The Seville Communion (48 page)

"Fine. You know he did it. But I need to know how and why."

"Well, Father, that's your business. But maybe I can give you a few more details. Bonafé was up on the scaffolding when Father Ferro came upon him." He put on his glasses and took a little plastic bag from his pocket. "Well, look what we found on the corpse."

"It looks like a pearl."

"It is a pearl," said Navajo. "One of the twenty set into the Virgin's face, crown and mantle. And it was in Bonafé's jacket pocket." Quart stared at the little plastic bag, at a loss. "And?" "It's a fake. As are the other nineteen."

* * *

In his office, surrounded by empty desks, the deputy superintendent gave Quart the remaining information. He poured the priest a coffee and got himself a bottle of beer. It had taken all afternoon and part of the evening for the necessary tests to be completed, but it was definite that somebody had replaced all the pearls on the carving with fakes. Navajo let Quart read the reports and faxes on the matter. His friend, Chief Inspector Feijoo, had worked till late in Madrid trying to trace the pearls. All the clues pointed to Francisco Montegrifo, the Madrid art dealer who had been Father Ferro's contact for the illegal sale of the altarpiece from Cillas ten years earlier. It was Montegrifo who had put Captain Xaloc's pearls on the market. The description matched that of a set of pearls found in the hands of a fence, a Catalan jeweller who was also a police informer. Montegrifo's role couldn't be proved, but there was evidence. The date the informer gave for the transaction coincided with the resumption of renovation work on the church. Builders' merchants contacted by Navajo's men confirmed that the cost of the goods supplied exceeded the parish priest's salary and the contents of the church collection box.

"So we have a motive," concluded Navajo. "Bonafé's on the trail. He turns up at the church and confirms that the pearls are fake. He tries to blackmail Father Ferro, or maybe the old priest doesn't even give him time." The policeman enacted the scene with his hands. "Maybe he catches him in the middle of what he's doing and kills him. He locks the vestry door and spends a couple of hours at the Casa del Postigo, thinking. Then he disappears for a couple of days." Navajo looked at Quart, as if encouraging him to fill the gaps in his account. Disappointed when Quart said nothing, he continued reluctantly, "Father Ferro won't tell us anything about his disappearance. Strange, don't you think? And you haven't helped much in that area, Padre, if you'll allow me to say so." He took another bottle of beer and a ham sandwich from the small refrigerator behind him and started to eat.

"I'd rather say nothing than lie to you," said Quart. "By talking I'd compromise people who have nothing to do with this. Maybe later, when the whole thing's over . . . But you have my word as a priest: none of it directly affects the case."

Navajo bit into his sandwich, took a swig of beer, and regarded Quart thoughtfully. "A secret from confession, right?" "You could call it that."

Another bite. "I have no choice but to believe you, Padre. Anyway, I've received instructions from my superiors and, I quote, I'm to proceed with the utmost tact in this affair." He smiled, his mouth full. "Although once the case is resolved, on the surface, I intend to look deeper into it, even if only in a personal capacity. I'm a devilishly curious policeman, if you'll permit the expression." For a moment he became serious. "And I don't like people pulling my leg." He screwed his sandwich wrapper into a ball and threw it in the bin. "I haven't forgotten that I owe you." He raised a finger suddenly: he'd just remembered something. "Oh, by the way. A man was just admitted to the Reina Sofia Hospital in a pretty serious condition. He was found under Triana Bridge a little while ago." Navajo peered at Quart closely. "A small-time private investigator. They say he works for Pencho Gavira, Macarena Bruner's husband. Rather a lot of coincidences for one night, don't you think? I assume you know nothing about this either."

Quart held Navajo's gaze. "No."

Navajo picked his teeth with a fingernail. "I thought not," he said. "The guy's a mess: both arms and his jaw broken. It took him half an hour to get out a couple of words. And when he did, all he said was that he'd fallen down the stairs."

Since Quart was the only Church representative available, Navajo gave him some official documents along with the keys to the church and to the priest's quarters. He also made him sign a brief declaration to the effect that Father Ferro had handed himself in voluntarily.

"You're the one cleric who showed his face. The archbishop telephoned this afternoon, but only to wash his hands of the whole thing." The policeman frowned. "Ah. And to ask us to keep the reporters out of it." He threw his empty beer bottle into the bin, yawned theatrically, and glanced at his watch, a hint that he wanted to go home.

Quart asked to see the parish priest. Navajo, after a moment's thought, said he saw no reason why not if Father Ferro agreed. He went to arrange it, leaving the fake pearl in its little plastic bag on the table.

Quart stared at the pearl, imagining it in Bonafé's pocket. It was large, with some of the sheen scraped off where it had been set into the carving. For the murderer, whoever the murderer was - Father Ferro, the church itself, or any of the people involved with it - the pearl, once out of its setting, had become a deadly object. Unwittingly, Bonafé had been treading at the edge of a secret that went beyond the scope of the police investigation. Do not profane my Father's house. Do not threaten those who seek sanctuary there. Conventional morals offered a poor vantage point for considering these events. One had to go beyond them, to cross that boundary to reach the inhospitable paths that the small, hard parish priest had trodden for years, bearing on his weary shoulders the weight of a cruel sky. Willing to provide peace, shelter, compassion; to forgive sins; and even - as on that night - to take the blame for them.

It wasn't such a mystery after all. Quart smiled sadly, staring at the fake pearl from Our Lady of the Tears. Things fell into place: the pearl, the church, the city itself, the particular point in time and space.

"Whenever you like, Father," announced Navajo, peering round the door.

It didn't matter who pushed Honorato Bonafé off the scaffolding. Quart reached out and touched the plastic bag containing the pearl. Contemplating Our Lady's fake tear, the soldier lost on the hills of Hattin recognised the hoarse voice and clash of steel of a brother waging his own personal battle in the same corner of the board. The man had no friends left to give him a hero's burial in a crypt among recumbent statues of knights in gauntlets with a lion at their feet. The sun was high in the sky, and at the foot of the hills the corpses of men and horses lay spread out at the mercy of jackals and vultures. So, dragging his sword, sweating beneath his chain mail, the tired warrior got to his feet and followed Simeon Navajo down the long white corridor. At the end, in a small room with a guard at the door, Father Ferro sat on a chair, in grey trousers and a white shirt, without his cassock. They hadn't handcuffed him, but he looked very small and defenceless. His black eyes, red-rimmed, stared impassively as Quart entered. With the guard and deputy superintendent watching, stunned, from the door, Quart went and kneeled before the old priest. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

For an instant, the old priest looked in astonishment at the man kneeling before him. Then he slowly raised his hand and made the sign of the Cross over Quart's head. The old man's humid eyes shone, and his chin and lips trembled as he pronounced, soundlessly, the ancient formula offering solace and hope. On hearing it, all the Knight Templar's ghosts and dead comrades smiled at last, relieved.

He crossed the deserted square and walked along the avenue towards San Telmo Bridge, in the absolute solitude and silence of dawn. He saw a free taxi but didn't stop; he needed to walk. As he drew closer to the Guadalquivir, the air seemed damp, and he felt cold for the first time since his arrival in Seville. He turned up his jacket collar. By the bridge, unlit at that hour, the Almohad Tower melted into the darkness.

He crossed the bridge. The fountain at the Puerta de Jerez wasn't on as he passed the brick-and-tile facade of the Alfonso XIII Hotel. He walked along the wall of the Reales Alcazares. Near La Juderia he breathed in the fragrance of orange trees and damp earth and then turned down the narrow streets of Santa Cruz, the sound of his footsteps preceding him. He didn't know how long he'd been walking, but he felt he'd travelled a great distance, outside time, as if in a dream. Suddenly he was in the middle of a small square with houses painted red-ochre and white, a square with railings, pots of geraniums, and tiled benches that showed scenes from
Don Quixote.
And at one end, clad in scaffolding, with a dilapidated bell-tower, and guarded by a headless Virgin, stood the church of Our Lady of the Tears: three centuries old and full of memories of the people who had found refuge there.

He sat on a bench and looked at the church for a long time. Nearby, bells rang out; the swifts and pigeons took wing and then settled back on the eaves. The moon had disappeared, but the stars were still visible, twinkling icily. At daybreak it grew colder, and the priest's muscles and back began to ache. At peace now, he watched the light grow in the east. The nearby clock struck again, and once more the birds rose. The pink glow pushing night towards the other side of the city, the clear outline of the belfry, the roof, the eaves around the square - all signalled the arrival of day. Cocks crowed, because Seville was the kind of city where cocks still crowed at dawn. Quart got up, as if waking from a long dream.

At the entrance he took out the key and turned it in the lock. The door creaked as it opened. Sufficient light filtered through the windows for him to see his way between the pews facing the altar, which was still in shadow. At the altar, a candle burned. He stood in the middle of the church, looking at the confessional with its door open, at the scaffolding against the walls, at the worn flagstones and the black mouth of the crypt where Carlota Bruner's remains lay. He kneeled in one of the pews and waited until day had fully dawned. He didn't pray - he didn't know who to pray to - and the accustomed rituals of his old discipline didn't seem appropriate. So he simply waited, his mind empty, comforted by the silent reassurance of the old walls. In the growing light he could make out a bearded prophet, an angel's wings, a cloud or a ghostly figure on the smoke-blackened ceiling. The sun arrived at last, filtering through the window with the lead outline of Christ, and the altarpiece to the glory of God was lit up, all baroque gilding and pale columns. The Holy Mother crushed a serpent's head with her foot, and that, thought Quart, was all that mattered. He went and rang the bell. He sat on the floor beneath the thick rope for a quarter of an hour and then rang the bell again. There was another quarter of an hour to go before eight o'clock Mass.

He switched on the altarpiece light and lit the six candles, three on either side of the altar. He set out the books and the cruets, then went to the vestry and washed his face and hands. He opened the cupboard and drawers, took out the liturgical objects and chose the appropriate vestments. When everything was ready, he put them on in the order and manner that no cleric taught in a seminary ever forgets. He began with the amice, the strip of white cloth still worn only by very traditional or old priests like Father Ferro. Following the ritual, he kissed the Cross at its centre before putting the amice over his shoulders and tying the ribbons behind his back. There were three albs - two of them were too short for him, so he chose the third, probably the one used by Father Lobato. He then took the wide band of white silk known as the stole and, having kissed the Cross at its centre, put it on over the amice. At last he took the old white silk chasuble, with faded gold embroidery, and slipped it over his head. When he was dressed, he stood motionless, his hands resting on the sideboard, staring at the dented old crucifix between the two heavy candelabra. Despite not having slept, he felt clear-headed and peaceful, just as he had when he sat on the bench out in the square. Following the ritual, performed in the same way by others for almost two thousand years, diminished his sense of solitude. It didn't matter that the temple was damaged, that the belfry was covered with scaffolding, that the paintings on the ceiling were faded. Or that on the wall, Mary bowed her head before an angel in a painting full of cracks and stains and darkened varnish. Or that at the end of Father Ferro's old telescope, millions of light-years away, the cold stars mocked it all.

Maybe Heinrich Heine was right and the universe was nothing but the dream of a drunken God who had fallen asleep on a star. But the secret was well guarded. Father Ferro was prepared to go to prison for it, and neither Quart nor anyone else had the right to reveal it to the good people now waiting in the church. Sounds - a cough, footsteps, a pew creaking as somebody knelt - reached him through the vestry door, beside the confessional where Honorato Bonafé died for touching Tanit's veil.

He looked at his watch. It was time.

XV
Vespers

Using his real name would have contravened the Code.

Clough and Mungo,
Approaching Zero

Two days after returning to Rome and presenting his report on Our Lady of the Tears, Quart received a visit from Monsignor Paolo Spada at his apartment on the Via del Babuino. It was raining, just as it had been three weeks before, when Quart was ordered to Seville. When the doorbell rang, Quart was at an open window that looked on to the terrace; he was watching the rain fall on the roofs, the ochre walls of the houses, the grey sheen of the paving stones and the steps of the Piazza di Spagna.

Spada stood in the doorway, solid and square in a dripping black raincoat, shaking the rain from his bristly head. "I was passing," he said, "and I thought maybe you could give me a cup of coffee." Without waiting for an answer, he hung his raincoat on a hook, went through to the austere sitting room, and sat in an armchair by the windows. He sat there in silence, staring at the rain, until Quart returned from the kitchen carrying a coffee pot and cups on a tray.