Stealing God (21 page)

Jimmy went on with his spaghetti. No, they didn't want Agatha bloody Christie on this or any sort of detective. What they wanted was a magician, because if it was about fixing a papal conclave it was going to be one hell of a trick.

Absolutely one hell of a trick.

TWENTY-SIX

Danny didn't look happy and when he spoke he didn't sound happy.

‘I don't like this, Jimmy. I don't like what you've told me and I don't see what I can do now that you have told me.'

Jimmy signalled to the waitress. She came to the table.

‘Same again?'

She was a chirpy South African.

‘Just a beer, thanks, no coffee.'

She went away.

‘I don't like it.'

‘It gets worse.'

‘I bet it does. How could it get any better?'

‘I'll tell you if you want.'

Danny held up his hand.

‘Too much, you've already told me too much, don't tell me any more. A Chinese archbishop who may have been murdered here in Rome, old friends in London who ordered a factory in Glasgow firebombed, an investigation that's unofficial but high-level, and a rector who did everything but kidnap you. Not to mention whoever put you into hospital.'

‘That doesn't count. That was just a message from an old acquaintance.'

‘Oh fine, then I can see how that wouldn't count. What I don't see is why you told me about it all in the first place.'

‘So you could watch my back. That doesn't seem a lot to me.'

‘Watch your back how, watch for what?'

‘Whatever comes.'

‘I'm retired, Jimmy.' The waitress arrived, put the beer on the table, and left. ‘If only half of what you've told me is true then it's way out of my league. This isn't any kind of police work that I was ever involved with.'

‘Just look out for me. If you see me getting into trouble call a policeman.'

‘How can you get in any more trouble than you're in already?'

‘I'll wear a pink carnation behind my right ear. Just keep an eye on me, and if you think I'm …'

Jimmy wasn't sure how to put it.

‘If I think you're what?'

‘If I seem to be losing the plot.'

‘And how would I know? You left me behind on this from the start, as soon as you told me.'

‘No, not that. If I seem to be cracking up. It might happen. Like you said, this is out of the frame for anything you or I ever did. I might screw up or it might screw me up. Just keep an eye on me.'

Danny fiddled with his empty coffee cup.

‘I can do that, I suppose,' then he pushed the cup away, ‘but that's all I can do. Don't expect me to pile in if this blows up in your face.'

‘But you can call a copper if you think I need one.'

Danny nodded.

‘If I can find one. You know what they say about coppers when you need one. And make it a sunflower behind your ear, that way I'll be sure to spot it.'

Jimmy laughed.

‘Sure, a sunflower it will be.'

Danny's voice changed, the laughter replaced by concern.

‘Listen, I have to say this. That plot you thought you might lose? Well, what if you've already lost it? All that you've told me, well, it's not exactly normal is it, even for police work. Maybe you should see someone, a doctor, have yourself checked over.'

‘I'm not long out of hospital. There's nothing wrong with me.'

‘I wasn't thinking about your body. Look, Jimmy, I don't think you need anyone watching your back and I don't think it's a policeman I should get for you. I think you may need to talk to someone.'

‘I'm talking to you.'

‘Not me, someone who can help you with what's going on in your head.'

‘Help me how?'

‘You lost your wife, that must have been bad. You try to get over it, you think you have and decide to become a priest. You come to Rome. You're among strangers. You decide to keep yourself to yourself, a loner, a man on the outside who doesn't mix. Then you suddenly disappear and when you come back you get put in hospital.'

‘So? I explained all that.'

‘A message from an old acquaintance? Some explanation. You tell me a story about a murdered archbishop and a conspiracy to get you here run by none other than your own college rector. Mysterious fires in Glasgow and policemen suddenly getting sent to the US.'

‘Fire and policeman, both singular. It was only one fire and one policeman.'

‘This isn't a joke. Even if it was only one policeman or one fire it's already too much. Archbishop Cheng died, yes, but my guess is it was just an old man dying after a hard life. I know that you really are a Duns student and you really do have a rector, and that's all I know for sure. Everything else is just stuff you told me.'

‘I got put in hospital. That was real enough. You tried to visit me there, remember?'

‘OK, but it had all the marks of a mugging. Why shouldn't it be just what it looked like? The hospital bit is true but I think the rest of it is all in your head. No inspector, no fire, no conspiracy. I think you were about ready for a breakdown and when you got mugged that, on top of everything else, well, it sort of …'

‘Pushed me over the edge? You think I'm nuts?'

‘I think it's like a film that's going on inside your head. To you it all seems real but you're the only one who can see it. I think you need help.'

Jimmy wished Danny was right, that it was all going on in his head and the right kind of help would make it all go away. As it was, there was a chance someone might have murdered four cardinals. That had to mean something. But then there was McBride and what she's said about his mental state. Now it seemed she wasn't the only one. He was here with Danny and had told him everything because he'd believed what she'd said, that he might go nuts, and permanently this time. But what if she was wrong and Danny was right, it wasn't going to happen. It already had. Schizophrenics believed the voices they heard were real. To them they were real. He'd interviewed one once after he'd committed a violent assault and the memory of that interview brought a chill to his heart.

The ‘Ride of the Valkyries' suddenly began in Jimmy's pocket. He pulled out the phone and answered it.

‘It's still Ride of the bloody Valkyries, you said you'd fix that.' He listened for a moment. ‘Right. I'm in a bar, La Tosca in the Piazza Colonna on the Corso. In a few minutes then.' Jimmy put the phone away. His mind had cleared. He was back in the land of the living. This was no film inside his head. ‘That was my imaginary inspector. He's coming to pick me up and he can back up everything I've told you.' Jimmy finished off his beer. ‘Sorry, I shouldn't have dragged you into this but I didn't think I could do it without someone to talk to and I chose you. Sorry.'

Danny smiled a big smile.

‘For God's sake, what's to be sorry for? I just got through telling you that I thought you were having a major breakdown, suffering from chronic hallucinations, that you were a mental basket case. You don't think I wanted it to be that way, do you? But if even a small part of what you've told me is true then you are in deep shit, man. It's going to chew you up and it won't spit you out, not alive anyway.'

‘So now you're an expert on Vatican politics? I hope you're better at it than you were at making your psychiatric diagnosis.'

Jimmy was grinning, but Danny wasn't.

‘I don't have to be any sort of expert to know that if some stray bystander gets sucked in by that sort of machinery they don't get left to walk away and tell the tale when it's over.'

In the distance a police siren began to be heard.

‘If it's Ricci he must be in a hurry.'

‘You're going to carry on with this?'

‘I don't think I get a choice.'

‘Well leave me out of it. I still have a choice and if you want to meet make it somewhere other than this place?'

‘Why? I like this place, I think we fit in.'

‘We fit in like nuns at a strip joint.'

‘Well I like it, we're not locals. We live in Rome but we don't belong. Why shouldn't we fit in with the tourists?'

‘We're supposed to be here to study. We're not tourists, we're students.'

‘For God's sake look at us, two men old enough to be grandads, and you think we should fit in as students? We're freaks, something the tourists ought to have a good look at alongside the Forum and St Peter's and all the other stuff. Fools for God, that's what we are, a little Roman peep-show.'

‘If it's true at all it's only true about you. I'm not a freak and I'm not part of a peep show. Even if I'm leaving I'm still …'

Whatever Danny thought he still was, Jimmy didn't get to find out because a siren came down the Corso and then the big, black police Lancia pulled up outside the door to the bar. It stood there with its engine running and the blue light on the roof flashing.

‘This your man?'

‘Yeah, I'll let him come and get me. I want you to be sure he's real.'

The back door of the car opened and a smart young man got out and came into the bar. He saw Jimmy and came to the table.

‘What are you doing? Why didn't you come out?'

‘Inspector Ricci, I want you to meet my friend Danny. He's a student priest like me.'

Ricci looked at Danny, then he put out a hand.

‘Nice to meet you, Danny.'

Danny shook his hand.

‘We've met before, Inspector, in another bar, but Jimmy didn't mention you were a policeman.'

‘Have we? Sorry, I don't remember.' Ricci turned back to Jimmy. ‘OK, can we go now?'

Ricci didn't wait. He turned and walked away. Jimmy got up.

‘See, real, like I told you.'

‘Yeah, Jimmy, just like you told me. Go careful now and remember what I said.'

‘That it's a film and it's all happening in my head?'

‘That it will chew you up.'

‘I'll remember, and I'll keep in touch. Pay the bill, will you, I think my man's in a hurry.'

And Jimmy left the bar.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The police siren seemed to make no difference; no one got out of the way, the traffic was just too congested and too obstinate. The driver had to push his way through like everyone else. Ricci had been sitting in silence, sulking that he had been made to get out of the car and go into the bar, or maybe he was thinking. Jimmy broke the silence.

‘How come we get a car and driver?'

‘Luigi's a friend, off duty. He's doing us a favour. Don't you want to know where we're going?'

‘If you want to tell me.'

‘Quadraro, out of the city, down the Via Tuscolana.'

‘And what will we see when we get there?'

‘Two days ago the police were called to a break-in in an apartment out there. It turned out the place was empty. The young woman who lived there, Anna Bruck, was away. She couldn't be traced. No problem, just wait until she gets back. Meanwhile the scene of crime is turned over, prints get taken.'

‘All the usual.'

‘All the usual, pure routine, no hurry, and not particularly thorough. It was just an opportunist break-in. The prints got sent off and suddenly all sorts of alarm bells started to ring.'

‘A petty break-in rings alarm bells? Was the thief someone special?'

‘Not the thief, the girl who lives there. It turns out she's Anna Schwarz, the only member of the Geisller Group still at large.'

‘Geisller Group?'

‘A German terrorist group named after their leader, Conrad Geisller.'

‘What sort of terrorists?'

‘Extreme, sort of right wing.'

‘Neo-Nazis?'

‘No, not in the traditional sense. They admired strength. Their particular creed was that any cause that can fight its way to the top is a justified cause and any cause that wouldn't use force to achieve its aims is a weak cause and should go under. To them the law of the jungle was the natural law, the only real law.'

‘Might is right?'

‘Exactly, their favourite slogan translated more or less as, it's not wrong to be strong, their manifesto was headed: Conviction, Action, Victory.'

‘They had a manifesto?'

‘Oh yes, four pages of pro-violent nonsense dressed up in socio-political jargon. Real adolescent stuff. They were a bunch of campus hard cases. No one took any notice of them until they murdered the professor of history at the university where they were studying.'

‘They did what?'

‘Murdered him. Claimed he was perverting evolution by manipulating history to subvert natural selection.'

‘Again?'

‘That he was homosexual and thereby frustrating the natural law, that he was part of an atheistic liberal world conspiracy to suppress the divine right of the strong to assert their will and control their destiny.'

‘Well you can't say fairer than that, can you?'

‘I memorised it from a website. I thought it would give you a laugh.'

‘Oh hilarious.'

‘They were political weirdos. They supported Israel and the US because of their use of force and Hamas and Hezbollah for the same reason. They were on the side of the tough guys regardless of what they stood for. It was all a bit incoherent. They were just stupid kids playing at being revolutionaries.'

‘So naturally they topped their history teacher. Well you would, wouldn't you? And after that show of strength what happened?'

‘They went on the run. They lay low for a while until they bungled a bank raid. Nobody was hurt and they didn't get anything. Then there was a raid on a supermarket, they got away with quite a bundle of cash but a security guard got shot and died later in hospital. After that things hotted up. The media became interested and that's when they stopped being a bunch of violent young thugs and became the Geisller Group. The police turned up the gas but they all managed to get away somehow.'