The Gospel Of Judas Page 20

  ‘How?’

  He cast around. How do you prove things? How do you know what happened, when? How do you know who the man Youdas was, and what kind of relationship he had with Yeshu? ‘Airline tickets. People, for God’s sake. The people I was with in London.’ He thought of the bishop and his heart sank. The keyboard tapped in the background, the hesitant touch of evidence. The magistrate looked down at the desk in front of her, examining a report or something. Her voice was neutral, informed with the indifferent tones of bureaucracy. ‘At what time of day did you leave Italy?’

  ‘In the morning. She drove me to the airport.’

  A sudden upward glance. ‘The signora drove you?’

  ‘Gave me a lift. Drove me.’

  ‘So she was at your apartment in the morning when you were there?’

  ‘She came to my flat that morning. To drive me to the airport.’

  ‘So you were the last person to see her alive?’

  ‘Was I?’ Some kind of nightmare. Not a nightmare with Madeleine, not a nightmare with Judas. A nightmare of absence, the lack of someone, a void where once there had been a presence. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know when she died. I don’t know who saw her. How can I answer that kind of question?’

  ‘Signora Brewer’ – the woman struggled to pronounce the name; it came out with the vowels widened and emphasised: Breu-where – ‘died during the course of that morning. She was not found until the afternoon, but she died during the morning.’

  ‘But when?’

  She ignored his question. ‘Can you provide evidence that she took you to the airport at the time you say?’

  ‘Of course I can. The time of my check-in.’

  ‘Tell me. Tell me the time and the airline and the desk.’

  He told her, and the keys pattered at his back, footsteps hurrying after his account of the morning, a morning that was merely two days ago but a whole world away, a whole aeon away, projected now into a new significance: the last moments of Madeleine on earth, her last moments anywhere perhaps. Madeleine letting herself into the flat with her light familiarity, her smile, her gentle hands touching his hands, his face. Madeleine begging him, that was what was so disturbing, Madeleine begging him for consolation, for consummation, for that fragile communion that they had shared, the communion that gave them an impoverished glimpse of the eternal. ‘She must have gone back to the flat,’ he said. ‘After she left me at the airport she must have gone back. Didn’t the porter see her come in?’

  The magistrate was impassive. ‘We will need material evidence of all this. Airline tickets, receipts, that kind of thing. What was your relationship with this woman?’

  ‘I’ve already told you. We were friends.’

  ‘What kind of friends? Close friends? Were you her confessor?’

  ‘I had been, some time ago. When we first met. But no longer.’

  ‘How was she that morning? How did she seem?’

  Leo shrugged. How did Madeleine seem? She was dead, for God’s sake. How did she seem? ‘Normal. She was a woman of moods. She seemed happy, she seemed sad. Sometimes both at the same time.’

  ‘And that morning?’

  He was silent. The magistrate looked at him, saw something there, picked up with her magisterial antennae some vibration. ‘Were you and signora Brewer lovers?’ she asked.

  ‘What an extraordinary question.’

  She looked at him bleakly. ‘My job is extraordinary, Mr Newman. The death of a woman in this way is extraordinary. Falling from a roof is extraordinary, suicide is extraordinary, murder is extraordinary, therefore my questions are extraordinary. I repeat: were you and Mrs Brewer lovers?’

  ‘I am a priest,’ Leo said.

  The magistrate made a small noise, a noise that was part laugh, part snort of contempt. Evidently she did not think much of priests. ‘I will have to ask you for a blood sample.’

  ‘A blood sample? Why in God’s name a blood sample?’

  The keys pattered in the background. ‘Because Mrs Brewer had sexual intercourse shortly before she died. The pathologist found semen inside her body. We want to know whose it might be.’ Her words seemed to hang in the still air of the office like an exhalation from the tomb. Inside her body. And Leo saw Madeleine lying broken on a slab, an approximate collection of limbs and ribs, a bag of bruised and ruptured organs. And probing, latex fingers working their way inside the depths of her belly, intrusive impersonal fingers searching inside her. Desecration. He heard his own voice in the room, his voice being chased by the chatter of keys, by the scream of swifts outside the open window, by the awful hurrying footsteps of guilt. ‘What possible business can it be of yours whether signora Brewer made love to someone before she died?’

  ‘Did she have sexual intercourse with you, Mr Newman?’

  ‘Her husband. Why not her husband?’

  ‘Mr Newman, will you please answer my question?’

  ‘Why is it your business?’

  ‘Because a woman is dead, Mr Newman. A woman is dead and it is my job to discover how and why she died.’

  ‘You think I might have killed her? This is ridiculous. You think I killed her?’

  ‘I don’t think anything yet. She was a woman with a family. Possibly she was a woman with a lover. She was a woman who might have been a danger to one of the people in her life. She was a woman who died. She may have fallen, she may have jumped, she may have been pushed. She may even have been killed by a blow to the head before being thrown from the roof. All these things are possible. Some of them are more probable than others; one of them happened. My job is to find out which one it was.’

  Leo said, ‘She was a woman with a history of attempted suicide.’

  The magistrate smiled, as though mere knowledge was an admission of guilt. ‘Did you know that, Mr Newman?’

  ‘I was told so by her husband. This morning.’

  ‘But you did not know about this before? Your close friend never told you that she had a history of … mental instability?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘And you never suspected anything?’

  ‘She had moods. Nothing particular.’

  The woman nodded. ‘And now will you answer my question? Did you have sexual intercourse with Mrs Brewer on the morning that she died?’

  ‘What about her husband?’ Leo repeated. He almost shouted it. He raised his voice and the magistrate looked back at him and smiled a humourless smile because she was used to being shouted at by men and she had learned to use it to her own advantage.

  ‘Her husband denies having any sexual relationship with his wife for the last two months,’ she said.

  Leo Newman was silent. The tapping of keys paused, waiting for his answer. Pointedly the magistrate looked down, consulted the pathologist’s report as though she might discover something new there, some small, organic detail that she had overlooked.

  ‘I did,’ he said quietly. ‘Yes.’

  A quick glance up. ‘And did she consent to this?’

  ‘Do you mean, did I rape her and then throw her body off the roof and make my own way to the airport? Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘I mean just what I said. Did she consent to having sexual intercourse with you?’

  Leo was silent. He closed his eyes. You might close your eyes in the confessional and no one would notice. Here the magistrate watched, and put her own interpretation on things. He closed his eyes and Madeleine touched his face with her fingers as though discovering him in the total darkness of the Church of San Crisogono. ‘Yes, she did. She wanted it.’

  ‘Meaning that you didn’t?’

  ‘Meaning nothing of the kind. We were in the middle of a love affair. It was difficult, not the kind of thing you can summarise easily in a couple of words.’

  ‘But you wanted the affair to end?’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’ He cast around for an answer, as though such things as answers and explanations were lying around somewhere in this cramped and shabby office. And in a
sense they were, bound up in dozens of manila folders: answers and half-answers and lies; the truth, the whole truth and nothing like the truth. What is truth, Pilate asked? The Greek word aletheia. ‘I don’t know,’ he repeated. ‘Then I thought, maybe yes, I wanted it ended. Now …’ His voice faltered. Something took over, some awful tide of emotion that for a moment he couldn’t control. He shook his head as though to rid himself of it. His eyes smarted and his heart pounded and sweat stood out on his forehead. He needed to swallow. There was something stuck in his throat that would not go down. Perhaps these organic manifestations were all symptoms of guilt. Perhaps they signified that he had killed her.

  The magistrate nodded as though she understood everything. She called for water and a plastic cup and she waited while he drank. And then she went on: ‘You had sex with her and when it was all over you killed her and threw her body over into the alleyway behind the palazzo, and then made your way to the airport? Was that it?’

  Some part of him, a small, fragmented part watched all this from a distance and knew that he ought to laugh. It was a joke, an uproarious, absurd joke. He should have roared with laughter, wept with laughter, wet himself with laughter. It should have hurt his sides and made his ribs ache. He just shook his head. There were tears there, of course; but they were not tears of laughter. He saw his tormentor through a blur of tears, as though she was painted in watercolours and the paint had run in the rain. ‘Of course I didn’t kill her,’ he said quietly. ‘This whole thing is mad. I didn’t kill her. I love her.’

  ‘But you didn’t expect her to take her own life, did you?’

  ‘Does anyone expect such things?’

  ‘Apparently her husband did.’

  ‘So why don’t you listen to him?’

  ‘Because my job is to listen to everyone.’ She paused, considered the papers in front of her, considered the man in front of her, considered matters of guilt and innocence. ‘I would like you to make a formal statement, signor Newman. You are obliged by law to state what you know of the events surrounding the death of Mrs Madeleine Brewer. You are, of course, entitled to have a lawyer present if you wish.’

  ‘I don’t need a lawyer,’ Leo said.

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Very well. I suggest you begin from the very start, when you woke up.’

  And so they rehearsed the trivial, intimate events of that morning once more. Yet again he moved through the flat getting his breakfast, getting things ready, listening for a footfall on the landing outside the front door. Yet again Madeleine fitted her key in the door and opened it and walked into the apartment. Yet again she greeted him with a flat ‘Good morning’ and took his hands in hers, kissing the tips of his fingers, touching them to her face. They talked, they went out on to the terrace, he followed her back in. ‘Love me,’ she whispered once more. ‘Love me.’

  ‘Can you tell me the time that this happened?’ the magistrate asked.

  Leo cast around vaguely. ‘About eight o’clock. My plane was at midday. She came about eight, I think. I hadn’t expected her so early.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I didn’t know what time she’d come.’

  Again she took his hands and led him into his bedroom. Again they lay down on the bed and her hands held him, drew him towards her, drew him into her. Not like that first time, not the awful fumbling and the shame. This time she held him there while the small explosion took place inside her, his explosion and hers: a small organic miracle. The keys pattered at his back. ‘There,’ she whispered to him. ‘There.’ He felt her breath in his ear, felt the small impulse of air as much as he heard the words. ‘There,’ she said. ‘You’ve loved me.’

  ‘And what time did you leave the apartment?’

  ‘After ten o’clock. I remember hurrying. I remember hurrying Madeleine because we would be late. I think perhaps …’

  ‘What do you think?’

  What did he think? He thought perhaps he had killed her. ‘I think perhaps she wanted me to.’

  ‘To what?’

  He raised his voice in anger: ‘To be late. To miss the flight. I think perhaps she wanted me to miss the flight.’

  And then the drive, the sudden change of mood, from the small, intimate triumph, to silence and withdrawal. She didn’t speak much on the journey, didn’t speak much at the airport, stood silent beside the check-in desk as he went through the business of ticket and passport, watched him with a neutral face as he disappeared beyond the metal detectors and the television screens.

  ‘That was the last I saw of her.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘About eleven o’clock. I don’t remember exactly but it was about eleven o’clock. Eleven-fifteen. We were late for the check-in.’

  The keys fell silent. A printer whirred back and forth and rolled out four pages of typescript. Leo read through words that were a mere skeleton of that morning, a mere simulacrum of reality, a mere shadow of Madeleine’s presence there in the flat beside him, her body on his, her mind enveloping his. She fucked other men, said Jack.

  ‘I must ask you to surrender your passport, Mr Newman,’ the magistrate said as he signed the document. ‘You must not leave the country until such time as the preliminary investigation is at an end.’

  The entrance hall of the ministry was a space of marble and travertine. It had the atmosphere of a station concourse. There was the same shifting crowd, some people with purpose – a train to catch, a hearing to attend – others with nothing to do but hang around to see what might happen. There was the same sense of randomness, of strangers thrown together by the arrogant and ridiculous hand of chance.

  ‘You are Mr Newman?’ One stranger amongst many, a young man with a sharp nose and a prominent Adam’s apple. He spoke English of a kind.

  Leo frowned. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Press,’ the man said. ‘Il Messaggero. You can tell me of the woman’s death? The wife of the English diplomat? You can tell me?’ He brandished a small tape recorder. Leo saw wheels turning within the thing. He brushed the youth aside. ‘I can tell you nothing.’

  The man hurried after him: ‘You can confirm the things that are being said?’ And suddenly, from nowhere that Leo could see, there was the stark magnesium flash of a camera.

  He hurried through the huge doors, out into the dazzling light, down the steps to the pavement. Buses trundled by, swirling round the square pursued by shoals of mopeds.

  He walked across the river. The water slid beneath the bridge in a soft and pungent organic flow. There was the smell of asphalt and exhaust fumes, a miasma like the shifting mists of Hades or Sheol or wherever it was that the dead went. Madeleine walked beside him, his own image of Madeleine, Madeleine sharp and acerbic and normal, not a hysterical woman who would throw herself at men or from rooftops. She accompanied him through the narrow streets of the old city, all the way to the Palazzo Casadei where she slipped quietly away from him as he went into the entrance. From his glass box the porter watched. Leo climbed slowly up to the attic and let himself into the flat. The place was as desolate as it had been on that first occasion when he had looked it over with Madeleine. But then she herself had filled it, made it bright with her presence. Now it was as empty as a tomb.

  He found her photograph, the one she had given him before she took him to the airport. It had taken on a strange votive power, the potency of an icon. He placed it on the table. It was like one of those pictures on a gravestone, a solemn image of a person who never was, a Madeleine he had never known. There was nothing else, that was the problem. He wanted her to walk in the door and greet him in her manner. With a kind of panic he even tried to imagine the event, the key turning in the lock, the door opening, Madeleine appearing there in the sudden space. But she had no face. She fucked other men. She had no face. Not the face of the half-smiling woman in the photograph, not any face at all. He had lost her and he had lost even the memory of her. She fuc
ked other men. He picked the freesias out of their vase and threw them away. They were faded and withered and the water was foul.

  The tyranny of the telephone. It rang throughout the day, bleating like a tiresome child. Would he confirm that …? Did he deny that …? Voices sounding across a spectrum that ran from perfect English to native Italian with all the hybrids in between. Was he available for interview …? Was it true that …?

  In the evening Goldstaub called. ‘Is it true?’ he asked.

  ‘Is what true? Can’t I have a moment of peace?’

  ‘Madeleine, Leo. It’s all over the English newspapers. Is it true?’

  ‘If you mean, is she dead? then the answer’s yes. I don’t know what else you may have been reading.’

  ‘Christ alive, Leo—’

  ‘I doubt it, I truly doubt it.’

  ‘Stop trying to be clever. Is there some kind of problem?’

  ‘The authorities seem to think I may have killed her.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘The ridiculous is what they deal in.’

  Later Jack called. His voice was dull and expressionless. ‘You’d better get hold of the English papers tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Why? What are they saying?’ But Jack had already hung up.

  Next morning he found the letter. It was there in his postbox beside the porter’s lodge, the envelope addressed in unfamiliar handwriting and franked with a Rome postmark. He tore it open, thinking that it might be anything, a letter from a sympathiser, a letter from an accuser (plenty of phone calls from that kind already), a letter quite unconnected with the matter of Madeleine’s death. He never really expected a letter from beyond the grave. The expert in the handwriting of two thousand years ago, of the uncial and the minuscule, could not even recognise Madeleine’s handwriting.

  I’ve tried this before, she had written.

  An unpleasant sensation. A sensation of nausea, just below the breastbone; and dizziness, and a chattering in his mind as though a dozen voices were speaking to him all at once, a dozen whispers on the edge of audibility. He looked round for somewhere to sit, there in the shadowy entrance archway of the Palazzo Casadei with the porter watching curiously from his glass cabinet. It was easier to go through into the courtyard beyond, into the pool of daylight and the faint dribble of the fountain where papyrus grew green and bright. He sat on the step of the pedestal and peered at the page.