David Hewson - The Fallen Angel

A stash of notes. Eight euros, just enough for a meal and a drink or two. A small plastic bag with white powder in it. A single condom. A passport with the maroon cover of a European Union document, and the crest of the United Kingdom.

He opened it up and saw the same face he’d seen the previous evening, the same blank, surly expression too on the photograph beneath the clear security film, issued only six months before. And a name: Robert Peter Gabriel.

The first Thursday of September, a morning so hot it seemed summer would never leave.

A day and a half had passed since the murders in Trastevere. The gunning-down of a police officer and the missing Robert Gabriel had changed everything, brought a feverish anxiety to the headlines, the mood in the Questura, and the minds of the large team of officers now working on the case. It was rare for a member of the police to die on duty, an event that would usually demand some show of visible mourning on the part of the authorities.

The circumstances of Riggi’s murder made this difficult. The media had quickly picked up the rumour that the dead man was under investigation for corruption. They soon learned, too, that Robert Gabriel had been in the pay of the Vadisi. When they coupled this with their existing fascination for the Gabriel case, and its links with the Cenci, they seemed to feel they’d found the perfect story, one that embraced everything that could sell news to a public desperate for both titillation and a source of outrage about the damaged state of the world. Murder, crime, sex — and the young, innocent-seeming face of Mina Gabriel, now grieving for her dead, wicked brother. The tale had it all.

The demonstrations outside the Questura had grown. Judging by their posters, their complaints now extended to police incompetence and inefficiency in allowing the suspect brother to be killed by a group of criminals who should have been arrested years ago, and thrown out of Italy as unwanted foreigners. Costa recognized this shade of public opinion. It was one that surfaced from time to time, when a case of injustice hit the headlines and touched some popular nerve.

The Gabriel case had unleashed a torrent of deep resentment towards the authorities over the state of law and order on the streets. It was a bad-tempered spirit, one that someone other than Leo Falcone might have exorcized the easy way, swiftly laying the blame for the murders of Malise Gabriel and Joanne Van Doren at the door of the dead son, closing that side of the case for good. Then, when the furore had abated a little, quietly working through a list of the known henchmen the Vadisi might have used for the hit.

But easy was never Falcone’s style. The Gabriel case continued to concern him. The dogged inspector would not rest until he got to the very bottom of the strange and opaque event in the apartment in the Via Beatrice Cenci the previous weekend. As he made clear repeatedly in meeting after meeting, it was this that appeared to have triggered the series of tragedies which culminated in the shooting in the street two nights before. Truth never acquiesced to convenience in Falcone’s mind. It was one of his defining characteristics, an awkward, staunch persistence that seemed ingrained in the man’s personality.

Costa admired this, and could see and understand his reasoning. They now knew that Malise Gabriel’s death was not accidental, as it was meant to appear. The loose scaffolding ties. The blood and tissue that had been revealed on Di Lauro’s handkerchief, wiped from the radiator in Mina’s room. The clear evidence that Gabriel was a difficult, argumentative man, one who had been conducting an adulterous affair with Joanne Van Doren in the secret photographic studio in the basement of her building.

All of these factors aroused suspicion. What irked Falcone most was the continued silence on the part of Mina and her mother, their mute response to his many questions, their unwillingness to become involved. This was irrational and odd, and Costa knew it too. He had told Agata that he believed Mina was an innocent party in what had taken place, perhaps an aggrieved one too, not that he had mentioned that. His words were only partly meant to reassure her. Some truth continued to elude them and it went beyond the curious silence on the part of the young English girl and her mother.

Then, as they assembled for one more case conference, Teresa Lupo summoned them suddenly to forensic. Finally, some hard evidence had, it seemed, been unearthed.

In the Questura’s largest forensic lab office Silvio Di Capua gazed at the grubby object in front of him, grinned and said, ‘You’ve no idea how lucky we are. There are a million illegal dumps around Lazio and most of them would have this stuff in ashes by now. Behold.’

Forensic had tracked down some of the household material taken away by Joanne Van Doren’s builders the previous Sunday. It had been found on a site near Latina, untouched since it arrived. Di Capua’s attention had come to focus on a mattress from a single bed, one that looked depressingly familiar. The sheet was still on it, with the white and green mosaic pattern Costa and Peroni had seen when they walked into Mina’s room the previous Sunday, before the place had been cleared.

‘Why wasn’t it burned?’ Costa said.

Falcone looked at him and sighed. Judging by the expressions on the faces of Teresa and Peroni they found the question baffling too.

Di Capua shook his head.

‘It was some crappy little place that was behind schedule or something. Am I meant to care? Maria?’

The stocky young assistant who now seemed permanently attached to Teresa’s deputy beamed as she showed them the marks left by her aerosol.

‘Semen,’ she said proudly. ‘We’ve sent off a sample for analysis.’

Costa took a closer look at the mattress.

‘Do we know for sure this is Mina Gabriel’s?’

‘Oh, come on,’ Peroni objected. ‘We were there. In the room. We saw this ourselves. It’s hers.’

Teresa placed a gloved finger on the mattress and said, ‘I’ll be able to confirm it’s the girl’s from skin residue if nothing else. Mattresses are full of it. It might help if you can persuade her to give me a DNA sample we can match, of course.’

Costa wouldn’t give up.

‘If it turns out the semen was the father’s, it could have been one more place he slept with Joanne Van Doren.’

The pathologist stared at him.

‘His daughter’s room? Why would he use that? He had his own secret little sex club in the basement. Why take the risk in the house?’

‘Some people like risks,’ Costa began. ‘I don’t know. Why don’t we wait for some facts? Instead of trying to concoct a case to match some theory that keeps bobbing up in front of us every time we’re stuck for an idea? Why. .?’

‘Let’s not allow our personal feelings to colour this investigation,’ Falcone interrupted. He nodded at Di Capua. ‘Good work.’

‘And another thing,’ Costa began, then saw Falcone’s stony face, gave up, realizing it was pointless.

Teresa Lupo was working her gloved hands along the side of the mattress, underneath the white and green sheet. She’d seen something that Di Capua and his assistant had missed. There was a fabric handle built into the side, for carrying and turning. It protruded a little more on one side than the other.

She raised the sheet, took out a pen and poked the end down the hollow cotton loop of the right-hand fastening. Something popped slowly out of the other side. It was a tiny USB memory stick, the kind people used for storing and moving files around computers.

‘Well, what do you know?’ Costa murmured. ‘We’re in luck again. Am I the only one who finds this steady stream of evidence a little. .?’