Richard Beard - Acts of the Assassins

He brought bags of pistachios into the office at the Antonia, then forgot them in a desk drawer as he went through the logged post-death appearances of Jesus. For about a month after Jesus vanished he was everywhere and nowhere at once. He was seen by Peter, by the disciples together (behind locked doors, avoiding surveillance), by more than five hundred followers, by James, and then again by the disciples.

During each appearance Jesus walked, spoke, ate. Cassius Gallio picked open a nut, dropped the shells in his bin. He had to conclude that Jesus wasn’t severely handicapped, despite his extreme ordeal. More reasonably, if his death could be faked then so could his injuries. But Cassius had witnessed at close quarters the wounds of Jesus when he was nailed to the cross. He could pull up comprehensive pictorial evidence to confirm the event. Someone had been severely injured and had died, even if it wasn’t Jesus, meaning the switch theory looked increasingly plausible. Though not yet convincing enough to present with confidence to Valeria.

Cassius Gallio pursued the logic of his speculation. If Jesus had arranged a switch, then Joseph of Arimathea was implicated. In the absence that day of the disciples (who, minus Judas, were hiding the real Jesus somewhere in the city) Joseph had taken responsibility for hauling the body off the cross before sunset, hiding the evidence in his private tomb before standard post-mortem checks could be made.

Joseph had a security file, like every high priest in Jerusalem: his address, his voting patterns, and a record of his sympathy for the Jesus cult. To fill in the gaps Gallio tried out his new phone, CCU issue, and googled Joseph of Arimathea . No network coverage, not behind the historic walls of the Antonia, so Gallio made do with his desktop. The internet turned out to be as vague as the dossier: Joseph was originally from Arimathea, but may have fled to Europe, a thin-lipped man with a chin-end wispy beard. According to the pictures, he had a taste for ornate headscarves.

Gallio concluded that if he wanted unique off-the-record information, of the type that would unlock secrets, he’d have to put in the legwork.

Outside Joseph’s former villa, on the wealthy upslopes of Abu Tor, the roadside shrubs were overgrown and a landscape services van was parked in front of a chained sign saying Gate In Constant Use . Next door to Joseph’s address, a gardener was strimming the base of the boundary wall. Gallio waved his arms until the man turned off the machine, flipped ear defenders off one ear.

‘Is this your van?’

‘Not blocking anyone. No one’s lived there for years. Who are you?’

‘Estate agent. Lost the keys. Might have interested a buyer.’

‘Well, try and sell it.’ The gardener snapped his defenders back into place, which made him shout even louder. ‘It’s an eyesore!’

Gallio knew from experience that the secret of life — anywhere, at any time — is to act like you belong. He squeezed past the van, stepped over the rusted chain and brushed through the weeds in the gravel driveway. The windows at the front of the large house were boarded up, but those round the side were intact. A shop-bought kennel and a green plastic water butt. Gallio stood on a metal dustbin and tried the top of what looked from the outside like a toilet window. Secured.

He jumped down, steadied himself, pushed with one finger at the back door. Locked.

Gallio looked more closely. The locks had been changed and replaced with imitation Yales. He ran his finger over fake brass. Leave now, said the voice of reason. Take a breath, step back and call Valeria. Get a warrant. Respect the procedure, as a lesson learned from the botched execution. But a warrant would take for ever.

Cassius Gallio was a Speculator, even if Valeria refused him the title. He’d excelled in training, where he’d mastered a range of skills they told him he’d never forget. He glanced over his shoulder. No one was watching. He was inside the house within thirty seconds.

The back hallway looked a mess. The plasterwork was patchy and a ray of sunlight picked out a wall scorched by a pallet fire. Squatters. The air inside the house had settled, colder than outside, stale. Some scrabbling noises, mice making themselves scarce, possibly a bird trapped in the roof.

No one home, and hadn’t been for years. Cassius Gallio called out, a courtesy to the unknown. No reply. To the right of the hallway was the kitchen, cupboards stripped, floor tiles cracked in several places. Gallio went past the kitchen and opened the next door on the left. In this room the mirror above the fireplace was smashed. Gallio felt behind the frame, then up into the chimney. He sifted through ashes in the grate, but he was aeons behind the curve. Every room was the same: empty and open drawers, rotting skirting boards, mice briefly interrupted from generations of digesting the evidence.

Gallio left the way he came in, securing the door behind him. He was about to walk away when he considered the metal dustbin beneath the window. He’d intended to put it back in its place, but instead he lifted the corrugated lid, peered inside. At the top was a pretzel bag that dated from earlier that year. He checked both ways — still no one watching — then upturned the bin. The contents slumped in a heavy mess across the paving stones. A rusted tuna can with an ancient sell-by date — more or less what he was hoping to see. Older than the tin can was a grey layer of biodegraded sludge, and in the sludge some shards of glass.

He took out his handkerchief, last used by Valeria to avoid fingerprints on the crop in the stable. Gallio retrieved two pieces of glass and knotted them inside the handkerchief. All was not lost.

‘I’m not going to trouble the lab,’ Valeria said. ‘Not yet.’

‘These could be significant pieces of evidence.’

‘Which you acquired without a warrant. You haven’t formally launched your operation and already you’re breaking rules. First things first, you know that.’

And first of all, Valeria suggested, Cassius Gallio should work out as precisely as possible the nature of the man he wanted to find. What would Jesus look like now? Gallio had read second-hand accounts of the time the disciple Thomas put his fingers in Jesus’s wounds. So Jesus wasn’t injured, in the sense of being handicapped, but the records suggested he was visibly scarred.

Gallio added this conclusion to a provisional Missing Persons description, but regretted not having paid closer attention at the time. The CCU had coached him to be observant, and in the line of duty he’d witnessed the arrest and death of Jesus. He was therefore surprised that he had no stable image of Jesus fixed in his memory. Jesus would be older now, but Gallio struggled even on basic descriptors like height, the shade of his hair, the colour of his eyes. Identification 101.

He hadn’t considered Jesus worth memorising, not back then, when as a rookie Speculator he’d been more intent on recruiting Judas. Gallio had made no special effort to settle the physical Jesus in his mind. The secondary sources of information, which could have supplemented his memory, were unreliable.

Valeria stopped by his desk to tell him to hurry up.

‘Nearly there. One final detail.’

Gallio had to decide on an image of Jesus for his official Missing Persons bulletin, and although Valeria had commissioned various artists’ impressions the results were variable. In the pictures Jesus ranged from angelic rabbi (fair, slender) to swarthy warrior (determined, muscular), by way of the occasional portrayal as an unearthly cosmic light. They’d never find him if they searched for cosmic light.

The disciples. Cassius Gallio had the disciples on his mind. By all accounts the disciples strove every day to be as much like Jesus as possible. They had dark hair and were bearded. They wore clothes of a beige or cream colour, and sandals. Their eyes were brown. This was the Galilee model of a disciple, with variations. Peter was broader in the shoulder, while John sometimes shaved, but every disciple had the basic likeness to Jesus, which was unsurprising. All ten surviving disciples were from the same region of Israel. Four of them were brothers, some were cousins, and each could pass for any of the others. The head of James, as Valeria had demonstrated, could be mistaken for the head of Jesus.