A Cold Flame

by Aidan Conway

  One of the older orange trams trundled past, sliding and screeching along the grooves of its predetermined course.

  “We are strong everywhere, Ali, if we believe,” said Jibril. “We have no fear, of anyone or anything as long, as we have our faith to guide us.”

  Ali was nodding now like a toy dog Jibril had seen in the back of a car once when he was young. In his white traditional Islamic robes, he looked every inch the fanatic.

  “Yes, yes, Jibril. Allahu Akbar,” he said, “Allahu Akbar,” but having at least the sense to whisper the exclamation.

  So, it was perhaps true. What Jibril had heard and hoped for before he had embarked on his journey was, maybe, true. The word then had been that there were high-level figures from his own country using Rome as a base for their operations. Having fled Nigeria, they had blended in with the community, keeping their heads down, and had then taken advantage of the relatively lax security to go about their criminal business. This was big news.

  “The message is that soon he may be able to help bring us up to speed. Then we can take the fight into the heart of Christendom – as the Qur’an says we will – with equipment, means, with weapons.”

  As Ali uttered the last word in the list, he aspirated it with powerful satisfaction, delighting in the whiplash of its onomatopoeia. When they were mingling in public spaces to avoid easy detection, their preferred language was English. Passersby paid them little attention, used as they were to tourists and diplomats in the city. But Jibril was still cautious. His burner phone gave him some security. He was sure they were not yet being trailed but he also knew that the deeper in they got, the more likely it was that they would appear on the secret services’ radar. It was mathematical, a probability game. They had to remain one step ahead.

  He pondered what “weapons” meant? Assault rifles, grenades, explosives, rockets even?

  “Through the established channels, Ali,” Jibril said, slowing him down. His response betrayed nothing but his usual cool detachment despite the growing realization that this could be a turning point. The chance of hitting harder than anyone had hit the West before was becoming a real possibility. That was what all this meant. But no emotion should cloud their judgement. “He can be introduced through the established channels. But you have at least a name for this emissary?”

  Ali looked surprised and stopped, putting a hand on Jibril’s arm.

  “But are you not curious to know who he works for?” said Ali. He was almost salivating, it appeared, his eyes agape.

  But Jibril now believed he knew exactly who he was speaking about. His own dogged intelligence work, his probing and searching, had not been in vain. Its aim had been to identify approachable targets and high-level figures with exploitable vulnerability – but it had also had a secondary purpose: for him, a nobody, an outsider, to get close to the power structures of the Nigerian underworld in Rome, Naples, and Milan. That was the springboard he needed. Little by little he had been building a picture. A snippet of information here, a drug dealer there. Where to find a weapon, who was running the whores. And the drugs, of course. The cocaine. And so, it had all begun to add up and now he could see where the trail might lead.

  “Who, Ali? Tell me.”

  “A man with influence, Jibril,” he said, relishing the build up. “A man with a vision for Islam and for the future. Our future. Look around you,” he said gesturing to the greying facade of a church that would have once been at the communal heart of the Esquilino district. “People come here to urinate against these walls when they are drunk or to shoot drugs on the steps over there. Look at the filth. Christians can have no respect for God if this is how they keep their shrines and holy places. They have no faith. They can continue to bomb and maim our people in its name but they are the living dead. Zombies,” he added, gesturing to the few dissolute and decadent “native” Italians traversing the street as if his verdict were a fact as indisputable as the sun’s rising in the east. He had the zealot’s certainty all right, thought Jibril. Ardent. Impervious to any idea but his own.

  At that moment there was the sound of a strangled squeal of brakes on the damp tarmac. They both turned to see a black BMW pulling up alongside them.

  “Ali!” said a muscular and heavily chained black African in dark glasses as the electric window descended to reveal his full profile. “Get in the car. He is here. He is in Rome.”

  Thirty-Four

  “No one in the monastery knows anything about the whereabouts of any painting,” said Carrara. “So can we assume it was stolen by our killer?”

  “They don’t know when it went missing,” said Rossi. “Or no one’s telling?” he added. “Quite a difference, I’d say.”

  They were back in the office and totting up the evidence.

  “These priests and monks,” said Rossi. “How would you describe them?”

  “Taciturn. They’re a contemplative order.”

  “Handy excuse, isn’t it, but they’re rather sphinx-like, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Comes with the territory, I suppose. I mean they’re always going to weigh their words wisely.”

  Rossi was chewing on a pen and studying a blow-up of the image Iannelli had given them.

  “We’ll keep this well under wraps for now. Until we’ve got something on the painting. So who is our resident art expert?”

  “Right,” said Carrara. “I was getting round to that.”

  Rossi looked up from the photo on his desk. Just then there was a knock at the door.

  “Yes,” said Rossi, swinging his feet off the desk.

  It was a triumphant-looking Katia.

  “I believe you are looking for an art expert, Inspector.”

  I might have known, thought Rossi.

  “Come in,” he said resigning himself. “And close the door.”

  ***

  Katia had pulled up a chair next to Rossi and was now leaning over the image again with the magnifier, her honey-tanned bare arms giving her the appearance of a driven but rather sensuous archaeologist. She scribbled some notes into a jotter.

  “So, art was your first degree,” said Rossi. He didn’t expect to get much small talk but thought it was worth a try anyway. That was the Italian in him, an instinct. Never give up.

  “Correct,” she replied without wavering a millimetre. “All set for a museum curatorship or Sotheby’s.”

  “And where did it all go wrong?” said Carrara from the corner of the desk.

  She put down the magnifying glass, checked her notes one more time then looked up.

  “The Italian disease,” she said with a brief ironic smile, clicking her pen closed. “They kept giving the jobs to less-qualified but better-connected candidates. So I jacked it all in, got a job in a supermarket to pay the rent and then took the public competition for the Financial Police and got myself into the stolen artworks department. At least I could use my expertise.”

  “Pays less,” said Rossi. “The Force.”

  “Hence the opportunity. Anyway, once I began to find out what some people were prepared to do to get their hands on a work of art, I thought I’d get myself some more experience and moved onto homicide and organized crime. Talk about butchers and sadists. It’s worse than Hieronymus Bosch,” she said with an air of levity that put Rossi to shame, considering how queasy he had felt at the crime scene.

  Rossi nodded. “The guy who liked to boil his victims in caustic soda? Or the one who sowed live rats into prisoners’ abdomens to get them talking? Where was that?” he said in Carrara’s direction, “Mexico?”

  “Colombia,” said Katia. “I can give you the details over lunch sometime, if you’re curious.”

  “Hence the second degree in criminology,” said Carrara looking again over her CV, now in his legitimate possession.

  “And what do you do in your spare time?” said Rossi. “If there is any.”

  “You mean when I’m not painting or studying foreign languages?” she said.

  She was teas
ing him, he knew it. So he was not the only intellectual on the block. He might have to get used to it.

  “Well, I like to keep in shape. Like yourself, Inspector,” she added, with a subtle nod towards the bottle protruding from the filing cabinet’s open bottom drawer.

  “Well,” said Rossi, “we do like to think things through over a drink from time to time. When the day is done, of course.” He got up and shut it with a casual side-foot. “So, what’s the next move on this one?”

  She looked through her notes again underlining a few incomprehensible abbreviations and codes then swung round on her chair to face Rossi.

  “I’ll get on to it. We may be able to come up with some programs that can match brush strokes and samples with a database of stolen artworks. I presume the reason it was subtracted from the scene is because of its value, or because it was hot.”

  “Or because the killer was taking it back,” Carrara chipped in. “We could always see if we can wring anymore information out of the brothers and sisters.”

  Rossi nodded his agreement.

  “At least it will narrow down the search.”

  “Better to keep them in the dark about what we know,” said Carrara. “They may get complacent. Presuming someone’s moved it or stashed it. And they haven’t declared it missing. I mean, it’s not like you wouldn’t notice.”

  Katia swung back towards the desk and moved in again to study the painting.

  “Well, the frame’s interesting,” she said. “Depends if it’s original, but it tells at least a part of the story. It’s all a question of cross-referencing data in catalogues and applying your artistic knowledge.”

  “Do you have a working hypothesis?” said Carrara.

  Katia leaned back for a moment, crossed her arms and put a pensive finger to her lips, further enhancing the curve of her breasts beneath her stretch camisole top. She seemed, however, to evince little or no self-consciousness about her own potential for distraction.

  “Renaissance,” she said. “Italian. Likely a portrait. More than that, I can’t say. I’ll need time. You think it’s important for other reasons, don’t you?” she said, turning and looking directly at Rossi. “Apart from whether it was stolen or not, I take it.”

  She was good. And tough with it. He was trying not to let the attraction get in the way, or get its way like some spoilt child jabbering away inside him.

  “I think it has to lead us somewhere of interest,” he said, letting some of his former reserve melt away. “And maybe right back to the killer.”

  Thirty-Five

  Jibril had followed Ali without question despite some natural misgivings. The closer you got the more dangerous it became, and there was no one who was going to look out for him if these people had even the slightest doubts as to his integrity. They would dispatch him as a security risk, an informer, a spy. Ali, meanwhile, was blissfully unaware. Not to have followed would have, however, only raised suspicions, also putting his life at risk. It was war-zone logic. The fruit of experience. The driver brandished no weapon, of course, but Jibril was certain a shoulder holster was nestling beneath his loose-fitting silk shirt. He had driven them at some speed until the vehicle eventually came to a halt outside a discreet hotel behind Porta Maggiore.

  “I’ve been seeing the sights of this wonderful city,” their driver said, breaking the silence and turning round to study them both. “It almost seems a shame to damage it,” he added then laughing out loud and showing, as he did so, white and gold teeth in almost equal numbers.

  “Come,” he said, “we are here.” He gave a quick look around, opened the door and stepped out on to the pavement. Ali and Jibril followed him through the plate glass revolving doors and into the lobby of the unostentatious three-star establishment.

  Jibril had never even set foot in a hotel and to him this already smacked of luxury. The carpets and smells, the subdued tone. He felt out of place and conscious of being inappropriately dressed, as though he had turned up to a military inspection in civvies.

  “Wait here for two minutes,” said their driver, indicating the creamy-white, low-slung divans in a corner of the lobby. He then ambled towards the reception desk where, after exchanging brief pleasantries with him, the female receptionist reached for the phone. He turned and gave Ali and Jibril the signal to follow again, and they made their way towards the lifts. Jibril tried to show no sign of fear or uncertainty but he knew now he was going to face a test. It was something he had prepared for but, as with all such tests, one could never know what questions the examiner would ask.

  The lift bell rang. They stepped inside.

  Their driver led them along a corridor and, as he passed young cleaning ladies bending and busying themselves in open rooms, he gave them approving glances. He then stopped and gave a coded rap on a door with a “Do Not Disturb” sign. It was opened by the very same hand as had opened the door to Giancarlo in the hotel in Naples and, as Jibril entered, he saw coming towards him the same imposing figure in traditional dress as had greeted the ItalOil executive.

  Such robes, thought Jibril. He hadn’t seen an outfit like this since he had left his country, since he had left his village for the city and for the oil fields so many years ago. The President, as he was to be known, reached out a hand to Ali and Jibril in turn.

  “Welcome, my friends.”

  ***

  An array of non-alcoholic drinks on a silver serving tray and the remains of a light buffet were still on the coffee table between them. Ali had gone off to discuss matters with other members of the President’s retinue.

  “I must say again it’s so good to meet a fellow countryman and a Muslim in Rome,” he said first in English. “Where were you born?”

  In spite of the preamble, Jibril was not suprised by his directness.

  “Near Lagos, on the outskirts, and then we moved, many times,” said Jibril. “My grandparents were from the south but things happened during the war and my father and my mother had to flee.”

  Jibril gave him the name of a shanty village he had visited once. Better always to keep a distance. Though he knew the lie, if discovered, could have him killed, too.

  “I don’t know this place,” the President replied. “It is very small, I imagine. Out in the sticks!” he added, laughing at his use of English.

  “So your mother’s tongue, by the way,” he said, questioning, as he reached out to take more food.

  “Igbo. But she wanted us only to learn English. It was languages that divided us, she used to say, so one language will unite us. And when she died, I was young and had no one to teach me. I adopted English. Or you could say it adopted me.”

  “A philosopher!” the President exclaimed. “And like mother like son!”

  A door opened on the far side of the lounge and a shapely, provocatively dressed figure emerged and ambled across. Jibril saw her heels were at least six inches and the white dress, barely long enough to be called as such, gleamed in contrast with her firm black thighs. The President held up a hand in undisguised annoyance and called to an assistant, rattling off instructions in the language of Jibril’s childhood. The real language of his childhood.

  The assistant produced a wad of banknotes for the escort, which she examined briefly before tucking them away in a Gucci handbag. She too then addressed the President, who leapt to his feet as if she had managed to reach him with a cattle prod rather than words. Something in what she had said had enraged him. To anyone else who might have been listening, not Nigerian and not from the north, the only comprehensible words would have been “Hotel Incantevole” and they might have remembered seeing the building’s late Renaissance facade while walking north from Piazza Repubblica. They would, however, have had no way of knowing she had also said “the same day, same time” and “the same services as usual”.

  The President sat down again as his suited flunkey ushered the pouting hooker out of his sight.

  “But you know,” he said, regaining his composure and placing another
sweetmeat into his mouth, “your accent, has just a hint of the north, or am I mistaken? Is it possible, even though, as you say, you are from Lagos? Or maybe it is only in my imagination.”

  “My great-grandmother,” said Jibril, was from the north, I believe. I don’t know the village. That is the family story, anyway,” he said. “And they say she never lost her accent. But maybe it was in the oil fields. There were many friends there with whom I forged great friendships. I’m sure their way of speaking must have rubbed off.”

  The President nodded.

  “Indeed. Friendship. But there are few friends, Jibril. Few real friends. And so you found yourself an orphan, early in life?”

  “Yes, my father had died in an accident when I was a baby. He had gone to the Delta for work but he never came back. I followed in his footsteps in that sense.”

  So much death, thought Jibril. But it was not so unusual in a country where average life expectancy was forty-five.

  “And now, after many travails, you are in Rome. I will not ask you to tell me how you came here. Your story is familiar to me. Like so many, I also came to Europe and Rome as a relatively poor man, but with big dreams and now, well,” he said gesturing to his staff, “I am respected, feared, and I am rich. I want to use my wealth wisely and well. To promote the Islamic cause in Africa and beyond. To rebuild the Caliphate, that was once great, with only God’s laws. But the new Caliphate will be even greater and will stretch from the Atlantic Ocean eastwards to the Gulf and beyond, northwards across the sea to Europe.”

  Jibril listened. He knew the importance of waiting to be asked to speak.

  “You know, of course, how far Arabic Muslim influence reached once? Through Spain across the Pyrenees and into France.”

  The President gave another satisfied chuckle. “There are many brothers in France, in England, Belgium, Germany, Sweden. We have our men in place throughout the lands of the infidel. We need only give the word and they will rise up in the name of Allah!”