‘Time of death?’
‘Hard to say. Three in the morning, maybe four. One of those holes in the night where we’re unlikely to find a witness. He used to work late, hold his meetings late, make his speeches. Not usually this late.’
‘Suspects?’
Gallio is growing tired of the police chief’s eloquent shoulders. They rise, they hold the position, they fall. In foreign lands, especially those with a history, people are born to not care less. ‘Anyone with respect for common sense. Or it could be a political killing. In Babylon we have a fragile economy, and the deputy minister of finance was a conversion risk, or his wife was. A big fan of Thomas, the minister’s wife, when any top-level defection to the cult of Jesus would likely slow the figures for economic growth.’
‘How’s that?’
‘He did insist on social justice.’
The police chief holds out his hands. Sadly, justice is not right now a priority. Thomas had failed to understand the realities of the age in which he lived. He was a disruptive influence.
‘Stoning suggests a group.’ Baruch is back from exploring the wider area while Gallio is yet to move from where the body came to rest. Hands on hips, he gazes at the surrounding high-rises. Not Babylonian architecture at its finest.
‘At least two or three decent stone-throwers,’ Baruch says. ‘Otherwise a stoning can take for ever.’
The footprints on the slab foundation tell no single story. Too many shoes, in too many directions. Cassius Gallio picks up a stone the size of a bread roll, common enough in modern Babylon. He extends his arm, feels the weight in his hand, lets it go. The stone cracks off the concrete.
‘We bagged some bloodied stones and took them to the station. We don’t expect them to tell us anything. Towards the end someone took pity, and speared him through the heart. Not that Thomas was an innocent.’
‘I need to talk to someone who knew him.’
The deputy finance minister lives in a Babylonian villa with a partial view of one corner of the Hanging Gardens. Inside his walled compound he has an Abyssinian greyhound and caged canaries, the best of everything. The minister is out, but Gallio wants to interview his wife. She is in tears, desolate across a Moroccan sofa in an upstairs sitting room, a crucifix and a 42-inch television on opposite walls. She wants nothing more than to talk about Thomas.
‘He was a wonderful man.’ She dries her eyes, but the streaked mascara tells a story.
‘Maybe,’ Gallio says, ‘but he was also running a property scam.’ He won’t try to break this to her gently. ‘In our part of the world Thomas was a major player in a criminal fraud. Did you know that?’
‘He was not.’ She’s a handsome woman who hasn’t been pretty or thin for as long as her husband can remember.
‘Thomas is a serial confidence trickster,’ Baruch says. ‘He’s known to the Jerusalem police and wanted for questioning in connection with a fraud involving the faked resurrection of a felon.’
Gallio sighs as if the truth is routinely sad, but, given his criminal profile, Thomas in Babylon has behaved as expected. The wife of the deputy finance minister should not be surprised that Thomas took investments large and small on a development he never intended to build, using grandiose language to mask a misleading dream.
‘We made donations.’
‘You gave him public money.’
‘For a good cause. He wanted to build a heaven on earth.’
‘Does your husband, the minister, know the extent of your donations?’
Cassius Gallio doubted a government minister could be shocked. Housing scams were not unusual, especially in Babylon. However significant the sums of money, an experienced minister would expect Thomas to ensure generous returns for the rich from substandard housing for the poor. Business as usual.
‘Laundering?’ Baruch presents the suggestion like a gift. Thomas had received cash donations. If they wanted, the city leaders could frame his murder as a gangland hit for a laundering scheme gone wrong. If they so pleased, if such an explanation would keep the public happy.
‘That’s not what he was doing.’ The woman sits up straight and swallows the last of her tears. She adjusts the chain round her neck to settle the medal of Thomas flat between her breasts. ‘He was a good man. He supported the Friends of the Vulnerable of Babylon.’
Gallio makes a visual inventory of the room, checking off mementos earned from a lifetime’s political graft. He sees many objects with no obvious function but made from precious metals. The woman sobs, can’t help herself, holds her hand to her mouth.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Cassius Gallio says. ‘A few more questions and we’re finished. Did you ever see Thomas with Jesus? You’d know because they look similar, like brothers.’
‘Thomas said Jesus was often with us.’
‘But did you ever actually see him? I need you to be clear on this point.’
We can cut through their delicacy, Gallio thinks, through their carefully confusing wording. ‘We know that Thomas claimed to be acting in the name of Jesus. Did you ever see Jesus or know how Thomas received his orders?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘So you didn’t see him?’
‘No.’
‘Who do you think killed Thomas?’
‘Satan,’ she says, no hesitation. ‘Satan carries away the servants of Jesus. He is a savage wolf, and he is among us.’
Cassius Gallio tries again. ‘Calm down, please, no need to panic. Now tell me, apart from Satan, did Thomas have any enemies?’
He’d still be alive if they hadn’t flown first to Antioch, on Turkey’s eastern Mediterranean coast, to interrogate Paul who wasn’t even one of the original twelve. Paul wasn’t there when Jesus threatened to pull down the Temple or turn the world on its head. He was a hanger-on, an afterthought. He never spoke to Jesus and never met him, but in their wisdom Baruch and Valeria had decided to target Paul.
Baruch made a fuss about flying, which he claimed was unnatural. He had pills to take, and then he didn’t take his pills. He slept most of the connecting flight of the journey, KLM to Amsterdam, and for the next leg while the Boeing taxied across the Schiphol runway he put a mask over his eyes. He pulled it off. When they were airborne he couldn’t believe the plane stayed up.
‘The last one did.’
‘Flying is presumptuous. One day we’ll have to pay.’
‘Go back to sleep, caveman.’
Baruch preferred the aisle seat, to be closer to the emergency exit when the plane crashed into mountains. He unclipped his seatbelt, clipped it again. Gallio refused to give up his half of the armrest.
‘You’re in a plane. The world is not about to end.’
‘But if it were, though. If the world were about to end, what would you do differently?’
Gallio ignored him and looked out of the window at the heavenly weather of air travel, sunlight rebounding from the white upside of clouds. He felt lucky ever to have seen this.
‘Would you abandon Judith like you did the first time?’
‘I wouldn’t have this conversation.’
‘Maybe you would. Faced with the end of the world.’
‘But we’re not facing the end of the world, are we?’ Gallio gave up looking for heaven in favour of shutting Baruch up. ‘Listen, we’re on a flight from Jerusalem to Antioch with a change at Schiphol. Whatever the destination, there’s always a change at Schiphol. The world as it is keeps turning.’
Gallio remembered Jude, sick and hopeful in Beirut, waiting for the return of Jesus. ‘You don’t really believe the world is ending, do you?’
Baruch snorted. ‘Of course not.’ The stress lines beside his eyes deepened. ‘Just the important part of the world that’s conscious in this plane as me. Do you believe Jesus is alive?’