David Hewson - The Fallen Angel

Peroni was staring at Costa from the other side of the table, a meaningful and deeply suspicious expression clouding his customarily friendly face. They all knew Falcone well by now.

‘This is very kind of you,’ the big cop said in clipped, measured tones. ‘Given that we’re in the middle of a rather nasty murder investigation.’

‘Happy birthday to me!’ Agata announced with a touch of despair, raising her glass to them. ‘Why did I end up with police officers for friends?’

‘Because you were lucky,’ Falcone told her. ‘Who better to help you find your way into the real world?’

‘Who indeed?’ she murmured. Agata looked almost as doubtful about this impromptu party as Peroni did.

‘Tell us about work,’ Costa said quickly, trying to change the conversation. ‘Yours. How is the college? Your students?’

‘My students,’ she said, laughing. ‘Is that what they are? Most are just children and don’t know it. Children with parents who’ve more money than sense and think that, by sending their offspring to Bella Italia, they will come back transformed. Adults. Civilized. Made into the human beings they should be, by strangers like me.’

No one said anything. The mood, her mood, seemed terribly fragile.

‘Being a teacher’s never easy,’ Teresa suggested.

‘I imagine not,’ Agata replied. ‘But the truth is, I don’t like some of them. They’re coarse. They come late into class in the morning. Hung over. You can see the alcohol in their eyes. The drugs. The lazy licentiousness. That’s their response to being given their freedom. To throw it away in some bar in the Campo.’

‘Drugs?’ Costa asked.

‘The other teachers talk about it as if it were nothing. I’m sorry.’

‘And the director? Bruno? He knows?’

She put down her glass and toyed with the beautiful necklace.

‘This is my night, isn’t it?’ Agata Graziano asked.

‘Every second of it,’ Falcone declared with a theatrical flourish.

‘Then let’s not talk about the Collegio Raffello. It’s. . boring. I have to go to some convention on Sunday evening. Four nights. I didn’t expect this. Milan.’ Her dark face became still and thoughtful. ‘With Bruno.’

‘Milan has its beautiful parts,’ Peroni suggested.

‘No,’ Agata insisted. ‘Enough. Tell me something. The truth, now. I have to ask, since it’s in all the papers. On the TV. This awful story has my students, such as they are, more enthralled than any old paintings I can throw at them. . The Gabriel family. Well?’

Falcone smiled at her very pleasantly and asked, ‘Well what?’

‘When will it come to an end, Leo? When can I open a newspaper or turn on the TV and not see that poor girl’s face staring back at me? Soon, please. Tell me that.’

‘Soon,’ he agreed. ‘Tomorrow, in fact.’

They all stopped and looked at him.

‘Yes,’ he went on. ‘Tomorrow. I’ve decided. This has gone far enough. I shall file my report to the commissario . It will say no more than the obvious. Malise Gabriel was the monster the papers have been painting him to be. He was murdered, with some guile, by the son, who also killed the American woman. Perhaps because she was involved somehow. Or she found out. We’ll never know. Only the dead could tell us that. The brother himself was murdered by this unknown Italian drugs outfit we learned about today from the Turks, as was his crooked policeman friend. This is not unrelated. Had he not killed his father and brought such publicity on himself. .’

A thought crossed Falcone’s mind, one he kept to himself.

‘That side of the case I shall pass to another inspector who can attach himself to narcotics in order to pursue it fully. I’ve seen enough of this tragedy, as I’m sure have you. So.’ He chinked his glass with Agata’s. ‘Consider it done with. Despatched, all neat and tidy.’

‘And Mina?’ she asked. ‘Her mother?’

He paused for a moment.

‘I shall say that, while we have plenty of evidence to suggest both of them had good reason to fear and hate Malise Gabriel, there’s no evidence to implicate them in his death, or that of anyone else. The case will be closed.’

There was silence around the table. Then Agata brightened, chinked her glass all round and said, ‘That’s the best birthday present I could have hoped for. The very best.’

Falcone watched her. In his face was the pride of a parent, Costa thought. And some relief too, some satisfaction that, in his own head, a turning point, a decision, had been reached.

The red Ducati was, as Maria had promised, in pieces. The wheels, engine and frame lay scattered over the downstairs forensic room, each element tidily labelled with a tag. She and Silvio Di Capua stood next to the bits, along with a couple of forensic assistants they’d called in when the labour became too physical. The Rome number plates were on the desk. Fakes, naturally.

He felt wiped out. They’d been working twelve hours a day for almost a week. He needed a break. But the discovery of the mattress had energized the young woman next to him. Perhaps she saw it as a way into a job in the Questura. More likely, Di Capua thought, she just loved the challenge. For all her clumsiness and over-exuberance Maria Romano was a natural forensics officer: doggedly curious about everything. Even matters she didn’t begin to understand.

‘Remind me. What exactly are we meant to be looking for again?’ he asked, half wishing he’d accepted Falcone’s strange invitation to dinner.

‘Clues, silly!’

Di Capua’s initial disdain had transmuted to desire a few days before. Now it was slowly changing again, into a grinding, subterranean sense of annoyance.

‘Yes,’ he said testily. ‘But what kind exactly?’

It was a rhetorical question. He knew the answers by heart. Prints, stains, smears from leather boots or gloves. If they could find the helmet or some other clothing they might identify an individual who’d ridden, or worked on, the bike. But there was nothing, only a few marks that would take days to interpret. Scuffs on the paint. Some fabric — wool and cotton, it looked like — trapped around the tank filler cap. Corroborating material. Nothing that would put a name or a face to the man who had gunned down two people in public on a hot Roman night.

Maria still had evidence bags to sort through. Judging by the bright and energetic expression on her face she seemed willing to work through the night if necessary.

She pulled on her shiny black hair and looked at him, realizing this was a test.

‘We’ve got blood.’

There was some, on the right-hand side, the frame, the seat, the composite casing behind the carb.

‘It’s smear,’ Di Capua said. ‘I told you. We’ll type it but it’s not from the rider. It’s from one of the poor bastards he shot. Look.’ He pointed to the tell-tale points of soft tissue on the black metal and scarlet paint. ‘Spatter too. He was still bleeding badly when he fell. It’s the brother or the cop. The brother would be my bet. There was some smear on his clothes that suggested he’d come into contact with the bike.’

‘Why would he do that?’ Maria asked.

‘I don’t know! Does it matter?’

‘Maybe. We’ve got the drugs.’

She’d retrieved two small plastic bags containing what looked like cocaine from the little compartment where tools were kept. Di Capua had had to scream at her when she seemed about to lick her little finger and taste the stuff. Too many bad movies. He’d had to point out the obvious: why would anyone do such a thing? What if it wasn’t cocaine but something poisonous? And how was she supposed to know what cocaine tasted like anyway? This was so often the problem with the work-experience kids. They thought they knew more than they did.