Daniel Blake - Soul Murder

It wasn’t hard to recognize what it was. Half the Western world had one.

A crucifix.

More precisely, the bottom half of one.

The top half wasn’t far away. The break ran diagonally across Jesus’ chest.

‘You got these?’ Patrese asked the photographer.

‘Every which way.’

Patrese squatted down, pulled a transparent plastic evidence bag from his pocket, pushed it inside out and, with the plastic covering his fingers, carefully picked up one half of the crucifix.

It was broken, but not burnt.

Patrese turned it over in his hand.

It felt solid, weighty.

Not the kind of thing which would break if you simply dropped it on the floor.

If you hurled it, yes; but not if you just dropped it.

He looked around again.

Nearby, also smashed, were pieces of wood painted in bright gold and red.

Patrese found three, and could fit them together in his head without needing to check with the photographer again as to whether he could pick them up.

They looked very like the constituent parts of a medieval icon.

‘Mark,’ Patrese said. ‘Look at this.’

‘ You look at this , Franco.’

Patrese glanced up; first at Beradino, and then in the direction he was staring.

Beradino was looking at the stained-glass windows high above them; in particular, at the three windows which had been smashed.

Sunday nights in Pittsburgh are more or less traffic-free, so they had a clear run back from Saint Paul to the North Shore.

‘I spoke to him just this morning, you know?’ Patrese said, gliding the car through lights turning back from green to amber.

‘Spoke to who?’

‘Kohler.’

‘You didn’t tell me this.’

‘When could I tell you this? We’ve just been at a murder scene. His murder. I’m telling you now. I spoke to him around nine this morning.’

‘About what?’

Patrese sighed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

‘You really wanna know?’

‘I don’t ask unless I do.’

‘OK. This is a little personal, which is why I didn’t mention it before. I mean, it’s no big deal, it’s just…I was feeling a bit down, all right? My sisters had gone round to dinner with him the night before. I stayed home, didn’t want to go. Probably drunk a bit too much, felt shitty the next morning, was missing my mom and pop, wanted to talk to someone. Bianca was on shift at Mercy, Valentina…it was Sunday morning, she’d still have been in bed. So I called Kohler.’

‘And how did he seem to you?’

‘Totally normal. I didn’t really pay attention. I was doing most of the talking. He listened. He could have been cooking breakfast at the same time, for all I know.’

‘How long did you talk for?’

‘Six, seven minutes, I don’t know.’

‘You speak to your sisters today?’

‘Went to watch the Steelers with Valentina this afternoon.’

‘She say how Kohler was last night?’

‘Said he was fine. In good humor, in fact.’

Beradino made a moue. ‘Little did he know, huh? First Redwine, now…’

‘There’s no guarantee this is even related to Redwine.’

‘True. Could be copycat, could be coincidence. Method’s the same, location’s completely different. Only a few people had access to where Redwine was killed. Here, anyone could have come in off the street, literally. Few buildings more public than a cathedral.’

‘Why the smashing of the crucifix? The icon, the windows? None of that with Redwine, was there?’

‘Someone who hates religion? Someone who hates Christianity, certainly.’

‘Someone like Mustafa Bayoumi?’

Beradino glanced across at Patrese. ‘He seemed pretty hostile to it, for sure.’

‘So we look at Bayoumi first.’

‘Which means we believe the murders are connected, until proven otherwise.’

‘Yeah.’

‘First, we check his alibi. It’s just his mom again, no one else, we get suspicious.’

‘And we look for any connections between him and Kohler. Did they know each other personally? Did Kohler do something to piss him off?’

‘Or not do something to piss him off? Something Bayoumi thought he should have done, but didn’t? Was the diocese in dispute with the Homewood mosque project? Anything like that.’

‘Perhaps it’s something less concrete. If it is Bayoumi, maybe he chose Kohler as a symbol – as the symbol, the head – of the Catholic church in Pittsburgh?’

Beradino was quiet for a moment.

‘Let’s not get too carried away with Bayoumi, Franco,’ he said. ‘Whether it’s him or not, we turn Kohler’s life upside down, as we did Redwine’s. Who had a reason to kill Kohler? Who knew both Kohler and Redwine? We cross-reference every suspect, every witness, every friend, acquaintance, colleague. Some of Kohler’s parishioners must have been Redwine’s patients, and vice versa.’

‘And what else did they share? Were they members of the same country club? Did they play golf together? Were they on the board of the same charity? Were they members of the same professional association?’

‘Exactly. And on, and on, and on. Like I said before, Franco, back in Saint Paul, far as I’m concerned, this is like a cop killing. We give it full beans. You don’t go round burning bishops. Not on my watch.’

Patrese couldn’t help it. It started as a pricking behind his eyes and a flutter in the base of his throat, and then the tears were coming warm and too fast to stop. He wiped angrily at his face, not least so he could keep driving. Tears were weakness.

Beradino was silent, knowing better than to kill Patrese with kindness.

Patrese sniffed hard, twice, and swallowed.

‘What kind of man could do those things?’ he said. ‘What kind of monster?’

First thing Monday morning, Chance called Beradino and Patrese into a meeting; the three of them in the room, with Mayor Negley on speakerphone like the voice of God.

Howard Negley was a billionaire businessman who’d won the mayoralty a couple of years back. Drawing a token salary of one dollar, he’d proved himself a dynamic presence in City Hall; too dynamic for most of the old stagers there, who’d swiftly found themselves seeking solace in their directorships. Ostentatiously using his business skills and contacts to help regenerate the city, Negley had consciously set himself apart from the endless infighting of career politicos. The public loved him.

‘I’m not having surgeons and bishops murdered in Pittsburgh, you understand?’ Negley said. ‘I will not stand by and see it happen. It’s bad for the city.’

Bad for your popularity, you mean, thought Patrese.

What Patrese could take from Beradino, as good and honest a cop as you’d find anywhere in the Lower 48, sounded false and shrill from an elected official. Besides, why did Negley always have to talk as though he were addressing a political rally?

‘Whatever you need to find the killer, you got it,’ Negley continued. ‘You want more officers, you tell me. You want men from other jurisdictions, I can arrange that.’

It was all Patrese could do not to rotate his tongue in his cheek. To judge from the expression on Beradino’s face, and even Chance’s, he wasn’t alone in his opinion.

Yes, they could have more officers, from inside Allegheny County and outside too, but that wasn’t within the mayor’s power to offer, let alone make happen.

Typical Negley, Patrese thought. No wonder he’d married a Hollywood actress. The only thing more titanic than the mutual appreciation society would have been the clash of egos.