Sam Bourne - The righteous men

TO was still striding forward, her breath forming instant clouds. Her cheeks were beginning to glow. 'Apparently, they asked lots of weird questions.'

'What kind of weird questions?'

'About me and Pugachov. Did we have a sexual relationship?

Was he obsessed with me? Was he a stalker?'

Now Will understood what the police were thinking.

Pugachov, the psycho super, gets himself into TO's apartment after midnight. Tries to rape her. TO reaches for her gun, kills him and flees the scene.

'It won't take long for them to get your cell number. The police must have access to all that.'

'Hence this.' TO held up the carcass of a cell phone, minus its battery. Once the police had her number, they would doubtless be able to track it. Will had covered a couple of investigations where detectives reconstructed someone's movements using phone records. These not only revealed the numbers the suspect had dialled, but each time they had come within range of a transmitter. Police could draw a map showing where someone had been and when. Unless the phone was completely without power: no signal, no trace.

'When did you last have it on?'

'Mandelbaum's.'

'It won't take them long to get there. Will he talk?'

TO slowed down and turned her eyes to meet Will's. 'I don't know.'

They had come to Rabbi Freilich's house, no grander than any of the others in Crown Street. The paint was peeling on the front door, but that was not what Will noticed. Rather it was the bumper sticker that had been placed just above eye level: Moshiach is coming.

If these were student digs, it would not have looked incongruous.

But this was the home of a grown-up, a man of standing. The sticker sent a tremor through Will. It said one thing: fanatic.

TO had already knocked on the door and now Will could hear movement. Through the opaque glass, he could see the outline of a man's head and shoulders.

'Ver is? Vi haistu?'

Yiddish, Will imagined.

'S'is Tova Chaya Lieberman, Reb Freilich. I've come because of the great sakono.'

'Vos heyst?' What do you mean? 'Reb Freilich, a sakono fur die gantseh breeye.' The same warning she had given Rabbi Mandelbaum: a threat to all creation.

The door opened, to reveal the man Will had talked to at some length but had never seen. He was neither tall, nor physically commanding but his face had stern, firm features which, Will could see, conveyed a quiet authority. His beard was brown rather than white or grey and it was short and well-kempt. He wore neat, rimless glasses. In a different context, Will could see him as the CEO of a moderate-sized American company. As he saw and recognized Will, he hesitated, then gave a dip of the head, a gesture Will chose to interpret as contrition.

'You'd better come inside.'

They were ushered once again around a dining table white tablecloth, plastic sheet — in a room filled with holy books. This room, though, was large, airy and tidy. In a corner, Will spotted a pile of editions of The New York Times. He could also see a magazine rack stuffed with the Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and a variety of Hebrew newspapers.

Making the instant assessment that was part of his trade, Will wrote a four-word headline in his head to describe Rabbi Freilich: Man of the World.

'Rabbi, you know Will Monroe.'

'We've met.'

'I know how strange this must seem, Rabbi Freilich, me turning up like this after all these years. I promise you, I never thought I'd come back, truly I didn't. But Will is an old friend of mine. And he asked for my help when his wife went missing. He didn't know about my… my background.'

She paused, to collect herself. 'But now we know what's going on. We've pieced it together. It's taken some time and it's not been easy but we are certain.'

Rabbi Freilich held TO's gaze and said nothing.

'Good men are dying. First it was Howard Macrae in Brownsville, then Pat Baxter in Montana. Then Samak Sangsuk in Bangkok. And now this British politician. Someone is killing the lamadvavniks, aren't they, Rabbi? Someone is killing the righteous of the earth.'

'Yes, Tova Chaya. I'm afraid they are.'

Will drew breath, a tiny gasp. He had expected a battle with Freilich, a round of game-playing as the rabbi played dumb, forcing TO and Will to produce all their evidence. But he was denying nothing. A dread thought surfaced. What if the rabbi had already realized that these two had indeed exposed his murderous plot and had therefore decided there was no alternative but to silence them? They would have walked straight into his hands! No need for the man in the baseball cap, Pugachov's killer: Will and TO had done his job for them. How could they have been so stupid? They had not even planned a strategy for this encounter. TO had just stormed over there…

'A plot is indeed underway to murder the thirty-six hidden just men. For some reason, this plot is taking place now, during the Ten Days of Penitence — the holiest time of the year. The killing started on Rosh Hashana and it has not stopped. Whoever is behind this must have decided that these are the judgment days, that a righteous man murdered in this period will not be instantly replaced by the birth of another. Perhaps they have seen something in our texts we never saw, the existence of a kind of limbo period between the New Year, when people are inscribed in the Book of Life, and the Day of Atonement, when the Book of Life is sealed.

During these ten days maybe the world is especially vulnerable.

Whatever their reasoning, they have set out to kill the lamad vav and they seem determined to do it by sunset tomorrow, by the end of Yom Kippur.' He faltered. 'I didn't think anyone else would find out.' He turned towards Will, though not quite meeting his eyes. 'Tova Chaya was always an exceptional student. And you, you have shown admirable persistence.'

Thanks for nothing, thought Will.

'We have known about it only for a few days. But I tremble for the world at the very thought of it. Some will say this is only a legend, only a fairy story. But it has deep roots, ones that go back to Avraham Avinu, to Abraham our father. It has endured for millennia. Whoever is doing this is gambling that the story is just a story. That it is not a true statement about the way the world has worked since the beginning of time.

But what if they are wrong? They are testing this idea to destruction. It will be the destruction of everything.' The rabbi was drumming his fingers on the table. If he was faking anxiety, thought Will, he was doing a very good job.

'You keep saying they,' Will said suddenly, his confidence taking even himself aback. 'But I'm not sure there is a they. I think there's a you.'

'I don't understand.'

'Oh, I think you do, Rabbi Freilich. So far there are no suspects in any of these cases, except you and your, your… followers.' He knew it was the wrong word. The only leader these people followed was the man whose photograph hung on every wall. And he was dead. 'You more or less admitted killing Samak Sangsuk to me.' The muscle around the rabbi's left eye gave a slight twitch. 'And I know you are holding my wife, though what she has to do with any of this still no one has explained to me.' On those last words, he had raised his voice, betraying an anger he could not conceal. He stopped, to bring himself back under control. 'The only people we know have been engaged in criminal activity are you and the people who work with you.'

'I can see how it looks.'

'So can I. And I'm sure the police, who have you in their sights already, would get the picture very quickly if they knew half of what we know. I don't think I need to mention Mr Pugachov, the super at TO's, sorry, Tova Chaya's, building, do I? Killed last night by that goon in a baseball cap you had chasing us?'