The Fallen Angel

SEVEN

Silvio Di Capua frowned at the corpse on the table. The day had not gone the way it was supposed to. When he finally started on the preliminary autopsy he had begun under the impression he possessed two firm findings. Now their certainty seemed to be drowned in a sea of doubts, with insufficient time to dispel or clarify even a handful. He needed additional advice before he could proceed with the full autopsy. An expert. Nor was it proving easy to extract information from the dead man’s medical records.

The young pathologist muttered a quiet curse, swallowed his pride and called her. Teresa was still in the apartment in the Via Beatrice Cenci. She’d been there for the best part of six hours and now sounded harassed and a little cross.

‘Find anything?’ Di Capua asked.

‘Ever tried looking for evidence on a building site? The muck and dust these people leave behind them. .’

‘I have, actually. Several times. You just need to be patient and a little creative. It can be quite rewarding.’

‘Thank you for that comforting advice. I’ll bear it in mind. We’re not having any luck tracking down the stuff that got cleared out of here either. It sounds as if a lot went to some dump out in the hills.’

‘That was quick,’ he said. ‘I never realized the construction industry’s waste-disposal people were so efficient.’

‘Well, since you’re so expert in these things, Silvio, I’ll let you go down there to see if we can extract something out of it.’

He liked that idea and said so.

‘But you did find something?’ he asked.

‘We’ve found very little really. About half an hour ago, underneath a thick layer of dust, we picked up a blood stain on the side of a radiator in the girl’s room. Near the windows. I’ve sent someone back with a sample.’

‘You won’t get an answer till the morning. August, remember. It’s like. . like a morgue here!’

‘If you crack that joke one more time I will, I swear, eviscerate you. With a teaspoon.’

It was an old one, he realized.

‘Boring blood or promising blood?’ he asked.

‘It’s just possible it’s evidence of a struggle,’ she said with an audible sigh. ‘I don’t know. There’s no hair. No tissue. What about you? What about the photograph?’

Falcone had called from the Casina delle Civette asking them to examine urgently the picture of the unidentified naked girl and work out how old the initial photo might have been. The print the two cops took with them wasn’t the original. Before they left that morning Di Capua had scanned the photograph found in the apartment and run off a two-sided copy, one side picture, the other the handwritten message. Being the showman he was, Falcone wanted something that looked genuine to push into people’s faces should the mood take him. The original itself had been scanned into the lab system, at very high resolution. Di Capua managed to peer at it briefly that morning, trying to interpret the mass of pixels before turning to Malise Gabriel. The first task had taken rather longer than planned.

‘On the surface it looks like an image taken from silver halide film,’ he told her. ‘From an old-fashioned camera. A digital copy of a conventional print.’

‘So it could be twenty years old, then?’

‘A lot more than that for all I know. It’s just a partial image of the torso of some young nude girl lying on crumpled sheets next to what appears to be a semen stain. Nothing to date it at all. There’s visible film grain in the image. The photo came from a Japanese dye sub printer, really common. You can buy them down the shops for a hundred euros or less. Slip in your memory card or an image from a scanner, press a button, the picture pops out in a minute or less. I’ve got something similar in the lab. That’s what I used to give Falcone his prop. Don’t get excited. It isn’t like a typewriter. Even if you find me a printer to look at I’ve no idea how we could say with any great certainty the picture came from that. You’d need the print material — the disposable paper it uses, which usually gets thrown away pretty quickly. I can give you the brand though and a range of models. Since we’re going down the dump, we can look.’

‘And?’

Teresa always knew when there was a caveat coming.

‘It could be a fake. A good one. If you’re handy with photo software it’s very easy to make a digital original look as if it was shot on film years ago. You just turn the picture black and white, add some noise then soften it with some Gaussian blur. No easy way of saying if that’s what’s happened here. It could be twenty years old. Fifty even. It could be from last week. We’ve got a photo expert on call. I can get him in if you-’

‘I’ll think on it. What about you?’

He took a deep breath, knowing she wouldn’t like this.

‘Here’s the bad news. What with photos of nude teenagers and some other things I’m way behind. After what you said this morning I wanted to get Gabriel’s medical records first. I thought that would make things easier. I was wrong. The surgeon at the university hospital won’t release them and won’t tell me why.’

‘Doctors don’t have to roll over and give us everything we want.’

‘I know, but they usually do. And why not? The man’s dead.’

‘The university hospital?’

‘That’s what I said. I suspect Gabriel was being treated for cancer. I tried the head man in oncology-’

‘Adriano Negri?’

‘Friend of yours? It didn’t show. He won’t co-operate. Won’t show me a thing.’

‘You leave him to me. Is that it?’

‘Not at all,’ he said patiently. It was always best to get the worst out of the way first. Teresa worked better when she finished on a rising note. ‘I’ve got two things for you. Scratch marks. Some on his hands that could be evidence of a struggle. There are similar parallel marks on his lower back too. Fingernails. Three. Recent. Someone defending themselves. Someone having fun. Could be either. If you could locate a suspect and get a good look at their hands it’s possible we might still find some tissue underneath the nails.’

‘Fun?’

‘Fun. Don’t ask me to put a time on it but shortly before he died, anywhere between a few minutes and a few hours, Malise Gabriel had sex. No question about it.’

He paused, aware that her practical medical knowledge was immeasurably greater than his, since Teresa Lupo had worked as a doctor before becoming a pathologist.

‘Are people with cancer much interested in. . you know? Intercourse,’ he asked.

‘If they can!’ she snapped. ‘They’re still human beings. Good God, Silvio. Depends on the condition. Treatment or the disease can affect the sex drive. It doesn’t mean the desire disappears. They’re just sick people. For pity’s sake. .’

Di Capua added quickly, ‘There’s trace evidence of a condom, which is one more reason why I’m a little behind here. I don’t know the brand yet. There’s nonoxynol-9 spermicide residue which could help there. I’ve also got traces of water-based lubricant. Maybe intercourse was difficult for some reason. Or it was just something he. . they liked. No way of knowing. But again, there could still be something on the partner if you can get her or him into an examination room.’

He heard her begin yelling at someone to examine the toilets for condoms, then issuing another string of orders: checks for tissues, toilet paper, all the usual means by which semen might, with luck, be found. Di Capua knew what they really needed, though: bedding. If that was nothing more than ashes out at some dump in the hills this was not going to be easy.

‘Who the hell examined this man when he came in?’ she demanded.

He knew what was coming.

‘Maria. One of the university interns on work experience. It was Saturday. In August. He was an accident victim. Do you remember being young and naive and way too scared to cause trouble? I do.’

A florid curse lit up the line.

‘You want me to fire her?’ he asked.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not her fault it took us two days to realize we had a murder on our hands. I’m the head of the department. If you want to blame someone, blame me.’

Typical, he thought. Their omissions were regrettable but scarcely case-threatening.

‘Praiseworthy but unjustified,’ he told her. ‘We rely on the police to alert us to these things. They were asleep at the wheel. It’s not our fault they didn’t wake us as a result.’

‘That’s the most pathetic excuse I’ve ever heard,’ she grumbled. ‘I’m calling Falcone. Then I’m coming back to take a look at this myself.’