The Fallen Angel

ELEVEN

The sun seemed too dazzling for September. Costa raced across the grass of the garden. The woman had disappeared beneath the grand courtyard arch, into the elegant building ahead.

The four uniformed officers stood by the gate, bored, a couple of them smoking. Costa barked at the caretaker, demanding directions to Santacroce’s apartment.

It was on the first floor, the side of the courtyard facing back towards the river, overlooking the gardens and the tower. He ordered the men to follow him, found the broad stone staircase that led into the building, running through the double doors, up worn grey steps, past paintings and statues, tapestries and porcelain, the treasures of an old Roman family that had fallen, somehow, into the hands of a rogue.

An old story, Costa thought. A little like the tragedy of the Cenci after all.

He reached the first floor, found himself in a wide corridor with a polished wood floor. There was a door open at the end, light streaming through it, some elegant antique furniture just visible.

Three steps away, no more, he heard the first scream and he’d no idea at that moment whether it was a man or a woman, there was something so violent, so animal in that high, guttural shriek of pain.

‘Sir,’ said one of the uniforms, a fit man, faster than Costa, pushing in front of him, gun out, the way they’d been taught.

‘You don’t need that,’ Costa told him, and elbowed his way back in front then got through the door. He found himself in a long, airy studio filled with light that danced off polished chairs and tables, tall walnut cabinets and gilt-frame paintings. A high rack of books ran one length of the room. At the end Bernard Santacroce sat at an ornate desk, his heavy body twisted round in a captain’s chair, his face bloodied and racked with agony.

Cecilia Gabriel was over him, half on the desk, half on his knees, her right arm arcing backward and forward.

The only sound was that of the man’s racked breathing and the repetitive slash of knife against flesh.

The uniform had his gun out again.

Costa glared at him and snapped out an order to put it away.

By the time he got to the desk it was over. Bernard Santacroce, Simon Gabriel. . There was no saving him. The woman’s fierce torrent of hatred had taken his life just as surely as the cobblestones of the Via Beatrice Cenci stole away that of his elder brother. Now Cecilia Gabriel sat over him, the bloodied blade still in her right hand, gasping, from effort, from emotion, her blue eyes icy with fury.

‘Signora,’ said a voice from behind.

He turned. It was Falcone. Himself again, though his lean face looked a little more bloodless than usual. He was holding out his hand, staring at the woman locked above the dead Santacroce as if she were a partner in some bloody tableau, one disturbed before it had reached its final scene.

She dragged herself off the desk, off the man, walked towards them and placed the long, stained knife in Falcone’s outstretched fingers.

‘There, Inspector,’ Cecilia Gabriel said. ‘You wanted to find yourself a murderer. Now you have.’

Costa’s eyes fell to the expanse of verdant lawn outside. The girl sat near the fountain at its centre, knees drawn up to her chin like a child, face hidden in her skinny arms, a tight, hunched bundle of misery struggling to withdraw herself from the bright, golden day.