The Fallen Angel

SEVEN

Cecilia Gabriel flicked through a few of the photographs from Falcone’s collection, her face stony, expressionless. Then she closed the folder, threw it onto a nearby desk and walked towards the door.

Falcone stretched out an arm to prevent her leaving the morgue. Teresa Lupo’s heart sank. This was not a good sign.

‘These questions need answers,’ the inspector said.

The Englishwoman stared at him.

‘What questions?’

He shook his head in disbelief.

‘Are you serious?’ he asked.

‘Very.’

‘I believe Robert murdered your husband,’ he said straight out. ‘And Joanne Van Doren. I believe-’

‘No!’ Mina cried, staring at the body on the sheet.

‘Then who did? Robert was there. He had the opportunity-’

‘Why!’ the girl cried. ‘Why would he do such a thing?’

‘To protect you! And your mother! To stop us finding out what really happened the night your father died. . And before.’

The girl’s eyes misted with tears. She turned to Cecilia Gabriel.

‘Mummy? What’s going on? What photographs?’

‘I can show her,’ Falcone said, staring at the mother. ‘If you like.’

‘They’re fakes,’ Cecilia Gabriel insisted. ‘Grubby, dirty little pictures. Perhaps you ran them up, Inspector. I don’t know.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Falcone cried. ‘Why would we do such a thing? All I require of you, madam, is the truth. I know it’s painful. I will ask a specialist officer to deal with you and your daughter. But we must put this case to rest.’

‘You have no case,’ the woman snapped.

‘I do not understand!’ Falcone shouted.

Teresa Lupo took a step towards him, touched his arm, and said quietly, ‘Leo. .’

But there was no stopping him. The wrong buttons had been pressed, and it was almost as if Cecilia Gabriel knew she was doing this. All the advice that Peroni and Nic had been quietly trying to give him about how to handle this family amounted to nothing when his temper reached such a pitch.

‘When,’ he demanded, ‘is someone going to start telling me the truth?’

‘We are. .’ Mina said, distraught, fighting back the tears. ‘Why won’t you believe us?’

‘Lies!’ Falcone snapped. ‘None of this is credible. What happened between you and your father that night? And before?’

He turned on Cecilia Gabriel and barked, ‘And you? Doesn’t a mother want to know? Don’t you even give a damn. .?’

Teresa cursed herself for waiting a moment too long and then stood in front of him, half-said, half-yelled, ‘Inspector! This is my department, not a police interview room. If you wish to interrogate these people I suggest you take them there. I will not have you disrupting our work in this way. This is unseemly in the extreme. I won’t tolerate it. Do you understand?’

She had never treated him in this fashion before, though there had been plenty of grounds in the past. But she did it for his benefit as much as anyone else’s. Falcone’s frustration with this difficult case was beginning to affect him, to depress him, she believed. It was written in the lines on his narrow, tanned face, and the weariness in his eyes.

The Englishwoman took a step towards him and said, ‘What exactly do you want of me?’

There was a bleak look of stony self-hatred on Falcone’s face. This outburst had shocked him as much as anyone.

‘An honest answer. We have evidence, incontrovertible evidence, that your husband abused your daughter. Photographs. Physical stains on the mattress from her room. The mattress, I might add, which Joanne Van Doren so hurriedly removed from your apartment before we had the chance.’

The mother’s face was suffused in fiery anger. Mina Gabriel’s hands went to her mouth. Her eyes were glassy with floods of tears.

‘Oh, Leo,’ Teresa murmured.

The wrong time, the wrong place.

‘It is my belief,’ he went on, ‘that your daughter, your son and you conspired to murder your husband for this very reason, and make it appear an accident. That Joanne Van Doren died because of what she knew. That Robert-’

‘Well, arrest me, then?’ the Gabriel woman yelled at him. ‘If that’s what you believe. Do it or leave us alone. One or the other. Which is it?’

Falcone looked lost for words, for action, and there was an expression in Cecilia Gabriel’s face that seemed quietly triumphant. She knows we’re powerless, Teresa Lupo thought. She expected this all along.

The stranger at the door intervened.

‘This is quite enough!’ Bernard Santacroce declared, stepping between them, his arms outstretched, his face a picture of outrage. He looked into Falcone’s face. ‘Have you no sense of decency, man? How can you make such accusations? At a time like this?’

‘I am making them, sir, on the basis of the facts. Because it’s my job.’

‘Not here, Leo,’ Teresa Lupo said firmly. ‘Not now.’

The room had gone quiet. The forensic staff were quietly staring at their computers and their instruments, embarrassed, unsure of where to look.

She strode forward and said, ‘This is a mortuary. A place for the dead. I will not tolerate shouting matches. Nor will I allow it to be used as some kind of interrogation room. If you have anything more to say to each other, go somewhere else, please. This instant.’

The girl, Mina, looked as if she’d woken up inside some dreadful nightmare. Her hands were still at her mouth. Her eyes darted around the morgue, as if looking for something that was out of reach.

Nic, Teresa thought immediately. She needs a friend. From the way her gaze never strayed towards her mother it was surely clear there was little love, no amity there. Such secrets seemed to live inside these two, and Teresa Lupo realized she had no idea how they might be prised into the open. Or whether that was where they belonged.

‘You’re her mother,’ Falcone yelled, wagging a finger at Cecilia Gabriel. ‘Don’t you want to know what happened? What he did?’

He got a slap from her for that. A good one. Teresa had already heard about the first. She wondered if that had been as hard and as painful as this powerful, vicious blow.

‘Will you all kindly get out of here?’ she insisted.

‘Gladly,’ Santacroce replied and placed an arm around the Englishwoman, beckoning her and her daughter to the door.

Then he ushered Mina and Cecilia Gabriel outside.

Falcone watched them, helpless, full of an internal, seething rage, a hand to his reddening cheek. There was an expression on his face that shocked Teresa Lupo. It wasn’t the realization of failure. She’d seen that before, and knew he could deal with that, in time. It was some cruel moment of self-revelation, a realization of how desperately he’d tried to delve into the private moments of a family that, whatever the reason, was locked deep inside some painful, personal agony, one they never wished to share.