed him towards the Beatrice Cenci story. Her premature death had made it too painful to pursue his curiosity all the way, to visit those last mournful places that marked the young
girl’s end. ‘But why?’

She thought for a moment.

‘Dunno really. When we came here it just seemed the natural thing to do. It’s not like America. Or Canada. Or anywhere else. Rome’s a little world, all its own.’ She
glanced out of the window of the cafe by the Piazza Venezia, at the busy square beyond, and its monumental buildings, Aracoeli, the Capitoline museums, the hideous Vittorio Emanuele monument the
locals called ‘the typewriter’, the ‘wedding cake’ and much worse. ‘All that history . . . it sort of swallowed me. I felt at home, and I’d never felt that about
anywhere before.’

Mina sucked on the straw of her Coke.

‘I talked to Daddy. I told him this was what I wanted to do when I grew up. To write about Rome. To tell people about all the things they never saw. To open their eyes. He said . .
.’ Mina Gabriel seemed to be trying to recall his exact words. ‘He said I should let this place infect me as much as I possibly could. Haunt me. Like a ghost. Or a . . .’ One more
hunt for the correct term. ‘. . . succubus. Something that possesses you. You won’t understand. If you grew up here you’d take it for granted. I know I would.’

Costa didn’t say anything. He was stealing a glance at her right hand again, wondering if the scratches there were really the work of a cat.

She leaned forward and looked up into his face.

‘I could show you if you like,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘Show me?’

‘Yes. The places. Beatrice’s places.’

‘You’ll have things to do.’

‘I told you. Mummy won’t let me. We could go on the tour I invented for Joanne. It would be good to get out. To talk to someone new. I hate sitting around doing nothing. I get that
from Daddy. Everyone said we were alike. Peas from the same pod. There were two things he loathed more than any other. Idleness and hypocrisy. Please.’

Costa couldn’t think of a way to say no. In his head he was trying to frame a different question.

‘How did you get on with your father?’ he asked.

She stared straight into his face, her wide, young eyes unblinking, and said, ‘I loved him. And he loved me. That’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?’

‘Exactly,’ he said.

Mina Gabriel checked her watch then picked up the music case.

‘I’ve got to go to the church now. I’m doing this for him. Daddy adored this piece. Odd really. It’s religious. Everything Messiaen did was. Look.’

Mina opened the bag and showed him the music:
Transports de joie d’une âme devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne.

‘
Ecstasies of a soul before the glory of Christ, which is its own glory
,’ Mina translated. ‘A very long title, if you ask me. Ridiculously so. We just call it
Transports de joie
.’

She finished her Coke then went to the counter and bought a chocolate bar, ripping off the wrapping, taking a big bite.

‘Want to come and listen?’ she asked, mouth half-full.

‘I’m not a Catholic.’

‘Me neither. It’s just music. Got to feed the cats at ten thirty tomorrow. We can meet afterwards if you want. Up to you. I don’t mind being on my own. Honest.’

They crossed the Piazza Venezia together, dodging the fractious traffic, then ascended the broad sweep of steps that led up to Santa Maria in Aracoeli, St Mary of the Altar of Heaven. It was one
of his favourite Roman churches, in part because its name alluded to another, pagan past. Perched on the Capitoline hill overlooking the Forum, this was once the site of an important imperial-era
temple. Images of the Emperor Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl still stood on the high altar, commemorating the legend that Augustus had received a vision of the coming of the Catholic Church from
the Sibyl herself, in his temple on this very spot. Rome’s distant and near pasts, two different though related kinds of superstition, converged in the darkness of this quiet and holy place,
and lived there happily, side by side.

The organ stood in a dark corner of the cavernous church. Mina Gabriel disappeared behind some nearby curtains and returned wearing an ecclesiastical gown that made her look like a choir girl.
Then she climbed onto the long bench in front of the instrument. He watched how she positioned herself easily over the keyboard, the stops and the vast array of pedals beneath her feet, as if
coming home.

He took a seat at the end of a row, half-hidden in the shadows. The low, sonorous growl of the instrument grew out of the persistent gloom of the nave, seeming to come from everywhere. The music
was like nothing he’d ever heard, both harmonious and discordant, free-flowing, without the conventions of time and melody which he expected. There was something ethereal yet disturbing in
its clashing tones. As he watched, the girl seemed to become a part of the device, one more complex component of the vast, incomprehensible machine in front of her.

The sun shifted position. A ray of sunlight burst through one of the high church windows. It fell on her left cheek and he saw that the white skin there was wet with tears, awash with some
released emotion she’d kept back for the shade of the basilica.

The sight of her touched him, more than he expected, more than he wanted. Costa found his own eyes growing damp as he followed her anxious, taut body flying over the keys and stops and pedals of
the ancient organ, extracting from the instrument the composer’s tortured paean to an invisible yet omnipresent creator, a frail young girl trapped entirely by its mechanisms and the effect
they produced.

He wiped his face with his sleeve and quietly walked out by the side door, to the little staircase that led up to the more familiar Campidoglio, the summit, a stage in stone set by Michelangelo
to mark the
caput mundi
, the head of the world.

The early evening was airless and hot. There was no time to return home before the meal Peroni had organized. He sat in the piazza, in the shadow of the great bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius on
horseback, waiting, thinking, wondering.

Peroni’s choice of restaurant was always likely to prove controversial, with Falcone at least. When Costa arrived, feeling more than slightly grubby and sweat-stained,
the small gathering was standing in the Piazza delle Cinque Scole, directly opposite one side of the squat mass of the Palazzo Cenci on its little hill.

‘There must be somewhere else,’ Falcone complained, arms folded, face suffused with heat. He had looked a little leaner of late, which made his silver goatee seem somewhat
theatrical, almost like that of a stage wizard. In a pale linen suit, stiff with outrage in this modest corner of Rome, his anger seemed almost comically petulant, a point not lost on Agata
Graziano, who stood to one side with Teresa, scratching her petite dark nose to hide her mirth. Agata and Falcone had enjoyed a long, secret and somewhat strange bond. She was an orphan child who
grew up in a convent school. As a young cop Falcone had secretly donated part of his salary to charity, perhaps out of a sense of guilt at the failure of his own marriage. It had been used to pay
for Agata’s education. When Falcone discovered this, ever curious, he had arranged to meet the young girl, liked her, and the two had come to form an odd bond, close yet detached too, both
grateful to the other for something they rarely acknowledged. Unconsciously, perhaps against his own wishes, Falcone had become in some sense a substitute yet distant parent. The relationship
allowed her rather more leeway with him than was afforded to most.

‘I like the look of it, Leo,’ Agata said cheerily. ‘You don’t have to eat in a fancy restaurant every day, do you?’

‘It’s not even a restaurant, really, is it?’

Costa pitched in.

‘My father used to bring me here. He said it’s real working-class Roman food.’

Falcone shot him a filthy look, up and down the grubby suit, and grumbled, ‘My point exactly.’

‘You said I could choose,’ Peroni pointed out, waving a handful of tickets. ‘And we’re members now.’

In one sense at least, the grumpy old inspector was correct. Sora Margherita was no longer a restaurant. The city authorities had complained about the lack of facilities in the tiny dining room
set behind a small door in the ghetto and, amidst local outrage, forced the place to close. Then the owners discovered a loophole, and reopened as the ‘
Associazione Culturale Sora
Margherita
’. A dining club, membership free, fees charged according to how much one ate and drank. At which point the city gave up and culinary life in the ghetto returned to normal.

Costa walked round to Agata and Teresa, kissed them both on the cheek, took his membership ticket from the set proffered by Peroni and led the way inside. Within fifteen minutes they were in a
quiet corner away from the only other group braving the scorching night, seated in front of some of the best
carciofi alla giudia
, deep-fried artichokes, he’d ever encountered. The
wine was from Velletri. The staff were charming and quite unperturbed by the argument at the door. Even Falcone began to smile after a while. Then the conversation started in earnest.

The topic was Malise Gabriel, a man with a curious first name, Gaelic it seemed. He was an ethologist, a scientist specializing in the study of animal behaviour, who graduated from Cambridge and
won a readership there before he turned thirty. Ten years later he wrote the book which Peroni found in the apartment,
All the Gods are Dead
. The title came from Nietzsche’s
Thus
Spake Zarathustra
, though Gabriel’s work made Nietzsche’s attack on the Church appear mild. It was a calculated, prolonged and highly detailed assault on organized religion and
religious thought, a broadside that had managed to offend Catholics, Muslims, Protestants, Buddhists and Hindus alike, while selling millions and entering multiple translations. For one brief year
the book had been everywhere: cited as a cruel and corrosive diatribe by its critics and a brave and perceptively fresh analysis by its supporters, the first shot in a war in which secularism would
reclaim the moral high ground for good, dispatching religion to the fantasy world of superstition where Malise Gabriel felt it belonged. Then this controversial academic fell abruptly out of the
public eye, resigned from Cambridge and left the country, to embark upon the shifting and footloose academic career, much of it spent with inferior institutions, which had led him ultimately to
Rome.