The Fallen Angel

NINE

Not long after the Gabriels and Bernard Santacroce left the morgue Falcone took a call from Costa. Teresa waited, watching, and could see the disappointment in his face.

‘Well,’ he said when it was finished. ‘One more blind alley to add to the rest.’

‘Meaning?’

She listened as he explained what Costa and Peroni had discovered from the Turk at Ciampino.

‘We’ll check the alibi,’ Falcone said. ‘I’ll get narcotics to search his home. There won’t be anything there, of course. And the alibi will stack up. If it was him on the bike. .’ He scowled and shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t have said a word.’

‘Drugs. Complicated business. Is it really surprising there’s some grubby little war going on around the Campo? Or that our stupid little English friend on the table here put his own neck on the line by bringing all this attention to himself?’

Falcone muttered something foul and didn’t answer.

Teresa Lupo came and stood next to him. In his own way the man had tried to be sensitive towards the Gabriel family, as best he could. But the job, the need to ask awkward questions, and his own difficult personality all intervened in the end. It wasn’t his fault. This was who he was.

‘You know,’ Teresa Lupo said, ‘it is just possible that everything here really is as simple as it seems. Robert realized what a creep his father was and killed him. Then the American too when she found out. Toni Grimaldi’s right. Proving Malise Gabriel was having sex with his own daughter won’t bring anyone to justice. It could just cause a lot more pain to people who’ve had more than their fair share. Gabriel was a very sick man, Leo. Whether he told his family or not, they will have felt the burden. Should we really add to it?’

‘I know all this!’ he replied, seemingly hurt by her accusation.

‘I appreciate that.’

‘I’m not here to spare their feelings. I’m here to find out the truth. If they’d sit down, look me in the eye, and tell me something I could believe. .’

‘They don’t want to talk about it, Leo,’ she said. ‘Would you?’

He scowled. ‘What have they got to lose? You know the way public opinion is at the moment. Even if I could prove they knew Robert intended to kill his father I doubt I’d get them in court.’

‘Their dignity?’ she suggested.

He took a deep breath and looked into her eyes.

‘I’ve taken that from them already, haven’t I?’ he murmured.

She waited. He’d recovered himself again, was once more the maddening individual she’d grown to admire, to love in a way, over the years.

‘I don’t believe they’re murderers,’ he insisted. ‘Not directly. The brother, yes. Not them. I don’t see that they could have been involved in the American woman’s death. But Malise Gabriel’s? If they’re innocent why don’t they look innocent? Why do they act this way?’

‘Perhaps they feel you’re intruding into a part of their lives where you don’t belong. Besides, if you could prove they weren’t entirely innocent, that they somehow knew, would that be justice? Who’d benefit?’

He bristled and said, ‘That’s not my job. I don’t make those decisions.’

‘But you do. We all do. That’s why we’re here. Beatrice Cenci had the Pope’s inquisitors. Mina Gabriel has us. We’re kinder, I think. But are we really any different?’

‘You can’t pick and choose,’ Falcone insisted. ‘We’re all equal under the law.’

‘Unless you’re rich or a politician or the friend of someone who knows someone.’

‘They’re all the same as far as I’m concerned. This is the first time you’ve seen Mina and her mother. You tell me. Am I mistaken? Do you really feel I’m chasing some ghost here?’

No, she thought. His misgivings were entirely understandable, the reaction of an intelligent, experienced detective. Mina Gabriel was genuinely distraught at her brother’s death. But the mother with her cold indifference to everything, even the incriminating photographs. .

‘Grief isn’t a predictable emotion,’ she said. ‘It shows itself in very different ways, and at different times, because that’s how people are. They’re not machines or Pavlov’s dog.’

He pointed at the door through which the Gabriels had left and asked, ‘Have you seen that way before?’

She felt so sorry for Leo Falcone at times. He had an insight into dark places, a sympathy with the pain of those he suspected of terrible deeds. This awkward, intuitive wisdom was beyond the ordinary men and women within the Questura. They were lucky not to have it.

‘No,’ Teresa Lupo agreed. ‘Not that way. Do you really want to pursue this further, Leo? Toni Grimaldi doesn’t. But you’re the boss.’

‘What about you?’ he asked hopefully.

She shrugged.

‘I don’t know. If you asked the man in the street. .’

‘Then half the time they’d want to bring back hanging, and the rest they’d let the guilty walk away free,’ he interrupted.

‘Quite,’ she agreed. ‘It’s so much easier to define crime than it is to put your finger on justice, isn’t it?’ She observed him, thinking. ‘You’re letting this get to you and I don’t like watching that. You need to step back a little. See it from the kind of perspective we had in the beginning. When it was a dead man in the street, an intellectual man, a genius some might say. A man who loved science and reason and Galileo. And loved women and arguments and. . life, I guess too.’

Teresa Lupo tried to crystallize her thinking. It was so woolly, so vague it was impossible. But doubts led to certainties sometimes, if only they could be viewed in the right light.

She took Falcone by the arm and said, ‘You know the most illuminating conversation we’ve had about this curious little affair was last Sunday, in the ghetto, in Gianni’s little restaurant.’

‘True,’ Falcone replied. ‘We’re in the middle of a murder inquiry. I don’t have time for social events.’

She looked at her watch.

‘We still have to eat. Listen to me. It’s nearly four thirty. I doubt anything’s going to happen our end today. I’d put money on it not happening yours. Why not?’

A thought had clouded his face. He glanced anxiously at his watch.

‘Oh lord,’ Falcone said. ‘I forgot what date it was.’

He scratched his head.

‘Dinner,’ he said. ‘That’s a good idea. Very good idea, actually. Eight o’clock. I’ll book a place I know.’

He was pointing at Silvio Di Capua and the work experience kid, who were head down in the corner going through some papers.

‘Bring them along too.’

‘Are you serious?’ she asked.

‘Why not? I’m paying. Finding that mattress deserves something.’

Teresa put it to the pair of them. They looked surprised. Horrified, more like.

‘We’re busy,’ Di Capua said. ‘The Ducati from Tuesday night’s supposed to turn up any minute downstairs.’

Maria waved her gloved hands in their faces.

‘We’re going to rip it apart,’ she said gleefully.

‘But thanks for asking,’ Di Capua said, and went back to work.

‘Eight o’clock,’ Teresa agreed. ‘And now?’

Falcone scooped up his papers. He looked a little calmer, almost happier for some reason.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said. ‘Some fresh air. I need to get out of this place for a while. Call Costa and Peroni. I’ll meet you all there. And persuade Nic to go home and get a change of clothes for once. He’s only ten minutes from that place of his. It ought to be easy enough.’