Richard Beard - Acts of the Assassins

‘James gets visitors.’

‘I know. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, trekking miles to touch his bones. They talked about it on the coach to Pamukkale, and this is the secret the disciples want to keep from us. Whatever we do, they’ve planned ahead. Every decision we make works in their favour, if only we could see into the future. We were wrong about Philip and Thomas, they didn’t have to recognise their killer. The disciples don’t fight back because they’re happy to die. That explains why they don’t run, because the future is secure. Death is irrelevant to them. They have an insight into life after death that we need to take seriously.’

Baruch’s eyes are alight with a brightness Gallio fears: shimmering, brittle, sick.

‘Baruch, the British police are outside this garage in numbers. They’re not unreasonable people, and they’ll look after you. Give yourself up.’

‘Simon knew where he was going, and he wanted to get there. He suffered, but without the level of suffering I expected him to show. He had an absolute certainty about what was going to happen next.’

‘Jealous?’

The word slips out before Cassius Gallio can stop himself, a thought so evident that to think it is to say it. Baruch isn’t angry, he’s jealous, this is the most reliable of his emotions. He is the expert on death, but the disciples have information about the afterlife that he does not.

‘I am jealous, yes. I want to know where they go, and why it doesn’t scare them.’

Baruch places his killer’s knife in the looseness of his left hand. He fixes Gallio eye-to-eye and blows into the palm of his right, flexing then clenching his fingers.

‘Tell it to the police,’ Gallio says. ‘Don’t do anything you’ll regret.’

‘I know what I’m doing. Have a little faith.’

He rolls his shoulders, preparing himself. Tosses the knife back into his right hand, grips hard. Baruch stabs himself deep in the windpipe.

SHIT. THIS KIND of mess won’t clean up itself.

The next morning Gallio keeps Claudia involved, and that line in her forehead will not be softening any time soon. Her coping mechanisms involve pointing and tutting and snapping at Caistor locals who are too quick, too slow, too clumsy . Is it really so difficult, her body language asks, to get a pair of bodies bagged for air freight to Israel?

The heavy lifting they leave to John W. Varlow and his son, undertakers from Chapel Street, while Gallio feeds a diversionary story to the press about foreign gangs and ancient grudges and the chronic use of Humberside Airport by drug mules. He mentions Albania. The ladies and gentlemen of the press suck their teeth. Naturally, Albania. Cassius Gallio provides a prime-time story they recognise, along with its familiar ending. The kidnapper killed the hostage then turned his weapon on himself. That will be all, thank you.

For the people of Caistor, from that night onwards, the horror is safe in the past. The murder of Simon was a freak event, however sickening, but no one need think too deeply about what has happened here, not far from the market square. The case of the sawn-in-half disciple becomes a curiosity for out-of-towners, and a leaflet is available in the Heritage Centre.

Gallio has a report to write for Valeria, to close off the episode, but for him the incident lives on. He supervises the police as they decontaminate the crime scene, and reassures the commissioner that no other disciples of Jesus are expected to visit the region. The police commissioner glances at an upstairs window, above the long blue sign for White Hart Freehouse and Accommodation . Bartholomew is occasionally seen in silhouette, and he’s always conspicuous at the post office.

‘Except him,’ Claudia says. ‘But he’s harmless. He’s helping us with our enquiries, and we’ll take him with us when we go.’

They stay in Caistor. Speculators aren’t machines, despite their best efforts, and temporarily, while the double killing seems random and senseless, Gallio loses the urge to look for Jesus. He misses Baruch. He didn’t think he would, but he does. Baruch has been a part of his life as far back as Lazarus, and Gallio grieves for another story lost that connects the past to the present.

Keep it together, he tells himself, but his ambitions feel compromised by so much death and so little Jesus. He remembers Thomas on the morgue trolley in Babylon, Philip swinging from his thighs in Hierapolis, and now in Caistor Simon with legs splayed sawn almost in half. These murders are unforgettable, deliberately so, but what kind of death does Jesus need to see before objecting? What has to happen before he intervenes and makes his presence felt?

If Jesus is alive, and as powerful as Bartholomew believes, then he is everywhere and the answer to every question. He may even care. But if he doesn’t intercede he might as well not exist — the Jesus who abandons his followers to the saw and the rope and the stone is not worth seeking out.

Gallio asks the younger John Varlow, in a break from bagging-up the corpses, to recommend a tea-shop. In fact Caistor has only one, the Tea Cosy Café over the model railway shop, with a view of the market square. This is where every morning Gallio and Claudia debrief, comparing notes where Bartholomew can’t overhear. There is often not much to say, so they watch the time go by.

‘Stop looking at your phone,’ Gallio says. ‘Life is also here.’

They take the table in the window, though if life is here in Caistor life is once again slow. Claudia holds out her phone, screen facing Gallio. A text from Valeria, not the first. ‘Read it. She says good things about you.’

Gallio sees the length of the message, sighs, pushes his cup and saucer to one side and holds the phone in both hands. Valeria is full of praise. She commends Cassius Gallio for containing what sounds like an appalling situation. Baruch was a loose cannon (she always thought so) but now they can push on against Jesus free from Baruch’s obsession with Paul. Valeria advises Gallio, frankly, to keep his phone turned on. They’re not living in the Dark Ages. Next, she has new intelligence that the disciple Matthew is in Cairo.

‘According to our sources Matthew is writing a book,’ Claudia says. ‘Valeria reckons he’s their archivist. If so, he may have privileged information about a terror attack.

‘And he may not.’ Gallio hands back the phone. ‘She wants me to fly to Cairo.’

‘I know. Caistor, Cairo. International man of action.’

‘I can’t do this any more.’

Claudia looks up from her phone, sees he’s serious and makes a show of powering the phone off. She has to study the edges and the top to remember how to do it, the line has to appear in her forehead, then she places the dead phone face down on the table and slides it to one side. She leans forward over her hands. ‘You can’t give up now. We’re making progress. It can’t get worse than Simon.’

‘No?’

‘Baruch was a conflicted individual.’

‘He was deranged, but I liked him.’

‘He started taking the afterlife seriously. We made a mistake letting him get ahead of us but he’s done us a favour. Simon’s killer isn’t Jesus and it isn’t Paul, who’s under observation and house arrest in Rome. It looks like no single assassin is responsible. Baruch killed Simon. We know he didn’t kill the others. The riot police killed James. The murders are random.’

‘In which case there’s no point searching for Jesus. He’s not a controlling genius with a secret plan, and he doesn’t have conclusive answers.’

Claudia reaches across the table and places her hand on Gallio’s hand, her movement a textbook copy of Valeria in the restaurant when he first arrived back in Jerusalem. Claudia’s wedding band is hard against Gallio’s knuckle, but he doesn’t mind. He leaves his hand where it is, under hers, never making the same mistake twice.