by Jon Cleary
“Sort of,” said Malone. “I don’t think they’d call me a good one.”
“We seem to be in the same mould, Inspector. But Captain Goffi here is a good Catholic, one of the best.” Malone would have had his doubts, but piety wasn’t all pursed lips and steepled fingers. “He’s our conduit to the Vatican. He knows our contacts there and he’ll lead you straight to them. I think you should talk to Monsignor Lindwall, he’s English, before you approach Archbishop Hourigan. He works for the Archbishop in the Department for the Defence Against Subversive Religions.” He shook his head. “What medieval titles they go in for! Sometimes I wonder that they don’t drive around in chariots instead of their Mercedes-Benz.”
Malone, an iconoclast though a slightly reformed one, hadn’t expected such disrespect for the Vatican so close to home. But then the Romans had had to live longer and closer with the Church than anyone else.
“Monsignor Lindwall was a missionary in Africa for thirty years. He has no time for bureaucracies, even though he works in one. He will tell you the best way to get over all the hurdles you are going to find over there.” He got up and motioned to Malone to follow him to the tall doors. They were open to the spring sunshine and he stood in the doorway and pointed across the city to the west. “That’s it, Inspector. The citadel, one of the smallest yet easily the most powerful city-state in the world. We Italians invented the city-state—well, perhaps the Greeks were ahead of us, but we developed it much further. That’s the last survivor. Don’t try storming it, that won’t get you anywhere. The only way in is by trickery and subterfuge and burrowing. Monsignor Lindwall will tell you that—he’s a Jesuit.”
Oh Christ, thought Malone in half a prayer, what have I got myself into? He looked out across Rome, across the old, pale-coloured buildings to the huge dome of St. Peter’s dominating the city as towering commercial buildings dominated the other cities he had known. Like most Australians he had little sense of ancient history, but a sediment of his Celtic heritage stirred in him, ghosts whispered to him out of long-ago mists that all men were connected by events. People had lived in this city for God knew how long, there had been voters and polling-booths here when Australia Felix was just a wilderness, there were buildings here far older than Australia as a nation or even a colony. And the Vatican, though its power was now limited by treaty, had ruled longer than any of those who had tried to challenge it. Now he, in a way, was challenging it again.
“We’ll help you all we can, Inspector, but not in an obvious way. We have to live with them over there, but you can go back to Australia. So all our help will be unofficial and, as they say, under the lap. We Italians,” he smiled, showing what looked like more than the usual complement of teeth, “are very good at under the lap. Good luck, Inspector. Please come back and see me before you return home, with or without the Archbishop.”
Malone thanked him and left, saying to Goffi as they went down the stairs and out of the building, “I think he’s on our side.”
“Up to a point, Inspector. Nobody at the top in Italy is ever fully committed to one side or the other. Except, of course, the Pope.”
“And Archbishop Hourigan.”
“Ah, but he’s not Italian.”
There was another hair-raising drive down the Via Maggio XXIV, along the Corso Vittorio Emmanuel, over the Tiber and up the Via delle Conciliazone to St. Peter’s Square. Malone saw only sidelong flashes of what they passed and he vowed he would walk back to the pensione, wherever it might be. Better to be lost in the city than laid out in the morgue.
The Department for the Defence Against Subversive Religions was in a building across a small garden from the tower that housed Vatican Radio. It was a small Department; evidently subversive religions were not as big a problem as Archbishop Hourigan made out. Or perhaps the Vatican, like the rest of the world, was cost-cutting.
Monsignor Guy Lindwall was a small man; indeed, he was tiny. All his life he had been plagued by his lack of inches. Amongst the extraordinarily tall Denka tribesmen in the southern Sudan, he had been only head-high to their navels. It had seemed to him that he had spent years preaching St. Paul’s Epistles to the Genitalia. A midget of the cloth, he just hoped to God that when he reached Heaven that God was not tall. But he had a sense of humour, was voluble as a fishwife in a gale, talked a blue streak but with only the occasional blue word. He would, however, never preach cant.
He listened attentively, if impatient to say something, while Malone told him something, but not all, of the case. When Malone had finished the little man ran his fingers through his unruly white hair and shook his head.
“I don’t believe Kerry would have anything to do with a murder, not a nun and particularly his niece. He’s a decent man at heart, a moral man. He just has this obsession with Communism. We call him Archbishop Rambo and around here we’re all scared of what he’s going to do next. Every time he opens his mouth, the Sacred Heart fibrillates.” He pointed to a religious print hung on the wall of his tiny office. “You can see the glass is already cracked. Does anyone in the Curia know you’re here?”
“I don’t know. The Archbishop’s father has friends and spies everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone isn’t whispering in the Pope’s ear right now.”
“The Holy Father only got back from China last night—he has more on his mind than the Archbishop. No, it’s the cardinals in the Curia we have to be careful of. If Kerry goes to them and complains about you harassing him, nothing short of a miracle will get him out of here. You can take out all the warrants you can think of, he won’t be moved from here.”
“Maybe he won’t broadcast too much. He’s got plenty of reasons for keeping all this quiet.”
“True, true. None of us here in the Department knew he’d been in Nicaragua. His Holiness wouldn’t like that.”
“Does anyone in the Curia back him on the Contras?”
“One or two. They’re divided over there, just like Washington is. There are some of us here in the Department who think that some day, perhaps soon, Islam will be as big a threat to Christianity as Communism—it may even threaten both of them. But all Rambo can see is the Red menace.”
“How did he feel about the Pope going to China?”
“Oh, he was dead against it.” Lindwall smiled, showing badly fitting false teeth. He had lost his own years ago while surviving on a poor diet in Africa. He still suffered from malaria and there were traces of bilharzia in his bloodstream that had to be checked regularly. He had suffered for Christ, but none of it had left him bitter; he had a true vocation. In the next day or two, as he got to know him better, Malone would come to have the highest regard for the tiny priest: he was the best sort of advertisement for the Church, a priest who understood and did not just condemn sinners. “He preaches that one should never get into bed with a Red, especially in his own country. His Holiness, I think, prefers not to know too much about what we get up to. Or what our Archbishop gets up to.”
“So all we have to watch out for are the cardinals in the Curia?” Malone had had some opponents in the past, but never a battalion of cardinals.
“They are enough. Captain Goffi will tell you how powerful they are. Even the Holy Father has trouble with some of them.”
“Where’s Archbishop Hourigan now? Does he live in the Vatican?”
“No, he lives across the river, in a riverside apartment.” He gave Malone the address. “Do you want to telephone him?”
“No.” That would only be a warning. Kerry Hourigan would have Zara Kersey there waiting for him. “He might call out the Swiss Guards.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s a loose cannon, as the Americans here in the Department say.” Lindwall escorted Malone and Goffi to the door. “Have you seen the Basilica, Inspector? Come back this evening at six, you’ll see it at its best. His Holiness is saying Mass to celebrate his trip to China.”
“What’ll we have at communion—rice wine?”
“Tell that to Archbishop Houri
gan. He’ll probably agree with you.”
Out in St. Peter’s Square Malone gently but politely declined Goffi’s offer to drive him to the Archbishop’s apartment. “I need the exercise, Captain. And I think it’s better that I see him on my own. He may just shut up shop altogether if he knows you’re involved, unofficially or not.”
Goffi looked disappointed, but nodded. “I understand, Inspector. But take care. Rome isn’t as safe as it used to be.”
Malone walked down the Via delle Conciliazone, passed under the shadow of the Castle of St. Angelo, crossed the bridge and walked along the eastern bank of the Tiber. He could feel the city brushing against his consciousness; he began to wonder at the history of Rome, though he knew none of it. What secrets had been dreamed up behind these sundrenched walls he was now passing? The sun beat off them as if the stone were alive. He touched one of the walls, felt the warmth of it; when he took his hand away, there were flakes of paint on his fingertips. I’ve left my prints on Rome, he smiled, being literary. Maybe the city did that to you, though he didn’t know the name of a single Roman poet.
Archbishop Hourigan’s apartment was on the third floor of a palazzo that had once been the home of one of Rome’s richest and most powerful families. The grandeur was shabby now: paint peeled, dust floated, the busts on the wide marble staircase were chipped, like experiments in cosmetic surgery that had gone wrong. Malone passed several big doors, glanced at the names: Contessa This, Principessa That. The palazzo was a crypt for the past and Malone wondered what the Archbishop was doing here.
When he came to the Hourigan door he saw at once that it was new; or refurbished. The thick oak was polished, the brass door-knobs were bright. There was no title on the brass name-plate beside the door, just the name Hourigan. Perhaps clerical rank had no rating on this side of the river.
A butler in black uniform with white gloves answered Malone’s ring. He was an elderly man with a rugged face that reminded Malone of that of a Mafia boss he had once arrested back in Australia who, true to the form of the period, had been acquitted. The butler showed no surprise when Malone introduced himself, but stepped back and gestured for him to enter.
Then Kerry Hourigan, dressed in street clothes (Why did I expect him to be in full regalia? Malone wondered. Did Rome do that to you?), came into the entrance hall, his heels clack-clacking on the black-and-white marble.
He put out his hand. “I’ve been expecting you, Inspector. I was told you were in Rome. Come on in.”
He led the way into a high-ceilinged room too big to be called a living-room; Malone guessed this was what was called a salon. There was no seedy grandeur here; though nothing looked new, everything was stylish and expensive. The paintings on the walls were Old Masters, for all Malone knew: to his inexpert eye, they looked it. He noticed there were no religious paintings, no agonized saints sitting on red-hot pokers or Madonnas airborne by the Renaissance equivalent of Alitalia; perhaps the Archbishop got enough of that sort of art on the other side of the river. Hourigan waved Malone to a silk-covered chair.
“I never thought you’d have the persistence to follow me all the way here to Rome.” He appeared friendly enough; or anyway relaxed. He’s at home, Malone thought: Rome is home. “I understand there’s been another murder.”
“Yes. Father Marquez—you met him that evening in St. Mary’s.” It seemed a year ago. Did jet lag and 10,000 miles do that to you? Or was it because he was in another world altogether? “They tried to kill me, too.”
That upset the Archbishop’s composure. “They? Who are they?”
Malone decided to be blunt. “I was hoping you might give me a clue, Your Grace. I tried my luck with Mr. Paredes and Mr. Domecq—they suggested I try you.”
Hourigan shook his head. “You’re bluffing, Inspector.”
“That’s what your father’s lawyer said—Mrs. Kersey. Why does everyone think I’m bluffing? You’re connected to these murders, Your Grace, whether you know it or admit it or whatever. All of you are bluffing much more than I am. Or lying.”
The Archbishop flushed at that. “That’s insulting! Dammit, man, who do you think you are? I’ve told you—I know nothing about the murders! Good God, don’t you think I’ve felt something about my niece’s death, some grief, horror? I feel for that young priest, too, though I never knew him. I have no connection with the murders—they are as much a mystery to me as they are to you!”
“They may be a mystery to you, but I’m still convinced you’re connected to them. We want all of you brought together for questioning—you, your father, Paredes and Domecq. We can’t bring Paredes and Domecq here to Rome, but we can stop them leaving Australia—”
“How?” The Archbishop was almost too quick with his query.
Malone grinned. “You’re in a bureaucracy—you know there are ways and means. Come back with me, Your Grace. It’ll cause less of a stink.”
“You mean you’ll cause a—a stink if I don’t?”
“It’s on the cards.”
The Archbishop sat silent, his chin on his chest. His hands were folded, but he was not praying. The Lord, for Whom he was working, had let him down; the murders were accidents which should never have been allowed to happen. The Lord had made a mistake in allowing man his free will.
At last he looked up. “If I come back, if all your investigations prove I had absolutely nothing to do with this, can you keep it quiet? Out of the newspapers? I have work to do, Inspector—it’s God’s will—” There was a glint of passion in his eyes, almost of fanaticism. “I don’t want it ruined!”
“I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do my best. Can you leave tomorrow night?”
“No,” said Fingal Hourigan from the doorway. “He won’t be leaving Rome at all.”
He did not look out of place in this salon. With his white hair, thin aquiline face, dark suit and silver walking-stick, he could have been a Roman aristocrat; only the bright Irish eyes gave him away. There were still rumours of power and intrigue in the corners of the big room; he looked as if he intended to revive them. It suddenly struck Malone that this was his apartment, which explained the name without rank on the door-plate; the Archbishop was living here as a rich man’s son, not through some indulgence by the Church. Once again he wondered what had happened to vows of poverty. But he would get nowhere asking such a question of the Hourigans. The Archbishop probably looked upon luxury as one of God’s casual gifts; Fingal would look upon it as a deal with the Almighty. He sounded at the moment as if Rome itself was part of the deal.
“My son belongs here, Inspector.” He came into the room, moving a little cautiously on the marble tiles; the silver walking-stick tapped bone-like on them. “He’s outside your domain altogether.”
“Not entirely, Mr. Hourigan.” Malone had stood up, not wanting to be dominated by the old man. “I can ask the carabinieri to arrest him and hold him. He’s outside Vatican City.”
The Hourigans looked at each other quickly, as if this possibility had not crossed their minds. Then Fingal coughed a small dry laugh. “You don’t know Italy, son. When did the carabinieri last arrest an archbishop? One from the Vatican? I’m not without influence here, Inspector.”
“The Mafia?” It was a stupid remark and Malone knew it as soon as he uttered it; but he was becoming frustrated. “Forget that. You’d be further up the scale than them.”
“I’m glad you think so. You’re not that dumb—I don’t do business with hoodlums. I don’t do business with murderers, either.” He had once, long ago, but it never troubled his conscience. “Neither does my son.”
“Paredes and Domecq have both been charged with murder in Nicaragua.”
“Charged and acquitted.”
“No, not acquitted. Never brought to trial. There’s a difference.” He looked at Kerry Hourigan, who had remained in his chair, silent and with his hands still clasped together. “You must have known their record?”
“They were fighting Communists,” said the Archbisho
p. “There was a war . . .” But he sounded as if he were trying to forgive sins that were beyond his comprehension. “They are the leaders of an honourable army.”
“Bullshit, Your Grace,” said Malone. “With all due respect. The FBI have them also tagged as being the leaders of a drug ring, tied up with some mob in Colombia. You’re dealing with crims and you’re a bloody fool if you don’t face up to it!”
The Archbishop stood up, drawing some dignity into himself. “I think you’d better leave, Inspector. I’ll take my chances on my own judgement.”
Malone knew when to retreat. He was too experienced a policeman to go plunging on; there were other ways of going forward than by a direct line. At the moment, however, he wasn’t quite sure where he was going. He felt the loss of backup that could be relied upon. He had been like this twice before, in London and in New York; and he felt a recurrence of the same lack of confidence. But he didn’t let it show.
“Then you’d better move back into the Vatican. A carabinieri captain told me less than an hour ago, Rome isn’t safe any more. You’d better believe it.”
As he went out into the entrance hall he heard a sound that gave him some small comfort. It was the nervous tap-tap of Fingal Hourigan’s stick on the marble tiles.
II
Malone was both weary and tired; which can be two different conditions. Jet lag was catching up with him: he felt like falling into bed and sleeping for a week. But the weariness was greater: the weight of this case was exhausting him. Sitting here in a side pew in St. Peter’s he wanted both to fall asleep and throw in the case. Then, like the apparitions that sometimes appear in the moment before one falls asleep, the faces of Sister Mary Magdalene and Father Marquez, the one dead and serene, the other alive and afraid, would jerk him awake. Perhaps it was the setting. Both of them, the religious, would have been thrilled to be sitting where he was, to be so close to what was going on.
