The Righteous Men (2006)

by Sam Bourne

  Get on with it, Will was thinking.

  ‘But he was also known to the Bangkok underclass, as the man they called Mr Funeral. Mr Samak, it seems, had a strange sideline, one he ran not for profit but for its own sake. He organized funerals for the poor.

  ‘“Mr Samak would be in touch with all the mortuaries, all the hospitals, all the funeral homes,” recalled one associate Sunday. “If a corpse came in with no family or friends, with no one to bury them, they would call Mr Samak. If there was no money to pay for a proper burial, they would call Mr Samak.’“

  Will could feel the blood in his veins pumping harder.

  ‘Will? You still with me?’

  ‘Yeah, just keep reading.’

  ‘In the past, Bangkok’s poorest would end their days in a pauper’s grave, sometimes buried a dozen at a time, without a coffin between them. Mr Samak is credited with putting an end to the practice — almost single-handedly. Not only would he pay the burial costs, locals say he would also round up a congregation for the ceremony, often by paying “mourners” a few dollars to show up. “Thanks to Mr Funeral,” said one doctor, “no one was buried like a dog and no one was buried alone.”‘

  Will had heard enough. He hung up and galloped down the stairs, enjoying the sun on his face. First, Macrae, then Baxter and now Samak. Not just good men, but unusually, strangely good men. This was no longer a coincidence.

  He found a store, bought a couple of bottles of iced tea and headed back up towards the library: he would have to tell TC the news and work out the connection with the drawing. Surely, this was about to slot together.

  Except now he noticed a figure who until then had only lurked in his peripheral vision. Darting out of view, as if frightened that he had been seen, was a tall man, wearing jeans and a loose grey hooded sweatshirt. His age, his colour, his expression were all impossible to discern: his face was entirely obscured by the hood. Only one thing was clear: he was stalking Will.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Sunday, 3.51pm, Manhattan

  Will headed straight for the steps, taking care not to look over his shoulder. Once inside, he walked just as briskly. But he felt them before he heard them: the click, click of footsteps behind his, clacking along the cold stone floor. He headed for the first staircase he could find, daring, as he moved up another flight, to take a glance down. As he feared, the grey hood was right behind him.

  Now he broke into a jog, taking two more flights up. Once he hit a landing, he broke off, taking an instant decision to seek refuge in a room full of card-index catalogues. He dashed in, slowing to an immediate walk: even then, and silent, he felt too noisy, too sweaty for the hushed concentration of the room. He turned around: the hood.

  He walked faster, under a vast painting showing a trompe l’oeil sky. Dark clouds were gathering. Spotting an opening on the back wall, Will went in, only to discover it was not an exit but a small photocopying room. He darted back out, but now the hooded man was just a few yards away.

  Will saw the double doors out and ran for them. Once through, he was in a throng of people enjoying a mid-work break. He weaved through them to get to the staircase on the other side and, clutching hold of the hand rail, galloped down, two at a time. A woman carrying a computer monitor was in his way and he had to dodge to get past her. He moved to the left and so did she; he moved to the right and so did she. He leapt to her side to get past, but she let out an involuntary yelp — followed by a thud and a cymbal-crash of broken glass. She had dropped the machine.

  Now Will was in the main foyer, facing a large cloakroom. This was where regular readers began their day. There were lockers for bags and a long rail for coats that snaked around the room, as if in a dry-cleaner’s shop. The man in the hood was walking towards him. Calmly.

  Will had to move fast. While the attendant was looking the other way, he vaulted over the wooden counter and plunged into the thickness of the coats. Squeezing between a heavy anorak and a shaggy, afghan jacket, he pressed himself against the back wall. He could sense his stalker had stopped; Will guessed he was by the cloakroom, peering over the counter, searching. He tried to still his breathing.

  Suddenly, he felt movement. The attendant was handling the coats, pushing whole bunches of them aside, looking for a number. Will held in his cheeks to make no sound. But the man was getting closer, closer, closer — until he stopped, less than a foot away. Will felt him pull out a jacket and return to the counter.

  Then, a flash of grey. Will was sure the stalker had walked past. He allowed himself an exhalation; perhaps he had not been seen. He would wait five more minutes, then come out, find TC and get the hell out of here.

  But the hand got him first — thrust in before he had seen a face, like the robotic arm on a space probe. It grabbed his shirt by the collar, in an attempt to drag him into the daylight. Even in the dark, he could see the grey sweatshirt fabric that covered the arm. Twice Will locked onto it with both hands, pulling it off himself. But each time the hand came back, eventually smashing Will’s chin in the process. Crammed behind the coats, Will just could not get the space he needed to reach beyond this single, flailing arm — and hit the man behind it.

  The struggle was soon over. Will was pulled out of his hiding place like the meat from a sandwich. Now he came face to face with the man in the hood. To his complete surprise, he recognized him immediately.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Sunday, 3.56pm, Manhattan

  ‘Why did you run away? I just want to talk.’

  Talk? You just want to talk? So why were you bloody stalking me? Christ!’ Will was bending over, one hand on his knee, the other tending to his chin.

  ‘I didn’t want to approach you while you were with, um, that woman. Upstairs. I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t know if it was safe.’

  ‘Well, it would have been safer for me, believe me. Jesus Christ’

  Will found a chair and all but fell into it, trying to catch his breath. ‘So what the hell’s this about, Sandy? Or is it Shimon?’

  ‘Shimon Shmuel. But call me Sandy, it’ll be easier.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you, I really did not. But I couldn’t let you run away. I have to talk to you. Something very bad has happened.’

  ‘You’re telling me. My wife has been kidnapped; I’ve practically been tortured; your rabbi killed some guy in Bangkok; and now you’ve spent a weekend stalking me, before the grand finale of a whack on the chin.’

  ‘I haven’t spent a weekend stalking you.’

  ‘Save it, Sandy, really. I saw you from the window last night: the baseball cap nearly threw me, but I got it in the end.’

  ‘I promise you, I came to find you today. Not last night. I was in Crown Heights last night.’

  ‘Well, someone was waiting for me outside the Times building yesterday evening. They followed me to my friend’s house and waited there too. And so far the only person I know who does that kind of thing is you.’

  ‘I swear that wasn’t me, Will. It wasn’t. I had no need to come then.’

  ‘What do you mean, no need?’

  ‘It hadn’t happened last night. Or at least we didn’t know about it till this morning.’

  ‘What hadn’t happened?’

  It’s Yosef Yitzhok.’ The voice faltered enough to make Will look, for the first time, at Sandy’s face. He still had not removed his hood — a substitute skullcap, it was doing the religious duty of covering his head — but even in the shadow it cast, Will could see. Sandy’s eyes were red raw. He looked like he had been weeping for hours.

  ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘He’s dead, Will. He was murdered, brutally murdered.’

  ‘Oh my God. Where?’

  ‘No one knows. They found him dead in an alleyway near the shul. It was early this morning, probably on his way to shacharis. Sorry, morning prayers. His tallis, his prayer shawl, was red with blood.’

  ‘I don’t bel
ieve this. Who would do such a thing?’

  ‘I don’t know. None of us know. That’s why Sara Leah you met her, my wife — said I should find you. She thought this was somehow connected with you.’

  ‘With me? She blames me?’

  ‘No! Who said blame? She just thinks this might be connected to whatever happened on Friday night.’

  ‘You told her about all that?’

  ‘Only what I knew. But Yosef Yitzhok’s wife is her sister.

  We’re family, Will. He’s my brother-in-law. Was my brother-in-law.’

  The redness of his eyes was about to deepen again.

  ‘And Yosef Yitzhok said something to his wife?’

  ‘Not much, I don’t think. Just that he had spoken to you on Friday night. He said you were caught up in something very important. No, that wasn’t the word. He said you were caught up in something catastrophic. That was the word he used, catastrophic’

  ‘Did he say anything else to his wife?’

  ‘Just that he hoped and prayed that you understood what was happening. And that you would know what to do.’

  At that moment, Will could not have felt more helpless. The rabbi had said it first and now Yosef Yitzhok was repeating it, from the grave. An ancient story is unfolding, that’s what the rabbi had said. Something mankind has feared for millennia. Now YY was telling him the stakes were so high that he was praying that Will would know what to do. And yet, Will felt as confused as ever. If anything, more confused — his head swirling with the bizarre coincidence of Macrae, Baxter and Samak, three noble men all dying horrible deaths; the blustering rhetoric of the Book of Proverbs and, most recently, the impenetrable, mystical geometry of the diagram he and TC had found in this very library.

  ‘Shit! TC She’s still upstairs. Come with me. Hurry!’

  Will was scolding himself at every step, as he bounded up stairs and along corridors, Sandy behind him, returning to the reading room. How could he have left her alone?

  Will marched towards the desk he and TC had shared nearly an hour earlier. As he got nearer, his heart sank. A woman was sitting there — but it was not TC. She had gone.

  Will punched the desk with his fist, sending a bolt of pain through his arm — and a look of terror across the woman’s face. How can I have been such a fool! These kidnappers had now taken two women from under his nose. He was meant to have protected them both and he had failed them. Both.

  Sandy was standing by him, but Will could not see him or hear him. Only one thing stirred him out of his torpor: the steady, persistent vibration he now felt on his thigh. It was his phone.

  2 New Messages

  He pressed the first one.

  Where are you? Had to leave. Call me. TC.

  Will sighed out a chestful of air. Thank God up above for that. He opened the next message, sure it would be TC, suggesting the place they should meet up. What he saw made him take two steps back in amazement.

  Fiftieth and Fifth.

  Yosef Yitzhok might have been dead — but the riddles lived on.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Sunday, 4.04pm, Manhattan

  ‘And when did it arrive?’

  ‘Just now. This second.’

  ‘Well, the first conclusion we can draw is that Yosef Yitzhok was not our informant after all.’

  ‘We can’t be certain of that, TC. His killer may have grabbed his phone and carried on sending messages.’ As he said it, Will saw the absurdity of his suggestion. What were the chances that an assailant would steal a phone, check the ‘sent’ file and carry on sending perfectly coded messages in the same vein? Besides, there was an easy way to check.

  ‘Sandy, can you do me a favour? Call home and find out if anyone took Yosef Yitzhok’s phone when he was killed.’ Now talking back into the mouthpiece, to TC, he offered another theory. ‘What if someone stole his phone in the first place?’

  ‘Well, then it wouldn’t have been YY sending the messages at all, would it?’ TC was getting exasperated. Fearful of returning to her own apartment, she had fled to Central Park. To her great relief, she had run into some people she knew: married friends, with plenty of kids. As Will could hear through the phone, she had stuck herself in the middle of the group. The strollers, toddlers and picnic blankets would, she reckoned, serve as a security cordon, keeping the stalkers and kidnappers at bay. Listening to the sounds of childhood chatter, of softball games and a mother handing out cake, Will felt a pang of envy or, rather, longing — longing for a Sunday afternoon of relaxed, sun-kissed normality.

  ‘You mean, it was someone else all along.’

  ‘I think so, yes. YY is dead but the messages have not stopped. Ergo, he wasn’t the one sending them.’

  ‘So why would they kill him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Hassidim.’

  ‘We don’t know it was the Hassidim who killed him. That’s just another conclusion you’re jumping to. The truth is, Will, we know hardly anything. We can guess and speculate and theorize, but we know very little.’

  ‘What about the drawing in the library. Did you see anything?’

  ‘I think it’s probably telling us something very simple. It’s saying, “Think kabbalah”. The image is so complex, full of so many component parts, it can’t be about any one bit. It’s just the general idea. That diagram is the fundamental building block of all kabbalah. It’s almost like a logo.’

  ‘Hang on. There’s another one coming now. I’ll call you back.’

  He walked as he pressed the buttons to reveal the latest message, one which he willed to be clear. Now that he did not have TC at his side, he desperately needed a little simplicity.

  Behold the lord of the heavens but not of Hell.

  They only had to walk a few blocks north to find the junction which the earlier message had directed them to: Fiftieth Street and Fifth Avenue. That was where they stood now.

  Looming over them was the gothic fortress of St Patrick’s Cathedral where, little more than a week ago, he had sat rapt, listening to The Messiah with his father. A week ago but a different lifetime.

  His father. A spasm of guilt passed through Will: he had barely included him in this search. It was obvious he wanted to help; he had made that clear last night and again this morning, even doing his bit to decipher the text messages. Yet Will had been impatient, happy to use his father as a glorified chauffeur and not much more. Perhaps for all the effort of the last few years, the two of them were not as close as Will liked to believe. Most men would probably have looked to their fathers to be their chief ally in a crisis like this, but Will was not most men. He had lived the bulk of his childhood, his formative years, a continent away.

  Looking at it now, Will remembered his initial impression of the cathedral when he had first arrived in New York. It struck him as vaguely ridiculous. Despite his love of old buildings, this vast, vaulted structure, which would have fitted in fine in Paris, London or Rome, looked absurd in the middle of Manhattan. Sandwiched between steel and glass skyscrapers, its arched windows, crenellated towers and heaven piercing spires were not only out of place but out of time. They seemed to embody a kind of futility, an attempt to hold back the onrush of modernity. This was the fastest city in the world and the cathedral stood implacably at its centre — trying to stop the clock.

  What could it mean? Beckoning Sandy to follow him, he waded through the tourist throng and stepped inside, enveloped immediately in the deferential hush vast houses of worship wreathe around themselves like fog. Will marched forward, his eyes scanning for anything that might fit that message. Who was lord of the heavens but not of hell?

  He looked over his shoulder. Sandy had barely advanced from the door; he was gawping at the impossibly high ceiling, then startled by the rebounding echo. Clearly, he had never been in such a building before. The contrast with the lino-and fake-panelled gymnasium that served as the Hassidim’s synagogue had overwhelmed him. Will remembered something his father had once said, that religious people ha
d much in common, even when they did not share a faith: ‘The same magic works on all of them.’ There was no doubt about it: Sandy was moved to be here.

  Will, who had gone to school and college in buildings older than this one, was not overawed by the cold stone floors or medieval architecture. He was on a mission, to find a lord of heaven but not of hell. He faced the Grand Organ and then the smaller Chancel Organ. He checked out the altar and the pulpit, raised like the crow’s nest of a ship. He examined the narrow shelves holding glass jars for the lighting of candles, and the boxes of new ones, available free of charge. He had a look at the small, private chapel, apparently closed off for private ceremonies. He looked upward, to see two flags: the first belonging to the United States, the second to the Vatican. He had no idea what he was looking for.

  He walked the length of the nave, studying the blocks of pews. He glanced up at the loudspeakers and screens attached to the pillars. There were tapestries with inscriptions, but no reference that might fit the message. There were stained-glass windows with pictures of saints, shepherds and the odd serpent. Will thought he saw an angel or two.

  Hold on. Directly above, dominating the space around, was a huge crucifix, with a sculpted Jesus. It was picked out in strobing white light, as tourists queued to photograph it.

  Was this the lord of the heavens but not of hell? After all, the underworld was the realm of Lucifer rather than Jesus. Maybe it was as simple as that. Maybe he was meant to look at Jesus. But then what?

  He wished TC was with him, another pair of eyes, another brain. Sandy was nice enough, but he did not have the kind of laser observation or brainpower Will was sure he needed right now.

  Will headed for the exit, shoving a dollar bill in the glass box marked for donations — and filled with what seemed to be the coins of a thousand nations.

  Outside, he dialled TC’s number. ‘Look, we’ve been inside the cathedral. I’m meant to be finding the lord of the heavens but not of hell. There’s nothing that seems to connect with that. Nothing I can see. Yeah, I’ve walked up and down. It’s just pews, crucifix—’