Stealing God

by James Green

‘What sort of noise did the neighbour say she heard?’

  Ricci shrugged.

  ‘I didn’t ask.’

  Jimmy reached over and pulled back the bed clothes and looked at the sheet.

  ‘The bedclothes are rumpled but the sheets haven’t been slept on.’

  ‘So? The bed was put back together after the place got searched.’

  They went into the living room.

  ‘How did the woman next door know she’d gone away?’

  ‘A note through her letterbox. “Hello, I’m your new neighbour, Anna, I have to go away for a week. If anyone asks for me could you tell them I’ll be back next Tuesday?”’

  ‘Why not do it in person?’

  ‘Because she wanted to be seen as little as possible by as few people as she could manage.’

  ‘So has next door ever seen Anna?’

  ‘No. No one seems to have seen her.’

  ‘What language was the note in?’

  ‘Italian, and I know that may be odd but it was definitely in Anna’s handwriting. It got cross-checked and it matched.’

  ‘So Anna the terrorist who is on the run sets up an alias and with this alias she comes to Rome. How did she rent the apartment?’

  ‘All done by phone, rent paid for six months in advance. Checking references would be a formality if the money was already in the agent’s account.’

  ‘Was the money paid by a bank transfer?’

  ‘Cash, paid into the agent’s account, she used a bank in Genoa.’

  ‘And the teller doesn’t remember her?’

  ‘She doesn’t remember a thing, just another customer. There was nothing useful from the CCTV either. Two or three women who used the bank on the day the payment was made could have been her but there was nothing definite.’

  ‘She seems to be able to move around free as a bird and yet stay invisible.’

  ‘She’s had the practice. She had the cream of the US and European anti-terrorist agencies looking for her and they never even got a sniff.’

  Jimmy went to the window and looked out. Why was she here? Out of nowhere, when they needed something to breathe life into the corpse of an enquiry they got a known terrorist dropped in their lap. This wasn’t like the cardinals, just something to keep him going, to put off the day he’d have to face the fact that his priest training was probably finished, that he’d have to start all over again.’

  ‘She does actually exist, doesn’t she, our invisible Anna?’

  ‘She exists. Her parents say she contacted them twice while she was on the run, both times to tell them she and Eva were OK.’

  ‘Contacted them how?’

  ‘By letter. The handwriting was hers, she used a nickname she’d had when she was little and the fingerprints checked. Fingerprints and DNA taken from her home check out with here. She may be invisible but she exists and she’s been here.’

  ‘What did Geisller and the other one the police got say about her?’

  ‘Nothing, they never met her.’

  ‘What?’

  Jimmy turned away from the window.

  ‘They never met her?’

  ‘No, they never saw her.’

  ‘Are you telling me she was part of a terrorist group and the rest of the group never met her? How the hell does that work?’

  ‘It seems she organised things through Eva. She set up the places and passed the information to Eva. Anna always made sure they were separate with Eva and herself together; she never had any direct contact with the men.’

  ‘Now three are dead, two banged up in prison for the rest of their lives, and Little Sister has surfaced on her own.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jimmy turned back to the window. Ricci let him think for a while but then got fed up of waiting. ‘So what do you think, is it anything to do with us?’

  Jimmy left the window and sat down on the settee.

  ‘Could be yes, could be no, or it could be something else altogether.’

  He picked up the old newspaper. Then put it down.

  ‘Come on, Jimmy. Don’t pussyfoot about. Do we follow this one?’

  ‘Oh we follow it all right,’ he stood up, ‘and we don’t have to piss about on our own any more. Anna is a known terrorist on the run so there’ll be big guns out looking for her. Get the Cherub to give you an official hook-up to whoever is running the investigation. This flat will have been gone over by experts so we’ll plug in to anything they get. Whatever she’s part of it’s off and running and she’s busy doing what she came to Rome to do.’

  Ricci didn’t like the idea of bringing the police in, there’d be nothing in it for him if the whole thing turned official.

  ‘Do we need to tell the police what we know?’

  ‘What do we know? There’s an outside chance that Cheng might have been killed, that there’s also an outside chance that some other cardinals might have been killed, and on the basis of those two possibilities we have concluded that there might be a plot to fix the election of the next pope. That what we’ve got so far and if we told them that they wouldn’t cooperate, they certify us, and they’d be right. What we have is comic cuts.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something my dad used to say, comic cuts. It was a kids’ comic, silly stuff, only fit for children and people weak in the head. Anything we told them about what we’ve done so far will sound like a load of bollocks to any working detective.’ Jimmy’s manner changed. ‘But Anna Schwarz isn’t bollocks, is she? She’s real and she’s the first piece of concrete evidence we’ve had, a lead that we can actually follow. We were looking like clowns, chasing moonbeams, but now, suddenly, we’re hooked up to something real.’

  But Ricci wasn’t really listening. He had other things on his mind.

  ‘It’s going to be tricky. If we don’t tell them anything about what our interest is then it has to be a one-way street, their information to us and nothing from us to them.’

  ‘Then make it the minister’s problem, he brought us in so he can deal with it. If this Cheng business is so important and Anna might be part of it we have to be in. Unofficial maybe but still on the inside. Tell him to kick some backsides if he has to.’

  ‘And what if they pick her up?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s likely.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The police can follow her if she leaves a trail but that’s about all they can do. I doubt they can stop her; she’s been too good in the past to make any stupid mistakes so my guess is she’ll be too good this time. Whatever she came to do will get done and then she’ll disappear.’

  ‘And what, according to your theory, is it she’s come to do that can possibly be linked to Cheng’s death? Kill another cardinal?’

  Jimmy didn’t mind the sarcasm but noted that it was still his theory.

  ‘She’s not a killer, from what you told me not even close to being one unless she shot her sister. She moved people about so let’s assume that whatever she’s here for must be related to what she was good at. Maybe she came to move a team. Her job is getting them in and putting them as near to their target as possible.’

  ‘That makes sense and if we’re right then the target is probably in Rome. Why else set up here?’

  Jimmy noted that now it was “if we’re right”. If things went their way on this pretty soon it would become our theory and if they made it all the way Jimmy’s guess was that when Ricci made his report it would have always been his own theory.

  Well, why not, he had other things to worry about. He felt angry with himself. What was going on? Why wasn’t his brain working properly? What was holding him back? Danny had said it was all a film running in his head that only he could see. Maybe he wasn’t so far wrong. It was like being in a movie, playing a part. He’d once heard a story about a Chinese philosopher who’d dreamed he was a butterfly. After that he was never sure if he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. That was the trouble with dreams, while you had them they were real. It
was the same with schizophrenia, while it was happening it might be a dream to others but it was real to you.

  Jimmy tried to break away from that line of thinking; it got him nowhere and if he was mad or even close to it, thinking about it wouldn’t help, probably only make it worse. Whatever his state of mind Anna Schwarz was real enough, she wasn’t a figment of anyone’s imagination, not a character in any film. A known terrorist had surfaced here in Rome and somehow, like Alice in Wonderland, he had fallen down a rabbit hole and become part of it, so grab it with both hands and get on with it. He had to concentrate on the job in hand and push everything else out. But he didn’t like doing it. He had a vague idea that in there somewhere he was pushing out something important.

  ‘We need to know how she travelled when she left here, which means car rentals or travel tickets. She didn’t know anyone would be looking for her so she will almost certainly use the same ID. Also, she’s been away three nights if she put that note into the next door flat the day before the break-in.’

  Ricci nodded.

  ‘She did.’

  ‘Three nights then. So we need to know if she has checked into any hotels.’

  ‘What do we tell the Cherub?’

  ‘That it’s possible she’s moving a team and the target could be here in Rome.’

  ‘OK. Anything else here?’

  Jimmy gave the place a look.

  ‘I doubt it but I’m not sure. There’s something at the back of my mind, something that’s pulling me away from just going straight after her.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘God knows, probably nothing. Probably just that this whole thing has been screwy from day one and is getting screwier by the minute.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to try and work out what it is, what’s annoying me. Either it’s important, in which case I need to know, or it’s nothing, in which case I need to get rid of it. Either way I need to bring it up where I can see it. You get on and find out how things stand with the police and what they’ve got on how Anna travelled. I need to think, I need to go over everything from where we started through to now. Can I get back from here by myself?’

  ‘Sure, you take the Metro. It’s about fifteen minutes to Termini.’

  ‘No. I’ll need more time and the Metro is too noisy, all that piped musak. What about a bus?’

  ‘Yeah, there’s a bus. But it takes about a day and a half.’

  ‘Slow is just what I want. I’ll take the bus.’

  ‘Where will we meet?’

  ‘Chiesa Nuova.’

  ‘Not a bloody church.’

  ‘Why not? It’ll be quiet, it’ll be a good place to think, and maybe say a prayer. If you don’t get the right sort of information we might not have anything to fall back on except prayer.’

  He was smiling but he wasn’t really trying to be funny. Something was happening and Anna Schwarz turning up meant that it was happening now and the truth was he didn’t have a clue as to what it really was. He wasn’t sure about a team, but he believed in Anna. Somehow Anna was the key, but the key to what? Anna was on the move and if she thought she was clear there was a good chance she’d leave a trail. But if this was terrorist related why recruit an on-the-run amateur? Why not someone trained and better still someone without a record?

  Ricci broke into Jimmy’s thoughts.

  ‘Are we going or are you going to stand there all day? Come on, I’ll drop you at the bus stop.’

  They left the apartment. When the driver saw them coming he threw his cigarette out of the window and started the engine.

  ‘Who knows?’

  The question puzzled Ricci.

  ‘Who knows what?’

  ‘There may be a Mass on. I haven’t been getting to Mass as often as I’d like since this started.’

  ‘You’re a bloody religious nut, that’s what you are.’

  That was what Ricci said, but Jimmy wasn’t the only one with private thoughts and concerns about the way things were turning out. He was glad he’d be alone in the car. He’d also done some hard thinking about something that was worrying him. He was expected to go to the minister’s aide and tell him that it was possible a known terrorist with Al Qaeda links had been sent to Rome to bring in a team, but a team to do what, assassinate a cardinal? It was mad but it was all they had so far, that there had been the unexpected deaths of three cardinals who might be connected by their importance should a conclave be convened. Which all meant? God knew. It probably meant that at best he’d get thrown out on his ear for wasting the aide’s time. But if the aide thought there was a chance, even only an outside chance, that they were right he couldn’t do anything once he’d been told. If there was any possibility at all it would mean, what? Putting extra security round every cardinal in Rome? If it could be done how many men would that take, for Christ’s sake, and then, when nothing happened and everyone started asking questions, he’d be the one they’d be looking at waiting for the answers. And what could he tell them? An ex-London copper, who got early retirement due to stress and who wanted to become a priest thought someone was out to kill cardinals.

  He didn’t want to think about it any more, but it was all he could think about. This was going to be a ball breaker. If Jimmy was wrong, and the odds were he was as wrong as he could be, then Ricci’s career as a copper ended. It wouldn’t just stall, it would end. They wouldn’t even put him in Traffic. They’d kick him into the nearest gutter and jump all over him before they went away and slammed every door they could think of in his face. If he told the Cherub and Jimmy was wrong then the shit was going to hit the fan in a big way. But if he didn’t tell the minister and Jimmy turned out to be right then the shit also hit the fan but in a much bigger way. Either way Ricci knew exactly who the fan was pointing at. Maybe Jimmy was right, at this point in time maybe prayers weren’t such a bad idea.

  The car pulled over and stopped. Ricci nodded to a bus stop.

  ‘The X53 from here will take you in. When you get there say one for me, and maybe light a candle.’

  ‘I was going to do it for both of us; I think we need it.’

  The Lancia pulled away. The driver had put the blue light on the roof and the siren was on. Jimmy watched it go. Ricci was in a hurry. Of course he was. He wanted to let the minister’s aide know what was happening as soon as possible. He wanted to get the credit. Well, why not? It would help him and it was no use to Jimmy.

  He looked at the oncoming traffic. There was no bus in sight.

  What are we doing? Jimmy tried to go over it but he was confused. He’d always been a good detective. He could look at the facts and put them into some sort of order and see if they pointed to anything. But in this thing what were the facts? An archbishop had died …

  No, it was no use going over it all again, he’d been over it and over it and it never went anywhere. Or did it? It had led them here to Anna Schwarz but where was that? He looked down the dual carriageway. There was still no bus in sight. He went back to his thoughts.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Jimmy was in luck, there was a Mass about halfway through when he arrived at the church with a small congregation gathered together in the front two or three rows.

  Chiesa Nuova had been built at the beginning of the 17th century as the Oratorio di S. Filippo Neri and was the imposing Mother Church to oratories which had spread world-wide. But in this city of ancient churches it had always remained Chiesa Nuova, the ‘New Church’. Jimmy didn’t like it, the interior was too ornate, crowded with paintings and statues, with flourishes of gold leaf on endless decorative stone carving. To Jimmy’s London-Irish sense of Catholicism, with its solid streak of puritan Jansenism, it all conspired to distract the eye from what should be the central focus: the altar.

  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.

&nb
sp; 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.