The Heretic Scroll

by Will Adams

  She walked carefully along the terrace, doing her best not to crunch the pebbles of sharp grey gravel, or to let the sun cast her shadow on the sheeted French windows. Halfway along, she realised she’d forgotten to lock the terrace doors behind her. Too late now. She’d have to do it later, when she went back in to close the bolts. She reached the end without being noticed. Unfortunately, the terrace stopped here with a fat stone balustrade. She leaned out over it. The paved courtyard was so far below that it made her feel a little dizzy. And her only possible way onwards was a narrow ledge that ran along the side of the building, beneath a series of sash windows.

  Carmen hesitated. But it was this or go back and admit what she’d done. It was this or her career. She climbed up onto the balustrade, reached a foot carefully down onto the ledge, then stood on it with her back to the wall and shuffled slowly along. Her toes began to tingle. With nothing to stop her from falling, and nothing to hold onto, it felt even higher than before. Breezy too. She tried not to look down or think of the slight misstep that could send her plunging. But her imagination wouldn’t be controlled. It played it again and again in her mind, the way she’d scream and flail, the wet thud as she hit the flagstones. She came to a frozen halt. Her heart began racing madly, making her head swim until she found herself swaying backward and forward, struggling to keep her balance.

  II

  When Dieter had roused Gunther from his bed that morning, the man had mewled like a two-year-old. When he’d sent him off to watch Conte’s studio, he’d moaned about there being no chance that any self-respecting photographer would go to work at such an ungodly hour. It was with a certain satisfaction, therefore, that Dieter parked his Audi alongside Gunther’s white van. ‘No chance, eh?’ he said.

  ‘Fine. You were right.’

  ‘And my bike?’

  ‘I never said it was yours,’ said Gunther, pointing across the piazza. ‘Only that it was a Harley.’

  Dieter followed his finger across the cobbles of Rione Sanità. His heart gave a thump of recognition the moment he saw it, despite its new plates and the red flashes the bastard had added either side. Apart from anything else, he’d bought those black leather saddlebags himself at a specialist Berlin store. Dieter had hoped for much from this trip, but he’d never dreamed of getting his beloved bike back. ‘And Rossi?’ he asked.

  ‘I lost him.’

  ‘You lost him?’

  ‘He spotted me,’ said Gunther. ‘It was drive on or be made. He might even have checked for our tracker.’

  Dieter nodded, too exultant for recrimination. Rossi and his bike. This promised to be a great day. But there was work still to be done. He looked around the piazza. It was a junction of three roads bordered by cobbled strips on which a few market traders had set up stalls, all surrounded by shops, offices and apartment buildings, into any of which Rossi might have gone. They could sit here watching the Harley, of course, but that was hardly Dieter’s style. Besides, that would mean having to snatch him once he came back out into the open, hardly ideal even without those three uniformed officers lounging against the bonnets of their squad cars outside what appeared to be a small police station, eating pastries and drinking from Styrofoam cups. No. Far better to find Rossi now.

  Find him and finish this.

  III

  Standing out on the narrow ledge with her head swimming, Carmen closed her eyes. She thought through what would happen if she turned back. She’d have to knock on one of the French windows and ask to be let in. The full story would inevitably come out. Shame and disgrace would most certainly follow. Her academic aspirations would be in tatters before she’d even started.

  No. She refused to countenance it. It was as simple as that.

  At once, her heart rate settled back down. Her dizziness stopped. She opened her eyes again, breathed deeply, then edged further along the wall. The first window she came to was for a storage closet containing cleaning supplies. The second and third were both of frosted glass. As best she could remember, they were the men’s and women’s loos. No matter anyway. All three of them were locked. But the fourth was raised several inches, to allow in a little fresh air. She stood beside it and listened for a few moments. It sounded quiet inside, which made sense, for this part of the library was largely off limits to the public.

  She risked a quick peek. It appeared to be a small staffroom, with a few chairs, a fridge and a coffee maker. And empty too, as best she could see. She tugged the window higher. No one shouted or came to check. She clambered through, tumbling inelegantly in her haste, banging her left knee hard. She picked herself up, lowered the window back down, hobbled to the door. It was silent outside. She slipped out into a corridor just as a stern-looking librarian came into view, carrying a heavy encyclopedia in both her arms. Carmen put on her best guileless expression and spread her hands. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I seem to be hopelessly lost. I’m looking for Rare Books & Manuscripts.’ The woman frowned but nodded along the passage. Carmen thanked her and set off limping, planning to blame her lateness on embarrassing stomach problems.

  Luck was with her, however. Professor D’Agostino arrived just a few moments after she did, offering excuses of his own. She got lucky again when she went to unlock the Colonna room door, for they were so busy chattering among themselves that they didn’t notice the mortice was already unlocked. She let them in, apologised again, assured them she’d be there should they need anything at all, then took her place at the small round table outside, her adrenaline rush finally abating, allowing her to consider what she’d learned.

  Not St Mark, as she and Cesco had thought, but passages from St Paul instead, including from his first letter to the Corinthians. And how on earth had that ended up in Herculaneum? Corinth was way across the Adriatic. But there was a simple explanation. St Paul had been a prolific correspondent. Such men had typically kept copies of their own letters to refer back to whenever they received replies. And he’d reputedly passed through Naples on his way to Rome, where he’d spent two years in prison, awaiting trial and execution. Easy enough, then, for copies to have been made. As to why the owners of the Villa would have wanted them, perhaps one or other had been curious about the new religion. Or perhaps it had been the Galilean connection. By remarkable coincidence, Nazareth was only a good walk away from Gadara, home of the infamous swine and birthplace of Philodemus, the Villa’s favourite philosopher.

  ‘You look pale. Is everything all right?’

  She glanced up. Victor was wheeling his trolley down the aisle, returning Tertullian to his shelf. ‘I’m fine,’ she assured him.

  ‘A remarkable trick, that, of yours. To come in again, without first having left.’

  She stared at him. He looked curious more than accusatory. ‘I did leave,’ she said, putting her hand to her stomach. ‘I needed the loo.’

  ‘Ah. I must have missed you.’

  She watched him return the Tertullian to its place then push his trolley back up the aisle. Christ, what a mess! But there was little she could do other than hope he kept his suspicion to himself. She texted Cesco to let him know the scroll was safe, then returned to her contemplation of it. Not so dramatic as the Gospel of St Mark, perhaps, but potentially more consequential. St Paul had been the dominant figure of early Christianity, far more important than any one of the evangelists, second only to Jesus himself. He, rather than St Peter, had been the rock on which the Church was built. His writings had been fought over from the start and were still fiercely contested. His first letter to the Corinthians had been used to denounce homosexuality and reject women priests, despite the suspicion that the passages in question had been added later by other hands. This scroll would likely settle such disputes for ever. No wonder Lucia had been so insistent on making progress before news slipped out. No wonder Taddeo was so desperate for his excavation licence, in case there were other scrolls waiting to be found. And no wonder the Holy Inquisition had sent down one of its top men – for the nature and auth
ority of the Catholic Church itself were very much at stake.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I

  Earlier that year, Taddeo Santoro had fallen into a malaise. His peaks had all been scaled. His horizon was bare of challenge. He’d tried to stay enthusiastic but inside he’d grown so listless and despondent that he’d feared he’d lost for ever his youthful zest and drive and passion, the attributes that had inspired those around him to trust and follow him. Then, one afternoon after returning from Grenoble, Lucia Conte had begged an urgent appointment at the museum, during which she’d confided that X-ray tomography of their new scroll had revealed what appeared to be several passages of text from the letters of St Paul.

  Cardiac paddles couldn’t have jolted him to life any faster.

  ‘It’s not an epsilon,’ snapped Father Alberts. ‘How could you possibly think it an epsilon?’

  ‘Because it looks like an epsilon,’ retorted Zeno D’Agostino. ‘How else am I supposed to judge?’

  ‘An epsilon makes no sense.’

  ‘An epsilon makes no sense if the previous character is tau. If it’s pi, it makes perfect sense.’

  ‘But it’s not pi.’

  ‘It’s not pi because you don’t want it to be pi,’ sighed Zeno. ‘It’s like “of” and “in” all over again. We need to see this fresh. We need to discard our priors.’

  ‘How can we possibly discard our priors?’ said Alberts angrily, slapping his copy of Nestle–Aland. ‘Our priors are the text we’re working from. And that says “of”. It does not say “in”. Overturning it needs evidence, not a will for mischief.’

  ‘The evidence is right there in front of your eyes. It’s not my fault if you refuse to look.’ He turned to Taddeo for support. ‘Well, Mr Chairman? Do you have a view?’

  Taddeo peered again at his screen. His eyesight wasn’t what it had once been. All he could see, in honesty, was a blurred squiggle a bit like a question mark. Appropriate enough. It was all a mystery to him. The job needed younger eyes, that was the truth of it. Those fighter pilots with hawk-like vision who could spot enemy planes when others could see only sky. In the absence of which, people would see whatever they wished. ‘Perhaps we should move on,’ he sighed.

  ‘Move on,’ muttered Father Alberts. ‘Always moving on. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.’

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘Ambiguity makes for controversy. Controversy makes for ticket sales.’

  ‘That’s beneath you,’ said Taddeo. ‘I’m after the truth, that’s all. Now let’s continue.’ But suddenly he felt restless. He pushed back from the table, rose to his feet, paced circles around the table. The shameful truth was that Alberts was right. He had minimal interest in the text itself, despite its earthquake nature. And neither his rusty Greek nor his knowledge of St Paul were in truth good enough to help with decipherment or interpretation. What he cared about was the scroll itself, quite possibly the most precious artefact ever discovered. That was why he’d insisted on attending these meetings from time to time, to maintain his connection to it; to bolster his claim, as the senior figure in Neapolitan archaeology and head of the Herculaneum site, to be the one to announce its discovery to the world and pledge its display at his museum. He could already picture the stir that would cause. He dreamed of it in bed at night. The drama of those first headlines, kept on the front pages by provocative leaks of the very passages Alberts and D’Agostino were currently disputing. Then the exhibition itself: breathless throngs of the faithful and the merely curious stretched out across the main hall, down the steps and out of sight along the street. How he’d whet their appetite with piped religious chants and screens showing passages of text translated into all the languages of the world. He’d be able to charge whatever he liked. Attendance records would still be smashed. The Pope himself would visit. Royalty and presidents. Stars of screen and sport. He’d give them each his personal tour, take photos for his office wall. Then there were the lecture tours, the documentaries, the magazine profiles, maybe even a movie or two.

  And his would be the face of it all.

  He stopped by the terrace doors. Each had an embedded pane of security glass thick enough to blur his view of port and bay; but he could still make out a tour ship set for Capri, its deck visibly emptier than usual. Vesuvius had devastated the city’s tourist trade, as he knew all too well from the museum’s shrunken receipts. But the scroll would sort that out. It would be a bonanza for this city. He ran a finger around his collar. Another muggy afternoon with no air conditioning. How he longed to undo these bolts, lift the locking bar and throw open—

  He frowned down. The floor bolt was up. He’d never seen it up before, he was sure of it. Lucia would never have allowed it. He looked up. The top one was down. He lifted the locking bar and pulled the door towards him. He took a step outside. The terrace ran all the way to the end, where – as he recalled – it turned into a ledge. The French windows were all covered by white sheets, so that anyone could have made their way past them without being seen. A monstrous suspicion came to him. He remembered Carmen’s lateness, her breathless arrival, her flimsy excuses. He turned and looked in horror at the safe. His scroll! His precious scroll! He dropped the locking bar back in place, then – ignoring the bewildered faces of Alberts and D’Agostino – he strode with grim purpose to the door.

  II

  Izzo was reviewing his case notes when the summons came from his station chief. He went downstairs to find all the other section heads already there, which made it easy to guess the reason. The evacuation was finally being called. The chief motioned for him to shut the office door behind him, then confirmed his supposition. The first announcement would be made later that night. All schools and places of learning would be closed tomorrow. All non-essential government offices too. Hospitals were to transfer out patients and private businesses were being put on notice too, including shops, cafes and restaurants.

  ‘How can we survive without those?’ muttered Stefan.

  ‘We can’t. That’s the point. Because this is just to get people focused. The hope is that a fair proportion of them will read the writing on the wall and leave tonight. That way, the city won’t have to pay for them. Because at eight tomorrow morning they’ll be announcing the full evacuation. Everyone out within twelve hours. The town is to be empty by eight tomorrow night.’

  ‘Christ Jesus. What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing. They’ve just shat their pants, is all. And handed us the toilet paper.’

  ‘Nice. How long will it last?’

  ‘Until it’s declared safe again, I guess. Which will be weeks, at least, knowing those cowards at the Observatory. Last time, it went on three months.’

  ‘And us?’ asked Stefan. ‘Are we essential government personnel?’

  ‘Amazingly enough,’ said the chief. ‘Even you. It’s going to be a brutal day tomorrow. I want everyone out on the street. Traffic duty, door knocking, explaining arrangements, showing faces. I’m damned if we’ll leave our town to the vandals and the looters. That means Serious Crimes too, Romeo.’

  ‘I’m working a murder,’ he protested. ‘I can’t just drop it.’

  ‘For this, you can. Unless you’ve actually got the bastard by the collar. So tell your people and make arrangements for your families too. I don’t want you worrying about them tomorrow. It’ll be shambles enough already, believe me.’

  Izzo got on to his taxi service as he headed back upstairs, to book a car for Isabella and Mario. They had nothing available before ten thirty in the morning. He booked that anyway, just in case, then tried other companies. But word of the evacuation must have leaked already, for there was nothing to be had. So he called Isabella to let her know, trying his best not to sound too cheerful when he told her to start packing.

  III

  The narrative was easy. The numbers were hard. Many of the bills, demands and statements were missing, as if Raff had thrown them away without even looking. So it
took Cesco a good three hours to work out even roughly how much he’d owed. It came to nearly half a million euros. The bulk, however, was secured at reasonable rates against this apartment, his business and the Lamborghini, whose insurance he’d thankfully kept up, along with a modest life insurance policy in favour of his kids. He’d also been earning enough from the studio to cover his interest payments and had just taken out a new credit card too, with a five figure limit, so he hadn’t been under immediate pressure. Even better, Cesco could find no trace of unexplained cash infusions. If Raff had cooked up a deal with Miranda Harcourt, he hadn’t yet been paid.

  More good news followed. A text from Carmen to tell him that the scroll was still in place. He began to wonder if there wasn’t some other explanation for Raff’s rendezvous with Harcourt. But what? He lunched on spaghetti pesto and a slice of apple pie, then began the dismal business of notifying Raffaele’s creditors of his death. He’d just hung up on one when there came a soft tap at the front door, so quiet he wasn’t even sure he’d heard it. Then it came again, as though whoever it was didn’t really want to be heard. He was about to go check when they began working at the lock. With a jolt, he remembered the white van following him from the studio and the Hammerskin lookalike at its wheel.

  And Raff’s name was on the buzzer downstairs.

  He retreated to the office, quietly shut its door, looked out the window. In the piazza below, he could see the roof and rear of what appeared to be the same white van. A shaven-headed man in blue jeans and a sleeveless black leather jacket was chatting to its driver. He too looked every inch a Hammerskin. And though there was no sign of Dieter, that likely only meant he was the one outside the door.