David Hewson - The Fallen Angel

‘Nic,’ he said finally. ‘The building inspectors went straight in there yesterday morning. Those people are good. They’d let us know if there was something wrong.’

‘There was something wrong. The son pulling out a gun, shooting it in the air then running off into the night. With his father dead on the ground. His sister there too.’

‘Dope.’

As if that explained everything.

‘It needs looking at.’

‘It is being looked at. By the drugs people. They knew the kid anyway. And the building inspectors can deal with the structural stuff.’

‘The girl. .’

Costa didn’t elaborate. Peroni was a very smart man. It was hard to keep anything hidden when he was poking around.

‘What about the girl?’

‘Where is she now?’

Peroni pulled out a notepad and looked at it.

‘With her mother round at the academic place where her father worked. Some institution called the Confraternita delle Civette. Near the Campo. Heard of it? I haven’t.’

The Brotherhood of the Owls. The Little Owls, to be precise. Costa had been an avid birdwatcher when he was young, and knew where to find these charming little birds when they nested in the ruins and bosky corners of the Appian Way.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘New to me.’

‘It seems they’re being very generous in the circumstances. Providing the family with accommodation. Uniform interviewed the mother and the girl, as you’d expect after an accident. They’re pretty upset, naturally. Didn’t have a lot to add. The girl was at home on her own for most of the evening. Father came back around ten. They spoke briefly. He seemed cheerful. She got dressed for bed then went into some music room they had and spent most of the night practising. Got a concert coming or something. She thought her father was going to read a book then go to bed. Some time after midnight she heard a shout and a noise, saw what had happened, went outside. The rest you know. The father didn’t like to smoke in the apartment. He’d got into the habit of stepping out onto the balcony.’

‘Even when it’s covered in scaffolding?’

Peroni looked a little annoyed, which was unusual for him.

‘Don’t you have better things to do on your holidays? The whole block was being renovated. That was why they got the apartment on the cheap. They probably never even saw it without scaffolding. Why would they worry?’

Falcone had looked into this after all.

‘Did she see the brother that night?’

Peroni scanned his notes.

‘He was out drinking with his friends in the Campo. Where he was most nights. The sister says she glimpsed him in the downstairs hall when she was rushing out after her father fell. Must have been on the way back and got caught up in the whole thing.’

‘The father’s dead on the ground. The mother’s God knows where. And the son doesn’t even step out of the shadows to help his own sister?’

‘The mother was playing in the orchestra at an amateur concert. From what we know she came as soon as she could. The son was maybe drunk. Doped up. Who knows? People get funny around death. I’ve seen cops scared of going near a corpse. So have you.’

‘Yes, but. .’

‘Narcotics say he was a runner for one of the Turkish rings dealing stuff to the foreign kids. They had him on their radar for a little chat soon. He’d dumped a very valuable stash of coke and heroin in the doorway. The narcotics people found even more in his room.’ Peroni thought about this for a moment. ‘The question you might want to ask is: why did he stay around at all? And did his sister know what he was up to? She didn’t tell you he was there for quite a while, did she?’

That didn’t add up.

‘She was more concerned about her father. Here’s another question. Would you walk out onto scaffolding five floors up for a cigarette?’

‘You never smoked, did you? Of course I would, particularly if I had a wife who hated the smell of tobacco in the house. The scaffolding ran the length of the balcony. It was the sort they suspend from the roof on arms or something. You can see that from what’s still up there. Seems pretty stable to me. Looks like it’s been there forever. Too long maybe. Perhaps it got rusty. The construction people will know.’

Costa sighed and said, ‘You’ve been there already?’

‘Walked past on my way here,’ Peroni admitted with a grin, then called for another coffee, coughed a couple of times, and straightened up as if he felt a little better. ‘We do get the job done without you, believe it or not. If there is a job. Which there isn’t. So what’s really on your mind?’

‘Beatrice Cenci,’ Costa muttered, not expecting a response.

The man opposite stiffened.

‘What the hell has that poor girl got to do with it?’

Costa blinked.

‘You know who I’m talking about?’

‘I’m not a complete idiot. There was a play about her a few years back at the Teatro Sistina. Teresa took me.’ He frowned and the foreign expression made his big, friendly face age several years. ‘I bawled my eyes out. Then she told me it was all true and I bawled them out again. What a horrible story. Want another piece of the funny pizza?’

‘Not really.’

‘I’ll take one for later.’

He turned, smiled at the woman in the headscarf at the counter, and got himself some more.

‘The man died in the Via Beatrice Cenci,’ Costa went on, and knew how ridiculous that sounded.

Peroni looked at him and raised a single eyebrow.

‘The daughter,’ Costa continued. ‘Mina. She had blood on her pyjamas.’

‘Her father had just fallen five floors. She was bent over him when you arrived. His blood, don’t you think?’

‘Do we know that?’

‘No,’ Peroni admitted. ‘Are you really suggesting there’s more to this just because it happened in the street where the Cenci girl lived, what, five, six centuries ago?’

‘Four and a bit actually. No, of course I’m not.’ There had to be more to it than that. ‘Sometimes you see things, Gianni, and you know they’re wrong. You don’t understand why. Or what it is you’re half-seeing either. But you know.’

‘Oh yeah, you know.’ Peroni peered at him across the table. ‘And a few days or weeks or months later you get to understand that, half the time or more, you were just an idiot. We’ve all been there. It can turn out nasty. Particularly when it involves kids.’

Costa bridled at that remark.

‘And the other half?’

‘You’re on holiday. Leave it to someone else.’

‘I’m not in the habit of asking favours. Let’s just go there and run through the basics.’

‘Uniform and narcotics have done that already.’

‘Uniform think this is nothing more than a building collapse. Narcotics see what they want to see.’

‘And we’d be different?’

‘Maybe,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I don’t know.’

Peroni leaned forward and peered into his eyes.

‘Maybe you’re bored. Or turning suspicious in your old age. You’re on holiday. It’s sunny out there. Why aren’t you taking Agata somewhere? Not trying to turn some terrible accident into a crime scene?’

It was the second time he’d heard this suggestion. Costa knew a conspiracy when he saw one. They could have told him in advance that Agata was going to be there that Friday night. It might have saved some embarrassment.

‘Don’t presume to organize my life, please. And pass that message on.’

Peroni folded his arms and said not a word.

‘One quick look inside the apartment,’ Costa suggested. ‘Indulge me. Then we’re done.’

‘You’re. . off. . duty,’ Peroni said emphatically.

‘And you’re barely fit for work. We make the perfect pair.’