“Are you Tacit?” the woman asked him.
She hadn’t needed to ask if it was him. She recognised him from the painting hanging in the Vatican, in one of the private chambers, of course. The Vatican didn’t like to publicise its Inquisitors.
She asked the question nevertheless, hoping against hope that the rough looking figure would say he was not him. The painting of Tacit hanging unseen in Vatican City had captured a determined, dashing man in his twenties, jet black hair, strong features and fierce blue eyes, full of passion and faith. This figure, whilst obviously him, displayed none of the vitality or spirit layered so deep within his painting. For want of another word, he looked damaged, like the city in which he drank.
It was a dingy and morbid place, the bar – much like the figure of the Inquisitor – set several side streets back from the main streets of the city, desperately in need of a woman’s touch. Or demolition. She prayed that the German bombs would see to it sooner rather than later. It was ironic that a mediaeval tannery and adjoining stables next door to the decrepit, seedy establishment had been decimated in a recent barrage. Of course, every head had turned to watch her as she entered, dressed as she was in scarlet, her wild red hair surging around and down over her breasts, a cape of velvety crimson drawn tight around her shoulders and tied in a bow above the plunge of her cleavage. The bar and its clientele were not averse to having women in their midst. Whilst prostitutes and escorts were well received and welcomed at the bar, a woman like this, alluringly dressed, an air of confidence and majesty bound up in the way she moved, was of a type not usually seen in such a place. All eyes watched her as she stepped towards the corner of the room, tongues flickering greedily over fat lips, dark eyes watching her every move in the gloom of the bar. They spied the large dishevelled looking Priest whom she approached with jealous envy, and exchanged filthy jokes about how even the Priests were now taking to whores in these dark, war torn days.
Tacit shovelled a last morsel of food into his mouth from oily remains on his plate and sucked his fingers greedily.
“I asked are you –”
“Who wants to know?” he growled, his eyes fixed on the half full bottle of spirit and glass alongside. He reached his greasy fingers forward and gathered up the tumbler, necking the amber liquid in a single quick gulp.
The woman paused and looked at the Inquisitor hard. She’d met a few of them in her time, Inquisitors. The experienced ones; they all looked haggard, spoiled, bruised, a symptom of their line of work. But Tacit, he looked more ruined than any she had seen before. He looked old as an oak tree and as rough as its bark. His deeds were legendary in the Catholic Church and she refused to let his appearance undermine her impression of him.
“I asked, ‘Who wants to know?’,” his broad jaw set firm.
“Sister Isabella,” she replied.
Tacit thrust the glass firmly down beside the bottle and refilled it. “You don’t look much like a Sister to me,” the Inquisitor muttered, despite his eyes having never left the table.
“You don’t look much like the man I was told about.”
Tacit paused, considering the gall of the woman’s words. Now he raised his eyes up to her. She noticed they settled on her cleavage a moment longer than she would have expected. If Tacit was merely a man she wouldn’t have expected anything less. But Inquisitors were supposed to be above the petty frailties of men.
The chair next to where Isabella stood was kicked roughly from beneath the table by one of Tacit’s heavy black boots. She drew it still further away from the table edge and seated herself, watching Tacit intently.
His eyes were back on his drink, the tumbler back in his hand. He necked the glass in two gulps and pulled a face of revulsion.
“If it tastes that bad, why drink it?” the Sister asked, her eyes hardening on him.
Tacit put the glass down, more measured this time, and sat back. He crossed his arms and peered at her disdainfully. “What do you want, Sister?” He hissed the word ‘Sister’ as if it offended him.
“You’re needed.”
“So soon after my last assignment?” he growled desolately. He saw a sense of contempt harden the Sister’s features at the Inquisitor’s apparent relucance to work and grimaced. “Don’t judge what you don’t know,” he spat. “I was serving the Lord whilst you were still sneaking kisses from the choristers behind Cathedral chapter houses.” He coughed roughly to clear his throat. “So, tell me, what does the Church want now? Another exorcism? Breaking of some protestant heads? Hopefully something to get me out of this God-forsaken city. It was bad enough before the war came to its borders.”
“Priest of Arras Cathedral?” Tacit knew of them all – every Father, Brother, Cardinal and Saint in the whole of the Catholic world. He made it his job to do so.
“Ex-priest of Arras cathedral,” Isabella replied, her eyes not leaving Tacit’s face, waiting for any reaction from him. “Father Andreas was killed last night.”
If Tacit was shocked at the news, he gave no hint of it in his face or his manner. He reached across for the bottle and refilled his glass. He looked across at Isabella, the bottle still in his hand. “Do you want a glass?” he asked gruffly, more in an attempt to deviate her steely glare than a willingness to share his drink. Inquisitor Tacit had no problem drinking alone.
The Sister’s silence gave him his answer. He set the bottle down and drank most of the glass in a single pull. He put it down and sat back in his chair, crossing his arms once again. The chair beneath him creaked as he shifted his weight backwards. He weighed up what he had been told.
“If it’s murder, call the police,” he said, eventually.
Sister Isabella glared at him, her cold unmoving eyes fixed firmly on his. He stared back, their gazes locked in a silent but fierce battle.
After a few moments, Sister Isabella spoke. “You’re drunk. I can see it in your pupils.”
Tacit sneered and shook his head, reaching to fill his glass again. “If you think I’m drunk now, you haven’t seen anything.”
The Sister’s hand took hold of the neck of the bottle the moment Tacit’s hand was on its body.
“Hombre Lobo, Tacit,” Isabella hissed, leaning forward towards him across the table. Spoken with her rich Spanish accent, the words took on an even more apocryphal form.
Tacit ran his eyes over the mysterious red haired woman, judging and evaluating. If she was a Sister, she was like no Sister he’d ever met before. She looked more like a prostitute than a patron of divinity. He should know, he’d dealt with enough of both in his time. She wore no emblem of Christ, at least none that he could see. She overtly sexualised herself with how she dressed. She wore makeup. Early twenties. Daring young women, looking to take over the world. All looking like she did, though, they might. There was a scent of incense, perhaps even perfume, about her. He could detect it clearly through the pervading odour of stale alcohol and tobacco which hung heavy in the bar like the stench of death. But there was something else, something besides her using the rarely uttered word for one of the Catholic Church’s most damned of enemies. There was an almost tangible sense of godliness emanating out of her, almost as much as her comeliness. She was a beautiful woman, in every sense of the word.
“How many cases have you worked?” Tacit asked, his unmoving eyes firm on her face.
“A few,” she replied, tossing her hair out of her face.
Tacit spat dismissively, shaking his head.
“Enough,” Isabella answered back firmly, her eyes on his. “It’s not my first murder case, if that’s what you mean? And you’re not my first Inquisitor. I have been sent here to guide you in the course of your investigation.”
Tacit’s face creased with the suspicion of a joyless smile. He let go of the bottle the Sister was still holding firm in her grasp and sat back. “And if the dear Father is now deceased then on whose authority are you here?”
“The Vatican.”
“Not good enough.”
“Why do you need a name?”
“I always have a name with every case.”
“You know as well as I that you’ll never have a name.” Inquisitor assignments were almost always given anonymously by the Holy See, so that if an investigation led back to one within the Church itself, there could be no opportunity for retribution against the original instigator of the case.
Tacit nodded. The fact she knew the routine for issuing them convinced him she was who she claimed to be, whoever that was.
“Why do they suspect Hombre Lobo?” he asked, pursing his lips.
“Come and see the body.”
“They have a body?” Tacit asked, surprised.
Isabella picked up the bottle by the neck and poured a long stream of liquid into the glass in front of her. As she set the bottle down, Tacit reached forward to grasp the glass but Isabella was too quick for him. She gathered it up and put it to her lips. Tacit watched for any sign of revulsion or grimace to the hard liquor as she swallowed.
None came.
“It’s in a crypt,” she said, setting the glass down. “In Arras Cathedral.”