The Fallen Angel

EIGHT

There were just the four of them in the apartment in the tower of the House of Owls. Bernard Santacroce was in his rooms in the palace, Cecilia Gabriel said. They wouldn’t be disturbed.

The girl sat in the centre of the living room on a chair tugged from the dining table. The rest of them formed a semi-circle around her. Falcone watched this happen, realizing, to his dismay, that they had so easily adopted the pose and the characteristics of an interrogation.

It was now nearly midday but Mina Gabriel still appeared to be in her night clothes: loose pink pyjamas, plain cotton, cheap. Her hair was uncombed and a little lank, her eyes listless and unfocused. Like a kid on the edge, unable to contain for much longer the black truth Falcone was convinced she held trapped inside.

The mother talked a little, in a calm, almost friendly voice. She did her best to reassure the girl that this was nothing formal. Not some kind of grilling. Not even a formal interview. There would be no notes, no pressure. And if it came to nothing, then every word would be forgotten afterwards.

Mina listened, eyed each of them in turn then asked, her voice brittle with hatred, ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’

‘We’re here to help,’ Grimaldi insisted.

‘That’s what they told Beatrice Cenci,’ Mina snapped. ‘The Pope’s inquisitors. The lawyers. The torturers with their chains and pincers.’

‘Mina,’ Grimaldi said quietly. ‘We’re not those men. This is not that time. You’re not Beatrice Cenci.’

Her pretty head lolled a little at that, as if she was thinking. Falcone caught an expression on the mother’s face, one of shock, of revelation perhaps. They didn’t talk much, these two. Mothers and daughters had a certain distance sometimes, one that emerged in the early teens and, usually, would have begun to dissipate at this point. He’d recognized that often enough even though, in his own head, he still believed he knew little of families.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘The truth,’ Cecilia Gabriel said quickly, before either of the men could speak.

‘The truth?’ She looked at her mother and laughed. ‘Why?’

‘Because. .’ Cecilia Gabriel closed her eyes for a moment, trying to stem her tears. ‘It’s time, Mina. This secret. .’

Her voice had a frail, pleading tone. It didn’t appear to move the girl.

‘What secret?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know!’

There was a tension between them, one taut with intimacy.

‘So this truth,’ Mina hissed. ‘You think it’s going to set us free? Can’t you hear in your head what Daddy would say to that? How he’d rip that coarse little cliche apart?’

‘Daddy’s dead,’ Cecilia Gabriel told her. ‘I can’t hear him any more.’

‘Can’t you?’ the girl spat at her.

Cecilia Gabriel pulled her chair over then placed her arm around Mina’s shoulders. The girl stiffened, with all the false yet hurtful loathing that a child could sometimes display towards a loving parent.

‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said and kissed her cheek tenderly, then stroked her hair, the way one did with a child. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

Mina pulled herself together and sat bolt upright, pushing Cecilia Gabriel away.

‘You’re on their side now, aren’t you? You’re one of the torturers too.’

Cecilia Gabriel stared at her daughter, her eyes full of sorrow. Falcone asked himself again: without some point, some hope of justice or redemption, was it worth inflicting this amount of pain on anyone? Even those stained with guilt?

‘Something’s wrong,’ the Gabriel woman whispered. ‘I’m not blind, Mina. I’ve known since the beginning. Something’s wrong and it’s inside you. I don’t know what it is. I don’t want to think sometimes.’

‘You’re my mother! You’re supposed to defend me! Not ask questions!’

The woman closed her eyes. She seemed to possess no more words.

Falcone shifted his chair closer to the girl and tried to catch her eyes.

‘No one’s defended you more than your mother,’ he said. ‘You’ve no idea how hard it’s been for us to get this far. But she needs to know, Mina. As do we. The law demands that we deal with these facts, and until you help us do that this will go on. It must, however much we’d like to end it.’

The girl was silent, thinking, her small fist tight against her lips, tears streaming down her reddening cheeks.

‘Did you have any idea that Robert planned to kill your father?’ Grimaldi asked.

She said nothing.

‘This email we found on his phone.’

‘What email?’

Grimaldi explained, adding, ‘It has your name on it. It’s an incriminating document.’

‘It’s an invention. Like everything.’

She bit her fist with her even white teeth.

‘Did Robert feel he had good reason?’ Grimaldi persisted. ‘Because of what your father did?’

The skin on her fingers turned scarlet. There was blood there. Cecilia Gabriel uttered a cry of agonized despair and tried to force the girl’s fingers away from her mouth.

‘All we need,’ Falcone added, ‘is to know that you sent him that document because he asked for it. If you can just tell me that. The rest. .’

He glanced at Grimaldi who looked deeply unhappy at what he believed Falcone was about to say.

‘Inspector,’ Grimaldi objected. ‘There are limits.’

‘If you say you sent him something because he asked for it,’ Falcone continued, ‘the rest I will deal with, Mina. I promise. This evidence, this apparent proof, I cannot hide. But I can choose to set it to one side.’

‘I loved Daddy,’ she chanted. ‘Daddy loved me.’

The words came out like the lilting refrain from a child’s song. Then again. And again.