Unholy Ghost (22 page)

She closed her eyes. Jimmy could see she was tired now. The interview was over or very nearly over.

‘So what happens now?'

She opened her eyes.

‘Now I rest, you may go.'

‘About me? What happens about me?'

‘I'm not sure. You were already barred from Denmark, now we can add France and Germany. You cannot safely return to the United Kingdom, your old friends there have made that abundantly clear. I'm not sure you are of any further use to me, Mr Costello. I had hoped that you might change, but I now think that might have proved a false hope. I will think about it.'

‘Will they kick me out of Rome, out of Italy because of this?'

‘They might.'

‘I'd have nowhere to go if they did that.'

‘No, you wouldn't, would you? But I'm not at all sure you have anywhere to go if you stayed. I'm not sure you have anywhere to go wherever you go.'

Jimmy knew what she meant, he was going nowhere, but how much more damage might he do on the way. Suddenly he felt as if he were the one who had lost an arm. There was something missing in him, what was it?

‘Did the Comedian die?'

‘The Comedian?'

‘The Commander, the Danish bloke.'

‘I doubt it. If he had I would have been informed.'

She closed her eyes again. There were no more questions and nothing more to say. He was dismissed. He got up quietly and left. The clinic was in central Rome so he walked until he came to a church. It wasn't far, it never was in central Rome.

He went in and found the nearest statue. It was a friar, you could tell by the long, hooded habit and the tonsure on the top of his head. Maybe it was St Francis or St Dominic, but Jimmy didn't care who it was.

He put some money in the box and took a candle, lit it from one already burning and put it with the rest.

‘It's for Serge Carpentier. It's something I owe him, this and a lot more, only now it looks like this might be all he'll get. Tell him, sorry.' But it was never that simple. ‘If you're there, if he's there, if any of you are still there.'

And then he realised what was missing in him – hope.

There was no one there. There was no St Francis or St Dominic to carry his message. There was no Bernadette, no Michael waiting for him. There was no one and nothing. When it ended it ended. There was nothing else, nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for, no reason to go on. Somehow it had all slipped away from him.

Jimmy left the church, a crumpled, middle-aged man, anonymous and alone, a man of sorrows familiar with grief. A man going nowhere, because nowhere was the only place left for him to go.

More titles from

The Jimmy Costello Series

Corrupt ex-copper, and fixer for the Catholic Church, Jimmy Costello is sent to Spain to investigate when a senior cleric is accused of being part of ETA, the Basque terrorist movement.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, a murder occurs as soon as he gets to Santander, and it's not the last as Jimmy encounters some unwelcome reminders of his violent London past.

His enigmatic boss in Rome may not approve, but Jimmy, as always, decides to see things through, to the end.

This edition is published by Accent Press

Copyright © James Green 2014

The right of James Green to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN: 9781909840744

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 4SN

The stories contained within this book are works of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the authors' imaginations and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental