The Fallen Angel

PART THREE
ONE

He didn’t go home. Costa bought a bottle of mineral water and wandered the ghetto, renewing his memories of an area he’d had little reason to visit professionally over the past few years. Then he walked into the open space of Largo Torre Argentina, a chaotic, semi-excavated pile of temples and imperial-era buildings next to a line of busy bus and tram stops. This was one place he did know well. He recalled the day he’d taken his late wife there and pointed out the columns of Pompey’s Theatre near the tram stops where Julius Caesar was assassinated. Nothing marked the location of this momentous murder. In the modern world the area, which was once as important as the Forum itself, was best known to many for the cat sanctuary that resided between the pillars and shattered headstones through which emperors once walked.

He was leaning on the railing, staring down into the walled-off area of the refuge when he saw her. Mina Gabriel was there in a T-shirt and jeans, crouching down feeding three strays near the furthest wall, close to the columns associated with Caesar. Two women in their thirties were talking to her, with grave and sympathetic faces. The girl got up, turned, smiled briefly, kissed them both, smiling gently, and said something that looked like ‘grazie’. Then she came back to the entrance, picked up a leather music case and began to walk up the steps to the street level.

Costa strode quickly over and met her.

‘Mina?’

She looked tired. Her guileless brown eyes were pink and watery, her young, intelligent face drawn. She’d tied back her hair into a simple ponytail so that she now looked much younger than he recalled. With the music case slung over her shoulder like a satchel she could have been one more Roman schoolgirl.

Head cocked to one side, a little wary, she looked at him and said, ‘Yes?’

‘Nic Costa. I was the police officer. The other night. . Your father. I wish I could have done more.’

She thought for a moment and asked, ‘The man in the street? You carried him across the road?’

‘The man in the street.’

The girl nodded.

‘You carried me too. When I wouldn’t get out of the way. I’m sorry if I behaved badly.’

‘You’ve nothing to apologize for.’

She looked around, as if trying to work out whether he was alone. He couldn’t help but notice there were scratches on her hands. Old ones, the blood dark red.

‘Are you here to interview me?’

‘No, no. I was just passing. I’m on holiday at the moment. I saw you. I wanted to say. . to offer my condolences.’

‘Everyone’s so kind here,’ she said, staring at him, her eyes very steady and focused. ‘Even though they don’t know us. The women at the sanctuary. The people at the church.’ She held up her music bag. ‘They’re going to let me play there. In front of the public. At five o’clock.’

‘Are you sure you want to do that?’

‘Why not?’ she replied with a shrug. ‘I can’t sit at home all the time, thinking about what happened, wondering if I could have changed something. My brother’s still out there somewhere, I don’t know where. Mummy’s talking to Uncle Simon about organizing a funeral in Berkshire. Not that that’s going to be an easy conversation. He hated Daddy.’

‘Why would your father’s brother hate him?’

She shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know. We’ve never met Simon. I just hear what goes on. He’s a banker in London. Filthy rich and materialistic. Nothing matters to him except money. Exact opposite to us. It doesn’t matter. Mummy wants to deal with all that. I can’t sit around moping. Daddy wouldn’t. He was always doing something.’

She had forty minutes before the appointment in the nearby church of Aracoeli.

‘Would you like a coffee? We can talk if you want.’

Mina Gabriel stared at him more intently, and he was aware of being judged, perhaps by a child, perhaps by someone with an older, more informed intelligence.

‘A Coke would be nice,’ she answered. ‘It’s so hot here in August. I never expected it to be like this. None of us did.’

‘It’s hot,’ he agreed. ‘A Coke. An ice cream if you like.’

She smiled and said, ‘Just a Coke, thanks. I’m not a kid.’

They began to walk towards the piazza.

‘Your hands,’ Costa said. They were fine and slim, with long, musician’s fingers. The scratches extended from the knuckle almost to the wrist on her right. ‘You’ve hurt yourself. Can you play?’

‘Cats,’ she replied. ‘Horrible little things, sometimes. Ungrateful. It’s nothing. I can play.’