Stealing God (24 page)

He sat down in the back row of the pews far away from the congregation. The priest saying Mass wore red vestments. It must be the feast day of some martyr, red was for blood, for violence and death.

He sat searching for words.

‘Dear Lord …'

Dear Lord what? Dear Lord why is Anna here? No, not that. God knew, but he wasn't about to share the information. Dear Lord, keep me good as a detective. No. Dear Lord, keep me bloody good as a detective. No, it wasn't that. You got it by working at it. It didn't come any other way. Dear Lord, make me wrong about the film in my head, keep me sane. But God didn't change things. He wasn't a slot machine, put in a prayer and get out what you want. If God had been like that then all he'd ever get was, Dear Lord, please give me a winner with long odds for the two-thirty at Kempton Park. So, what were the right words? Jimmy switched off his mind, and when he did, the words came.

‘Dear Lord, keep in your mercy, compassion, and forgiveness Bernie and Michael, and take them into the love of your everlasting kingdom of peace and happiness.'

You didn't ask for yourself, you knew what you were. You left yourself to God and hoped for mercy and maybe, if you were lucky, other people prayed for you. The ancient formula, spoken without thought, came automatically to his lips.

‘May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.'

He looked at his watch and realised he was hungry. He'd had no lunch and it was now three o'clock. When the Mass was finished he would go somewhere and get something to eat. If Ricci hadn't come by the time Mass was over he could phone him to say where he was. He turned his attention to the priest and switched off his mind. The priest was speaking rapidly in some language that wasn't Italian. He was oriental. Jimmy looked at the people in the front rows. They were oriental, probably pilgrims with their own priest. He looked back to the priest and had no difficulty in following what was being said. He knew the words of the Mass almost by heart, but from constant repetition not from any study or interest in what it all meant. The interest had come after Bernie and Michael's deaths, when he had tried to leave his old life behind him in London and went to the west of Ireland to search for a new life. There he had started to listen. Why had he waited for them to die before he had begun to listen?

Jimmy sat and watched the altar.

It was something someone had said. The thing he wanted to bring out into the open was something someone had told him. No, not someone, more than one person. He had been told something very important and told more than once and by more than one person. He concentrated and as he did so whatever it was slipped further away.

He gave up. It would come when it was ready, if it came at all.

He got up and quietly walked to the nearest candles. They were in a black, wax-spattered affair by a massive round pillar and above them, on a plinth, the statue of a saint looked down. Jimmy put some coins in the money box, picked up two candles, lit them, and put them among the others. There were always candles burning. People always wanted something from God, a big favour, a small favour. When only God could help you reached out to him and you did it like you did to all the powerful ones. You got an insider to put in a word for you. Jimmy looked at the stone saint.

‘Whoever you are, if you were ever in trouble, please pray for me.' Pray for what, what was the message he wanted this saint to slip to God? ‘That I can find a way of going on, if not as a priest then as something. Amen.'

He crossed himself and looked back into the church. The priest had come down from the altar and was distributing communion at the altar rail. It was nothing to do with him, he was a spectator, uninvolved. It was their Mass after all, not his.

Jimmy went out of the church into the sunshine. It had only been a little prayer to a very minor saint whose name he didn't even know. But it was something. It was the best he could manage in the circumstances. Now he could go and get something to eat and try to work out why Anna and why now? Or perhaps he could dredge whatever was at the back of his mind out into the open.

Chiesa Nuova was on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele just opposite the entrance to the narrow street with the café where he met Danny and Ron, so he knew the area quite well. He had a choice of places to eat but he just wanted a simple meal in quiet so he went round the back of the church into a maze of back streets where he could find the kind of place he wanted.

It was something he'd heard, just one thing, like Anna was just one thing. One thing that might tell him what he needed to know, but what? What had he been told?

He found a place where the locals ate, not unlike the bar he, Danny, and Ron used. He ordered spaghetti and a beer and sat down. He put his mind into neutral. He'd tried thinking and it hadn't worked so now he just sat and drank his beer. His spaghetti came and he ordered another beer. The spaghetti was good, he was ready for it.

When he was about halfway through his meal the ‘Ride of the Valkyries' jangled in his jacket pocket and the man at the next table, smoking a cigarette with a glass of red wine in front of him, looked across.

‘Shit.' Jimmy put his fork on his plate, took out the mobile and answered it. ‘It's still playing bloody Wagner, when are you going to …' He stopped and listened. ‘Why won't they?' He listened again. ‘Oh, fuck.' If the solitary drinker at the next table spoke English he didn't seem to mind the language, but it wasn't much of a place, so it probably didn't matter one way or another. ‘Look, we'd better meet, this needs sorting. Where are you now? I'll be there in about ten minutes.'

THIRTY

Cars weren't allowed in Campo di Fiori because of the busy market square but Ricci's big black Lancia was outside the bar with the blue light still on the roof to identify it as a police car. There was no sign of the driver. Ricci was sitting inside holding his usual campari and soda, and there was a beer ready on the table. The waiter nodded as Jimmy walked past him, he didn't smile, but he definitely acknowledged his arrival. Progress there at least, thought Jimmy as he went and sat down.

‘He nodded at me.'

‘Why not? He's seen you before.'

‘He used to ignore me.'

‘Maybe now he thinks you add a dash of something to the place. To be so out of fashion in a place like this might be the way to be in fashion. Who knows, crumpled scruffy might be the new black.'

Jimmy took a drink and noticed the pack of aspirins was on the table.

‘Still got the headache?' Ricci nodded. ‘Why not see a doctor?'

‘I've seen one, remember? I'm on sick leave.'

‘Maybe you really are sick.'

‘It's a headache, that's all. Leave it alone.'

Jimmy left it alone.

‘Why won't they co-operate?'

‘Because I'm unofficial. I'm on leave pending a medical report and when I'm at work I'm nothing to do with terrorists. As for you, you don't exist.' He paused, picked up his drink, thought better of it, and put it back on the table. ‘I found out who was on the team and phoned one of them off the record. I told him I was working for the minister in an unofficial capacity and asked for a contact inside the investigation so we could share information. Fifteen minutes later I get a call which slams the door on me.'

‘Why didn't you go to the minister's aide and let him pull the strings?'

‘If Anna's on the move we're in a hurry and going through the minister would have taken too much time. I thought my way was best. I was wrong.'

It was a lie and not a very good one. He'd tried to bypass telling the Cherub what they'd come up with and it hadn't worked. Now he waited to see how Jimmy would take it. He took it surprisingly well.

‘Well we still need access to progress reports, to information as it comes in. We need to ask questions and get them answered.'

‘I put a message in to the minister's aide. He should get back to me.'

‘He might get back to you? You just left it at that? We're sitting here with no police hook up, Little Sister is on the move, and all we've got is that Charlie Cherub might get back to you?'

‘Well, what else could I do? And he was quick with the Anna stuff in the first place.'

Jimmy wasn't happy with it, but he left it. Ricci should have gone through the aide, not buggered about with unofficial requests; that way they would have got what they wanted. If the Cherub believed them. But would he have believed them? Maybe Ricci was right to leave him out of it, even if it hadn't worked out.

‘We've got to phone McBride.'

‘Why?'

‘Well, who the fuck else is there?' Ricci looked around. Jimmy had let his voice rise and in this place just about everybody spoke English. ‘She must have a direct line to whoever set this up with the minister. When we asked for a Vatican contact we got her. Whoever she is she's more than just a simple academic and part-time rector. She's a player of some sort. So if we ask her for a police contact inside the investigation she might be able to get somewhere. We need access. We need to get up to speed on what the police have on Anna's movements and we need it now. If she's bringing a team in she wouldn't move until she was needed, and she wouldn't be needed until the team were about to arrive. She must already have a safe house for them.'

‘We don't know that, maybe that's what she gone to do, not pick up the team.'

‘Oh yes? You said she arrived three weeks ago, what do you think she's been doing since she arrived, sight-seeing? If she's moving, they're moving, and that means a timetable. I don't know how these things work but I'd say day one, the day she left, would be to get where she's going and check that everything is OK. We know she's careful so she'd want to make sure that there were no unwelcome spectators to see her meet the team when they arrive. Day two she would take delivery of the team and get them to the safe house. Day three, yesterday, her job's done and she's finished. The team's in place so Little Sister will have flown. What do you think?'

‘Sounds all right but I don't know how these things work any better than you.'

‘We need to know how she travelled. If she hired a car the team might still be using it.'

They both sat in silence for a moment with their own thoughts and both were thinking about the same thing: their future, what happened to them when this ended, however it ended. It was Ricci who broke the silence.

‘Look, whatever's going on is a long way from Cheng's death. It might be a blind alley for us even if we get inside the information loop. Why don't we give it up and let the police sort Anna out? We're tying ourselves in knots on something that's probably nothing to do with what we're supposed to be looking at.'

‘Then why were we given Anna in the first place?'

‘She was a coincidence, she's not connected to Cheng or anything we're doing. And even if she was we'd never be able to sit here and work out what it is.'

Ricci was right, but Jimmy wasn't going to agree. Cheng and the other cardinals might be a dead end but finding Anna Schwarz was all that stood between him and having to face re-building what was left of his life.

‘We could try.'

‘For God's sake, stop being Sherlock bloody Holmes and let's go back to Cheng. That's what the minister wanted us to do, not chase phantom terrorists.'

Jimmy nodded and picked up his beer. Ricci was right but he wasn't going to drop it so easily.

‘All right, but at least let me get in touch with McBride.'

‘Why? We don't need McBride, we don't need to know what the police have got or what they'll get. We need to drop the fucking thing.'

This time Ricci didn't look round. He didn't care what anyone might think. Jimmy finished his drink and ignored Ricci's outburst.

‘I'll go to my apartment and phone her.'

‘Oh, Christ, I don't believe this. Why do you have to be such a stubborn bastard?'

‘Just the way I am I guess.'

‘God give me strength.' Ricci reached for the packet and dropped the last three tablets into his hand. He swallowed them with the last of his drink. ‘Come on, if that's the way you want it I'll drive you.'

Jimmy got up slowly.

‘You sure about that headache and a doctor?'

‘I'm sure. I know what's causing it: you.'

‘OK, but I still think you should see a doctor.'

‘Go to hell.'

And they left the bar.

THIRTY-ONE

Ricci sat in a chair and watched Jimmy put the phone down.

‘What did she say?'

‘I told her what we'd got so far, how Anna turned up, and our theory about bringing in a team.'

‘Your theory, Jimmy, you're the brains, the leader, remember?'

It was back to being his theory.

‘I told her Anna was on the move and what we think might be happening …'

‘What you think might be happening.'

‘… and she just said stay where you are, give me your number, and I'll phone you back as soon as I can.' Jimmy sat down; his manner seemed far away. Ricci waited for a second.

‘So we wait here?'

‘You don't have to. I'm the one who wants to see where this goes.'

‘No, I'll see where it goes, if it goes anywhere.'

‘Funny though, she didn't seem interested, she just listened. Why didn't she have any questions?'

‘You told her what you think and then told her what you wanted, an urgent message passed to the minister. What do you expect her to do, spend time cross examining you? She's getting on with it, doing what you asked her to do.'

Ricci wasn't wrong, but he wasn't completely right either.

‘I suppose so.'

Ricci stood up and wandered about the room. He was restless. Waiting, doing nothing wasn't something he was good at, especially when he didn't like the nothing he was doing.