David Hewson - The Fallen Angel

They left the restaurant just after ten, happy, well-fed, a little drowsy from the long day. Costa offered to walk Agata home but she declined, making an excuse he didn’t believe. Something was wrong in this new life of hers. It was obvious, just as it was clear she didn’t want to discuss it.

He watched her go. Teresa and Gianni Peroni stood, arms linked, at the edge of the Piazza delle Cinque Scole, laughing and joking with one another. The night had brought an unexpected revelation. Leo Falcone really had abandoned a difficult case, one they all suspected was more complex than it seemed. This had never happened in all the time Costa had known the man. There were failures, plenty of them. Cases that fell down in court or, more often, investigations that simply went nowhere. But he couldn’t recall a single instance where Falcone had decided that he would accept the obvious, the status quo, and no longer pursue an inquiry that, in all probability, still had some way to run. Even the matter of the brother’s death and the murder of Gino Riggi would now be handled by some other officer. A part, the private, personal part, of Costa wanted to welcome this decision. The professional side of him was quietly appalled.

They said their farewells. Teresa and Peroni wandered off looking for a cab. Costa picked up his helmet. He’d had just a single glass of wine. It was fine to ride home. He wanted to. The city became too close, too constrictive at times, particularly in the narrow lanes of the ghetto. He’d parked the scooter near to the tiny arch beneath the Palazzo Cenci, a grim, dark alley with a small shrine supposedly marking the location of an ancient murder.

‘Safe journey,’ Falcone said, emerging from the dark and still amused by the idea of the Vespa. ‘I never had one of those things, you know. Straight from a bicycle to a car. Nothing in between.’

Costa hesitated.

‘Is everything all right, Leo?’

‘Of course it is. Did Agata enjoy herself? Shouldn’t we be worrying about her?’

‘A little, I imagine. But she’s like you. She’ll never tell you when something’s wrong. You have to learn the signs. Then pluck up the courage to say something.’

He left it at that. Falcone didn’t.

‘And you think that came from me?’ he asked.

‘You were the only outside figure in her life when she was in the orphanage, weren’t you?’

The older man leaned against the restaurant wall and stared back into the piazza.

‘I was a kind of father, I suppose. A very poor and distant one. I remember realizing, when she was seven or eight, that she saw me that way. I retreated a little after that. Frightened. Yes, I was frightened by it. The dependence. The closeness.’ He shrugged, amused at his own frailty. ‘Some of us aren’t cut out to be family men.’

‘I think you did more than you realize. More than you accept.’

‘Perhaps.’ His face had grown long and gloomy again. He was tired. They all were. ‘How could a man like Malise Gabriel do something like that? To his own daughter? How ? I don’t understand. That’s not sexual desire, is it? It’s power. Bullying. Violence. Just one more form of rape. A worse form, if that’s possible. And that girl. That child. .’ He shook his head. ‘I think she actually feels guilty herself.’

These questions troubled Costa from time to time. There were crimes that sprang from comprehensible sources. Greed. Jealousy. Hatred. Despair. But not this one.

‘We can’t see inside the minds of everyone we deal with.’

‘We see inside the minds of their victims though, don’t we?’ He began to walk towards the square, and the place where Costa had left the scooter. ‘You know. .’

The night was beautiful when they reached the open space of the piazza. There were lights in the apartments of the Palazzo Cenci, faces at the glass, some blank, a few happy, staring out at the sea of cars parked on the cobblestones.

‘I stood in the Questura today and did everything I could to try to force Mina Gabriel to talk. To get that young girl, woman, I don’t know, to tell me the truth. Or rather confirm the truth. That her father abused her. And somehow everything we’ve seen — the deaths, the agony — followed from that terrible, disgraceful act. Why did I do that? Who benefits? If she, and perhaps her mother, were accomplices, what will happen? A lengthy and expensive trial. A few months in jail at the most. Probably not even that. And. .’ He shook his head, as if scarcely able to believe he’d left the most important point till last. ‘More than anything, the pain. The agony I put them through. Why? Because it’s my job. Because, as I so pompously told Teresa, we’re all equal under the law. Are we?’

Costa could see the scooter now, against the wall by the low, dark arch. Malise Gabriel had died on the cobblestones beyond. ‘We can’t afford to make choices.’

Falcone stopped, put an arm on his and said, ‘We can, Nic. We do. All the time. It’s pointless pretending otherwise. I chose to pursue this case because their reticence offended me. Almost as much as the idea that a father could do such a thing to his own child. I felt there was something here that deserved punishment, and it was my job to deliver that. But there’s no one left to punish, is there?’ He looked into Costa’s eyes. ‘God knows, haven’t they suffered enough already?’

‘They have,’ he agreed. ‘I’m still not sure. .’

‘Well, I’ve thought about this long and hard and I am.’ He pointed at Costa in the dark. ‘When you become an inspector remember this case. We need to be conscious of our humanity too. That’s more important than the law sometimes. Just don’t ever quote me on that. Especially in the Questura. Now. .’

His phone rang. Falcone apologized, seemed ready to ignore it, then saw the number on the handset.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, and stepped away to stand by a parked car.

Costa waited. It seemed necessary for some reason. The call was short. Falcone barely spoke at all, though he listened intently, nodding all the while, his face a picture of introspective concentration. Something else too. It was difficult to tell in the dark, but it seemed, to Costa, to represent a return of the bleakness he’d seen in the man these last few days, a desolate gloom that had been dispelled by the time they arrived at Al Pompiere that evening.

Finally Falcone ended the call with a curt ‘ grazie ’, no more.

‘Thank you for coming,’ he said and patted Costa on the shoulder, not looking into his eyes for one moment. ‘I’m glad you did.’

‘Something from the Questura?’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Falcone replied immediately. ‘Routine stuff. Come in tomorrow and tidy up the papers. Then take some days off. Go back on holiday. Enjoy yourself.’

‘Holiday?’

‘Speaking of which,’ Falcone added, ‘I won’t be at my desk in the morning till around lunch time. Some. . personal matters to attend to. Please tell people not to contact me. It’s rather delicate.’

‘I see,’ Costa replied, in a tone that said he saw nothing at all, and would happily be enlightened.

‘Good,’ Falcone said and then loped off into the night, a tall, solitary figure striding through the ghetto, head down, thinking.

The Questura felt odd the following morning. Falcone, as he promised, was nowhere to be seen. The murder detail had turned up to work only to discover they were to stand down from the Gabriel case until further notice. This puzzled Costa deeply. Falcone had assured them the investigation was finished. No one else had been told that. It simply seemed to be on ice.

Peroni felt equally baffled, so the two of them gravitated to forensic and the morgue, mooching around the staff there, trying to find some answers. No one knew why the case was in limbo, neither dead nor alive. Or if they did they weren’t telling.