God's Spy (23 page)

Cardoso’s autopsy when he ran out, leaving me right in the middle of a sentence.’
‘How very like him.’
‘Of course. But let’s not talk about that. Let’s see what the army taught you.’
Paola pressed the button to bring the paper target – the silhouette of a man outlined in black – closer to her. The crude image had a white circle in the centre of his chest. It took a while for the target to come back to them; Fowler had moved it as far away as possible. She wasn’t in the least surprised to see that almost all the holes he’d made were inside the circle. What surprised her was that the last one had missed. She felt disappointed that he hadn’t managed to get them all neatly inside the target, like the protagonists in action films.
But he’s not an action hero, he’s flesh and bone. Sharp-witted, cultured and a damn good shot. In some ways, the one shot he missed makes him more human, she thought to herself.
Fowler laughed when he saw the target, amused by his own failure. ‘I’m a little out of practice, but I still like to shoot. It’s an unusual sport.’
‘As long as it remains a sport.’
‘You still don’t trust me?’
Paola didn’t respond. She liked watching Fowler, without his collar, dressed only in his shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his black trousers. But the photos Dante had shown her of El Aguacate were still whirling round inside her head, splashing about like drunken monkeys in a bathtub.
‘No, padre. Not completely. But I want to. Is that enough for you?’
‘It will have to do.’
‘Where did you get the gun? The depository is closed at this hour.’
‘Troi lent me his. He told me he hadn’t used it in a while.’
‘Sadly enough, that’s true. You should have seen him three years ago. A real pro, the best sort of analyst. He still is, but back then his eyes were full of curiosity. Now that look has gone and all that’s left is the anxiety of a paper-pusher.’
‘Is that bitterness or nostalgia in your voice, dottoressa?’ ‘A little of both.’
‘Did it take you long to get over him?’
Paola acted as if she didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘What did you say?’
‘Forget it. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’ve seen the way he creates walls of solid air between the two of you. Troi is an expert at keeping his distance.’
‘Unfortunately it’s something he does very well.’
Dicanti hesitated a moment before she went on. She felt that emptiness in the pit of her stomach again that looking at Fowler sometimes gave her – the feeling that she was on top of a Ferris wheel. Should she trust him? She thought, with a sad, fleeting irony, that when all was said and done he was a priest, and he was accustomed to seeing people at their worst. As was she.
‘Troi and I had an affair. It was brief. I don’t know if he stopped liking me or if his mania about being promoted got the upper hand.’
‘But you prefer the second choice.’
‘I like to fool myself – in that and other things. I always say to myself that I live with my mother in order to protect her, but in reality I’m the one who needs protection. I suppose that’s why I’m attracted to strong but unsuitable types – men I will never actually share my life with.’
Fowler didn’t respond. She had made herself very clear. They were standing close, looking at each other. The minutes ticked by in silence.
Paola was absorbed in Fowler’s green eyes, knowing his intimate thoughts. Somewhere in the background she thought she could hear a quiet hum, a persistent noise, but she ignored it.
It was Fowler who said, ‘You’d better answer your phone.’
Paola realised it was her mobile that was ringing, and it was starting to increase in volume. She picked it up and for a second was furious. She hung up without saying goodbye.
‘Let’s go, padre. That was the laboratory. This afternoon someone sent us a package by messenger service. And it was supposedly sent in Maurizio’s name.’

Saturday, 9 April 2005, 1:25 a.m.
‘The envelope arrived almost four hours ago. Can anyone tell me why we didn’t find out what was in it until now?’

Troi looked at her, patient but burned out. It was very late in the day to put up with a subordinate’s nonsense. Nevertheless, he kept a tight grip on himself as he put the pistol that Fowler had borrowed back into its drawer.

‘The envelope arrived with your name on it, Paola, and when it arrived you were at the morgue. The girl in reception put it in with my mail and I only saw it later. When I realised who had supposedly sent it, I set things in motion, but at this hour of the night that takes time. The first people I called were the bomb squad. Nothing suspicious in the envelope, as far as they were concerned. When I found out what was in there, I called both you and Dante. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of him, and Cirin hasn’t been answering his phone.’

‘They’ll be sleeping. It’s the middle of the night.’

They were sitting in the fingerprint lab, a narrow space replete with lamps and bulbs. The smell of the powder used to recover prints was everywhere. There were technicians who claimed to love the smell – one even swore he sniffed it before going to see his girlfriend because it was an aphrodisiac – but Paola found it distinctly off-putting. The smell made her want to sneeze, and the dust stuck to her dark clothes and was hard to wash off.

‘All right, do we know for sure that Karosky sent this message?’

Fowler was studying the script of the person who’d written the address. He held the envelope up, his arms slightly extended. Paola suspected he didn’t see well close-up. He must need glasses when he reads fine print, she thought. She wondered how he would look with them on.

‘This is his handwriting – that’s certain. And the macabre joke of putting Pontiero’s name as the sender – that’s Karosky too.’
Paola took the envelope out of Fowler’s hands, placing it on top of the large table that took up most of the space in the room: a sheet of glass for a surface, lit from below. Spread over the top of the table were the contents of the envelope, in transparent plastic bags.
Troi pointed at the first one. ‘His fingerprints are on the note. Take a look at it, Dicanti.’
Paola lifted the plastic bag with the note written in Italian and gave it a closer look. Looking through the plastic, she read the message out loud.

Dear Paola,

I miss you so much! I’m in MK 9, 8. It’s warm here and it suits me fine. I hope you can come and say hello sometime soon. In the meantime, I’ve sent you a video of my vacation.

Kisses,
Maurizio

Paola recoiled from a mixture of anger and horror. She tried to hold back the tears, forcing them to stay inside; she wasn’t going to cry in front of Troi. Maybe in front of Fowler, but not Troi. In front of him, never.

‘Father Fowler?’

‘Mark, chapter 9, verse 8 : “Where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.”’
‘Hell.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Fucking bastard.’
‘There’s no mention of his having to flee the scene a few hours ago. It’s possible that the note was written before that. The disk was cut yesterday morning, according to the dates on the files.’
‘Do we know the model of the camera or computer with which it was recorded?’
‘With the program he used, those details aren’t on the disk. No series numbers, no codes – nothing that could help us identify the equipment he used.’
‘Fingerprints?’
‘Two partials, both Karosky’s. But I didn’t need them to know it was him. Seeing the contents would have been enough.’
‘So what are you waiting for? Put the DVD in, Troi.’
‘Father Fowler, could you excuse us a minute?’
The priest understood the situation instinctively. He looked Paola in the eye. She gestured to him slightly, telling him that everything was OK.
‘Why not. Coffee for three, Dicanti?’
‘Two spoonfuls of sugar in mine, please.’
Troi waited for Fowler to exit the room before taking Paola’s hand in his. She flinched at the contact: his palms were too fleshy and moist. Yet how many times had she sighed, wanting those hands to touch her again? She’d hated their owner for his disdain and his indifference. Now there wasn’t even a spark left from the fire that used to burn between them. It had been extinguished in a green ocean only a few minutes before. All she had left was her pride, and it was something she had in abundance. She definitely wasn’t going to give in to his emotional blackmail. She withdrew her hand and Troi let his drop.
‘Paola, I just want to warn you. What you are about to see is going to hit you very hard.’
Dicanti gave a hard, humourless smile and crossed her arms. She wanted to keep her hands as far away from him as possible. Just in case. ‘I’m used to looking at dead bodies.‘
‘Not of your friends.’
The smile on Paola’s lips trembled like a leaf in the wind, but her spirit didn’t waver. ‘Let’s see the video, Troi.’
‘Is this the way you want things to be? It could be very different.’
‘I’m not a little doll you can treat any way you like. You rejected me because it was dangerous for your career. You preferred to return to your wife and the comfortable misery of your marriage. Well I prefer my own misery now, thank you very much.’
‘Why now, Paola? Why now, after all this time?’
‘Because before I wasn’t strong enough. But now I am.’
Troi ran his fingers through his hair. He was getting the picture. ‘You’ll never be with him, Paola. Even if that’s what he wanted.’
‘You might be right. But it’s my decision. You made yours some time ago. At this point, I’d rather give in to Dante’s lechery.’
Troi was disgusted by the comparison. Paola relished seeing him look so uncomfortable; her angry outburst had penetrated her boss’s ego. She’d been a little hard on him, but he deserved it for the many months he’d treated his conquest like a piece of shit.
‘As you wish, Dottoressa Dicanti. I will go back to being the ironic boss, and you, the pretty novelist.’
‘Believe me, Carlo. It’s for the best.’
Troi’s smile was sad and defeated. ‘All right then. Let’s see the disk.’
As if he had a sixth sense, Fowler came in with a tray of something that could have passed for coffee if given to someone who’d never tasted the real thing.
‘Here you go: venom from the caffeine machine. May I presume that the meeting is about to get under way again?’
‘It is indeed, padre,’ Troi responded.
Fowler observed them closely, unobtrusively. Troi seemed the sadder of the two, but there was something in his voice. Relief? Paola was obviously stronger, less insecure.
The director pulled on a pair of latex gloves and removed the disk from its sleeve. Technicians from the laboratory had rolled a small table in from the conference room. Sitting on top were a 7-inch TV and a cheap DVD player. Troi wanted to watch the film in here because the walls in the conference room were glass, and anyone walking down the hallway could have got a good look at Karosky’s film. By now, rumours about the case Troi and Dicanti were working on had circulated around the building, even though not one of them came close to the truth.
The disk began to play. The film started immediately, without titles or any preliminary material. The style was utterly crude; the camera was jumping about hysterically and the lighting was atrocious. Troi turned the brightness on the TV all the way up.
‘Good evening, souls of this world.’
Paola cringed when she heard Karosky’s voice, the same voice as had tormented her over the phone after Pontiero had been murdered. But the screen was still blank.
‘This film depicts the process by which I am going to eliminate the holiest men in the Church from the face of the earth, fulfilling the work of the shadows. My name is Victor Karosky, a renegade priest of the Roman religion. Over the course of many years I abused children, protected by the stupidity and complicity of my former superiors. For these good deeds I have been chosen by Lucifer himself for the task, at exactly the moment in which our enemy the Carpenter selects his chosen one to rule on this ball of mud.’
The screen changed from complete darkness to a series of shadows. A man appeared, soaked in blood, his head hanging down on to his chest, tied up to what looked to be the columns in the crypt at Santa Maria de Traspontina. Dicanti barely recognised him as Cardinal Portini, the first victim – the one whose dead body she had never seen because the Vigilanza had cremated it. Portini uttered a few quiet groans. Karosky was only visible in the tip of a knife that poked the flesh of the cardinal’s left arm.
‘This is Cardinal Portini; he is too exhausted to protest. Portini did more than his share of good in the world, which is why my master detests his stinking flesh. Now you will see how I put an end to his miserable existence.’
The knife was pressed against the cardinal’s throat. Karosky then slit it with a single cut. The screen went blank again, and then a new picture appeared, with a new victim tied up in the same place. It was Robayra, looking extremely afraid.
‘This is Cardinal Robayra, quaking with fear. He carried a great light within him. It’s time to return that light to its Creator.’
This time Paola had to look away. The camera showed the knife as it attacked Robayra’s eye sockets. A single drop of blood splashed on to the camera lens. It was the most awful spectacle Dicanti had ever seen, and she felt as if her stomach was only one image away from heaving up everything she’d eaten. And then the film had a new subject, the one she’d feared the most.
‘This is Detective Pontiero, one of the followers of the Fisherman. They put him on my trail but he was powerless against the Prince of Darkness. The detective is slowly beginning to bleed.’
Pontiero looked straight into the camera, but the face wasn’t his. His teeth were clenched but the life in his eyes had not been extinguished. The knife slit his throat agonisingly slowly. Paola looked away.
‘This is Cardinal Cardoso, friend to the disinherited of the world, the bedbugs and the parasites. His love was as repugnant to my Master as the stinking entrails of a goat. He too has died.’
There was something wrong. In place of the filmed images, they were looking at photographs of Cardinal Cardoso on his deathbed. Three photos in all, all of them a dull shade of green. The blood was unnaturally dark too. The three photos were on the screen for fifteen seconds, five seconds each.
‘Now I am going to kill another saintly man, the most saintly of all. People will try to stop me, but they will end up in exactly the same position as those you have seen die before your very eyes. The cowardly Church has hidden it all from you, but it can no longer continue to do so. Good night, souls of this world.’