Gallio and Claudia have questioned Bartholomew endlessly, without great success.
‘What’s your opinion of Paul?’
‘I like Paul.’
‘You said that as if there’s a but.’
‘Paul always wants to explain. Sometimes Jesus just is.’
Valeria runs out of patience and orders them by phone and email and text to give up on Bartholomew. Once, twice, three times. She wants Cassius Gallio in Cairo, because even her researchers struggle to remember Bartholomew’s name — as a disciple he must be unimportant. Gallio suggests Bartholomew is about to crack, while after-images of Claudia from the night before mean he couldn’t care less.
‘Leave Bartholomew alone,’ Valeria says, ‘before I have to send someone to fetch you.’
Claudia tells Gallio their time is up. The reality they have to face is that no one can live in Caistor indefinitely. She invites Bartholomew to join their daily meeting at the Tea Cosy Café, and over a disappointing cappuccino she convinces him he’s done everything he can in Caistor. The hour has come, she says, for him to turn his thoughts to more benighted corners of the earth.
‘We’ll pay your fare,’ Claudia says, and Gallio wishes she wasn’t in such a hurry. He assumes that for her the twin room in the White Hart pub has been an interlude, a brief fantasy, and now she wants home with her children. She’s young, she’ll recover.
‘Wherever you feel called to go,’ she tells Bartholomew, ‘as thanks from Rome for your help.’
Caistor has no travel agent, which gives Cassius Gallio fresh hope of a new delay, but Claudia discovers internet terminals at the Heritage Centre. Claudia is keener to leave than he realised, past the café inside the entrance, the three of them loud on the stripped floorboards, up the stairs beyond the library to the computers on the second floor.
Claudia sits Bartholomew in front of a computer screen and shows him pictures of Greece, gorgeous and blue. Greece needs love and medicine and social justice. She leans across him and searches for a flight, departing Humberside Airport, and the earliest available is a last-minute package leaving later in the week to the northern Peloponnese, west of Athens. Not an established tourist destination but the new-build hotel has sea views. Looks promising. Fly into a city called Patras.
Bartholomew holds up his hands, shakes his head. Not Greece. He’s less interested in gorgeous and blue and more in overrun by idolatry. Claudia clicks to Ibiza, but Bartholomew points further along the alphabet to Iran. Iran. Claudia will struggle to find Tehran four-star specials with pool and vibrant nightlife.
But Bartholomew insists, so Claudia puts together a route leaving the next day that involves three transfers to the airport at Bashkale in Armenia, which is the closest she can get him to the border. She downloads for Bartholomew an Armenian visa for an Israeli citizen available on the internet for immediate travel. The final stage, the short trip into Iran itself, he’ll have to arrange by himself. She fills out his booking details.
‘How many bags?’
No bags. One-way.
The next afternoon they share Bartholomew’s taxi for the short ride to the airport, leaving plenty of time before his first leg to Amsterdam (Schiphol, inevitably). Gallio buys him a cappuccino at the café in the airport, and there’s a smiley face in the chocolate on the milk.
‘About the cross, and Golgotha,’ Bartholomew says. He has milk froth on his moustache, and Gallio hopes for a last-minute confession, a decisive offering before Departures. Instead Bartholomew asks a question. ‘At the very end, when Jesus died, was there light?’
Hopeless. The disciples give nothing away, but they’re happy to take from others. ‘You had to be there.’
Gallio immediately regrets his unkindness. Bartholomew missed the crucifixion because he was scared, or preparing an escape for Jesus, but at Humberside Airport Gallio has no further use for him. A bit of kindness won’t hurt either of them.
‘Yes, now you mention it. I’m trying to remember. I think there was light.’
Bartholomew is joyful like a child. He wants the same story at every bedtime, even when in daylight there are more convincing versions available. He ignores the implications of an anaesthetic-infused sponge, even after Gallio has brought it to his attention. Jesus looked dead but in fact was sedated, which connects into a new plausible story: Joseph’s tomb was pre-stocked with medicines and dressings. Even so, given his injuries, Jesus needed three days to gain strength before his accomplices could move him.
A gate number appears on the flight information screens.
‘Better make a move,’ Bartholomew says, hands flat on the table, but Gallio can feel the levelling of those Galilee brown eyes, saying talk to me one last time, while you can. You may never see me again, and I am a disciple of Jesus. ‘You’ll not stop looking for him. You know that, don’t you?’
‘The investigation is ongoing, and for the time being the Wanted bulletin remains valid. I’ll be looking for Jesus while that continues to be my job.’
‘I feel I’ve neglected you. Somehow I got very busy, even in Caistor, but we should have spent more time together. I sense I could help.’
‘Where’s Jesus?’
‘Everywhere.’ Bartholomew drains the last of his coffee, a regular dark-skinned guy with a beard wearing pale Middle Eastern robes. ‘When you find him you’ll know, but maybe he’s not the one who’s hiding.’
Since identifying the body of James, ages ago in the stable in Jerusalem, Cassius Gallio has worn the disguise of a Swiss pharma rep, a religious tourist, an academic, and most recently in Caistor a normal human being muddling through while giving his time to the Church. None of these pretend people are him. If the quest were the other way round, and Jesus were to look for Cassius Gallio, he wouldn’t know where to start.
‘Maybe I should stay,’ Bartholomew says. ‘Point you in the right direction. I’d like to help you feel his love.’
Bartholomew’s flight is called. Boarding. Claudia suddenly remembers he hasn’t checked in but she rushes his e-ticket details to a self-service terminal. His destiny is not to stay in England, and when confronted by automated check-in Claudia is the answer to his prayers.
‘Open yourself up to him,’ Bartholomew says, as Gallio ushers him in the direction of the gate. ‘He knows who you are.’
‘Me? By name?’
Cassius Gallio stops on the concourse, and Bartholomew does too. A flight crew has to dodge to avoid them.
‘You were there at the crucifixion. He never forgets a face.’
‘You should go through,’ Claudia says, but Cassius Gallio gives Bartholomew a last opportunity to tell the truth.
‘Nobody comes back from the dead, my friend. That’s common knowledge. Tell me what really happened.’
Bartholomew does not take this opportunity at Departures to change his mind. ‘I’ll pray for you,’ he says, ‘that you find what you’re looking for.’
‘You need to go through Security,’ Claudia says. ‘Go now.’
‘Jesus did not come back from the dead,’ Gallio says. ‘I hope you can live with yourself.’
‘Don’t worry about that. Worry about the fire that’s coming, when Jesus returns and has dominion over the earth.’
‘But if he doesn’t?’
‘He is coming, along with the cleansing fire.’
‘Go,’ Claudia says. ‘And good luck.’