David Hewson - The Fallen Angel

There was a bookshelf on the wall opposite the bed. Costa bent down and looked at the titles. One shelf was entirely devoted to works on the Cenci and their time: Dumas, Stendhal, Shelley, Moravia. Then he shook the duvet on the bed. Dust and dirt and bits of plaster and rubble fell on the floor. He threw back the cover and examined the sheet underneath. Fresh boot marks apart, it was spotlessly clean, newly ironed. Newly changed.

Costa was about to move on to the mattress beneath when Peroni coughed loudly and gave him a black look. This wasn’t the time.

The older cop walked towards the window, glanced out, then asked, ‘Why did the scaffolding collapse?’

Joanne Van Doren shrugged.

‘If I knew I’d tell you. Whether it’s the fault of my workmen or not. Do you imagine I feel good about this? I liked Malise. He was a decent, caring man. I guess that’s why Mina turned out the way she did.’

‘The scaffolding. .?’ Peroni persisted.

She didn’t like being pressed.

‘Do you have a head for heights?’ Joanne Van Doren asked. They didn’t have time to say anything. ‘Good. Then follow me.’

There was a set of external metal stairs at the back of the building. They climbed up the steps to the roof. The view was extraordinary, a sweeping prospect of Rome stretching from the Campidoglio to the Gianicolo hill and St Peter’s across the Tiber.

A heavily built man in council overalls was clambering over some bulky apparatus at the front. Joanne Van Doren walked over and said to him, ‘You’ve got company. The police are back and want to know what happened.’

He was about fifty, with a brutish, ill-tempered face and a grey moustache. He didn’t look as if he wore an overall often, particularly on Sundays.

‘Signor Di Lauro is the building inspector in charge of the investigation,’ she explained with a friendly wave. ‘I am, of course, offering all the help I can.’

‘Any ideas?’ Peroni said, flashing his card.

‘Don’t you people ever talk to one another?’ Di Lauro grunted. ‘I went through this with those guys I spoke to this morning. I really have better things to do.’

‘Please,’ Costa interrupted. ‘Just briefly.’

‘Briefly.’ He climbed down from the mechanism he was looking at, a complex set of wheels and pulleys and platforms, and put his hands on his hips. ‘This is what’s known as a suspension scaffold. That means the strain is taken by the anchorage and counterweights you see here. On the roof.’

‘How much can it support?’ Peroni wanted to know.

‘This apparatus is licensed for a load of three hundred and fifty kilos. Three men.’ He waited to see if they understood. ‘So if there was just one man on it. .’

‘Got you,’ Peroni replied. ‘And. .?’

‘And what?’

‘Why did it break?’

Di Lauro closed his eyes as if in pain.

‘I don’t know. Maybe structural failure in the scaffolding itself. Metal fatigue. Or maybe someone did their job wrongly. It happens.’

He grimaced. Something didn’t seem quite right.

‘Often?’ Costa asked.

‘This scaffolding was erected by Signora Van Doren’s own people. They worked on it. They stood to suffer if it went wrong. No. Not often. Scaffolders are meticulous men. The paperwork’s in order. The tiebacks, the counterweights. . this seems to be a professional job.’

Costa grabbed hold of a piece of loose cable, took one step towards the edge of the roof and peered down over the edge at the distant cobblestones below. The view down to the street made him feel a little queasy. He looked at Di Lauro and asked, ‘Would it be easy to make it fail deliberately?’

The council man sighed.

‘No. Possible. But not easy. You’d need to know what you were doing.’

‘Nobody has access to this roof,’ Joanne Van Doren cut in. ‘The building’s empty except for my workmen and the Gabriels. Trust me.’

‘So when will we know?’ Peroni asked.

Di Lauro shrugged.

‘Impossible to say. A week at least. Possibly longer. We’ve taken away the debris from the ground. Tomorrow I’ll find some people to look at it.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Costa asked.

The man sighed. ‘It’s. .’

‘Sunday. I know. And August.’

‘Listen,’ the council man snapped. ‘You do your job. I do mine. I will find out what’s happened here. If it’s negligence, there could be criminal charges, Signora Van Doren.’ He didn’t look at her as he said this. ‘In cases of extreme negligence it can be manslaughter.’

‘I was at home drinking a glass of wine in front of the TV,’ she said with a wan smile. ‘That would seem a little cruel.’

‘The last case of this kind took three years to come to court. It got thrown out after four months.’ Di Lauro shook his head. ‘None of this is easy.’

‘More lawyers,’ the American woman grumbled.

‘Thanks,’ Costa said, and led the way back downstairs. He was glad to be inside again. Joanne Van Doren was starting to look impatient with their presence.

‘What are you going to do with this building now?’ Costa asked.

‘Try to sell something,’ she said, as if the question were idiotic. ‘Get this damned apartment finished so I can put it on the market. I need the money. Otherwise everything goes to the bank and I’ll be as broke as my old man back home. These aren’t good times for the private sector, gentlemen. Haven’t you noticed?’

She looked briefly ashamed and for a moment seemed on the verge of tears. It struck Costa that this woman appeared genuinely affected by the death of her tenant, though she did not, perhaps, want this to show.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. This is nothing next to what Mina and her mom are having to deal with. Malise loved them. I can’t imagine what life’s like without him. You know. . instead of poking around here you might be better off trying to help them get through the next few days.’

Costa nodded, then watched as some new men arrived at the door.

‘I’ll pass that on to the appropriate authorities,’ he murmured as she walked away to greet them.

Peroni was poking around in the living room, going through the newspapers and magazines that were piled in a jumble on the glass table in front of the sofa.

‘This is where he must have been drinking last night before he stepped outside,’ the big man said. ‘There’s a ring from a glass here. Just one.’ He bent down and sniffed it. ‘Whisky. Got spilled too. Good point you made back there.’

‘Which one?’

Peroni stared at him, surprised.

‘If that kid was wearing headphones in that music room a small army could have walked through here and she’d never have noticed. Also, there’s this. I don’t get it.’

He stood up, a thick book in his hands. It was an old edition, a fat, tall paperback. The title was All the Gods are Dead . The author’s name was Malise Gabriel. Bells were ringing in Costa’s head again.

Joanne Van Doren saw what they were doing and came over.

‘I put that under the table myself,’ she said. ‘We had to sit down and use it when the council people turned up. They wanted to see some plans. I should have told Cecilia when she came round. She was looking for all the little personal things she could find. The conversation got a little. . tense. I kind of forgot.’

Peroni flicked open the book and glanced at Costa.

‘So this is what he was reading,’ Peroni said. ‘His own book? And it’s. .’ He turned to the front and checked the date. ‘. . twenty years old. Why would someone read a book they wrote themselves? An old one?’

‘Maybe to remember the good times?’ the American woman suggested. ‘Who knows? Excuse me. I really need to talk to these guys.’