The Fallen Angel

FOUR

The door to the building was open, the entrance hallway dimly lit with low security lights that wound up the long staircase like decorations left over from Christmas. He shouted the brother’s name. Costa’s voice echoed round and round the winding steps, dying somewhere near the summit. He recalled that long climb the previous day, with Peroni stopping to catch his breath on every floor.

The thought of making that journey again was starting to fill his head with dismay when a loud, metallic clang shook the floor beneath his feet. It took a moment to realize what it was. The lift, the small, old-fashioned open iron elevator with the out-of-order sign on the doors, was ascending from below with an asthmatic rusty wheeze.

One more lie, Costa thought as he listened to the rheumatic squeal of the cables and pulleys straining against one another. Then the cage arrived with a heavy, clattering bang. Nothing happened. He walked over and could see, in the dim light of the interior bulb, that it was empty. The buttons were within reach through the collapsible door. Someone had sent it for him.

He got in and waited. This was a vast, empty place. Robert Gabriel could be anywhere. After a few moments there was another rattling sound and the cage began to move uncertainly down, descending into the thick, airless dark, a dead space rank with the smell of damp and decay. Instinctively Costa patted his jacket, the empty spot where his gun would have been if he were on duty.

‘One of those days,’ he said to himself.

The lift came to a halt with a rickety jolt. The only thing visible was a single dingy light bulb dangling from a cord beyond the cage. He threw the door open with a clatter and got out, calling once more. Another light came on, then a third. His eyes began to adjust. The basement was full of building material. Sacks of cement, planks, a wheelbarrow, boards covered in hardened plaster. From somewhere in a far corner came the scurrying sound he associated with rats. Close by he could see a single heavy door which looked as if it might lead to some kind of ‘garden’ apartment, the accommodation that was always the cheapest in these places.

He walked ahead. There was a thin line of yellow light beneath the door.

‘Robert,’ he said calmly and turned the handle.

There was no reply. He walked in and found himself in what appeared to be a photographic studio. A small forest of professional-looking floodlights was set against one wall, several of them lit so they cast a dazzling white field of illumination across the room. They were all aimed in a single direction: at an ornate double bed covered in crumpled scarlet sheets, set against a wall decorated with a sea of cavorting cherubs, winged chubby creatures, the kind Raphael once painted, though not quite like this.

The tiny creatures, like miniature angels, leered lasciviously as they coupled and licked and squeezed and squealed on the cloudy pillows of a perfect blue sky, eyes down, always, to the bed beneath them.

Pornography, he thought immediately.

‘Robert,’ he called into the darkness, then realized he could smell something.

A memory returned. The forensic department when Teresa Lupo was just one more junior in a time before the world had turned entirely digital. The police photographers then used film, loved the stuff, would wind off frame after frame getting every angle of a victim, recording each death for posterity, unable to see the results until they returned to the Questura and ran their work through chemicals in the dark. Life before digital was finite, circumscribed by its own limits, by cost. No more than six films per case unless someone wanted more. Now, when photos and videos came for free, they could shoot to their heart’s content, fill the Questura’s screens with a million images, each demanding interpretation.

It was easier in some ways before. Paucity, the very fact that the information to which one had access was limited, could pull a complex investigation into focus. And focus smelled like this. There was a darkroom somewhere nearby, one of those small, enclosed places with sinks and mysterious equipment from which, with a little luck, a spark of enlightenment would emerge on the face of a damp piece of photographic paper held between the teeth of a pair of plastic developing tongs.

If Robert Gabriel was there, on this hidden floor in the basement of the house in the Via Beatrice Cenci, he didn’t want to make his presence known.

Costa walked up to the bed and thrust aside the top sheet. The fabric beneath was freshly crumpled. There was the faintest trace of a stain, like the one next to the adolescent torso in the photo in Malise Gabriel’s book, the pale young skin that might or might not be Mina’s.

He took out his phone and glanced at the screen. No signal, not even a flicker. He was underground, deep in the belly of a stone fortress. The modern world didn’t want to intrude into this place.

His fingers fell on the stem of the nearest floodlight. Costa began to angle it around the room. The walls were bare. In the corner was a small and narrow door, just ajar. He took one step towards it and the chemical smell became stronger.

Acid. Fixer. Hypo. He hadn’t heard those terms in years but each one came with its own distinct scent as he remembered the times he’d spent in the darkroom, watching, waiting for some image to emerge on the paper as it swilled slowly in the plastic baths.

He got to the other side of the room and pushed his hand through. There was a black curtain, just as he expected. And somewhere beyond, the most precious, most dangerous thing of all in a darkroom, the string pulley for the light switch. One jerk on that at the wrong moment and any film, any unfixed print would be rendered useless in a second.

Costa remembered the way the Questura had a red light outside its own processing unit, warning anyone thinking of entering to stay out until the mystical process of turning invisible silver halide into some black and white representation of reality was complete. There was no such sophistication here. In the basement of the ancient palazzo, next to what gave every indication of being some kind of secret pornographic studio, perhaps there was no need.

His hand fumbled against the inside wall, hunting for the string. Nothing. He edged through a little further and something brushed against his face. It was always somewhere you didn’t expect it. Costa pulled the dangling cord, blinked briefly as two strong fluorescent tubes began to flicker violently into life above him, found himself walking forward in the brief flashes of illumination they afforded, then screamed, couldn’t help it, as his arm bumped into something, sent it swinging away like a pendulum that disappeared for a moment and came back, fetching up against his right cheek with the plain, heavy physicality of a corpse.

Cold skin, cold clothing, another, more organic smell, the stink of death.

The tubes hit full power. The room was awash with bright, cool light. His face was level with the chest of a human being moving gently in front of him. He looked up and found himself face to face with the dead features of Joanne Van Doren, her pale, thin features distorted by the rope around her neck, eyes bulging, tongue lolling, like the mask of a slaughtered clown.

‘Jesus,’ Costa whispered and tried to turn away.

The hard, metallic nose of a gun edged onto the back of his neck.

‘Keep looking,’ said a young English voice beside him. ‘At her. Not me.’

Costa fought to think, closing his eyes for a moment. Then, when he knew he had to look, he forced himself to stare at the dishes and the gear by the developing sinks, not the body swaying in the bright light just in front of him.

‘What do you want?’ he said finally.

‘I want you to see. I want you to understand.’

‘Understand what?’ he asked and tried to turn. It was easier to talk if you could see someone. ‘I can’t. .’

‘Don’t look at me!’ the English kid screamed, and stabbed the gun hard into Costa’s skull.

Pain. Fear. Incomprehension.

‘What do you want, Robert?’ he repeated.

Strong fingers wound into his hair, forced him down over the evil-smelling sink.

‘Leave my sister alone,’ Robert Gabriel hissed in his ear. ‘This is nothing to do with her. Nothing. Tell them that.’

‘And you?’

‘What about me?’

He was scared. Angry. Full of the same petulant doubt Costa had witnessed in Mina at times.

‘Where are you going to go? With no money. No home.’ The pressure of the barrel on his neck eased. ‘Where are you going to run? With friends like yours, you’re a liability now. All they’re interested in is business, whatever they told you. Liabilities worry them. They won’t hide you. Not forever.’

The grip on his hair increased until it hurt. Robert Gabriel was strong.

A punch to the face, a blow with the body of the gun. Costa stumbled to the floor, lost his balance and found himself scrabbling on concrete.

‘I said, don’t look!’ the voice above him screamed.

He waited, listening to the steps recede into the studio beyond, and then disappear into the black maw of the building.

When there was silence Costa got up and went over to Joanne Van Doren. She’d been dead for a few hours. The rope went round a black heating pipe in the ceiling. Next to her was a plain chair, like the one in the studio, on its side on the floor, as if kicked there. He remembered the pained expression on her face when he came here the previous day. Perhaps he should have noted that more, asked someone to call. But she was just the owner of this block, not someone involved in the story. Or so it seemed.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, and walked out of the corridor, found the stairs, went up them one by one, clutching the banister in the dark, watching his phone all the way, waiting for some sign that he was back in the world beyond once more.