David Hewson - The Fallen Angel

Maria waved her gloved hands in their faces.

‘We’re going to rip it apart,’ she said gleefully.

‘But thanks for asking,’ Di Capua said, and went back to work.

‘Eight o’clock,’ Teresa agreed. ‘And now?’

Falcone scooped up his papers. He looked a little calmer, almost happier for some reason.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said. ‘Some fresh air. I need to get out of this place for a while. Call Costa and Peroni. I’ll meet you all there. And persuade Nic to go home and get a change of clothes for once. He’s only ten minutes from that place of his. It ought to be easy enough.’

‘Leo? Gone for a walk?’ Peroni asked, amazed.

They sat on the porch of Costa’s villa near the Via Appia Antica, sipping Pellegrino, watching the birds pick at the black grapes on the vines. Netting, Costa thought. That might be what he needed if he ever got round to trying to put the vineyard back in order.

‘He never goes for a walk,’ the big cop went on. ‘And this dinner? What’s he playing at?’

‘We don’t know what Leo does when he’s off duty, do we?’ Costa said.

There’d been a time, once. When he was briefly in love with the woman from Venice. But then that fell apart, as his affairs usually did after a while. And Leo Falcone was back to being the man they knew: a dedicated and talented police officer whose life revolved around the Questura, and barely seemed to exist outside it.

‘Suppose not,’ Peroni replied.

He turned and looked at Costa.

‘Is he happy, Nic? I mean, just a little bit. I’d never expect Leo to be really happy. Not like a normal human being. But a little bit. It would worry me if he didn’t have even that.’

Some more birds — finches, he thought — had begun to descend on the crop of grapes. They looked better than usual this year. He ought to be making wine, inviting people round to pick the crop, take part in the entertaining ceremony of crushing them, turning the juice into bad wine, just as his father had done with his friends a generation ago when Costa was a child. But those times, that way of life, seemed gone now. Everyone was so busy. The hectic round of work and duty never seemed to offer the space, the opportunity for leisure, time with the people you loved. Then the seasons turned once more, summer to autumn, autumn to winter. Another year gone, lost forever, haunted by the ghosts of words unspoken, promises never kept.

‘He’ll be happy when this is over,’ Costa said. ‘Something about this case. .’ He knew what it was, and so did Peroni. There was no need to say it out loud. Falcone was haunted by the thought of Mina Gabriel’s damaged innocence, and the idea that she might be punished for defending herself against the brutish attentions of her own father. ‘It gets to him, doesn’t it?’

‘Gets to all of us,’ Peroni said. ‘Can I take the car? I need to change too. You can make your own way there?’

‘Of course.’

The big man stood up and stretched a little painfully. Both he and Falcone faced retirement in a few years. Neither, Costa thought, would find it easy to leave the Questura behind. It wasn’t just the job. It was the people, the companionship, the notion of some shared sense of direction. The idea that, in some small way, their mutual efforts represented a glimmer of hope, a trace of humanity, in a world going bad.

‘We need to get Leo out more,’ Costa said without thinking. ‘We need to go back to the way we were. When Emily was alive. When we felt like. .’ There was no other word, and he was a Roman so it was not difficult or embarrassing for him to use it. ‘. . like a family.’

Peroni nodded.

‘We do,’ he agreed. ‘Starting tonight.’

Costa watched him go, thinking all the time about Agata, what to say, how he might help her through this difficult transition. He became lost in his thoughts after a while. So much so that, when the time came to go, he simply walked upstairs, threw on the first set of clean clothes he found, then came back down, fell on the Vespa and kicked it into life on the first try.

They assembled at the restaurant just before eight, Agata coming directly from work. Falcone had picked Al Pompiere back in the ghetto, just a few steps away from Sora Margherita, the humble little hole-in-the-wall they’d visited a few nights before. He arrived in a fresh grey suit, a carnation in his lapel, a smile on his face, looking so calm, so at one with himself, Costa wondered why, a few hours earlier, he’d been worried about the man.

They went up the staircase to the first floor of the restaurant, one of the best in the ghetto. A reserved sign stood on a secluded window table with a view back to the Piazza delle Cinque Scole and, on the small mound opposite, one face of the gloomy, sprawling Palazzo Cenci. Costa found the sight distracting: this tragedy was somehow rooted in the buildings around here. In the history of the Cenci family, in the rundown apartment block that Joanne Van Doren had been trying, unsuccessfully, to resurrect and turn into a gold mine, creating instead a bleak fortress of secrets, some of them still hidden.

The waiters danced around the inspector obediently. He was known here, though he’d never so much as mentioned the place. Falcone was a private individual, even as he went about his business in the throng of the city. There was a duality to the man, in the way he could be personable, and show great care and courtesy to those around him, then retreat into his own thoughts in an instant.

Sparkling Franciacorta arrived, followed by plates of zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella, battered salt cod, crunchy fried artichokes and bitter puntarelle shoots with anchovies. Finally the head waiter entered carrying a small gift box wrapped in beautiful velvet and placed it in front of Agata.

Falcone clapped, alone. The rest of them stared at him, wondering, until Teresa asked, ‘Are we celebrating something?’

‘A birthday!’ he cried. ‘I’m too much of a gentleman to reveal the age, naturally.’

Agata bent over her present, creased with laughter, hiding her mouth with her hand.

‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ she said.

‘As if!’ he retorted. ‘You should tell a few more people, though. You’re out here with the rest of us now. Not hidden in some cloister.’

‘I was an orphan! After that a sister.’ She watched as Falcone, then the rest of them, raised their glasses in a toast. ‘Birthdays were never so important. One year older. What does it matter?’

‘It matters,’ Teresa interjected, ‘because you get free food and drink, and presents. Or rather one present. Of course. .’ She glared at Falcone. This was why the cunning old fox had gone for a walk. ‘Had we known. .’

He squirmed on his seat at the head of the table as Agata opened the velvet box. She found herself holding a very ornate gold necklace. One, Costa judged, a little too ostentatious for her taste.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she declared. ‘Thank you. You don’t need to do this, Leo.’

‘Of course I do,’ Falcone replied. ‘I was your sponsor when you were a child in that orphanage. These ties come with duties. As does friendship.’

He gestured at the waiters. They came out with more gifts: boxes of expensive chocolates from a fancy store in Via Condotti.

‘What exactly is going on?’ Teresa began, in a tone that was only just short of being cross.

‘It’s my way of saying sorry,’ Falcone said quickly. ‘To all of you. I’ve behaved badly of late and I know it. I took my anger out on the people around me. That was wrong. I want to apologize. Come on.’ He pointed a lean index finger at the menu. ‘Pick the best they have. Lamb and artichokes. Wonderful. Beef with citron. Fish. Nic, they’ll cook anything a vegetarian can want.’