David Hewson - The Fallen Angel

She swore, an English word, a common one.

‘If she does this,’ Grimaldi went on, ‘and says, merely, that she passed on this building information to Robert because he asked for it, that she knew nothing of any conspiracy, well. .’

He watched her wringing her hands, waiting for the woman to calm down.

‘Then,’ he went on, ‘we’re finished here. I can write honestly that this is a family tragedy with an unfortunate conclusion. One with several victims. One that should not waste the time of the courts, since the principal perpetrator, Robert, is now dead.’

‘You’re asking her to tell a lie! To make out her own father was some kind of animal!’

They waited for a moment.

‘We can only help the living,’ Toni Grimaldi said eventually. ‘I don’t know if you honestly believe Mina has told you the truth. From what you say, I suspect not. Understand me, please. We’re not here for her confession. We’re here to beg her for sufficient information to allow us to declare this case closed in spite of the evidence that exists. Surely you understand it would be better, for you and for her, that this bleak episode is laid to rest? A brief conversation is all I ask. Just us, you, your daughter. No lawyers, no friends. No notes, no. . commitments. Simply something I may use as a justification to end this once and for all.’

‘Even if it’s a lie?’ she asked.

Grimaldi didn’t answer. Falcone found himself looking into Cecilia Gabriel’s clear blue eyes and admiring what he saw there. This woman wished to protect her daughter more than anything. As an individual he was deeply uncomfortable with the relentless bonds of family, the ties of closeness, which so often seemed unbreakable, resolute. From time to time Falcone had privately wondered what kind of parent he would have made. A bad one, surely, willing to abandon a wayward child in the end. In Cecilia Gabriel’s stiff and determined face he saw something he could never possess: a fiery sense of protective loyalty, whatever the circumstances. In terms of the law this was awkward and problematic. Yet it seemed to him that there was, in such blind, unthinking devotion, a degree of decency and love that no law, no court, no sentence could possibly deliver. It was a private judgement, and one he would never commit to paper, but he was now convinced that no good would come of dragging any of these people into court if that eventuality could be avoided.

‘Even if you feel it’s a lie,’ he responded. ‘It’s of no consequence. We cannot ignore the evidence we have. If Mina will give us reason to tell our own superiors that there is insufficient material to continue with the investigation. .’

He waited for her reaction.

Cecilia Gabriel stared at him candidly.

‘I’m rather sorry I slapped you, Inspector,’ she said. ‘We’ve all got a temper in this family unfortunately. Except Mina, of course.’

‘I’ve had much worse,’ he confessed, and found himself wondering if he would encounter this woman again. Some time beyond the black mist of mourning and despair that had hung around her on every occasion they’d met, and would stay there until the moment Toni Grimaldi caused the fog to lift.

‘I imagine you have.’

She then did something which struck Falcone as curiously English. Cecilia Gabriel clapped them both simultaneously on the knee, palms down, like some schoolmistress from a period movie who had come to some momentous decision.

‘I’ll ask Mina to talk to you,’ she declared, standing up, stretching, a long, lean athletic figure under the sun. ‘Just us. But I warn you now. I doubt she’ll agree to some convenient fabrication. Not even to save herself.’

They were back in the squad room. Costa stood behind one of the intelligence officers working a couple of huge computer screens simultaneously. Teresa and Silvio Di Capua were with him, liaising with forensic on the phone. Peroni was calling the UK, trying to locate Malise Gabriel’s brother. Finally, Costa thought, they might be on the brink of finding a way into this case.

The young woman officer on the desk had just come off the phone to Scotland Yard. She looked at them and said, ‘There’s no one called Julian Urquhart at the address where the bike was registered. The police in London say they went back two months after the theft was reported. The apartment was rented to someone else. The new people didn’t know anything about the previous occupant. There was no mail, no forwarding address.’

‘Why would someone with a false identity want an expensive new motorbike?’ Costa demanded.

She peered at the screen. Emails kept coming in almost by the second.

‘A crook with money doesn’t steal any old junk off the street. You buy something new under a false ID then fake a theft to get it off the register. Take it abroad. Use it without running the risk of getting stopped for driving something hot. Also. .’ She tugged at her short dark hair. ‘Crooks are normal too. They like nice cars. Nice bikes. You can do things to them. Tweak the engine. Build some compartment for explosives or guns or dope.’

Silvio Di Capua brightened.

‘We found cocaine in the frame.’

‘We know the bike’s supposed to have come from a drugs gang,’ Costa said. ‘Where’s the surprise there?’ He stared at the screen, trying to think. ‘We’re back on the same assumptions again. I hate that. Give me some different ones.’

Teresa Lupo got the idea straight away.

‘The photos in the basement were taken to incriminate or embarrass Malise Gabriel.’

‘Good,’ Costa told her. ‘I like that. But why? He didn’t have any money. He didn’t have anything. He was dying.’

‘The photos from the bedroom are real,’ said Di Capua, ignoring the question. ‘He’s our man.’

‘So who is he?’ Costa wondered, not expecting an answer.

Di Capua’s face was a picture of exasperation.

‘Give us time, Nic! I told you. We’ll get there.’

‘Why is it,’ Costa asked, ‘that I don’t think we’ve got time? We appear to be dealing with someone who can steal a Ducati in a different country and bring it into Italy without a soul noticing. Falsify photographs, force a man like Malise Gabriel into sexual situations, possibly against his will. Murder two people, one a kid, one a cop, in the street and disappear afterwards. Do you think he’s waiting around for us to knock on the door?’

They went quiet. This was not Costa’s normal, calm tone.

‘No,’ he went on. ‘Forget that question. Let me offer another assumption. Someone’s trying to put Mina Gabriel in the frame for her father’s death. Take another step. If they’re trying to do that, aren’t they trying to set up her brother too? Easiest way in the world to cover a crime. Blame it on a dead man.’

‘His sister can still talk,’ Teresa added.

‘Except she’s too scared and has been all along.’

Ever since that night in the Via Beatrice Cenci, he thought. For any number of reasons. Fear. Shame. Something else. A terrified silence that would always, in the end, come to be interpreted as complicity.

‘I still don’t understand. Why do any of this?’ he asked suddenly. ‘If it’s not for money. .’

‘For the girl?’ Di Capua suggested.

Costa shook his head.

‘If you’ve got this kind of money and control you surely don’t need to go to all this trouble for a seventeen-year-old kid.’ He tried another tack. ‘What about the Italian connection? Gabriel’s grandmother? She was called Wilhelmina something?’

‘Wilhelmina something doesn’t really help,’ the woman at the keyboard told him. ‘I’ve got someone trying to track back from the British births and deaths records to ours. It’s going to take a while.’