When you’re ready, I have two questions to ask.’
‘I’m ready.’
‘I want you to look really hard and tell me whether you’ve seen any of these men before and, if you have, where you’ve seen them. OK? Is that clear?’
‘The answer’s no. I haven’t seen any of these men before. The man I saw had eyes you couldn’t forget.’
‘You’re absolutely certain, Mrs Perez?’
‘I’m certain. He had his hands around poor Mr Bitensky’s neck and he looked up at me with those eyes. Those terrible eyes—’
‘It’s OK, Mrs Perez. Please don’t distress yourself. Jeannie, you can take Mrs Perez home now. Thank you.’
‘OK, show in Mrs Abdulla.’
Will was spared the encounter with his father he had feared. Twenty minutes after the line-up, Fitzwalter had come into the cell.
‘More good news and bad news. The bad news for me is that two witnesses say you were not the man they saw in Mr Bitensky’s apartment. One of them did recognize you in the line-up. She places you at the apartment building – standing outside at the time of the killing. So the good news for you is that I’m going to have to let you go. For now.’
There were forms to fill in, so that Will’s things could be released. He pounced on his cell phone first, powering it up. Instantly it began vibrating: a voice message. TC.
‘Hi, guess what. As predicted, I am in police custody. They’re questioning me about the murder of Mr Pugachov. It seems he was shot, at point-blank range. Can you believe this? In my apartment? That sweet, gentle man. And I can’t bear to think it’s all because . . . What? Oh God, I’m sorry. Sorry, Will, that’s Joel Brookstein. Do you remember him? He was at Columbia. Anyway, he’s agreed to be my lawyer. He’s telling me to shut my mouth. Let me know where you are and what’s happening. Not sure if they’ll let me keep this phone on.’ Her voice faded, as if she needed to talk over her shoulder. ‘All right, I’m coming. One minute! Will, I’m going to have to go. Call me as soon as you can. We don’t have much time.’
As he listened to her voice – which now seemed to oscillate between TC and Tova Chaya – he heard a double beep. A text message. He pressed the buttons.
Paul, sort the letters of no Christian! (1, 7, 29)
In the bombardment of the last few hours, Will had almost forgotten about the phantom texter. In his mind, he still associated these messages with Yosef Yitzhok, even though he knew, rationally, that was impossible. This latest text was definitive proof: someone else had been giving Will these coded clues all along. But who?
The meaning of this latest message seemed almost within reach. Forty-eight hours of communication with this man had given Will some sense of the workings of his mind. This must be how crossword addicts do it, Will thought: after a while, they insert themselves into the head of the crossword setter.
And this did indeed look like a crossword clue. Surely, the literal meaning was irrelevant. He knew how such clues worked, with instructions in one part relating to the rest. But who was Paul? And why did the solution include a word twenty-nine letters long?
He would start with the most obvious bit, following the instruction to ‘sort the letters’, to reorder, ‘no Christian’. With the recklessness of a newly free man, he grabbed a pen from the desk clerk’s table and scribbled on the back of the receipt she had just handed him.
On Ian Christ. That did not work. Con this rain. That was not much better.
And then he saw it, smiling his first smile in hours. How perfect that this message should arrive just as he was alone, without TC. The one area where he would have greater knowledge than her.
He picked up the phone to call his father. To tell him the good news that he had been released without charge and ask him to stop on his way, maybe at a hotel, and pick up the one thing that Will realized he would need: a bible.
Monday, 4.40am, Manhattan
For a minute, he thought about asking the desk sergeant. Then he reconsidered. It would not look great, a dishevelled murder suspect, alternately ranting about the identity of the true killer – ‘He has piercing blue eyes!’ – and then demanding to read the bible. Fine if Will was guilty and pursuing a ‘diminished responsibility’ defence; not so great for a man who wanted to walk out of the seventh precinct having convinced the police he was both innocent and sane.
Instead he waited for his father pacing outside, desperate to get away. Finally William Monroe Sr, dressed in a battered sailing jacket, appeared. He looked exhausted, his eyes ringed in red. Will wondered if he had been crying.
‘Thank God, William,’ he said, hugging his son, his hand cupping the back of his head. ‘I wondered what on earth you’d done.’
‘Thanks for that vote of confidence, Dad,’ said Will, pulling away. ‘No time to talk. Do you have the thing I asked you to bring?’
His father nodded, a gesture of sad surrender, as if he was humouring a son who was babbling about the voices in his head or demanding a hundred bucks for another fix of crack. ‘Here.’
Will pounced on the bible. ‘OK, Dad. You know those text messages I’ve been getting? Well, here’s the latest.’ Will held up his cell phone.
Paul, sort the letters of no Christian! (1, 7, 29)
‘What could that mean?’
Hurriedly, Will explained. ‘No Christian is an anagram for Corinthians. The figure 1 refers to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians – and it must be Chapter 7, Verse 29. Which is why I wanted a bible. And here it is.’
What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short.
‘He’s getting desperate.’
‘Will—’
‘Hold on, Dad. I just want to prove something to you. Now, I know how bizarre this will sound, but at the heart of this whole, fucked-up business seems to be a Jewish religious theory. It centres on men of exceptional goodness.’ He could see his father’s face moving from pity to impatience.
‘Will, what on earth are you talking about? The police brought you here on suspicion of murder tonight. Do you have any idea of the trouble you’re in?’
‘Oh yes, Dad, believe me. I know that I am in the deepest shit imaginable. Deeper than you think. But please hear me out on this. The Hassidim who are holding Beth say that someone – it may even be one of them for all I know – is killing good people. Extraordinarily good people. Not just here, but all over the world. What happened tonight is that I came this close to witnessing one of those killings. If the Hassidim’s theory is right, the man who was murdered tonight will be a so-called righteous man. Which is why I wanted you to see this.’
He took his BlackBerry out of the police zip-loc bag, clicked on the internet browser and selected Google. Then he punched in the words ‘Bitensky and Lower East Side’.
