A Cold Flame

by Aidan Conway

“A good spot for thinking,” said Rossi.

  At an intersection of the quadrangle there was a heavy wooden door. An elderly retainer sat on a chair next to it and rose to his feet at their approach. He turned a large old-world key in the iron lock, and Rossi and Carrara emerged into a deserted cobbled side street.

  “So many places in Rome I still haven’t seen,” said Rossi. “In all these years. It’s inexhaustible.”

  Carrara nodded.

  “How about some breakfast?” said Rossi.

  It was nearly ten o’clock and his very early colazione had been meagre. He didn’t like crime scenes on a full stomach. Just coffee to get him moving. Now, with the worst out of the way, he felt something like hunger again.

  ***

  They turned onto Via Saturnia. There was a bar with flimsy aluminium chairs and tables outside.

  “Too early I suppose,” said Rossi. Eyeing the menu.

  “Coffee it is then?”

  “And cornetti.”

  “The diet?”

  “Carpe diem.”

  “Live for today.”

  Rossi picked up The Post from an adjacent table along with the Corriere dello Sport.

  “Wonder what Torrini will make of this?” he said.

  “Depends if it gets claimed or not,” said Carrara.

  “Early days.”

  “Can we run all the checks on the victim?” said Rossi. “When he came there, where he was before.”

  Carrara was already shaking his head.

  “Before retiring, he lived his whole life in the Vatican. It’s all in there. The paper trail. The abbot had the essentials ready at the scene. Vatican city passport and official residence.”

  “And no face left to match to it, right?”

  The waiter deposited two sugar-dusted cornetti on the table with the espressos.

  “Are you saying it’s an identity issue here?” said Carrara as he stirred sugar into his coffee.

  “I’m saying nothing can be excluded. Including the possibility that our killer was going to torch the place but thought better of it or was disturbed. Who’s onto the staff list? The sooner we get the statements the better. He knew where to go and who he was killing.”

  “Unless it was random. Any priest will do.”

  Rossi shrugged. A couple of teenage-looking tourists were sizing up the bar’s potential.

  “Oh to be twenty again,” said Rossi. The girl had a chequered shirt knotted at the front and shorts that were very short. She was how he might have imagined Yana at the same age, if she’d been born in better circumstances. He knew that her life had not been easy. She’d been lucky back then if there was enough to eat.

  “Just going to make a quick call,” he said getting up and walking out of the shade and towards the corner.

  She was at work and had been following the media circus reaction to the murder. There was rolling news coverage and the main TV outlets were going all out for the Islamist theory.

  “Didn’t see you on TV yet,” she said. “The world and his wife seems to have been there. It took me an hour to get to work through the traffic.”

  Rossi gave some generic reassurances but felt powerless to guarantee anything. He sat back down. Another call was coming. It was Iannelli.

  “Dario,” said Rossi. “You’ve heard then.”

  “I’m watching it,” he said. “But guess what?”

  “What?” said Rossi.

  “I’ve got some pictures you have to see. Now.”

  “Pictures of what?”

  “Your dead priest. With a knife in his back and his throat cut. In my inbox.”

  Thirty-Two

  He had moved, to a small hotel out on the Appian Way, one which better-heeled tourists favoured for its large pool and pine-scented remove from frantic central Rome, not to mention its Michelin star. All of which was relative for Iannelli with his one-star freedom rating. Rossi and Carrara had driven straight there and were now sizing up Iannelli’s suite. Iannelli was stroking his as yet tentative attempt at a beard.

  “Not thinking of converting, are you?” Rossi tried to joke.

  “They reckon it’s a waste of time but I do feel a little more anonymous. Until someone gets a photo of me and then I’ll have to think of something else.”

  He was hooking up his laptop as he spoke.

  “WI-FI’s not great but you’ll see. Anonymous source, of course.”

  “When did you get it?” said Carrara.

  “About one in the morning. I was asleep but when I logged on before breakfast I saw it. Here you go. What do you make of the message?”

  Rossi read out loud.

  “‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!’”

  “The whole text is included below, look,” said Iannelli scrolling down.

  The image was much like the scene they had witnessed, but the lighting was artificial, the body lying face down, the knife protruding from his back.

  “But the face,” said Rossi. “It’s visible. It’s an unholy mess but it’s there.”

  Iannelli gave a look of consternation.

  “What do you mean, visible?”

  “We’ve just been there. His whole face had been removed, mutilated. It was unrecognizable.”

  “He’s not in great shape in this one either, is he?” said Carrara, surveying the scene over Rossi’s shoulder. Blood had all but obscured the features but there was no doubting that the face had not yet been structurally disfigured in any way.

  “So what about the Bible quote?” said Iannelli. “Wouldn’t we be expecting something from the Koran if it was an Islamist scenario?”

  “They like to show they know their enemy,” said Rossi. “Which could also be part of the game. They follow their faith to the letter, while we infidels are, as it says, hypocrites. We call ourselves Christians but we don’t practise what we preach.”

  “Hence the butchery?” speculated Carrara.

  Rossi gave a shrug.

  “So, it’s not some sort of Bible John character?” said Iannelli remembering the scripture-quoting Scottish serial killer who was never found.

  “Good memory you’ve got there, Dario,” said Rossi.

  “What about the metadata?” said Carrara. “There should be an Exif tag on the picture. Might be useful.”

  Iannelli shook his head.

  “Removed. No schoolboy errors here.”

  “IP address?” said Rossi.

  “They’ll have used a hot phone,” said Carrara, “and piggybacked on an open WI-FI. Or, if we’re lucky, a no-questions-asked Internet café. We can at least see if they remember a face.”

  “So, no extra clues,” said Rossi.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” said Iannelli. “Think that’s your lot.”

  Rossi scrolled down to the end of the quotation. It was Matthew 23. Christ’s reproaches to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The warning against hypocrisy and the seven wows on the teachers of the law and the Pharisees. He still knew it off by heart after his brief spell as a seminarian.

  “He’s not having a go at the Jews too, is he, by any chance?” proffered Carrara but Rossi was shaking his head.

  “This is a beef with the Church. The Catholic Church. Or meant to look like one at least.”

  “But why does he take his souvenir photo and then disfigure the body? And then send it to me?” said Iannelli.

  “Why don’t we blow it up?” said Carrara, moving in to take a closer look. “What programs have you got on this?”

  “Be my guest,” said Iannelli.

  Carrara pulled up a chair, making a slew of windows suddenly materialize all over the screen.

  “Give the contrast a bit of a boost, and the lighting. Better?” he said as Iannelli and Rossi watched over each shoulder.

  “Much better,” said Rossi, his own interest growing by the second as his eyes began to home in on something. “Hang on a minute,” he said, staying Carrara’s hand with his before he could make further adju
stments. The grotesque tableau in front of them had been shot at a fairly wide angle to show the entire body and the room’s surrounds. As such, some secondary background detail also featured. “The corner there. What do you see?”

  Rossi’s attention was concentrated on a triangular shadow, visible but not sharply in focus.

  “A picture?” said Carrara.

  “A painting,” confirmed Rossi.

  “Do you recognize it?” said Carrara. “Is it significant?”

  Rossi leant back and continued to stare at the image, remembering the space on the wall, the masonry dust, the absence of any shadow.

  “Maybe. I’m sure we could get an ID on it eventually?”

  “So was it stolen or what?” said Carrara.

  “Possibly. But that’s not the point. Don’t you see? It’s the one that’s no longer there.”

  Thirty-Three

  Jibril had taken a seat at the back of the classroom near the fire exit, the better to observe his classmates and so that he had a clear view of the door. Tension was high. There had been a lot of talk, rumours abounded and he, for now, was lying low. His pen strayed as his thoughts came out in contorted, confused doodles on the paper. So, someone had beaten him to it. Well, the holy man’s enemies must have been legion. If it really was the priest he had been looking for. But it had to be. The episcopal ring, the purple shoes at the back of a wardrobe, the diary with its “V this”, “V that”, “V tonight! ”; “V back in town. ” All the signs had to point to Victor, his Christian friend of several years’ standing. His murdered friend.

  Jibril had put in time and miles and miles of walking and knocking on doors and asking for help just to get near the guy. He’d known there had to be a link somewhere. Retirement homes. Monasteries. And it had finally come up trumps. It was police work and he had realized he was made for it. Grinding it out, tracking it down, eliminating the impossible until the possible became real. Begging, asking, offering, showing up, being moved on from pillar to post. The Church needed people like him to validate their own existence and yet they often despised him at the same time. Sure we help the needy but don’t ask for too much, brother. Know your place in the hierarchy.

  He reflected on the relative success of their intelligence, however. In the end, the priest’s diary had clinched it. The cleaning girl had really come up with the goods on that one. “Look for a journal, a memorandum,” he had told her. “There’s always a diary on a businessman’s or a politician’s desk. Check for anything unusual or repetitive, initials, codes, make a note.” And she had found it, salted away where its owner would have believed it was out of harm’s way. There were also the times corresponding to the exact period soon after Victor’s arrival in Rome when he had made his boasts to Jibril about having made high-level connections, about knowing a cardinal. All that had happened just before his disappearance. And then nothing until his reappearance as a corpse, the one Jibril had seen in the morgue.

  Soon after, Jibril had also discovered that the elderly cardinal Victor had spoken about was dead too. He could still remember every word of that telephone conversation the previous winter when he himself had still been in the immigration detention centre in Sicily. It had been their last conversation. Rome had then still seemed a distant dream for Jibril but Victor had given off the air of an old hand in the Eternal City, the metropolis paved with gold.

  But even then Jibril suspected that Victor had already fallen into a trap. The friends in high places he spoke about, one of whom was Cardinal Terranova, would not be doling out charity without some comeback. That was the power game. Victor had alluded indirectly to the favours, the requests for male company in exchange for help with his bureaucratic difficulties, brushing it off as an acceptable price to pay, the initial cost of escaping the immigrant’s poverty trap.

  Jibril laughed silently to himself. So, how convenient it had been for the cardinal to die just when Victor had disappeared. Quite simply, he had not believed this cardinal to be dead at all, and what they had uncovered in the priest’s apartment was damning evidence of his suspicions that this now was the cardinal living in hiding, under a false identity. He certainly wouldn’t be the first to fake his own death out of expediency when the law and the press were closing in. Jibril had discovered that early on, in his own country. Then you could pop up where you liked when a decent interval had elapsed. There were men of influence with more aliases than they could possibly remember. Jibril himself had settled for disappearing only once. But this priest or cardinal – this man like anyone else – must have had a hand in Victor’s death, either causing it materially or having exploited and used him and then failed to prevent it.

  “Jibril!”

  “Maestra.”

  He hadn’t even heard the question, and today, an eery atmosphere permeated the classroom and the city. A priest killing was a clear sign. It was cowardly, evil, perfidious. And they were laying the blame squarely at the door of the Muslims, what with the bomb now having been claimed by the Islamic Caliphate in Europe. But no one he knew could give any account of it. Except perhaps Ali. He was positioning himself, manoeuvring. He hadn’t fully stomached Jibril’s assuming effective command of intelligence. Neither had Ali been in favour of Jibril’s more cautious methods, his slowing it all down and waiting for the right moment for the symbolic, truly resonant strike, his military approach to winning and fighting another day.

  “Mohammed says he is not in favour of rights for the homosexual community. Do you want to comment?” Olivia asked.

  “It’s not natural, it is against the teaching of the Prophet,” came a voice from the other side of the classroom, which Jibril heard distinctly this time. Mohammed was not one of their inner circle but he was religious. They knew each other and something of what they both did. There was no animosity but Mohammed disapproved of his relationship with Olivia, which was now an open secret. If he knew that it was a carefully constructed front, a means to an end, he might think differently, but Jibril could not reveal that. Not yet.

  “It is against our religion,” said Jibril. “What can I say? If you have a religion you must follow it. You must practise what you preach too.”

  Olivia’s eyes remained glued to him. He knew what she was thinking – that this was not what they had said and agreed on in private, over glasses of wine and while listening to her music. On their first intimate nights together he had told her how he wanted to embrace the West and its freedom. That was why he was here. Live and let live. Each to his own. Love knows no boundaries if it is well-intentioned.

  She moved her attention away from him to the whole class.

  “Well,” she said, “in Italy, it is certainly not a crime and it is not considered immoral, even if our own Church may take a very different view on this. For the state, all are equal and deserving of respect.”

  After class, Jibril was surprised to see Ali waiting outside chatting with others of the group. Either he was keeping tabs on him or something was lined up, but Jibril didn’t ask. Instead he just expressed his surprise to see it had rained a little but it was warm. So, autumn was making a first shy appearance. Jibril made a well-understood gesture towards Olivia who was still trying to come to terms with his seemingly schizoid attitudes. The gesture meant “not now. Not today”. Then he joined Ali as the others went their separate ways. They moved off in the direction of Piazza Vittorio, and when they had walked for some minutes in silence, it was Ali who began to speak.

  “So, Jibril. Things are moving fast in Rome. We had our people there too you know in the monastery?”

  “Of course,” said Jibril. “I saw to that myself. Our intelligence-gathering net is well spread. But whoever it was that killed him was brutal but effective.”

  Ali didn’t seem the least bit disturbed that whoever had carried out the operation was unknown to them. He simply revelled in the fact of the killing itself.

  “Well, things are afoot, Jibril, and I’m not just talking about today’s great news. Bigger th
ings. Much bigger things.”

  Jibril waited to see what it was Ali wanted him to know. Ali had connections all right, from his time in Turin and Algeria. He had shuttled between the two countries as a child as his parents had squabbled and fought and, finally, practically abandoned him to his own fate. He was also a hothead, an ideologue, dangerous, not highly intelligent, yet he knew how to press the flesh and impress people. It was probably because of his mixture of Arabic and Italian blood. It gave him a certain flexibility, apart from his instability. But he also had delusions of grandeur; that too probably a product of his turbulent duality, his being two things and, by his own admission, “being no one, being nothing”. He’d moved down from the north, where he’d rocked a few boats in the mosque with his refusal to condemn attacks against civilians, his outbursts in support of Al-Quaeda, ISIS – though not publicly enough to get picked up on by the services. At least Jibril hoped not. He was useful but a loose cannon. That he knew important people was, however, of the utmost importance to the movement.

  “Go on,” said Jibril. “What is this news?”

  Ali stopped and turned to face him.

  “Well, it seems now a countryman of yours is keen to get to know more about us. Word has reached him that we are organizing and he wants to be a part of it.”

  Jibril could see he was glowing with pride now. But Ali’s weakness, his Achille’s heel, was that he fell all too easily for flattery, allowing his ego to lead him astray. When Jibril had arrived on the scene, he had understood just how gung-ho Ali was, how emotive. He was, in a word, a liability. Hence the change of tack, the low profile, the patient approach. But he knew it could only restrain Ali for so long.

  “He says he is an emissary of higher powers, much higher powers, where the movement is strong, Jibril. In your country. There they are pushing back the infidels who are running scared. Islam is spreading there, like wildfire. And you know wildfire moves quicker than a man can run. They have no answers for our certainties and they fear for their Western-style democracy, that excuse for letting foreign invaders strip their country’s resources. You have Boko Haram, Jibril, and it is feared now, too.”