The Fallen Angel

ELEVEN

They assembled at the restaurant just before eight, Agata coming directly from work. Falcone had picked Al Pompiere back in the ghetto, just a few steps away from Sora Margherita, the humble little hole-in-the-wall they’d visited a few nights before. He arrived in a fresh grey suit, a carnation in his lapel, a smile on his face, looking so calm, so at one with himself, Costa wondered why, a few hours earlier, he’d been worried about the man.

They went up the staircase to the first floor of the restaurant, one of the best in the ghetto. A reserved sign stood on a secluded window table with a view back to the Piazza delle Cinque Scole and, on the small mound opposite, one face of the gloomy, sprawling Palazzo Cenci. Costa found the sight distracting: this tragedy was somehow rooted in the buildings around here. In the history of the Cenci family, in the rundown apartment block that Joanne Van Doren had been trying, unsuccessfully, to resurrect and turn into a gold mine, creating instead a bleak fortress of secrets, some of them still hidden.

The waiters danced around the inspector obediently. He was known here, though he’d never so much as mentioned the place. Falcone was a private individual, even as he went about his business in the throng of the city. There was a duality to the man, in the way he could be personable, and show great care and courtesy to those around him, then retreat into his own thoughts in an instant.

Sparkling Franciacorta arrived, followed by plates of zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella, battered salt cod, crunchy fried artichokes and bitter puntarelle shoots with anchovies. Finally the head waiter entered carrying a small gift box wrapped in beautiful velvet and placed it in front of Agata.

Falcone clapped, alone. The rest of them stared at him, wondering, until Teresa asked, ‘Are we celebrating something?’

‘A birthday!’ he cried. ‘I’m too much of a gentleman to reveal the age, naturally.’

Agata bent over her present, creased with laughter, hiding her mouth with her hand.

‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ she said.

‘As if!’ he retorted. ‘You should tell a few more people, though. You’re out here with the rest of us now. Not hidden in some cloister.’

‘I was an orphan! After that a sister.’ She watched as Falcone, then the rest of them, raised their glasses in a toast. ‘Birthdays were never so important. One year older. What does it matter?’

‘It matters,’ Teresa interjected, ‘because you get free food and drink, and presents. Or rather one present. Of course. .’ She glared at Falcone. This was why the cunning old fox had gone for a walk. ‘Had we known. .’

He squirmed on his seat at the head of the table as Agata opened the velvet box. She found herself holding a very ornate gold necklace. One, Costa judged, a little too ostentatious for her taste.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she declared. ‘Thank you. You don’t need to do this, Leo.’

‘Of course I do,’ Falcone replied. ‘I was your sponsor when you were a child in that orphanage. These ties come with duties. As does friendship.’

He gestured at the waiters. They came out with more gifts: boxes of expensive chocolates from a fancy store in Via Condotti.

‘What exactly is going on?’ Teresa began, in a tone that was only just short of being cross.

‘It’s my way of saying sorry,’ Falcone said quickly. ‘To all of you. I’ve behaved badly of late and I know it. I took my anger out on the people around me. That was wrong. I want to apologize. Come on.’ He pointed a lean index finger at the menu. ‘Pick the best they have. Lamb and artichokes. Wonderful. Beef with citron. Fish. Nic, they’ll cook anything a vegetarian can want.’

Peroni was staring at Costa from the other side of the table, a meaningful and deeply suspicious expression clouding his customarily friendly face. They all knew Falcone well by now.

‘This is very kind of you,’ the big cop said in clipped, measured tones. ‘Given that we’re in the middle of a rather nasty murder investigation.’

‘Happy birthday to me!’ Agata announced with a touch of despair, raising her glass to them. ‘Why did I end up with police officers for friends?’

‘Because you were lucky,’ Falcone told her. ‘Who better to help you find your way into the real world?’

‘Who indeed?’ she murmured. Agata looked almost as doubtful about this impromptu party as Peroni did.

‘Tell us about work,’ Costa said quickly, trying to change the conversation. ‘Yours. How is the college? Your students?’

‘My students,’ she said, laughing. ‘Is that what they are? Most are just children and don’t know it. Children with parents who’ve more money than sense and think that, by sending their offspring to Bella Italia, they will come back transformed. Adults. Civilized. Made into the human beings they should be, by strangers like me.’

No one said anything. The mood, her mood, seemed terribly fragile.

‘Being a teacher’s never easy,’ Teresa suggested.

‘I imagine not,’ Agata replied. ‘But the truth is, I don’t like some of them. They’re coarse. They come late into class in the morning. Hung over. You can see the alcohol in their eyes. The drugs. The lazy licentiousness. That’s their response to being given their freedom. To throw it away in some bar in the Campo.’

‘Drugs?’ Costa asked.

‘The other teachers talk about it as if it were nothing. I’m sorry.’

‘And the director? Bruno? He knows?’

She put down her glass and toyed with the beautiful necklace.

‘This is my night, isn’t it?’ Agata Graziano asked.

‘Every second of it,’ Falcone declared with a theatrical flourish.

‘Then let’s not talk about the Collegio Raffello. It’s. . boring. I have to go to some convention on Sunday evening. Four nights. I didn’t expect this. Milan.’ Her dark face became still and thoughtful. ‘With Bruno.’

‘Milan has its beautiful parts,’ Peroni suggested.

‘No,’ Agata insisted. ‘Enough. Tell me something. The truth, now. I have to ask, since it’s in all the papers. On the TV. This awful story has my students, such as they are, more enthralled than any old paintings I can throw at them. . The Gabriel family. Well?’

Falcone smiled at her very pleasantly and asked, ‘Well what?’

‘When will it come to an end, Leo? When can I open a newspaper or turn on the TV and not see that poor girl’s face staring back at me? Soon, please. Tell me that.’

‘Soon,’ he agreed. ‘Tomorrow, in fact.’

They all stopped and looked at him.

‘Yes,’ he went on. ‘Tomorrow. I’ve decided. This has gone far enough. I shall file my report to the commissario. It will say no more than the obvious. Malise Gabriel was the monster the papers have been painting him to be. He was murdered, with some guile, by the son, who also killed the American woman. Perhaps because she was involved somehow. Or she found out. We’ll never know. Only the dead could tell us that. The brother himself was murdered by this unknown Italian drugs outfit we learned about today from the Turks, as was his crooked policeman friend. This is not unrelated. Had he not killed his father and brought such publicity on himself. .’

A thought crossed Falcone’s mind, one he kept to himself.

‘That side of the case I shall pass to another inspector who can attach himself to narcotics in order to pursue it fully. I’ve seen enough of this tragedy, as I’m sure have you. So.’ He chinked his glass with Agata’s. ‘Consider it done with. Despatched, all neat and tidy.’

‘And Mina?’ she asked. ‘Her mother?’

He paused for a moment.

‘I shall say that, while we have plenty of evidence to suggest both of them had good reason to fear and hate Malise Gabriel, there’s no evidence to implicate them in his death, or that of anyone else. The case will be closed.’

There was silence around the table. Then Agata brightened, chinked her glass all round and said, ‘That’s the best birthday present I could have hoped for. The very best.’

Falcone watched her. In his face was the pride of a parent, Costa thought. And some relief too, some satisfaction that, in his own head, a turning point, a decision, had been reached.