Cassius Gallio is doing his best: good cop, carrot, the agreeable options in life. So far he has spared Bartholomew the bad cop and the beatings, methods that carry more weight in the Antonia. Fewer contemporary distractions, but Valeria has sent him to England. She wants him to get ahead of Baruch and restore a sense of control, because Baruch gone rogue threatens the outcome of their mission.
‘You should have fitted him with a tracer.’ Valeria hated not knowing where everyone was, and what they were doing. ‘You had plenty of opportunity in Hierapolis.’
‘We’re supposed to be partners.’
‘But you fell out. You should have seen it coming.’
For the first time since Gallio came back Valeria was flustered, but she too had her career to consider, and the CCU was obsessed with results. Welcome to Jerusalem, Valeria, welcome to the complex case of Jesus.
Gallio wonders what damage Baruch can do in England. Unless, and this is not impossible, the disciple identified in Caistor as Simon is Jesus. Jesus has been hiding away on barbarian shores as a minor disciple, biding his time in an obscure and forgotten territory. Simon in a market town in England matches these requirements. Gallio urges the taxi onwards, because Baruch mustn’t get there first.
Even with a knife flat-bladed across his forehead Gallio had been optimistic that he was not in a proper fight with Baruch. A proper fight, with Baruch, was to the death, but they seemed to have reached a moment in the Shaare Zedek Medical Center where the fighting could reasonably stop. At least, Gallio was hoping they had.
‘You don’t want to die, do you, Gallio? You’re frightened of death. I can smell your little man fear.’
Baruch turned the blade, the cutting edge honed to the idea of slicing off an eyebrow, whole. In fact only Gallio had stopped fighting, and he waited for his life to flash before his eyes. It did not, which was encouraging, though as he’d noticed in other moments of extreme stress, most of them connected to Jesus, time did change shape. Time swelled, slowed, or everything happened at once. Time became unreliable, in the open moments between life and death.
Baruch’s knife stayed flat against Gallio’s forehead for several seconds, or for several years. He forgets.
‘You are pathetic,’ Baruch’s knife-face wavered. ‘You are old and ineffectual.’
Warm, wet, dripping into Gallio’s eye. The bastard, Gallio thought, he cut me. Gallio put his hand to his face and it came away wet and red, and not even a proper fight because he sensed the worst was over. He pressed his fingers hard against the wound, like a clumsy salute. Baruch had cut him, but he dared go no further because behind Cassius Gallio was Valeria, and behind her the CCU, and the legions, all the way back to Rome.
The two men had arrived at the medical centre to find Bartholomew sitting up in bed with a bowl of chicken soup. He was pale, but he managed a smile of welcome. Baruch sat down on the end of the bed, eyes greedy like an ancient prophet, sizing Bartholomew up, no suffering too extreme to imagine. Bartholomew steadied his bowl. He had no idea.
‘Leave him alone,’ Gallio said. Paul’s smug acceptance of his arrest, turning it to his advantage, did not sit well with Baruch. On the journey from the hotel he’d driven like a man possessed, his anger fierce enough to deter every possible traffic accident. Now Gallio wanted to intervene before the anger from the road found a way to settle on Bartholomew. ‘He’s been unconscious since Hierapolis. What can he tell us?’
‘He has information about his attackers. Maybe an identification.’
‘We arrested Paul,’ Gallio said. ‘You wanted Paul. Leave Bartholomew to me.’
‘Why should I? Paul will get his escort, the works. Cushy house arrest in some middle-class street in Rome, and now we can’t touch him. They’re pulling us out of shape, like last time, leaving too many questions unanswered.’
‘Baruch, we’re on the same side. We’re partners.’
Bartholomew sipped at a spoonful of soup, licked his lips, rediscovered entry-level distinctions between alive and dead. Eating was one of them. Baruch stood up and Bartholomew spilled soup on his sheets. Advantages, disadvantages.
‘Who was trailing me in Damascus?’
Gallio took a step back from Baruch’s undivided attention, but at least he was distracted from his prey.
‘You were followed?’
‘You know I was. And who tipped off Paul in Antioch?’
‘Why are you asking me? Ask Bartholomew, he’s more likely to know than I am. But do ask nicely, please.’
‘That’s exactly what I plan to do.’
Bartholomew had moved his bowl to the safety of the bedside table. Baruch sat closer this time, the disciple’s eyes, nose and throat within his reach. ‘Start at Hierapolis,’ he said. ‘This better be good.’
‘Nicely, I said.’
Bartholomew opened his mouth, but at first no words came out. He coughed into his hand and tried again. His voice was weak, feeling a way back into speaking. ‘I remember the beginning of the attack.’ Another cough, more forceful this time. ‘If that’s what you want to know. They were quick. They put a sack on my head. I didn’t see any faces.’
‘How many of them?’
Bartholomew shook his head; the memory simply wasn’t there for him.
‘What about voices?’
‘One voice, I think. Maybe more. It was difficult to hear, because of the sack.’
‘Try to place the voice,’ Gallio said, and compared to Baruch he sounded like a saint. ‘A man or a woman? What language were they speaking?’
Bartholomew smiled thinly, tired now. ‘At the time,’ he said, ‘I thought that’s how the devil would sound.’
‘Like the devil,’ Baruch said. ‘Thank you hugely for your help.’
For a full half-minute of silence, Cassius Gallio considered Satan as a suspect. Satan had been accused twice, in Babylon by the wife of the deputy finance minister and now by Bartholomew. Gallio resisted coincidence as an explanation, but could hardly bring in Satan for questioning. Instead he reasoned their latest suspect away: from inside a kidnapper’s sack voices will sound satanic.
‘Another question for you,’ Gallio said. ‘If you feel up to it. Why did James jump from the roof?’
Bartholomew looked confused. ‘Did he do that? I didn’t know.’
‘What do you know?’
‘Leave him alone, Baruch.’
‘Or what?’
Baruch reached around and pulled out his knife, laid the blade across his thigh.
‘He’s doing his best. He’s telling you what he remembers.’
‘He’s lying. Disciples lie. That’s their defining characteristic, to lie about what they’ve lived and seen. They’re keeping a secret, and Bartholomew is going to tell me what it is.’
‘The knife isn’t the way.’
‘So what is the way? Look at you, with your reasonable questions and your miserable face. I don’t know what the truth is with Paul, but I do know he goaded Jesus into an appearance. He stung the living Jesus by setting up the murder of Stephen on the street in Jerusalem, then Jesus ambushed him on the Damascus road. The two events are connected. Hurting a disciple can incite Jesus to intervene.’
‘That may be a correlation, not a cause.’
‘So let’s find out. Let’s taunt Jesus and see what happens.’
Baruch picked up his knife and Gallio reached for his arm. Baruch was up and on Gallio with the speed and expertise of a killer. He hissed like a snake. He pressed the blade flat against Gallio’s forehead, and cut him. He cut him above the eyebrow. He drew blood.