The Fallen Angel

NINE

Cecilia Gabriel printed out a copy of Bernard Santacroce’s academic paper then left Falcone and Peroni alone to poke around her husband’s gloomy office on the ground floor of the Casina delle Civette.

There were books aplenty, an office computer, some manuscripts, a music player with a collection of classical CDs, mostly Beethoven, and, on the cheap, utility desk where he worked, photographs of Gabriel’s family.

The pictures sat in a line next to the computer. Peroni stared at them, wondering, aware of Falcone’s judgemental gaze from behind him.

‘You’re the family man,’ the inspector said in the end. ‘Tell me.’

There were eight photographs in all. Mina Gabriel appeared in every one. The oldest showed her little more than five or six, the one next to it as a plain, somewhat gawky, very serious-looking kid, taller, staring straight at the camera. Gabriel’s wife was in four pictures and didn’t seem to want to smile much in any. The son appeared once, as a scowling boy of fourteen or so, tall and skinny, half-hidden behind his mother, with a head of curly brown hair that needed attention and doubtless wasn’t going to get it. None of the photographs bore any obvious visual context: a holiday destination, a birthday party, a picnic. Every picture bar one depicted the subjects seated on mundane, often slightly scruffy furniture, stiff, as if posing.

The exception was a photograph of Mina alone, recent, Peroni guessed. The girl was pictured from the waist up at a stone window. She appeared to be wearing nothing but a coloured bra or a skinny bikini top and a giggly, girlish smile. Her hair was a mess, as if she’d just climbed out of bed. She looked happy in a way it would be hard to fake. Peroni guessed the shot was taken upstairs, in the apartment Cecilia Gabriel had now reoccupied. But it dated from summer. He could see that from the full, verdant palm trees, the tone of the sun and the girl’s scant clothing by the open window. Given the timing of their stay in Rome this shot could only have been after they had moved out. Mina must have returned here with her father, got into a bikini or stripped to her underclothes, then. .

The big old cop winced. He hated cases like this.

‘Tell you what?’ he muttered.

‘Would you have a photograph like that on your desk?’ Falcone asked. ‘Of your own daughter?’

It was so easy to misread the signs, and the consequences for doing so could be terrible.

He looked Falcone in the eye and said, ‘If you manage to peek behind the scenes of any family you’ll find something that looks funny from the outside. A photo. A slap. A cross word spoken in the heat of the moment. You can’t judge people’s lives on the basis of a snapshot. If you did we’d all be guilty of something. The girl’s probably just sunbathing. Kids do. Even smart kids who belong to academic freaks on the slide. It could be nothing more than that. Everyone takes pictures of their family when they’re happy, having a nice time.’

There was a cold, disbelieving expression on Falcone’s chiselled face.

‘Sunbathing?’

‘Why not?’ Peroni pleaded. ‘Can’t anything be innocent any more? At what point did we start to tell people they couldn’t take pictures of their kids messing about being kids without someone snooping around to take a look and asking if it’s something worse?’

Falcone pointed at the picture.

‘At the point they look like that. Anyone can understand. .’

Peroni fought to keep a handle on his temper.

‘Not if you’re a parent! A normal one. The photo’s sitting on his desk. His wife must have seen it a million times. If there was something wrong, something going on, don’t you think she’d have realized?’

Falcone scowled and muttered something about how relationships could cloud someone’s vision, make them vulnerable.

‘I don’t remember anyone ever accusing you of that when you still had a wife,’ Peroni snapped back, and regretted his outburst immediately. His colleague’s marriage had been a protracted nightmare of recriminations and infidelities on both sides, one that had marked Falcone, perhaps helped make him the solitary man he was.

‘No,’ Falcone agreed, picking up the photo of the half-naked girl and looking at it very closely. ‘They didn’t. Perhaps the mother did find out in the end. Perhaps that’s what happened. The mother, the brother. . the girl maybe. I don’t know. They told him to stop. He didn’t. So finally they got together and killed him. Just like Nic said. They borrowed the idea from the Cenci girl, trying to make it look an accident.’

‘Nic didn’t say that. And besides, the Cenci all wound up dead, didn’t they? Great idea to copy, I must say. .’

‘There’s something very wrong here,’ Falcone insisted. ‘Do you really not see it?’

Peroni took one more look at the photo of the girl and issued a long, unhappy sigh.

‘I don’t know what I see if I’m honest. Families are just the world in miniature. Imperfect. Miserable as hell at times. Wrong too.’ He had to say it. ‘If you’d understood that maybe you’d still be married. Everyone’s got their secrets. You have to learn to live with them and keep them to yourself. It’s best for everyone.’

Again he regretted his clumsy words, which were meant to inform, not accuse. Yet Falcone’s face bore a brief mark of hurt. This was getting too personal, too close, for both of them. The inspector was his friend as much as a colleague and he hadn’t recovered completely from the unexpected and vicious slap he’d got from the girl’s mother. It wasn’t the violence that shocked him. Peroni knew that. It was the hatred, the force behind it. Falcone was a decent man, trying to do a difficult, sometimes impossible, job, one that society demanded without ever asking the cost. He didn’t want thanks. But he didn’t expect to be detested either.

‘I’m sorry,’ Peroni said. ‘That was uncalled for. I should never have said it. I simply feel we may be getting ahead of ourselves.’

Or was he really trying to convince himself of all this? He knew what Falcone meant. He just wasn’t sure they were looking in the right place. Meeting Bernard Santacroce had bothered him, for one thing. The man was a stuck-up bastard who hadn’t made the slightest effort to hide how he felt about Malise Gabriel.

‘Why wouldn’t that toffee-nosed bastard upstairs write out the name of his stupid academic paper for me?’ Peroni wondered.

‘I imagine he thought it was beneath him. Besides, we’ve got the paper already, haven’t we? If you think that’s evidence and this — ’ Falcone waved the photograph of Mina Gabriel in Peroni’s face — ‘isn’t, then God help us all.’

There were times when Peroni wanted to give Leo Falcone a piece of his mind. The truth, the whole truth, nothing but. It wasn’t rank that stopped him. It was simple human concern. He knew how much the man would be hurt if his fragile and lonely facade was punctured.

‘May I offer a word of advice?’ he said instead.

Falcone replaced the photograph then folded his arms, saying nothing.

‘We’re walking on eggshells here,’ Peroni told him. ‘If I remember correctly the only way they broke down the Cenci family was by torturing the brother. We don’t have that option, even if we knew where he was. If there’s a case here it may well depend on someone — the wife, the daughter, maybe even the son — deciding to tell us the truth. We won’t get that out of them easily. Or by shouting.’

‘I never shout!’ Falcone objected, then added, more quietly, perhaps with a little regret, ‘Well, rarely these days.’

Peroni opened the door to the Casina delle Civette. Evening was on its way, a lazy golden one, still full of heat.

He took Falcone by the arm, looked into the man’s lined face, with its silver goatee, which was now, with age, beginning to look a little vain and said, ‘Come on. Let me buy an old friend a beer. It’s August, Leo. We don’t need to rush things. No one’s going anywhere. A little time. A little patience. Who knows how this will look in the morning?’

The inspector’s phone trilled. Peroni picked up Bernard Santa-croce’s academic paper, placed it under his arm, and waited.

Falcone listened for a moment then hit the speaker button and turned the handset so he could hear. It was Teresa. She had news and it changed everything.