Richard Beard - Acts of the Assassins

Warm, wet, dripping into Gallio’s eye. The bastard, Gallio thought, he cut me. Gallio put his hand to his face and it came away wet and red, and not even a proper fight because he sensed the worst was over. He pressed his fingers hard against the wound, like a clumsy salute. Baruch had cut him, but he dared go no further because behind Cassius Gallio was Valeria, and behind her the CCU, and the legions, all the way back to Rome.

The two men had arrived at the medical centre to find Bartholomew sitting up in bed with a bowl of chicken soup. He was pale, but he managed a smile of welcome. Baruch sat down on the end of the bed, eyes greedy like an ancient prophet, sizing Bartholomew up, no suffering too extreme to imagine. Bartholomew steadied his bowl. He had no idea.

‘Leave him alone,’ Gallio said. Paul’s smug acceptance of his arrest, turning it to his advantage, did not sit well with Baruch. On the journey from the hotel he’d driven like a man possessed, his anger fierce enough to deter every possible traffic accident. Now Gallio wanted to intervene before the anger from the road found a way to settle on Bartholomew. ‘He’s been unconscious since Hierapolis. What can he tell us?’

‘He has information about his attackers. Maybe an identification.’

‘We arrested Paul,’ Gallio said. ‘You wanted Paul. Leave Bartholomew to me.’

‘Why should I? Paul will get his escort, the works. Cushy house arrest in some middle-class street in Rome, and now we can’t touch him. They’re pulling us out of shape, like last time, leaving too many questions unanswered.’

‘Baruch, we’re on the same side. We’re partners.’

Bartholomew sipped at a spoonful of soup, licked his lips, rediscovered entry-level distinctions between alive and dead. Eating was one of them. Baruch stood up and Bartholomew spilled soup on his sheets. Advantages, disadvantages.

‘Who was trailing me in Damascus?’

Gallio took a step back from Baruch’s undivided attention, but at least he was distracted from his prey.

‘You were followed?’

‘You know I was. And who tipped off Paul in Antioch?’

‘Why are you asking me? Ask Bartholomew, he’s more likely to know than I am. But do ask nicely, please.’

‘That’s exactly what I plan to do.’

Bartholomew had moved his bowl to the safety of the bedside table. Baruch sat closer this time, the disciple’s eyes, nose and throat within his reach. ‘Start at Hierapolis,’ he said. ‘This better be good.’

‘Nicely, I said.’

Bartholomew opened his mouth, but at first no words came out. He coughed into his hand and tried again. His voice was weak, feeling a way back into speaking. ‘I remember the beginning of the attack.’ Another cough, more forceful this time. ‘If that’s what you want to know. They were quick. They put a sack on my head. I didn’t see any faces.’

‘How many of them?’

Bartholomew shook his head; the memory simply wasn’t there for him.

‘What about voices?’

‘One voice, I think. Maybe more. It was difficult to hear, because of the sack.’

‘Try to place the voice,’ Gallio said, and compared to Baruch he sounded like a saint. ‘A man or a woman? What language were they speaking?’

Bartholomew smiled thinly, tired now. ‘At the time,’ he said, ‘I thought that’s how the devil would sound.’

‘Like the devil,’ Baruch said. ‘Thank you hugely for your help.’

For a full half-minute of silence, Cassius Gallio considered Satan as a suspect. Satan had been accused twice, in Babylon by the wife of the deputy finance minister and now by Bartholomew. Gallio resisted coincidence as an explanation, but could hardly bring in Satan for questioning. Instead he reasoned their latest suspect away: from inside a kidnapper’s sack voices will sound satanic.

‘Another question for you,’ Gallio said. ‘If you feel up to it. Why did James jump from the roof?’

Bartholomew looked confused. ‘Did he do that? I didn’t know.’

‘What do you know?’

‘Leave him alone, Baruch.’

‘Or what?’

Baruch reached around and pulled out his knife, laid the blade across his thigh.

‘He’s doing his best. He’s telling you what he remembers.’

‘He’s lying. Disciples lie. That’s their defining characteristic, to lie about what they’ve lived and seen. They’re keeping a secret, and Bartholomew is going to tell me what it is.’

‘The knife isn’t the way.’

‘So what is the way? Look at you, with your reasonable questions and your miserable face. I don’t know what the truth is with Paul, but I do know he goaded Jesus into an appearance. He stung the living Jesus by setting up the murder of Stephen on the street in Jerusalem, then Jesus ambushed him on the Damascus road. The two events are connected. Hurting a disciple can incite Jesus to intervene.’

‘That may be a correlation, not a cause.’

‘So let’s find out. Let’s taunt Jesus and see what happens.’

Baruch picked up his knife and Gallio reached for his arm. Baruch was up and on Gallio with the speed and expertise of a killer. He hissed like a snake. He pressed the blade flat against Gallio’s forehead, and cut him. He cut him above the eyebrow. He drew blood.

Then he pushed Gallio away, and with him everything Gallio stood for, the CCU, the legions, civilisation. With practised ease the knife found the sheath in the small of his back. ‘I’ll have answers,’ Baruch said. ‘If not here then from one of the others, and without your help.’ He made for the doorway, as if Jerusalem were full of disciples and he was in a hurry to find them, and to damage them. ‘I’ll deal with the disciples my way. You and your procedures are holding us back.’

Baruch slammed the door on his way out, making the liquids in the IV bags tremble.

‘It’s all right,’ Gallio said. He stood there with his fingers clamped to the cut above his eye. Blood found its way through to his knuckles, across the back of his hand as far as his wrist. ‘I won’t let anyone hurt you. I’m one of the good guys.’

Caistor is on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds, away from nearby towns and significant transmitters, so the broadband is patchy at best. The town has under three thousand inhabitants, and the spire of the Church of St Peter and St Paul is a central feature, though in English market towns every building has history, or will have. The fire station on the hill is closed down or not yet operational. It’s difficult to find anyone to ask, because cold and late the market square is roadblocked by squad cars. Blue lights flash in the darkness, sliding across the slick black numbers on the white car roofs. A helicopter hammers above, searchlight strobing the narrow streets.

Cassius Gallio spits into the gutter, and his spit freezes on double yellow lines. A hostage situation. Not what he needs right now, but as likely in Caistor as anywhere else, as the big city, as an isolated farmhouse — wherever the human brain decides that action needs to be taken, that destinies can be changed by force.

In Caistor, criminal hubris requires the presence of emergency police from Hull, who have surrounded a large Georgian house just off the market square. To the side of the driveway are three lock-up garages, the far one subject to a breaking and entering. The two men inside the garage refuse to leave peacefully, hands in the air, as requested by a thirty-watt police loudhailer. The authorities will do the rest but the intruders are foreigners. They don’t understand a word anyone says.

Cassius Gallio of the Complex Casework Unit, specialising in sightings of disciples, arrives from over the sea. He has his ID with the embossed eagle. He has the face in its misery, and an overcoat and scarf and leather gloves for the wind that blows in from the Humber. He expects, and receives, a respectful welcome at the crime scene.