I'm God

passed on to him before dying, and realizing with dismay what it was about, Saturday and Sunday had been spent in long and tormented reflection, interspersed with watching the TV news, reading the newspapers and seeing images of the bloodstained man who had died in his arms.

At last, he had come to a decision.

He didn’t know if it was the right one, but at least it was his.

In this uncertain situation, one thing was now clear to him. That something in his life had ended and something else was about to start. And he would do everything he could to make it something good, something important. By a strange twist of fate, at the very moment he had found himself alone, burdened with a huge responsibility, the knot he had carried inside him for years had loosened. As if the ship had needed a real storm to demonstrate that it was seaworthy.

At first, overwhelmed by doubt, he had wondered what Robert Wade would have done if he had been in his shoes. Then he had realized it was the wrong question to ask. What mattered was what he ought to do. And he had finally turned his back on the mirror in which, however hard he had looked for his own face, he had continued for years to see the image of his brother.

For the whole of Sunday night, he had lain on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, which was like a clear roof in the semi-darkness.

All you had to do was search. The most difficult thing to understand was not who, or how. It was where. And that was always somewhere closer than you thought. In the morning, when the signs and the street lamps had gone out and the sun had come up again, he had got out of bed and taken a shower that had completely wiped out any lingering trace of tiredness due to his sleepless night.

He had found himself in the bathroom, naked in front of the mirror. There, on the shiny surface, was his body and his face. He knew now who he was – he knew that, if there was something he had to prove, then he had to prove it to himself and no one else.

But above all, he wasn’t afraid any more.

The door opened behind him. In the doorway appeared the young woman who had introduced herself as Detective Vivien Light. When some time ago

when was that?

he had been released and had gone out onto the street with the lawyer, Thornton, and got into the car, he had seen her there on the steps, motionless, as if unsure whether or not to descend. The car had passed her and their eyes had met. A fleeting moment, a brief glance in which there had been no judgement and no condemnation. Only a curious sense of understanding that Russell hadn’t forgotten. At that time he hadn’t known she was a police officer but, when he had found her sitting at a desk with Ziggy’s photograph next to her, he had realized she might be the right person to talk to.

He would know very soon if he had been right.

The detective stepped aside and indicated the corridor. ‘Come with me.’

Russell followed her until they reached the door with a frosted-glass pane and the words

Captain Alan Bellew

painted in cursive lettering by a steady hand. It reminded Russell of images from black and white crime movies of the Forties. The detective opened the door without knocking and they found themselves in an office with furnishings that were anything but austere.

Filing cabinets against the wall to the left, a closet on the right, a small table with two armchairs and a coffee machine on its wooden surface. Walls of an indefinable colour. A couple of questionable paintings and a few plants in a vase fixed to the wall with a wrought-iron ring.

A man was sitting behind a desk facing the door. Russell couldn’t see him very well because he was silhouetted against the light from the window, made only slightly less bright by the Venetian blinds.

The man pointed to a chair in front of the desk. ‘I’m Captain Bellew. Take a seat, Mr Wade.’

Russell sat down and the young woman detective came and stood a couple of feet from him. She was observing him curiously, whereas the captain, if he was curious about him at all, didn’t show it.

Russell decided he was a man who knew his job. He was a cop, not a politician, someone who had earned his rank by results, not through public relations.

Bellew sat back in his chair. ‘Detective Light tells me you claim to have some important information for us.’

‘It’s not just a claim. I do have it.’

‘We’ll see. For the moment, let’s take it from the beginning. Tell me about your relationship with this Ziggy Stardust.’

‘First I’d like to talk about my relationship with you.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I know that in cases like these, you have considerable discretionary powers over concessions to anyone who provides useful evidence. You can offer money, you can even offer immunity from prosecution, if necessary.’

The captain’s face darkened. ‘Do you want money?’

Russell Wade shook his head, a half-smile on his lips. ‘Up until two days ago, an offer like that would have tempted me. It might even have persuaded me…’

He lowered his head, leaving the sentence unfinished, as if suddenly pursuing a thought, or a memory. Then he looked up again.

‘Today’s different. There’s only one thing I want.’

‘And are we allowed to know what that is?’

‘I want exclusive rights to this story. In return for what I’m going to give you, I want the chance to follow this investigation at close quarters.’

The captain thought about this for a moment. When he spoke, he spoke clearly and emphatically, as if determined to make himself understood. ‘Mr Wade, I’d have to say you don’t come with the best references.’

Russell made a vague gesture with his hand. ‘Captain Bellew,’ he said, adapting his tone to the captain’s, ‘my story is common knowledge. Everyone knows I won a Pulitzer I didn’t deserve and that it was quite rightly taken away from me. I don’t deny that – in fact I know it better than anyone. I’m not going to excuse what I did in the past. At best, I might be able to explain it. But this doesn’t seem to me the right time to do that. I beg you to believe that I have some very important things to say even though, as you said, I don’t have the best of credentials.’

‘Why do you want this?’

Russell was aware that the answer he gave was a crucial one.

‘I could give you a whole list of reasons. But what I really want is to stop being a coward.’

Silence fell in the room.

The captain looked him in the eyes for a long time. Russell held his gaze without any difficulty.

‘We could hold you as a suspect in the homicide of Ziggy Stardust.’

‘Of course you could, but I don’t think you will.’

To make these words seem less presumptuous, he decided to be a little more specific.

‘Captain, I’m not a vulture. If I’d wanted a scoop I’d have gone to the New York Times, however difficult that might have been for me. But, believe me, that would have thrown the whole city into total panic. And I haven’t the slightest intention of playing with the lives of thousands of people. Because that’s what’s at stake here…’

He paused briefly, looking from one to the other.