Bitter Moon

by R. L. Giddings

  I sat back in my chair, trying to stop my mouth from hanging open. Of course, I knew how incredibly accomplished Kinsella was as a practitioner. Everyone knew that. But being exposed to it first hand was a completely different experience. I felt ever so slightly awed.

  I grabbed the edge of the table and started to shake it violently, just to watch everything wobble.

  Kinsella leaned in, placing a steadying hand over each of our wine glasses.

  “I told you: the restaurant’s real.”

  “I just wanted to check.”

  *

  “What about the two dead techies?”

  “What?”

  “In the back of your van. Two tech guys with their throats cut.”

  Kinsella dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. He’d finished his meal while I made do with another glass of wine.

  “Please,” he laughed and held up his free hand. “At least when I try and deceive you about something I put a little effort into it.”

  “What are you talking about?” I resented him laughing at me like that. I felt like a truant and a fool. “Are you saying that didn’t happen?”

  “It’s like in a film,” he said. “If you don’t see the body then they’re not really dead. Did you see either of these bodies?”

  I had taken a huge risk coming out to Rome and now I was starting to regret it.

  “You’re saying that there weren’t any bodies in the van?”

  “Not only were there no bodies, there wasn’t even a van. When have you ever known me to operate from a van? Ever?”

  “But Valeria said…”

  “Valeria says a lot of things. Most of the time it’s what Kohl wants her to say.”

  I lowered my cutlery and sat back in my chair. “Valeria?”

  “Is working for Kohl. Believe me, I was as surprised as you.”

  “But he was the one who… destroyed her hand. Surely, she would never work for him.”

  “What if he promised to give her a new hand?”

  “A new hand? Is that even possible?”

  “Everything’s possible. Valeria was the one behind the ambush at the mill house.”

  I froze, hand halfway to my mouth not knowing who to believe.

  “I thought she was in London.”

  “That’s what she wanted us to think. Trust me, she was in York with Igor.”

  “The Battle Mage? The one from the church?”

  “That’s the one. They oversaw the whole thing: right up to the moment that mill house came crashing down. And then they came looking for me.”

  It was almost too much to take in. “So why are you here?”

  “Dumb luck, mostly. Igor thought that he could handle me on his own and that proved to be his un-doing. Before he died he told me a small part of Kohl’s big plan. Kohl’s here somewhere and I intend to find him. What about you? What did you find out?”

  I took out a folded piece of paper.

  “I took a trip up to Erasmus.”

  He was suddenly serious. “Did you indeed?”

  “They let me look through their records. This is Kohl’s father’s address.”

  “Got to be thirty years old at the very least.”

  “That’s what I thought but the lady in the office swears that it’s his current address. It seems that Kohl senior set up a trust fund to sponsor one of the students at Erasmus. Every year they invite him to the graduation ceremony.”

  “But he never attends.”

  “No, but this is where they send the invitation. It’s worth a look.”

  *

  We took a cab across the city. It dropped us on the southern approach to St Peter’s.

  It had grown dark but the walls were aggressively lit from all sides. While the dome itself is magnificent, the building itself is merely handsome. The sheer beauty of the place, I had been assured, was all contained within. My over-riding sensation, particularly at night, was off the sheer size of the place. I would have loved to have gone inside but we had work to do. Kinsella had already set off downhill. He’d been on the phone for the last ten minutes speaking in Italian. I followed at a discrete distance and waited for him to finish.

  “What was all that about?”

  “That was my opposite number in Rome. We worked on the same case a few years back.”

  “And what did he come up with? Anything interesting?”

  Kinsella turned, his hands deep in his pockets. “Not sure. It doesn’t seem to add up. This address is for a retirement home in the Vatican city.”

  “Why is that odd. He’s worked here all his life.”

  “And that’s the odd thing. Emile Kohl worked as a driver for the Archbishop’s office. Nothing special –they must have dozens of drivers. And yet his retirement home is one of the most sought-after in the city. Even Archbishops get exiled to the countryside.”

  “So, you think it’s a fake address?”

  “The address is real enough,” Kinsella chewed the inside of his cheek. “I don’t know, it just doesn’t sit right.”

  “I was thinking something similar: how can a driver, even a chauffeur, afford to fund a scholarship at a place like Erasmus? That’s going to make a big hole in anyone’s pension.”

  The building came up in front of us. It looked like an exclusive hotel with its high walls and gated entrance. There was a brightly lit gravel courtyard inside screened by a series of landscaped garden.

  I wrinkled my nose. “It doesn’t add up. None of it does.”

  “What do you want to do?” Kinsella said. “Should we just walk up and ring the doorbell or try some other way in?”

  I hadn’t thought this far ahead. What were we going to say to Kohl senior? It wasn’t like he was going to tell us his son’s location even if he knew it. Suddenly, I felt very unsure of myself.

  “I’m worried that this is going to turn out to be a massive waste of time. Either that or it’s a trap.”

  Kinsella turned to look at me. “A trap that I’m leading you into? What’s the matter, Bronte? Still don’t trust me?”

  I wasn’t sure what to think but the faint little smile and the little gleam in his eye convinced me.

  “I’d like to trust you but some of the things I learned at Erasmus… Well, they worried me. I can’t begin to reconcile what happened back then with who you are now. In all honesty I don’t know who to trust. I thought I could trust Valeria, but now…”

  “I get it,” he ground his teeth. “Everything’s moving too quickly. Is there anything I can say to reassure you?”

  “No! Yes!” I threw up my hands in frustration. “There is one thing. One thing I’m not happy about.”

  “Okay. Fire away. It’s been a difficult few weeks.”

  “I saw what you were doing up to at the stables back on the estate. You were interrogating that corpse.”

  He looked at me incredulously. “That was Szabo’s idea but I went along with it anyway.”

  “You raised a spirit from the dead.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to name it for what it was: Necromancy.

  “You must understand: I was desperate. I’ve been trying to track Kohl down for years, all to no avail and I was running out of ideas. I can understand how – in your eyes – I’m no better than he is.”

  He looked shaken by the admission. He walked over to the wall of the retirement home and leaned back against it, one knee raised. Then he took out a packet of cigarettes and offered me one. We stood there smoking for a while watching the cars as they passed on their way into the city centre.

  “Who did you talk to at Erasmus? One of the masters?”

  “Falcone. He gave me the whole tour. Took me down to the rock and everything.”

  Kinsella nodded. “You’ve been very thorough. And I guess Falco told you the whole sorry tale?”

  “He told me that you and Kohl were friends, along with another student.”

  “Carl Harris. I know. Did you believe him? What he told you?”

  “Most
of it. Though he was understandably vague about what happened to … your friend.”

  “That’s my greatest regret: what happened to Carl. But believe me on this one point: we were none of us innocent. We all knew exactly what we were doing. At least we thought we did. Carl was the scholar: he’d done an awful lot of reading around the subject.”

  “Summoning demons?”

  “That’s right. And we were eager. We felt we deserved our place at Erasmus. We were hard working and keen to experiment. That was the reason we’d gone there in the first place. We wanted to change the world. The masters knew what was going on but they were confident that we wouldn’t be able to do too much damage…”

  “Without access to the Arcana.”

  Kinsella cleared his throat. “Exactly. The thing being that their security arrangements were a joke. I had a good relationship with the Dean. Spent a lot of time working as his assistant. That gave me all kinds of access.”

  “And you used that to steal the Arcana from under his nose?”

  “Couldn’t do that. He checked it every morning. No. I distracted the Dean long enough for Hardy and Kohl to steal it with the intention of returning it before dawn. The first time was a disaster and they were nearly caught. We had to try three times before they were able to get the book and locate the Spell of Summoning.”

  “Were you not scared having access to such a powerful spell?”

  “Initially it was thrilling but we very quickly realised that we’d taken on too much. We split the spell into three sections and learned a section each. That made it more ‘manageable.’”

  There are countless stories about the spell itself corrupting the minds of those who try to wield it. I imagine most of them are true.

  “But then you used it summon a major demon.”

  Kinsella held up a hand. “Not the first time. We had summoned two minor demons prior to that, as we had agreed. We stuck to the rules: avoided using each other’s names; gave the demons specific tasks; avoided any ambivalent commands. We were in control – or so we thought.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “We had no intention of contacting any of the Higher Demons. We knew our stuff – or thought we did. We made an alliance with a lesser demon: Fzzarin. It was a complete anti-climax. He was slow and plodding, not dangerous and destructive. It was fun ordering him around. We thought we were playing it safe by summoning the same demon every night. Only he tricked us – or rather his master did. On the third night we performed the summoning and nothing happened. Except Fzzarin had appeared and had managed to conceal himself from us. Foolishly, we repeated the spell a second time and, from that moment on, we were lost.”

  Kinsella paused, took a long drag of his cigarette.

  “We had unwittingly summoned an Etruscan deity known as Tuchulcha. He exploited our paranoia so that we started to doubt ourselves. He isolated us, speaking to each of us separately. He convinced me of the ill will that the others bore towards me, how every advancement I had made in life had been due to some inherent strength of mine and how everyone else was envious of me. And I believed him. Persuaded me that every good turn that had been done to me had indeed been some terrible sleight that I had previously been ignorant of. He told me that my friends were not my friends but my mortal enemies and that not only were they eager to betray me but that they had already done so.

  “You turned on one another?”

  When he spoke again he sounded like the oldest man in the world, “We were completely out of our depth. Tuchulcha tricked us into leaving the sanctity of the pentacle. Without the protection of the pentacle we had no hope of defeating him. Tuchulcha gave us a choice. Either one of us offered themselves freely to him or he’d take all of us. Not much of a choice really.”

  I felt sick. “Falcone told me about what happened to Hardy.”

  Kinsella threw down his cigarette and crushed it under his foot, “You don’t know the half of it.”

  He walked back up the hill a few steps before turning.

  “We drew lots in the end. We were terrified, absolutely terrified. I cut a shoe lace up into three sections. My hands were shaking so much - I held the laces in one hand while the others drew lots. Hardy’s was … Hardy’s was...”

  He didn’t need to say any more. It was awful standing there pretending not to notice him crying.

  I felt for the necklace under my shirt. I’d used it to hang my grandmother’s amulet on. Three parts of the same shoe-lace. Now I understood.

  Without another word, he walked over to the gate and rang the doorbell. After a while, a figure appeared and Kinsella spoke with him. I could have been mistaken but I’m pretty sure money changed hands. The man moved to open the gate and usher us through. He locked the gate behind us and we followed him across the gravel driveway towards a small side entrance. The building itself was much older than its surrounding walls. The front entrance had its own portico, complete with columns.

  As we approached one of the side doors, a shout went up from another part of the forecourt and I thought for a moment that we’d been discovered but the gatekeeper merely raised a hand in acknowledgement of the other man who then went about his business. Our man took an age locating the correct key but eventually got the door unlocked. He spoke briefly to Kinsella in a heavy Italian dialect before leaving. Kinsella stepped inside. I straightened my shoulders and followed.

  The floors were white marble but the place had an austere, antiseptic smell like a private clinic. There was an ancient lift directly in front of us but Kinsella ignored it, pushing open a fire door. We took the stairs to the first floor and came out onto a long corridor which over-looked the drive. In front of us was a series of doorways shrouded in shadow.

  “Which one is it?”

  “Number 17.”

  Only none of the doors displayed a number. We wasted a good amount of time searching but couldn’t find a number anywhere, let alone number seventeen. Then, Kinsella caught my arm and pointed at the window. Set into the ornate glass were three green numerals set in a blue circle. XIV.

  “This way,” he said.

  XVII was three doors away. Before I had time to think Kinsella was trying the door handle.

  The door opened inwards.

  It was an old man’s room; the smell told you as much. Beyond the hallway we could see straight into the living room which was bathed in the light of a television screen. The centre of the room was dominated by a Layzee-Boy reclining chair. The figure propped up in it appeared to be asleep, his hands crossed in front of him. In one hand he was holding a pair of spectacles.

  We went and stood on either side of him. Kinsella turned the television off and it took a moment for me to adjust to the lack of light. The only other light source in the apartment came from the kitchen at the rear. I found a desk light and switched it on. Kinsella was probing under the man’s jowls.

  “He’s alright, isn’t he?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  I looked dumbly at the television set as if that had been the thing that had killed him.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “He’s still warm, if that tells you anything.”

  I angled my head to look at him differently. He seemed to have changed in that moment, transformed from a person who lived and breathed into an object which didn’t.

  I had relaxed earlier and now all my feelings of anxiety came flooding back.

  When the main light came on we both flinched.

  A figure in black with a purple sash at his waist stood in the kitchen doorway. At the same time, there was a crash from behind us and three men bundled in.

  The man in the kitchen raised a hand, bringing the others to a halt.

  He stepped into the room. He had iron grey hair but moved lightly in his monsignor’s robes giving the impression that he had been an athlete in his youth. He came around to look at the man in the chair, raising his hand in benediction.

  “He is with God.”

  “You kil
led him?” I said.

  He gave me a satisfied smile. “Who exactly killed who will be decided by the courts. I was administering communion just along the corridor when I heard someone cry out. I came in here to find the pair of you standing over the body. These gentlemen will verify my version of events.”

  I wanted to object but Kinsella caught my eye, thinning his lips. There was no point protesting our innocence. We had been well and truly set up.

  Kinsella said, “I take it that this is Jakob Kohl, father of Andreas.”

  “Who else would he be?”

  Something unspoken passed between the two men.

  “A frontman, a fake - as you well know.”

  The man gave Kinsella an exaggerated frown. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”

  “Would you like me to say it here, Archbishop Castellano? In front of all these witnesses?”

  There was a flicker of hesitation. The Archbishop dismissed the men with a gesture.

  The men looked confused but slowly backed off, pulling the door shut behind them.

  The Archbishop brought his hands together piously.

  “I was told that you were not to be under-estimated. I see that I was reliably informed,” he dipped his head in greeting. “Mr Kinsella and - I assume - Miss Fellows?”

  “Archbishop Castellano!” I said, remembering back to the briefing at the Rehab clinic. “The man from the picture.”

  Castellano raised his eyes in Kinsella’s direction.

  “A surveillance photograph we had taken last Wednesday. You were in the Vatican gardens meeting with Andreas Kohl. There’s no point denying it.”

  Castellano indicated his agreement.

  Kinsella continued. “In the same way that there’s no point denying that Andreas Kohl is your son.”

  Castellano stiffened. Despite the years he’d spent bending his emotions to his will, the truth was still capable of bridling him.

  “That is ridiculous.”

  “Really? Isn’t it true that you had an affair with Caroline Metz while she was working as a doctor at the Santa Cruz orphanage in Peru? You were the orphanage’s resident priest. Do you deny it?”