David Hewson - The Fallen Angel

‘And?’

Teresa always knew when there was a caveat coming.

‘It could be a fake. A good one. If you’re handy with photo software it’s very easy to make a digital original look as if it was shot on film years ago. You just turn the picture black and white, add some noise then soften it with some Gaussian blur. No easy way of saying if that’s what’s happened here. It could be twenty years old. Fifty even. It could be from last week. We’ve got a photo expert on call. I can get him in if you-’

‘I’ll think on it. What about you?’

He took a deep breath, knowing she wouldn’t like this.

‘Here’s the bad news. What with photos of nude teenagers and some other things I’m way behind. After what you said this morning I wanted to get Gabriel’s medical records first. I thought that would make things easier. I was wrong. The surgeon at the university hospital won’t release them and won’t tell me why.’

‘Doctors don’t have to roll over and give us everything we want.’

‘I know, but they usually do. And why not? The man’s dead.’

‘The university hospital?’

‘That’s what I said. I suspect Gabriel was being treated for cancer. I tried the head man in oncology-’

‘Adriano Negri?’

‘Friend of yours? It didn’t show. He won’t co-operate. Won’t show me a thing.’

‘You leave him to me. Is that it?’

‘Not at all,’ he said patiently. It was always best to get the worst out of the way first. Teresa worked better when she finished on a rising note. ‘I’ve got two things for you. Scratch marks. Some on his hands that could be evidence of a struggle. There are similar parallel marks on his lower back too. Fingernails. Three. Recent. Someone defending themselves. Someone having fun. Could be either. If you could locate a suspect and get a good look at their hands it’s possible we might still find some tissue underneath the nails.’

‘Fun?’

‘Fun. Don’t ask me to put a time on it but shortly before he died, anywhere between a few minutes and a few hours, Malise Gabriel had sex. No question about it.’

He paused, aware that her practical medical knowledge was immeasurably greater than his, since Teresa Lupo had worked as a doctor before becoming a pathologist.

‘Are people with cancer much interested in. . you know? Intercourse,’ he asked.

‘If they can!’ she snapped. ‘They’re still human beings. Good God, Silvio. Depends on the condition. Treatment or the disease can affect the sex drive. It doesn’t mean the desire disappears. They’re just sick people. For pity’s sake. .’

Di Capua added quickly, ‘There’s trace evidence of a condom, which is one more reason why I’m a little behind here. I don’t know the brand yet. There’s nonoxynol-9 spermicide residue which could help there. I’ve also got traces of water-based lubricant. Maybe intercourse was difficult for some reason. Or it was just something he. . they liked. No way of knowing. But again, there could still be something on the partner if you can get her or him into an examination room.’

He heard her begin yelling at someone to examine the toilets for condoms, then issuing another string of orders: checks for tissues, toilet paper, all the usual means by which semen might, with luck, be found. Di Capua knew what they really needed, though: bedding. If that was nothing more than ashes out at some dump in the hills this was not going to be easy.

‘Who the hell examined this man when he came in?’ she demanded.

He knew what was coming.

‘Maria. One of the university interns on work experience. It was Saturday. In August. He was an accident victim. Do you remember being young and naive and way too scared to cause trouble? I do.’

A florid curse lit up the line.

‘You want me to fire her?’ he asked.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not her fault it took us two days to realize we had a murder on our hands. I’m the head of the department. If you want to blame someone, blame me.’

Typical, he thought. Their omissions were regrettable but scarcely case-threatening.

‘Praiseworthy but unjustified,’ he told her. ‘We rely on the police to alert us to these things. They were asleep at the wheel. It’s not our fault they didn’t wake us as a result.’

‘That’s the most pathetic excuse I’ve ever heard,’ she grumbled. ‘I’m calling Falcone. Then I’m coming back to take a look at this myself.’

The black museum was one more place she appeared to know by heart. Mina Gabriel walked straight through the winding corridors of the ground floor, past models of men being torn limb from limb by horses, display cases full of knives and mallets and cruel instruments of torture. It was like reliving a nightmare. An executioner’s blade with a lion’s head handle, used to gouge out eyes, to cut off ears and noses and fingers. The Milazzo cage, an iron shell containing a human skeleton, a victim for once of another nation’s cruelty, in this case the British who had executed a deserter in Sicily by first mutilating the man then letting him starve to death locked inside the contraption. A spiked collar, a gossip’s bridle, pillories, stocks, whipping blocks. The ghoulish red cape of Mastro Titta, Rome’s most famous executioner, a celebrity of death, his uniform now hanging next to the axe he used to decapitate criminals in front of crowds of thousands.

Costa stared at the guillotine used by the Papal States and wondered how many lives had ended on this crude contraption of wood and metal. This place appalled him, made him ashamed of his inherited past, which was, perhaps, its purpose. Perhaps. . There was always a morbid curiosity in people too. He knew that. It burned inside Mina Gabriel, with an urgency she appeared almost to relish. He was curious to know why.

She grabbed his arm and rushed him round one more corner, stopping in front of a long glass exhibit case. He gazed at a nest of hangman’s nooses, each neatly tied. Next to the snarls of fading hemp was a note with the names and crimes of the men and women whose necks had once felt the rope’s deadly embrace. By the side stood a grey hooded tunic in coarse fabric, loosely hung on the wall in the shape of a human being so that it resembled nothing less than the cast-off skin of a ghost.

‘The Confraternita of San Giovanni Decollato,’ Mina said, not that he needed to be told. The Brotherhood of the Beheaded John the Baptist.

‘They have their own church,’ she went on in a low, earnest voice. ‘Near Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Do you think you could get me in? It’s closed usually.’

‘Why do you want to go?’

She seemed transfixed by the dusty cloak.

‘Those monks looked after people before they were executed. They probably cut Beatrice’s hair to make it easier for the executioner. These. .’ There was a zinc alms box bearing a decapitated head and next to it a set of small images of the Virgin and Christ. ‘They’d beg money from the crowd for her funeral, shove those stupid little pictures in her face to. .’ Her pretty features distorted with anger. ‘. . comfort her.’

He thought he’d lost the dreadful image those final few moments had once devised in his imagination. Now he realized the memory of Beatrice was not so easily obliterated, that it was a phantasm that would return to haunt him at the least prompting. A single visual remembrance stood out more than any other, and it was not the obvious, the harsh, bloody violence of that final moment, but the grey, hooded figures dressed like this, charity from the same source that signed her death warrant, gathering around like demons as the executioner approached. One more indignity at the end.

‘They keep things in that locked-up church of theirs,’ she murmured, gazing at the faded grey robe in front of them. ‘The basket her head fell into when she died. The hood of Giordano Bruno when they burned him at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori. Ropes and locks of hair. .’