The Other Tree Read online

  “Coherent!” said Luke, holding up a deflective hand as he strode away.

  * * *

  The Head Curator’s office was remarkably devoid of ornamentation, featuring only elegant Italian furniture and varnished oak cabinets which slid seamlessly behind the wooden wall panelling.

  Halbert Vesina was a pragmatist who understood that Corinthian columns do not restore themselves. He felt it was the natural order of the world that passionate enthusiasts, who spent long loving hours restoring teaspoons of crushed pottery into life-sized terracotta elephants, needed to be gently but firmly guided by those who understood that bank cheques were not for scooping up pieces of pottery.

  Museums were becoming an indulgence, an outdated curiosity in an era when digital information was fast replacing the need for physical interaction. Some would argue that nothing could truly replicate the experience of seeing an original work, or being in the presence of an object that had existed in the hands of ancient forebears.

  Unfortunately, such people did not run museums, and probably didn’t visit them, either. Halbert understood the need for moving with the times, the importance of politics, of survival. Which brought him to today’s meeting.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?” asked Halbert, smiling at the rugged group in his office.

  He noted with some unease that the woman had not removed her very stylish, very dark, sunglasses.

  “We understand St Basilissa’s Museum has experienced significant funding shortfalls in its budget for three years running,” said Docker.

  “We’ve had several essential capital works programs which have now been completed—” said Halbert.

  “Yet there’s still a blocked pipe in the staff bathroom, seven potholes you could bury a dog in in the driveway, and a toad infestation in the basement,” said Docker mildly, taking a seat. “However did you manage that one?”

  “The staff member responsible is no longer with us,” said Halbert coldly.

  Actually, they never knew what had happened to her after she’d declared one day that she would fix the problem, marched downstairs and, well… The museum had posted her last pay cheque to her family.

  “SinaCorp is a generous patron of the arts,” continued Docker. “And two million dollars could buy a lot of. whatever it is you use to get rid of toads.”

  “Golf clubs, mainly,” said Halbert faintly.

  Docker shrugged and held out a hand for the briefcase.

  “I could have the funds transferred to the museum’s account by close of business today.”

  Halbert watched as Docker punched a combination into the briefcase. Halbert didn’t see a keypad. The briefcase clicked open, and Docker removed a slender, frameless touchscreen, placing it on the desk. Docker paused.

  “I understand you have a Sumerian tablet in your collection, quite inexplicably old.”

  “The age of the artefact is unverified,” said Halbert, growing uncomfortable. “We’ve had difficulty obtaining a conclusive reading.”

  “I’d like to see it, the actual tablet.”

  Halbert looked from the touchscreen to Docker, to the other members of the SinaCorp team, back to the touchscreen, making mental calculations about how likely it was that there were other strings attached, possibly made of garrotte wire.

  “In my experience, it’s best to fix a problem before it gets out of hand,” said Docker. “You wouldn’t want the health department to get involved.”

  After a pause, Halbert picked up the telephone on his desk.

  “I’ll have someone bring it up immediately,” he said.

  Docker kept his eyes on Halbert.

  “Emir, Stace, prepare for departure,” said Docker. “Roman and Bale, with me.”

  * * *

  She wasn’t lurking.

  She wasn’t even really scoping. You could even call it appreciating, although it wouldn’t stand up in court. Chris meandered along the outside wall of the museum, appreciating the smooth white walls, which lacked handholds of any kind. Appreciating the tall, narrow windows made from projectile-proof glass. Appreciating the lack of loose grates and staff doors left conveniently ajar.

  Chris glanced nonchalantly over her shoulder. A gardener watched her with the casual interest of a spectator watching someone trying to climb into the panda enclosure at the zoo. It seemed unnatural that something so cuddly could also eviscerate you with its fluffy paws.

  Chris’s mobile phone suddenly beeped, and she scrabbled for her phone, terrified for a moment that it was bad news—that it was the kind of call you pray you never get.

  It was a message from a private number:

  Two blocks east. The piazza. Now.

  Chris looked around, but saw only a smattering of museum patrons wandering through the grounds. On principle, she had a strong dislike of cryptic, anonymous messages; however, it wasn’t as though she had anything better to do right now aside from lurk.

  Chris walked quickly through the city street, which bustled with lunchtime crowds spilling from sidewalk cafés. She soon reached a large, round plaza paved with honey-coloured cobblestones, marked by a large decorative fountain in the centre. It depicted a man on his knees, arms raised in the eternal gesture of “Why me?”

  Another message beeped on her phone.

  Eastern wall. Vicolo Selvatico.

  Chris swept her gaze across the crowded plaza, then up at the surrounding clock towers. She walked carefully around the edge of the plaza, staying close to the walls, the aromas of pancakes and pasta wafting through the warm air.

  A small marble plaque, Vicolo Selvatico, was fixed to the brickwork of a narrow alley, and Chris edged warily closer. A hand suddenly dragged her under the awning of an antique shop, and this time it took only a moment to recognise him.

  “Emir?”

  He glanced quickly at the crowded plaza before turning back to Chris.

  “What are you doing here?” said Emir.

  “Shopping. What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for the Tree of Life. Do you want to change your answer?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “I saw you at St Basilissa’s,” said Emir.

  Great, thought Chris. Now SinaCorp thinks I’m mentally deficient.

  “I don’t think the others saw you, but I could always spot you in a crowd,” said Emir.

  There was an awkward pause.

  “Chris, don’t tell me you’re trying to find Eden yourself,” said Emir.

  “I wasn’t going to. I was going to let you find out when your buddies got there and found a note stuck to the tree saying ‘You snooze, you lose.’”

  Emir pressed a palm to his forehead, closing his eyes. He took a breath, then opened them again.

  “Chris, I don’t mind if you want to go on a religiously inspired holiday. But if you’re serious about getting to the Tree of Life, it’s dangerous, and it’s expensive. Do you have that kind of money? Do you have the Sumerian map? Because heads up, Chris, we do.”

  Emir stepped forward.

  “Chris, if you want to join the team, I can make it happen,” said Emir.

  Chris’s expression was grim.

  “You throw wads of money around and everything just comes to you,” she said.

  “You say it like it’s wrong.”

  “It’s all luxury hotels and great perks, but they scrimp on the equipment and bend safety regulations, because it’s all about the bottom line. Cutting corners where they can, because profit is king and people are replaceable.”

  “We know the risks of the job, and SinaCorp provides us with state of the art equipment.”

  “Are you sure about that?” said Chris grimly. “My mother’s entire team fell off the side of a cliff because of faulty sweatshop hooks.”

  The silence was thicker than a Christmas pudding.

  “Don’t you understand that, even if you survive this, SinaCorp is going to take the Tree of Life, package it and sell it,” said Chris. “And if you can’t affo
rd it, then too bad.”

  “SinaCorp has twenty-seven charities and fourteen trusts dedicated to—”

  “Taking money from the vulnerable so you can toss back a few handouts isn’t charity.”

  “Sometimes, people have to look after themselves.”

  “Well, you look after yourself, and Luke and I will look after each other,” snapped Chris. “We’ll see who’s standing when this is all over.”

  She turned to leave.

  “Chris!” said Emir. “This isn’t breaking into the teachers’ lounge to get free crackers.”

  Chris kept walking into the afternoon crowd.

  “Who’s Luke?” called Emir, but she was already gone.

  * * *

  Luke did have an ulterior motive for going to Naples. However, as far as ulterior motives went, it was pretty tepid.

  Luke followed the twisting alleyways, the cracked plaster walls washed in shadow. This part of the city was old, in the ramshackle way of early neighbourhoods everywhere. It would have been a bustling residential and business district once, but now it was a place the tourism bureau deliberately omitted from its maps.

  Lopsided, three-storey apartments flanked the narrow laneways. Leaning out of one window, you could hold hands with the person in the opposite building. Dangerous amounts of laundry hung from miniature balconies, and bags of rubbish filled the gutters. Various people haunted the corners, hunched in doorways, making wordless transactions.

  Luke paused at a set of cracked wooden doors, green paint flaking like uncontrollable dandruff. He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and glanced at the neatly inked words.

  The only light in the room came from the doorway and several strategically placed pieces of tin. Two battered trestle tables sat in the middle of the room, and a serving bench piled with bowls and bent spoons stood near the back door. Rumpled men in unwashed clothing snoozed in corners or read week-old newspapers.

  A sturdy man with a face like an ex-boxer wiped his hands on a rag and nodded to Luke.

  “New?” asked the man.

  “Oh, I’m not homeless,” said Luke quickly.

  “Sure. Just take a bowl and sit where you like. I’m Patrick.”

  “No, really,” said Luke, extending a hand. “Luke. St Wulfstan’s Church. If you’re Father Patrick, then Sister Adila says, ‘Hi.’ I’m just here to, you know, meet brethren.”

  “Brethren,” repeated Patrick.

  “I mean, I was in the neighbourhood. I’m here for the rest of the day, so if I can help out…”

  Patrick glanced at the door, assessing the quality of the light streaming in.

  “It’s about lunch time,” he said. “Any good with a ladle?”

  Ladling slop was actually quite therapeutic, and Luke had never minded doing kitchen duty at the seminary. Before committing to the clergy, he had considered working in the correctional system, which he felt shared a lot in common with the priesthood. However, he had decided it was more efficient to work on the prevention side rather than the cure.

  He had found that ladling was much the same all the world over. Shuffling queues of worn-out faces, with their troubles, their mistakes, and their regrets, and all you could offer were words of comfort, sometimes hope, and a bowl of slop.

  As the afternoon wore on, the lunchtime surge trickled away to the regulars, who remained lodged in the corners of the shelter like persistent pocket lint.

  Luke drew up a wobbly stool and sat down with a bowl of grey sludge. Surprisingly, it tasted much better than it looked, with traces of coriander and mashed potato. In fact, it tasted better than what he cooked at home, which somehow always ended up tasting like dried sock.

  A man with several missing teeth, whom Luke recognised from the soup queue as Gruyere, shuffled over to sit opposite him.

  “‘Aven’t seen you around before,” said Gruyere, his accent thickly French.

  “I’m just visiting,” said Luke.

  “‘Ow far?”

  “Don’t get him started,” said Paul, a man in his fifties who looked as patched as his clothing. “Did you hitch on a cross-country train, did you walk three hundred miles from Milan, did you stow away on the Titanic—”

  “I never said I stowed away on the Titanic,” retorted Gruyere.

  “I’m not homeless,” said Luke.

  “Sure,” said Paul. “I keep telling myself I’ll have enough for a ticket back to Iowa next year. Some graduation trip.”

  “No, really, I’m not—”

  “Then what happened to your clothes?” asked Gruyere.

  Luke looked down at his clothing, mystified.

  “What’s wrong with my—”

  “It’s the eyes,” came a wispy voice from the shadows.

  The grey-haired man had hollow cheeks and wore impenetrably dark, round spectacles in the dim room. For as long as the others could remember, he had occupied a three-legged chair in the prime corner position, and from what Luke had gathered from the chatter, he was known only as Fernice.

  “You have eyes like an old-timer,” intoned Fernice.

  “Does everyone here speak English?” exclaimed Luke, feeling slightly heckled.

  “We hassle the tourists in their own language,” boasted Gruyere. “And they call us peasants.”

  “They call us beggars,” said Paul. “And, occasionally, public nuisances.”

  “It’s performance art!” said Gruyere, a hand flying to his heart.

  Luke glanced at Fernice, who was still staring blankly ahead from behind his dark spectacles, wearing a sombre expression.

  “Can that guy see?” Luke whispered to Paul.

  “Those sunnies are his only pair of prescription glasses,” said Paul. “But he likes to pretend to tourists he’s a blind seer. Anyway, if you need somewhere to sleep, this place is full at night, but there’s a boarded-up chemical warehouse a few blocks south, a run-down barn about five miles west of Fool’s Piazza, and an abandoned chapel just past Lyon’s Crossing.”

  “Don’t sleep at the warehouse more than three nights in a row,” warned Gruyere. “That place changes you…”

  “Thanks,” said Luke uncertainly. “You know, if you’re into performance art, maybe you could set up an amateur theatre grou—”

  Luke caught the faint sound of raised voices echoing down the street, bouncing off the cobblestones. The distant tension stung through the air like a familiar scent, and he rose from his chair, moving warily to the door.

  About two blocks down, a woman with limp red hair was arguing with two men dressed as Roman centurions. The men gestured aggressively, and the woman was edging away slowly.

  As Luke trod carefully closer, he could see that the two men were actually dressed in stained red sweaters, with cardboard armour. And while one was wearing sandals, the other wore purple flip-flops with the name “Ivan” written on them in marker, and possibly the words “Left” and “Right,” respectively. There was nothing fake, though, about the long knife each man wore tucked into his cheap leather belt.

  “Twenty-five US dollars a picture,” said the man wearing the sandals—the bulkier of the faux soldiers.

  “I said I didn’t photograph you,” replied the red-haired woman calmly.

  She clutched her side bag tightly behind her.

  “Look,” said the one in purple flip-flops, presumably “Ivan.” “Just pay what you owe, and there’ll be no trouble.”

  Ivan’s understanding of the Roman soldier scam was, like his costume, sketchy at best. For instance, it didn’t matter that he was wearing purple flip-flops, or that his “armour” had pizza logos on it. Nor was it relevant that they were miles away from anything remotely resembling a colosseum. What mattered was that Ivan and his buddy were here, and so were you. And you had money.

  The woman stood very straight, and the scene reminded Luke of a stand-off he had once seen between a praying mantis and a cat. One of them had gotten eaten.

  “I assure you, there will be no trouble,�
� said the red-haired woman, her hand sliding slowly into her bag.

  “Hey!” called Luke, running towards the trio. “The tour bus is going to leave without us!”

  Luke paused breathlessly beside the woman, grabbing her arm. She looked at him in surprise, her gaze sliding over him in rapid appraisal. Luke gave a hurried glance to the two dishevelled mock soldiers, and quickly slapped a fiver into Ivan’s hand.

  “Sorry,” said Luke, jogging away with the woman in tow. “We’re going to be late for the churros museum!”

  The bulkier man took a few steps after them, but Ivan gave a desisting wave, tucking the fiver into his pocket. Sometimes you had to balance the reward with the trouble, and there was something slightly odd about that guy…almost like an air of decay.

  Several winding streets away, Luke and the red-haired woman slowed to a ragged walk.

  “Churros museum?” wheezed the woman.

  “I don’t lie well under pressure,” said Luke, breathing deeply. “Odd spot for a tourist.”

  “I could say the same of you.”

  “I’m a priest. I was ministering.”

  “Is that why you smell of homeless people?”

  Luke sighed with the weight of a thousand wasted sermons.

  “Being nice isn’t as important as being good,” said Luke. “But it can still make—”

  He paused, remembering why he hated giving sermons. All those faces staring up at him, but none of them really listening. None of them really caring. They had taken him off speaking duties after his flat expression of crushing disappointment had made the smaller children cry.

  “Never mind,” said Luke.

  “Thank you,” said the woman, a little more gently. “But I was fine.”

  “Sure, a jet of Mace would have done the trick. And maybe next time they’d think twice. Then again, maybe next time they’d take it out on someone who didn’t have a can of Mace.”

  The woman didn’t reply, but there was something slightly odd in her eyes as she glanced at Luke.

  “So what were you going to pull out?” asked Luke.

  “Yes, Mace.” The woman buttoned up her bag firmly.

  For a moment, Luke thought he saw something move inside the bag. He subtly took note of the woman’s heavy boots beneath her summery dress.