God's Dog (15 page)

She remembered a distant September afternoon they'd spent together by the sea; the sand had looked positively black in the setting sun, the bathing attendants were folding up the deckchairs and the hawkers were wheeling carts piled high with unsold clothes up the concrete walkways all along the beach, their long shadows weaving over the white walls of the bathing-huts. An old fisherman up to his waist in water was scrabbling doggedly about in the sand in search of clams; he had the hard, rough skin of a man who has spent the whole summer in the sun. She and Ivan had sat down at the water's edge.

‘Look! If you go far enough out, you'll come to America…' Ivan had said meaningfully, looking towards the setting sun.

‘Rubbish: if you go far enough out, you'll come to Sardinia,' she had replied, taking the wind out of his sails. They'd both burst out laughing, hugging one another and rolling round in the sand, two bodies forming one joyful whole. Those were the days when anything could make them laugh until they cried. Everything was still in place, everything was possible.

The sound of a bus driving off from the traffic-lights interrupted Marta's train of thought. Outside, it was getting light; the room was slowly emerging from the darkness. Marta picked her clothes up from the chair and dressed herself; she was in no hurry. She put on her make-up carefully while the coffee gurgled on the stove. When she went out into the street, the first rays of sun were coming in through the blinds and falling on to the suitcase she had left in the room.

After a supper of lentil soup at a table with a group of beggars, he had slept in a refuge run by Caritas. At first light he had got up from the camp-bed and gone out. Empty buses were arriving in the station forecourt. The bells of the first Easter Day mass could just be heard above the clanging of the overhead railway. On the wall of the ticket-office in the bus station Salazar found a map of the bus routes between there and the sea. He studied the coastline, trying to work out where he might have been held captive. A thick pinewood, low-rise holiday homes, abut half an hour out of town. He located two possibilities: the stretch of coast between Fregene and Focene, or the coast around Castel Fusano. Going towards Ostia it was all too built up. The sudden sharp curves ruled out Castel Fusano; to get to Rome from there it would make more sense to take Via Cristoforo Colombo, which was completely straight. The planes that he had heard suggested Fregene or Focene, which were not far from Fiumicino Airport. Salazar rested his finger on the map and began working out how to board the next bus to Fregene. He had to act fast. He could try begging, but there was hardly anyone around, and it would be slow work. Robbing someone outright would be dangerous. So he went into a self-service restaurant in the station and grabbed a fork from the cutlery section, then continued on to the Chapel of Saint Christopher, to the left of the station. Here his goal was the alms-box beneath the row of candles, one of which he lit, pretending to pray while rummaging around in the lock with his fork; at last it broke, yielding up a pile of coins he slipped quickly into his track-suit pocket. He acknowledged the patron saint of travellers with a sign of the cross and left the chapel almost at a run.

He got out at the first stop in Fregene, in front of the police barracks, and went into a bar on the other side of the road. Now he had to find the baker's shop. He ordered a coffee and drank it at the counter, taking his time. Choosing his moment, when the place was empty, he went up to the barman and asked:

‘Excuse me, can you tell me where the bakeries are here in Fregene? I'm a baker and I'm looking for temporary work.'

The barman was drying the glasses.

‘A bakery?' he said, turning towards the cashier for further details. It was she who answered for him:

‘There's Albanesi's here on the square, or else De Piscopo, near the church. Otherwise you'll have to go to Fiumicino.'

‘Which way is the church?'

‘Here in the pinewood. What's the name of the street?' she asked, turning to her colleague for assistance. But Salazar had already left the bar.

Some trails of mist still lingered in the pinewood. He found the church by following the people who were going to mass, then wandered the nearby streets until he caught the smell of freshly-baked bread. De Piscopo's bakery was a low building with metal door and window frames and an ugly garish green shop sign. Salazar walked past it and took a road between the trees which gradually narrowed; parts of the asphalt were covered in sand. The villas were thinning out, their entrance gates becoming higher. It was not long before he recognised the view he had seen from the window of the basement; the house in which he had been held stood in a curve of the road. Although the surrounding villas were luxurious in the extreme, this one had no garden and the area around it was choked with weeds; the blinds were down, the windowsills were covered with moss and the eaves had tufts of grass growing in them. A rusty flagpole hung above the peeling door. Perhaps it had once been a Forestry Commission Station, which had been turned into a holiday home and then abandoned. Salazar walked round the building and found a back window he thought he could force open. He found a piece of wood in the undergrowth and managed to raise the blind, then broke the window, turned the handle and climbed in. Everything inside seemed to be in order: a house shut up for the holidays, with mattresses rolled up on their springs and wardrobes open to let in the air. He found the living room with the long table and the dusty pottery; he also found the basement where he had been held. He inspected each room carefully, but the members of the Free Death Brigade had left no sign of their earlier presence. He paid a cursory visit to the kitchen, and was about to leave when he noticed a lump of something white stuck to the stove; at first he thought it was mould, but when he touched it it felt like plastic, or hardened glue. As he walked around, he noticed that the floor was sticky, and the sink was encrusted with that same resin-like material. He opened the cupboards, inspected plates and glasses, pulled out all the saucepans; the larger ones were still damp, their interiors coated with something white. He looked in the dustbin and found a piece of candle. So, someone had been melting wax. He searched the place for other clues. Bathroom, bedrooms and living room revealed nothing. He went out to the back of the house and poked around in the undergrowth, where he found a series of large white plastic tubes which had been cut lengthways; they were three inches wide and about a metre and a half in length. Inside, his fingers came upon lumps of wax similar to those he had found in the kitchen. Now he was beginning to see the light and, as he did so, he felt a sudden shudder of horror creep down his spine. Clearly, the members of the Free Death Brigade had been making candles, and big ones at that. Not to light in front of altars, but more probably to serve as explosive devices. They were to replace the ones on the papal podium in Saint Peter's Square and send everything sky-high! Now Salazar saw why the man who had questioned him had been so interested in the police patrols on the podium! He clenched his fists and cursed himself. Yet in fact he had nothing to reproach himself for. It was only by answering those questions that he had had any chance of getting out of their clutches. Anyway, there might still be time. He looked down at himself, covered in scratches from the brambles, dressed like a beggar, his pockets weighed down with small change. It was not an encouraging sight.

The De Piscopo bread van was parked outside the bakery with the engine running and the door open. Between blaring adverts, the radio was giving out the traffic news. The driver had gone into the shop to take the orders and was chatting with the baker; two shop boys were lazily piling the bread into the baskets, cackling as they did so and occasionally gesturing towards the window. They loaded up a couple of trays of pastries and went into the back of the shop. Salazar observed the scene from behind a rubbish-bin. He walked around the bread van, jumped into the driving-seat and drove off, skidding over the gravel. The driver came out of the shop, put his hands on his hips, shook his head with a smile and went back into the shop, thinking the shop boys were playing a joke on him.

Salazar turned into the road which led to the Aurelia, the curves reminding him of the route he had been taken on, blindfold, by the members of the Free Death Brigade. He had to act fast; the ceremony would be starting in an hour. It was a glorious day; the air was crystal-clear, fields and houses crisply outlined, barely blurred by the thinning mist on the windscreen. The rows of cluster pines were giving off a fresh scent of resin, casting sharp shadows on the tender green of the fields. The roads around the city were strangely empty, but by the time he got to Via Cipro the pilgrims' buses were already double-parked, and columns of visitors snaked like gigantic caterpillars from one pavement to the other. Salazar abandoned De Piscopo's van and carried on on foot. People were pouring into the square; but before going to the colonnade, they had to be searched. Policemen were going through bags and running metal detectors over their owners. A large stand had been put up on the side overlooking Via della Conciliazione, with numbered paying places, and special areas for official visitors. The crowd was buzzing with impatience; children were climbing on to their parents' shoulders and craning their necks in the direction of the basilica. Many people had brought along plastic stools and were standing on them to get a better view. Although it was barely ten o'clock, the sun was already hot. Water sellers with red caps were weaving their way along the screened-off corridors, while policemen directed people towards the less crowded parts of the square. Salazar had decided to make a discreet approach to a Swiss Guard and give the alarm, so as to avoid creating sudden panic. The Swiss Guards were the only ones he trusted. But the nearest ones were just in front of the papal podium. He was trying to worm his way through the throng to reach them when he heard someone calling him.

‘Well, if it isn't Salazar! So you're here too! Well, of course you are! We wouldn't miss this for anything!'

The guarantor of faith was coming towards him, all dressed in white, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief.

‘That's an odd get-up you're wearing! Were you thinking of running the marathon? Actually, sporting gear isn't a bad wheeze. I'm already boiling in this gabardine,' he added, loosening his tie. His eyes on the basilica, Salazar sought desperately for an excuse to get away. But the doctor rambled on, nodding and winking in the direction of the podium.

‘You'll see, we've done a grand job,' he said in a low voice.

‘Papal medicine is in the vanguard when it comes to the preservation of corpses,' he continued. ‘Of course modern refrigeration techniques are crucial here. My predecessors completely dehydrated Ratzinger's body after his death; we did the rest. We kept nature well away from that coffin. Basically, inspector, that is the essence of every miracle: the suspension of the laws of nature. As you see, we're getting there! You might say that the Kingdom of Heaven will come when man has succeeded in suspending the laws of nature altogether. It's all much simpler than you think!' Squinting against the sun, the doctor continued dabbing his forehead with his handkerchief. He raised his sweat-drenched eyebrows and carried on talking, despite the effort that it seemed to cost him, even giving a faintly gleeful smile.

‘Do you know, inspector, I was thinking of you as I was getting ready to come out this morning. I was also thinking about angels: I was thinking that all the angelic orders are probably here at this very moment. If the pope's body is found to be intact, it will be a portentous event, a miracle such as has not occurred for centuries. The angelic orders could not miss out on such an occasion, so here they'll all be, from the Powers to the Dominions and the Principalities. The archangels will be here too, probably the odd Seraph. I don't know about the Thrones, they're rather busy, particularly at Easter; I'm not sure about the Cherubim, either, that would be too dangerous. As you know, Cherubim are referred to as the ‘burning ones'; the heat produced by such a high concentration of burning angels would be unbearable for us humans, we'd all end up fried! The ones who'll be here in force are the Virtues, the angels who inspire men to excel in art and science. So why not try to make contact with them? It shouldn't be difficult. All you need is to locate the lightning flashes they produce. We are in no doubt about the ways that angels reveal themselves. The Bible is quite clear in this respect: the Powers are surrounded by coloured auras and misty vapours, the Principalities by rays of light and the Virtues by lightning. Do you know what I think, Salazar? I think that not enough is made of these possibilities of contact between humanity and the celestial sphere. We must not let this chance slip through our fingers; such opportunities occur just a few times in a millennium, it will be centuries before another such occurs. One mustn't overdo it with miracles; they tend to lose their allure. But we are men of science and have little to do with such mass events; we should have prepared ourselves for this one by establishing contact with the angelic world in order to organise a human-angelic meeting in tandem with the ceremony. Times have changed, mankind is no longer sunk in barbarism; we are now sufficiently mature to engage in dialogue with these first offshoots of divinity. Think of the good that could come of it! The Eternal Father Himself would benefit; people would have greater faith in the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. How could the curia not have thought of that? What about the angelic hierarchies themselves? Has it not occurred to anyone that here on earth, after more than two thousand years, we are beginning to need some pretty powerful signs? The Archangel Michael should have given the matter some thought…' The doctor shook his head; a drop of sweat had fallen on to his lip, and then on to the white hairs of his goatee beard. Salazar looked at him with something verging on distaste, then turned his gaze towards the crowd in front of him, seeking a way through.