DAVID HEWSON THE FALLEN ANGEL MACMILLAN . . . while I was painting her I felt all the time as if she were trying to escape from my gaze. She knows that her sorrow is so strange and so immense, that she ought to be solitary forever, both for the world’s sake and her own; and this is the reason we feel such a distance between Beatrice and ourselves, even when our eyes meet hers. It is infinitely heartbreaking to meet her glance, and to feel that nothing can be done to help or comfort her; neither does she ask help or comfort, knowing the hopelessness of her case better than we do. She is a fallen angel – fallen, and yet sinless; and it is only this depth of sorrow, with its weight and darkness, that keeps her down upon earth, and brings her within our view even while it sets her beyond our reach. The Marble Faun, Nathaniel Hawthorne Contents PART ONE ONE TWO THREE FOUR PART TWO ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN PART THREE ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE PART FOUR ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE PART FIVE ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN PART SIX ONE TWO THREE FOUR PART SEVEN ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN PART EIGHT ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX PART NINE ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN PART TEN ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN PART ELEVEN ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE PART ONE ONE It was the last Saturday of August, just past midnight. Nic Costa sat on a low semi-circular stone bench midway across the Garibaldi bridge, listening to the Tiber murmur beneath him like some ancient spirit grumbling about the noise and dirt of the city. To his left in Trastevere ran a steady stream of cars and crowded late-night buses taking people home to the suburbs, workers from the hotels and restaurants, diners and drinkers too tired or impoverished to stay in the city any more. On the opposite side of the river, where this portion of the road bore the name Lungotevere de’ Cenci, the traffic flowed towards the centre, more quietly at this time of night. Rome was slowly, reluctantly, working its way towards sleep. If he closed his eyes he could almost imagine himself at home in the countryside of the Appian Way, listening to nothing but the distant echo of insomniac owls. Then, from both sides of the river, came the familiar sound of the weekend: loud, slurring voices, English, German, American, some he couldn’t name. The many busy bars of Trastevere and the Campo dei Fiori were beginning to disgorge their customers onto the street and for the next few hours the uniformed police and Carabinieri who worked the graveyard shift would find themselves dealing with the aftermath of an alcohol culture that was utterly alien to them. Most Romans didn’t much like getting drunk. Excess of this nature was socially unacceptable, an embarrassment, though that night he’d had rather more wine than usual and didn’t regret it for a moment. Further along the Tiber he could see a noisy bunch of young men and women stumbling across the ancient pedestrian bridge that joined Trastevere, near the Piazza Trilussa, with the centro storico. Costa wished he had the time and energy to walk there, then further still, until he could see the Castel Sant’Angelo illuminated like some squat stone drum left behind by the forgetful children of giants. Rome seemed magical, a fairy-tale city, on a drowsy evening such as this. And there were so many memories locked in these streets and lanes, the houses and churches and palaces around him. Good and bad, some fresh, some fading into the muted, resigned acceptance he had come to recognize as a sign of age. ‘May I ask again? What happened in Calabria?’ inquired the woman seated next to him. There was nothing like a gelato in the open air after midnight. He was three days into his summer holiday, one forced on him by the state police’s insistent human resources department. Already he felt a little bored. Then along came unexpected company. Costa licked his cone, bitter chocolate and fiery red pepper, thought for a moment and said, ‘It’s all been in the newspapers.’ ‘The newspapers! Some of it. About you and Leo and the rest locking up a bunch of crooks and politicians then getting feted by Dario Sordi in the Quirinale Palace. Medals from the president of Italy.’ ‘It was one medal,’ he pointed out. ‘A very small one.’ ‘So why did you need a party to celebrate?’ It was a good question. He hadn’t. It was their colleagues in the Questura who’d arranged that evening’s private celebration at a famous restaurant near the Pantheon. It was there that, by accident, on his part at least, he had met the woman who was now by his side picking at a pistachio ice cream with mixed enthusiasm. Teresa Lupo had invited her without telling him, and winked at him like some old-fashioned comic as she arrived. He felt sure he’d blushed, and hoped no one had noticed. And then he’d scarcely talked to anyone else all evening. ‘It’s disconcerting,’ she continued. ‘I turn my back for one moment and suddenly everything’s changed.’ ‘You’ve been gone for nearly two years, not a moment. Of course things are different.’ Her round brown eyes glittered beneath the single iron lamp above them. ‘So I see,’ she said. ‘I’d like to know what happened in Calabria. To Gianni and Teresa. To Leo.’ She hesitated. ‘To Nic Costa too. Him most of all.’ ‘I laid to rest some ghosts,’ he said without thinking, and realized he was happy to hear those words escape his own lips. ‘Most of them really. But that’s a story for another time.’ She put her small hand on his arm and moved a little closer. He was unable to take his attention away from her dark, inquisitive face, which was even prettier than he remembered, bearing the signs of make-up and some personal attention which had never been there before. ‘I’m happy for you. Would you mind very much if . . . ?’ She took his arm and wound it around her shoulders. Then her head leaned against his and he felt her soft, curly black hair fall against his cheek.