LITMIR.BIZ

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       Monday, November 1st

      For the second morning in succession, Patrese was woken in a hotel room by a phone call. This time, however, he didn’t have a hangover, and he knew who was calling: KIESERITSKY flashed up on his cellphone’s display screen.

      It was half past six. She wouldn’t be calling to ask how he’d slept. He picked up.

      ‘Hey, Lauren. You found John Doe?’

      ‘Damn straight. Darrell Showalter. A monk who teaches school in Cambridge.’

      ‘As in Cambridge, Massachusetts?’

      ‘As in Cambridge, England.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘No, not really. Yes, Cambridge, Massachusetts.’

      ‘You sure it’s him?’

      ‘Pathologist found a small birthmark on the ankle: could have been livor mortis until you knew better.’ After death, with no heart to pump it round the body, blood settles toward the parts of the corpse nearer the ground, causing a purplish-red discoloration of the skin. ‘One of the other teachers came up in the middle of the night to give us an ID. You want to go and talk to the school, they’re waiting for you.’

      Monday-morning traffic on the eastern seaboard meant it took Patrese four hours to get to Cambridge, and he knew it could have been worse than that.

      He’d finally taken his leave of Kwasi at around ten the previous evening, and had found a hotel off Washington Square that had charged him – which was to say, had charged the Bureau – a couple of hundred bucks for a bed less comfortable than a landmine, a shower smaller than Gary Coleman, and Art Deco furniture less tasteful than Trump Tower. By that stage, however, Patrese had been beyond caring.

      He’d spoken to Donner again en route to Cambridge and told him what was going on. Well, Donner had sighed, it’s not like we haven’t got enough to do here. True, Patrese had replied, but we are a federal organization, and these folks want me to help them out. OK, Donner had said at last. There was a Bureau field office in New Haven itself: he’d get them to give Patrese any help he needed.

      Darrell Showalter, the corpse formerly known as John Doe, had taught at the Cambridge Abbey School, a few blocks up from Harvard Square. Patrese instantly clocked the school as the kind of place that turned out muscular Christians: young men who half a century ago would have traveled the world bringing gospel and gridiron to the natives. Organ music swelled from inside a chapel; students hurried through cloisters.

      The principal introduced himself as Michael Furman and offered Patrese a seat, some coffee, a photograph of Showalter, and thanks for coming.

      ‘The school’s in shock, as you can imagine,’ Furman said. ‘Terrible business.’

      ‘What was it that Darrell did here?’

      ‘The school’s attached to the abbey, which is an institution in its own regard, of course. Most of our staff, like myself, are lay teachers, but some of the monks also teach: religious studies and spiritual guidance, mainly. It’s a tradition we value greatly. Darrell was one of those.’

      ‘So no family? No wife, no children?’

      ‘Absolutely not.’

      ‘Was he popular?’

      ‘Extremely. Both with the staff and with the boys. One doesn’t necessarily mean the other, as I’m sure you know.’ Furman looked around as though about to divulge an indiscretion, though only he and Patrese were in the room. ‘And the monks aren’t always that popular with the boys, either. Men who give their lives to God … sometimes they don’t understand children too well.’

      Or sometimes, Patrese thought bitterly, they understand children all too well.

      ‘No enemies?’ Patrese asked. ‘No disputes? No one who wanted to do him harm?’

      Furman shook his head. ‘Absolutely not. He wouldn’t have hurt a fly.’

      ‘Could I see his room?’

      ‘Sure.’

      Furman led Patrese down corridors that smelled faintly of disinfectant.

      ‘Do you know when he was last seen?’ Patrese asked as they walked.

      ‘In the refectory on Saturday evening, around seven o’clock. He was on roster then, one of the staff due to eat with the boys. After that, no one knows. I guess he’d have gone back to his room if he had no other engagements, and no one would have thought anything strange about not seeing him again that night.’

      ‘Next morning? Sunday, in a religious establishment; someone must have noticed him missing?’

      ‘Of course. His absence was noted at first morning prayers, seven a.m., but people just thought he was ill; there’s a virus going round the school, plenty of pupils and staff have got it. His room was checked to see if he was OK, but there was no sign of him.’

      ‘That didn’t cause alarm?’

      ‘At that stage, no. This is a big school; he could have been anywhere, doing anything. It didn’t seem sinister. But when he didn’t appear for the main chapel service at ten thirty or for lunch afterwards – that’s when we started to search for him in earnest.’

      ‘And when you couldn’t find him?’

      ‘We called the police.’

      And Patrese knew what the police would have said: he’s an adult, adults go missing, we’ll take a note of his details and let you know if we find anything. Meanwhile, the search for John Doe would have been working its way slowly outwards from New Haven, and Cambridge was far enough away not to have shown up in the first sweep.

      Not that it would have made any difference. Showalter had been dead several hours before anyone had even thought to look for him.

      ‘How easy is it to get into this place?’ Patrese asked.

      Furman shrugged. ‘We have security guards, of course, and gates, but we’re a school of young men. They go on sports and cultural trips, we encourage them to help out in the local community, the abbey itself is open to the public at certain times. We don’t want to shut ourselves away from the world. We wouldn’t be much of a school if we did.’

      ‘But anyone acting suspiciously would be challenged?’

      ‘I’d like to think so.’

      The problem, as Patrese knew, was that anyone who could kill a woman on New Haven Green and leave another body there was almost certainly pretty good at not acting suspiciously. If killers walked round rubbing their hands and cackling like pantomime villains, they’d be much easier to catch.

      ‘You have CCTV here?’

      ‘At the main entrance.’

      ‘Nowhere else?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘How many entrances are there?’

      ‘Four or five, depending on how you count.’

      ‘So why not have CCTV on them too?’

      ‘I wouldn’t have had it at all if it hadn’t been required by the insurance company. I want to bring these young men up properly, and you can’t do that if they think they’re being watched the whole time. I know most of them are good kids; but they’re also kids, and kids sometimes do what kids do. I come down like a ton of bricks on them when they screw up, but I want to let them make their own mistakes too. Within reason, of course.’

      Heck, Patrese thought. If he’d had a principal like Furman when he’d been at school, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up hating religion so much.

      ‘And you have no idea how Darrell

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