Stealing God

by James Green

  He waited. She had been spot on so far and he didn’t want to know where this was going. But it was something he knew he had to hear.

  ‘And my home life? My life as a good Catholic?’

  ‘I know nothing of your wife, Mr Costello, but I am pretty certain she was the one you looked to for the validation of your image of yourself as a good Catholic. Not the Church itself and certainly never any priest. I would guess she was all that you believed a good Catholic should be: devout, believing, loving, loyal. That she stayed with you, cared for you, accepted you, was the endorsement your private life needed for you to sustain it. Once she was gone, your world simply fell apart. My guess is that before she died, maybe during her illness, you glimpsed what being your wife had cost her, knowing as she did what sort of man you were as a policeman. That realisation brought you to the edge and after she died you suffered the inevitable psychotic episode. You almost killed two men whom you thought represented all that had gone wrong in your life. You were acting out a psychotic fantasy in which you had cast yourself as Nemesis. Those two men you so savagely attacked were a message to all the others that they could be reached by justice, even if they were beyond the reach of the law. That one of them was a powerful criminal who would have done you great harm after he came out hospital was what gave you your honourable early retirement. Where you should have gone, of course, was to prison.’

  ‘Prison would have been a death sentence.’

  ‘You aren’t suggesting early retirement and a pension to save the Metropolitan Police embarrassment was justice for what you did?’

  No, he wasn’t saying anything about justice. He didn’t want to say or hear anything more, because she was right. He was hearing the truth about himself and it gave him almost unbearable pain to be confronted by what he had known since he sat at Bernie’s hospital bedside. What he had buried so deep that he could pretend he didn’t know. Now she had calmly shredded his emotional defences and told him that the only two things his life had achieved were making his wife suffer so much and for so long, and turning himself into some sort of sick monster.

  ‘Are you saying that what I did to those animals was because I was sick, mentally sick?’

  ‘I told you, I have no medical training nor experience. I am making an interpretation of what happened on the basis of years of study. I couldn’t say whether your condition made you clinically insane but I doubt it. You thought you were acting rationally and you carefully planned what you did. I’m sure you would have been found, for criminal prosecution purposes, quite sane. But what you did was the action of a very disturbed mind, a mind which I think is still very disturbed.’

  She had to be wrong, please God, make her wrong.

  ‘So how come I’m here, how come you got overruled?’

  ‘My field is the politics of power, not psychiatry. There were two people on the panel which conducted your extended interview who were specialists in the field of mental health. Their view was that your going to Ireland after you left London and living quietly, going to Mass and choosing a kind old priest as the person you talked to, all showed remorse, a willingness to repent, to confront what you had done. Your decision to make amends for your life by applying to become a priest meant that you were no longer a danger to yourself or others and open to recovery.’

  ‘But you disagreed.’

  ‘I know how well a condition such as I have described can be hidden, camouflaged. The world I study is increasingly peopled by those who achieve great power but whose inner evil remains hidden until it is too late to restrain them and the monster emerges. Sadly I sometimes think that our world today owes more to the Book of Revelation than to the Gospels. I am quite sure you could appear to have begun your recovery and yet be someone who was still motivated by something that might not be fanaticism but is certainly sufficiently obsessive to be dangerous.’

  ‘You think I might still be a fanatical Catholic then? That applying to become a priest was part of some obsession?’

  ‘No, I think the goal you now pursue with such single-mindedness, a single-mindedness that could become dangerous, is to make your life right.’

  ‘Right?’

  ‘Right in a way you think your late wife would accept. I think you are determined to become a good man and you are prepared to do whatever it takes to become that good man. If you pursue such a goal without regard for the consequences either for yourself or others, you will re-create your old duality. You will try to embody the old saying that out of evil cometh good. It is a good thing for you to want to be a different person, one your wife could have loved and been proud of. It is a bad thing to destroy yourself and possibly others in the attempt.’

  She was still right, of course, she knew him better than he knew himself, but suddenly the anguish which had been filling his mind left him. She knew and she had made him face it. It was no longer hidden, no longer denied, buried deep within him, festering. It was out in the open. Please God it could now be dealt with, and not in his way, but in a way Bernie would have wanted it.

  ‘So what can I do?’

  ‘You need a friend, Mr Costello. You have tried to go on living your life in your head with only yourself as judge and jury on what you are doing and how you are doing it. You are trying to fight the evil in your life entirely on your own. If you continue you will at some point break down and you may suffer another, but more severe, psychotic episode. This time if you try to kill someone you may very well succeed. If so then you will spend the rest of your life heavily sedated in an asylum or be tried for murder and serve the rest of your life in a secure establishment for the criminally insane. Either way there will be no question of a recovery.’ It was the way she said it that made a cold hand clutch at his heart. She was so certain, so matter of fact. He knew she was speaking no more than the simple truth but that only increased the horror at how far he had continued to travel the road of his own destruction. ‘You need a friend, someone to take the role of your late wife, to support you and help you, someone with whom you can share your thoughts and feelings, someone you do not close out of one half of your life. You must learn to live one life and to live it outside your head, to live it with and among others.’

  He thought about what she was saying, about what she meant.

  ‘Will it be you? Will you be my friend?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. As I said before I didn’t want you for this work. I thought you unfit and I still think you unfit. Also I don’t like you. You are not a nice man, Mr Costello, not at all nice. But putting all that to one side, I can’t help you because I am far too busy. I’ve already said I resented the time our monthly meetings took up and kept me from my work. The meetings were necessary of course because I wanted to monitor you. Your progress or otherwise as a student was, as you now know, irrelevant, but your mental state concerned me so I had to give time to meeting you.’

  She had put him on the floor and now she was busy kicking the shit out of him. Oh well, what she was only doing with words he had done often enough with fists and feet. If you’re going to put someone down make sure they stay down. It was a universal rule. It obviously applied as much to people who worked for the Vatican as it did to corrupt coppers or North London gangsters

  ‘So that’s it. That’s what I have to do, find a friend?’

  ‘I can only advise you, and remember, I have no medical knowledge whatever. You are free to dismiss the interpretation I have put on events. I didn’t think you suitable for this investigation but, as I said, I was overruled. How is the enquiry going by the way, any progress?’

  Her voice hadn’t changed. It was still coldly matter of fact but she’d finished with the dangerous head-case who was on the way to becoming criminally insane, now she was talking to the clever detective who was supposed to be good at getting results.

  His reply was automatic. She was entitled to ask so he answered. There was no question who had taken the lead role in this relationship.

  ‘Maybe. We need to know ho
w many other cardinals, if any, have died in circumstances similar to Archbishop Cheng’s over the last two years, unexpectedly but apparently of natural causes.’

  ‘I’ll send you someone who can give you all the details you need. Anything else?’

  ‘What about Ricci?’

  ‘What about Inspector Ricci?’

  ‘As a friend.’

  ‘I will give you a word of advice about Inspector Ricci. He has a talent for the kind of work he does. He moves among people whose lives are built around extravagance, around show and display. False, constructed lives for false, constructed people. He can see through their show with an almost amazing insight. He can see the real person behind the façade. He can pass as one of them without becoming one of them and he can cultivate the right friends. He will go far, but he will not go as far as he expects. I told you, he has a spotless record. What I didn’t tell you was that he keeps it that way because when he gets to the top he wants no skeletons in his cupboard to hamper him in enjoying his power and authority. He may even have political ambitions. If and when you find yourself in circumstances where you need Inspector Ricci to commit unconditionally, be careful, he may very well not be there. I tell you this because you must work together and work well. Yesterday he found out about you. Today you find out about him.’

  ‘And when do I find out about you?’

  Her answer was a smile but nothing else.

  ‘I hope, Mr Costello, you are now fully and irrevocably committed to this investigation and we will have no more of the “it was the Chinese” nonsense.’

  ‘How do you know it was nonsense?’

  ‘In the same way you do. If you are to make progress I suggest that you open your mind to the wider possibilities.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘These days it is not only governments and multi-nationals who can influence international affairs.’

  ‘Do you have anybody in mind?’

  ‘More importantly, do you? As I said, keep your mind open to all the possibilities. Now, if there is nothing else I must conclude our meeting.’

  She stood up, so did Jimmy. The interview was over.

  ‘Thank you, Professor.’

  ‘Not at all, I have been asked to give you my full co-operation. I hope you feel you are getting it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I feel you’re holding nothing back.’

  ‘Then goodbye.’

  He was dismissed.

  He left feeling numb and shell-shocked.

  No, he thought as he descended the stone stairs, she was holding nothing back. No one could accuse her of that.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The library had once been the dining hall in the Rome residence of Gioffre Borgia, youngest son of Pope Alexander VI. He was considered at the time and thereafter by history as a very minor Borgia. His only rumoured excursion into family-like behaviour was the apparent murder of his elder brother Giovanni because he was having an affair with Gioffre’s wife, Sancia. His father, Pope Alexander, had to use his divine authority and publicly exonerate him. Gioffre subsequently remarried, retired from Rome, and had four children by his new wife Maria de Mila. He chose to live in the small town of Squillace on the Calabrian coast which he held as a vassal of Naples and which his descendants ruled after him in comparative peace until 1735. Well away from Roman politics and intrigue he came to be considered a good man, for a Borgia, and in his will he left his small Roman palazzo to the Church on the understanding that his soul would be prayed out of Purgatory and into Heaven in no more than a year. The Church had accepted the gift on the grounds that, for a Borgia, he hadn’t been at all such a bad man.

  The room which was now a library was small for a princely dining hall, probably capable of seating no more than forty to fifty people, but when the palazzo was turned into a college it was thought perfect to house their library. This it had stayed. Ricci’s China-watcher loved the room. He loved the rich plaster decoration of its ceiling, the leaded windows with stained glass decorations above and between the dark wooden shelves which were still filled with leather-bound books. He especially loved being alone in this room, which he frequently was when he visited. But he was under no illusions. One day it would be taken over for some other use and the volumes archived, hidden away. Their content, if considered of any value, would be digitised and databased and put online or stored on some electronic retrieval system. But until then he would use the room to sit, think, pray, and sometimes doze.

  He was sitting beside a small table in a comfortable leather chair. Opposite him sat Inspector Ricci, waiting for an answer. Finally it came.

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘He was a cardinal?’

  ‘Certainly.’ He paused for a moment. ‘In my opinion.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘In so far as it is possible to be certain.’

  Ricci fidgeted. He didn’t want to press the old man but he wanted a straight answer.

  The China-watcher was a tiny, delicate, oriental man with wispy grey hair, who wore in a black suit that was shiny with age, and a Roman collar. The large chair made him seem even smaller than he was. He looked very old, except for his eyes which shone with either mischief or delight. Or maybe it was both. Ricci got the feeling that if handled in the least bit roughly, he might break, like some flimsy, porcelain trinket.

  Ricci tried another tack.

  ‘What makes you so sure he was a cardinal?’

  ‘Because he came to Rome.’

  ‘But last time you told me that he was probably sent to Rome by the Chinese to see if he could be a link between them, the Vatican, and the underground church.’

  ‘Yes, that is what I told you.’

  ‘So how does coming to Rome make you sure he was a cardinal? You said it was the Chinese who wanted him here.’

  ‘Archbishop Cheng was sent to Rome by the Chinese. I have given you what I think is their reason.’

  There was another pause.

  ‘And?’

  ‘You never asked me why Archbishop Cheng was summoned to Rome.’

  ‘Summoned to Rome?’

  ‘By the Vatican. You never asked me why the Vatican wanted him here.’

  ‘And should I have?’

  ‘That is not for me to say, your reasons are your own. I have been asked by a friend to answer your questions which I have done to the best of my ability.’

  Ricci sighed; it was tough going. The old priest watched him. His wrinkled face was creased with a smile. He was enjoying himself.

  ‘Please tell me, Fr Phan, why was Archbishop Cheng summoned to Rome?’

  ‘To be given his red hat by the pope personally.’

  ‘So he was sent by the Chinese for one reason and summoned by the Vatican for another reason.’

  ‘Unless both parties had wanted Archbishop Cheng in Rome he could not have come. His visit was arranged by a joint agreement.’

  ‘So Archbishop Cheng was summoned here to be made a cardinal as well as being sent here on behalf of the Chinese government?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  Ricci sighed again. It was getting tougher.

  ‘No he wasn’t made a cardinal or no he wasn’t here on behalf of the Chinese government?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ricci almost swore out loud but fought down the impulse.

  ‘Yes?’

  The smile widened slightly to a grin.

  ‘Yes. No is the answer to both questions.’

  Watching the man opposite the grin slightly widened. Fr Phan hadn’t had so much fun since a rather silly CIA agent had tried to pump information from him about a high Chinese government official whom it was rumoured had become a secret Catholic.

  Ricci sat back. He was beaten.

  ‘I give up, Father. You’ve defeated me.’ He’d have to wait and let the old priest do it in his own way. He would help when he was ready, he just wasn’t
ready yet. ‘Tell me, Father, how did you become a China-watcher?’

  ‘When I was eighteen I was sent from Vietnam to Hong Kong to represent a French business based in what was then French Indo-China. While I was in Hong Kong Dien Bien Phu happened, the French were sent packing, and I was left stranded. My family came from what became the Communist North. I couldn’t go back so I decided to do what I had, for a time, been thinking about. I applied to be sent to Rome and trained for the priesthood. I was accepted and after six years was ordained and went back to Hong Kong. My family were not among the million or so North Vietnamese Catholics who had managed to go South; I lost touch with them. China was playing Big Brother to the North Vietnamese government, so watching China and Vietnam was one small way of feeling that I was keeping in touch with my family. I kept on watching until I was told by a refugee from my home town who had got out in the mess that was the end of the American war in Vietnam, that my family were dead, killed in an American air raid. I stopped watching Vietnam but kept on watching China. It was something I was good at and the Church wanted me to do it, so I did it.’

  ‘And you’re still doing it?’

  The old priest nodded. Now he was ready to answer. He had wanted a bit of fun and a little talk. Now he’d had had both he was ready to tell the inspector what he wanted to know.

  ‘Archbishop Cheng would have been made a cardinal in pectore when he was last imprisoned.’

  ‘In pectore?’

  ‘In pectore is Latin. It means literally “in the breast”. It means Archbishop Cheng was created a cardinal in secret. When that happens it is known only to the pope. Not even the cardinal so named is necessarily aware of his elevation. In any case he cannot function as a cardinal while his appointment is in pectore because it is only used in situations where the individual or their congregation need to be protected from any reprisals the elevation might cause. It is used when the individual is functioning, if at all, in a dangerous situation.’