David Hewson - The Fallen Angel

‘Mina,’ Grimaldi said quietly. ‘We’re not those men. This is not that time. You’re not Beatrice Cenci.’

Her pretty head lolled a little at that, as if she was thinking. Falcone caught an expression on the mother’s face, one of shock, of revelation perhaps. They didn’t talk much, these two. Mothers and daughters had a certain distance sometimes, one that emerged in the early teens and, usually, would have begun to dissipate at this point. He’d recognized that often enough even though, in his own head, he still believed he knew little of families.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘The truth,’ Cecilia Gabriel said quickly, before either of the men could speak.

‘The truth?’ She looked at her mother and laughed. ‘Why?’

‘Because. .’ Cecilia Gabriel closed her eyes for a moment, trying to stem her tears. ‘It’s time, Mina. This secret. .’

Her voice had a frail, pleading tone. It didn’t appear to move the girl.

‘What secret?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know!’

There was a tension between them, one taut with intimacy.

‘So this truth ,’ Mina hissed. ‘You think it’s going to set us free? Can’t you hear in your head what Daddy would say to that? How he’d rip that coarse little cliche apart?’

‘Daddy’s dead,’ Cecilia Gabriel told her. ‘I can’t hear him any more.’

‘Can’t you?’ the girl spat at her.

Cecilia Gabriel pulled her chair over then placed her arm around Mina’s shoulders. The girl stiffened, with all the false yet hurtful loathing that a child could sometimes display towards a loving parent.

‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said and kissed her cheek tenderly, then stroked her hair, the way one did with a child. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

Mina pulled herself together and sat bolt upright, pushing Cecilia Gabriel away.

‘You’re on their side now, aren’t you? You’re one of the torturers too.’

Cecilia Gabriel stared at her daughter, her eyes full of sorrow. Falcone asked himself again: without some point, some hope of justice or redemption, was it worth inflicting this amount of pain on anyone? Even those stained with guilt?

‘Something’s wrong,’ the Gabriel woman whispered. ‘I’m not blind, Mina. I’ve known since the beginning. Something’s wrong and it’s inside you. I don’t know what it is. I don’t want to think sometimes.’

‘You’re my mother! You’re supposed to defend me! Not ask questions!’

The woman closed her eyes. She seemed to possess no more words.

Falcone shifted his chair closer to the girl and tried to catch her eyes.

‘No one’s defended you more than your mother,’ he said. ‘You’ve no idea how hard it’s been for us to get this far. But she needs to know, Mina. As do we. The law demands that we deal with these facts, and until you help us do that this will go on. It must, however much we’d like to end it.’

The girl was silent, thinking, her small fist tight against her lips, tears streaming down her reddening cheeks.

‘Did you have any idea that Robert planned to kill your father?’ Grimaldi asked.

She said nothing.

‘This email we found on his phone.’

‘What email?’

Grimaldi explained, adding, ‘It has your name on it. It’s an incriminating document.’

‘It’s an invention. Like everything.’

She bit her fist with her even white teeth.

‘Did Robert feel he had good reason?’ Grimaldi persisted. ‘Because of what your father did?’

The skin on her fingers turned scarlet. There was blood there. Cecilia Gabriel uttered a cry of agonized despair and tried to force the girl’s fingers away from her mouth.

‘All we need,’ Falcone added, ‘is to know that you sent him that document because he asked for it. If you can just tell me that. The rest. .’

He glanced at Grimaldi who looked deeply unhappy at what he believed Falcone was about to say.

‘Inspector,’ Grimaldi objected. ‘There are limits.’

‘If you say you sent him something because he asked for it,’ Falcone continued, ‘the rest I will deal with, Mina. I promise. This evidence, this apparent proof, I cannot hide. But I can choose to set it to one side.’

‘I loved Daddy,’ she chanted. ‘Daddy loved me.’

The words came out like the lilting refrain from a child’s song. Then again. And again.

The guard on the gate of the palazzetto said he’d no idea where Bernard Santacroce was. But he told them they weren’t the first police officers there. That Falcone and another man were with the Gabriels in the little tower in the distant garden.

Costa cursed his own stupidity. He told the uniformed officers to stay by the gate. Then he strode on through the courtyard, beneath the arch, through the exquisite garden, to the Casina delle Civette.

The ground-floor door was open. He took the stone steps of the circular staircase two at a time. They were in the living room of the second-floor apartment, silent, grim-faced, seated awkwardly around Mina. The harsh midday sunlight fell through the arched windows. The girl blinked at him, shielding her eyes against it, as he entered.

‘Nic?’ Falcone began, standing up as Costa entered.

‘What is this?’ Costa asked, waving at him to stay seated.

Cecilia Gabriel was a little way from her daughter, distraught, face puffy with tears, a tissue in her hands, her eyes fixed on the floor.

‘We’re trying,’ Toni Grimaldi said, ‘to bring this matter to some kind of conclusion.’ He sounded exasperated. Costa wondered how long they’d been here, throwing questions at the girl again. ‘To get Mina to tell us just a little of the truth so that we can close this case for good. Unfortunately without some degree of co-operation, the evidence we have is too strong to be ignored.’

‘What evidence?’ Costa demanded.

‘The photographs,’ Grimaldi said, as if the question was ridiculous. ‘The email to her brother-’

‘The photos aren’t what you think,’ Costa interrupted. ‘The email’s a fake.’ He glanced at Falcone. ‘If you’d only left your phone on, Leo. If you hadn’t tried to take this case on to your own shoulders. .’

Falcone’s lean, tanned face flared with fury.

‘I am the inspector here,’ he declared. ‘I will decide the course of action.’

‘Not now,’ Costa cut in.

He pulled up one more chair from the dining table and set it next to the hunched young figure in the childish pyjamas, hugging herself in silence in the centre of the room, trying to pretend none of this existed.

Then Costa sat down, very close to her, tried to catch her eye, did so eventually and said, ‘I know, Mina. I know. Not all of it. Not yet, and maybe I don’t want or need to know everything. But I know enough. I know you told us the truth when you said your father loved you. I know enough, I think, to understand your brother was not what we thought.’

‘Aren’t you the clever one?’ she murmured in a thin, petulant voice.

‘Not really. Not at all. I’ve been stupid. Blind. I just saw what I wanted to see. What you wanted me to see sometimes. And sometimes, mostly maybe, what I felt like seeing myself.’

She clutched herself and rocked backward and forward, staring into the space in front of her with damp, unfocused eyes.

‘Where’s your uncle?’ he asked.

Costa watched both of the Gabriels avidly. Mina didn’t react, didn’t say anything, but Cecilia Gabriel’s head came up and her acute eyes were clear and sharp with shock.

‘I know it was him, Mina,’ Costa continued. ‘I understand, I think, the kind of pressure he must have placed on you. Why you felt you couldn’t tell us, even though-’