‘Is there anyone else your brother trusted?’
Saunders paced as he asked the question. It had been over an hour, and they seemed to be plowing the same ground over and over. Cianna was sitting on the chair, leaning over, her head hanging between her knees. Akhtar sat at the edge of the bed, watching the other two. He’d had little to add since the process had begun.
‘No,’ Cianna replied, the frustration coming through in her tone. ‘We’ve been through this. There was just me and Nick, no one else.’
‘How about your mother?’ Saunders asked.
Her head shot up, and she glared at Saunders as though he’d just insulted her. ‘No,’ she said. It was definitive.
‘How can you be sure?’
Saunders could sense the tension as her shoulders drew in close to her ears and her expression hardened. ‘He hated my mother,’ she said. ‘With good reason. She left us and never looked back. Charlie and me were on our own even before she walked away. Plus, she disappeared. Neither one of us had any idea where she was.’
‘Maybe he found her,’ Saunders suggested.
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘How can you be so sure? You were out of contact with him for two years. Maybe he started looking for her when you went away.’
She put her head down again. ‘He wouldn’t have done that,’ she said. There was an element of defeat in her voice.
Saunders watched her for a moment and then abandoned the line of questioning. It wasn’t getting them anywhere. ‘Okay,’ he said with a sigh. ‘What are we missing?’
‘I don’t think he took it,’ Cianna said quietly. ‘I think this is all just a huge fucking mistake.’
Saunders shook his head. ‘People like Fasil don’t travel halfway across the globe unless they’re certain. He’s taken a huge risk coming here.’
‘Did you see Charlie’s face just before Fasil killed him?’ Cianna asked. ‘My brother was a terrible liar. Always was. Before Fasil killed him, he was screaming at him, asking him where the Cloak was. If he’d known where this thing was, he would have said. I saw his eyes, and he was terrified. I don’t think he had any idea.’
Saunders considered that for a moment. He’d had the same sense at the time. ‘He didn’t bring anything else to your apartment with him?’
‘Not that I noticed,’ Cianna said. ‘I assume I would have spotted something as spectacular as an 800-year-old cloak.’
Saunders admitted, ‘I’d assume that, too. I was just checking.’
‘What does it look like, anyway?’ Cianna asked. ‘Maybe I missed it. Is it gold? Embroidered? What?’
The question brought Saunders up short for a moment. ‘I’m not sure, actually. It’s never shown to the public. I suppose I’ve always assumed it was silk. That would have been the common luxury of the time.’ He looked at Akhtar, who was shaking his head.
‘Such an American perspective,’ he said with a touch of superiority. ‘The Cloak is not powerful because of what it is made out of. It is a relic of the Great Prophet. Its power flows from his spirit, not the fabric. Luxury has nothing to do with it.’
‘So, what does it look like?’ Cianna asked.
‘It is homespun,’ Akhtar said.
‘Homespun?’ Cianna said.
‘Yes,’ Akhtar replied. ‘A simple fabric woven by peasants, course and gray, but very practical. This is what Mohammed wore into battle.’
‘So it would have just looked like a length of regular cloth,’ Saunders said.
‘Yes.’
Cianna shook her head. ‘Charlie didn’t bring anything like that to my apartment,’ Cianna said. ‘I suppose it could be in his duffle bag. We could go look.’
‘No,’ Saunders said. ‘It’s not there.’ He was staring off into space as he worked his memory. Something Akhtar had said sparked a recollection. ‘Charlie wasn’t a student of Islam or of Afghan history, was he?’
‘Not that I know of,’ Cianna said.
‘So if it looks like a simple piece of fabric, Charlie wouldn’t have had any reason to take it. Unless he was using it for something else.’
Akhtar frowned. ‘I am not following you.’
‘I am,’ Cianna said. She looked at Saunders, her eyes wide. ‘We know where the Cloak is.’
He nodded back at her. ‘Yes, we do.’
Morrell ran a finger over the handwritten name next to the buzzer on the first floor of the apartment house in Southie. C. Phelan. It was her. He’d been nearly certain when he heard the name, but he needed to be positive. The dead man who was missing a hand at the Cambridge boathouse was the brother of the young woman he’d talked with the day before. She was the same woman his brother had befriended years before. She was the same woman being stalked by the young Middle Eastern man who managed to get himself released from police custody with nothing but a phone call. And that was the morning after someone had taken a Black & Decker to Nick O’Callaghan in a manner strangely reminiscent of the kinds of torture used in dank buildings in Afghanistan.
Even if he’d believed in coincidences, those connections would be too many for Morrell. The girl was involved somehow in all of this. What this was and how she was involved were still beyond his comprehension. He intended to find out, however. It was now his singular focus.
He had to pause twice on the climb up to her apartment. His gut was hanging so far over his belt that it almost touched his crotch, and sweat was pouring down his face by the time he reached her door. Standing there, panting, he took a moment to catch his breath before he knocked. There was no answer, so he knocked harder. ‘Ms Phelan, it’s Detective Morrell, Boston Police Department! Open up!’
There was still no answer, so Morrell put his ear up to the door to listen to the silence from within for a moment. Once he was reasonably sure there was no one moving inside, he slipped a leather case out of his pocket and pulled out a pick. It took him less than thirty seconds to turn the locks and let himself in. If he found anything useful, he’d leave it there and go for a warrant, inventing a pretext for the search. It wouldn’t be the first time. Nor would it be the last, unless his heart gave up on the hike back down the stairs – a scenario he was becoming acutely aware was a growing possibility with each inch he added to his waistline.
He cracked the door open. ‘Ms Phelan?’ he said once more, just in case. ‘Police, Ms Phelan.’ He stepped into the empty apartment and pulled the door behind him.