Solomon Creed: The only thriller you need to read this year

This suit …

So where was the rest of it? Why did he only have the jacket? Where were his shoes? And how in Jesus’s name could he read French? How could he read English so fast, for that matter?

‘Je suis Solomon Creed,’ he said, and the language felt comfortable in his mouth, his accent smooth and slightly thick and syrupy – southern French, not northern Parisian.

Southern French! How did he even know that? How could he speak French and know the origin of his accent and yet have no memory of learning it or speaking it before or of ever being in France? How much of himself had he lost?

Some smaller writing was stitched on the edge of the label: Fabriqué 13, Rue Obscure, Cordes-sur-Ciel, Tarn.

The Tarn. Southwestern France. Cathar country. Formed in 1790 after the French Revolution. Capital Albi. Birthplace of Toulouse-Lautrec. Fine medieval cathedral there, larger even than the church he was now walking towards. Built of brick not stone.

He hit himself on the side of the head to silence the noise.

‘Shut up,’ he said aloud, realizing how mad he would appear to anyone watching. He looked around. No one was. Maybe he was genuinely mad, some delusional freak with an equally freakish mind: all this information tumbling through it like white noise and none of it any use.

‘I am a crazy man.’ He stated it, as if admission might be the first step towards cure. He said it again, then repeated it in French, Russian, German, Spanish, Arabic. He hit himself on the head again, harder this time, desperate to make it all stop or coalesce into something useful. He needed to tune out the noise and focus only on the concrete things that might help him remember who he was, the things that bound him to his forgotten past – the suit, the book, the cross around his neck. Physical things. Undeniable.

He reached the end of the boardwalk, stepped out of the shadows and into the stinging heat of the sun. The church was even more impressive up close, its spire forcing his eyes up to heaven, the way ecclesiastical architecture was designed to do.

Know your place, it seemed to murmur. Know that you are insignificant and God is almighty.

There was a large sign planted in the ground beside a pathway leading up to the church with CHURCH OF LOST COMMANDMENTS written across it in copper-coloured letters, a reference to something he’d read in Jack Cassidy’s memoir.

He continued past the sign and down the pathway towards the church. There was a fountain over to one side with a split boulder at the centre and marks on it showing where water had once flowed over the stones. He recognized this from the memoir too – water coming from a split stone, a miracle out in the desert commemorated here by a fountain that was no longer running.

He drew closer to the door and saw words cut into the stone above it, the first of the lost commandments the church had been named for:

I

THOU SHALT HAVE

NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME

It reminded him of the ‘No Guns’ sign he’d seen outside the old saloon on the outskirts of town; no firearms allowed there, no other belief systems allowed here. His eyes lingered on the carved numeral, the same mark he carried on his arm. Maybe it was not an ‘I’ but a number. Or maybe it was nothing at all and the church would hold no answers for him.

‘Let’s see, shall we?’ he whispered, then passed into the cool, shadowy relief of the entrance and through the door into one of the oddest churches he had ever set foot in.

14 (#ulink_bbcb7637-3b82-5c88-ba3a-e5a945dfd712)

Cassidy sat behind the oak expanse of his desk, mouth slack, eyes staring up at Morgan. When the doctors had told him Stella’s cancer had not responded to treatment and she had only weeks to live, it had felt exactly like this, as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the room and what was left was difficult to breathe.

‘Ramon,’ he said, repeating the name Morgan had just given him.

Morgan nodded. ‘Ramon Alvarado. Tío’s son.’

‘But – what was he … I mean, why was he on the plane?’

Morgan shrugged. ‘Some trouble south of the border. He needed a fast ride out of Mexico. I didn’t ask for the details.’

Cassidy stared out of the tall window of his study and down the avenue of jacaranda trees that framed the church beyond the wall. Above the roof he could see smoke rising out in the desert. That’s what had been filling his mind until Morgan had told him what had caused the fire. Now it seemed the very least of his worries.

‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t think you needed to know.’

‘You didn’t think I … but this has … Tío’s son!! Don’t you think you should have run it by me?’

‘It was a last-minute thing. I got a call. I made a decision.’

‘You made a decision?’

‘I didn’t have a choice, all right? When someone like Tío calls and asks for a favour, he’s not really asking. What would you have done different? Said, “Sorry to hear your son’s in trouble, but we’re not going to help you”? Don’t start blaming me for this. I didn’t make the damn plane crash.’

Cassidy rose from his chair and started pacing. ‘We need to do everything we can to speed up the crash investigation,’ he said. ‘Get proof that it was an accident.’

‘What if it wasn’t?’

Cassidy glared at him like he had suggested the earth was flat. ‘Of course it was an accident.’

Morgan took his phone from his pocket and stepped into the room. ‘When I went out to the crash site I nearly ran this guy down.’ He held the phone out.

Cassidy took his reading glasses from the desk and the photo on the screen came into focus as he put them on. It had been taken from inside Morgan’s car, the air outside filled with grit that softened the image, though the figure of the man standing at the centre was clear. He seemed to shine in the sunlight, his face gazing up at something the photograph did not show. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Says he can’t remember, but the label in his jacket says he’s called Solomon Creed.’ He swiped the screen and the picture changed. ‘He also got this on his arm.’

Cassidy looked at the livid red mark upon the man’s skin then at Morgan for an explanation.

‘Looks like a kill tag to me,’ Morgan obliged. ‘Cartel hit men get them to show they’ve clipped someone important. Usually they’re tattoos, but sometimes they cut themselves or brand themselves, like this.’

Cassidy looked back down at the photo as he realized what Morgan was suggesting. ‘You think this guy might have …’

‘Shot the plane down? Maybe. Say he knocked it out with some missile, got caught in the blast, banged his head and now can’t remember who he is. Or maybe he knows exactly who he is and just isn’t saying. The cartels use some pretty unusual characters as gunmen south of the border – gives the norteños something to sing about. So I don’t think the notion of an albino being used as a hit man is beyond the realm of possibility. They’re superstitious about albinos down there anyways. Hell, they’re superstitious about everything. They think the white skin shows they got divine power, like they’ve been touched by God or something. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that he might have done it. He was there, he was running away from the crash, he even said the fire was there because of him, and he’s got this mark on his arm. It’s all circumstantial, but we don’t need it to hold up in a court of law, we only need Tío to buy it. Someone is going to have to pay for his son’s death – and I don’t mean offer him cash, say “sorry” and hope everything’s going to go away. Blood will have to pay for blood here, so that’s what we have to give him. We give him this guy. We give him Solomon Creed.’

Cassidy swiped the screen and stared hard at the picture of the pale man standing on the desert road. Then he shook his head and handed the phone back. ‘I think I should talk to Tío first, try for a diplomatic solution before we start … throwing human sacrifices at him. We don’t even know who this guy is. Have you run an ID check?’

‘He’s not on the NCIC.’

‘That only proves he’s not a criminal. What about the missing persons channels – DMV, Social Security?’

‘What’s the point?’

‘The point is we’re talking about a man’s life here.’

‘No. The point is we’re talking about several people’s lives, including yours and mine. We’re talking about the survival of this town. I don’t want to know who this guy is. I don’t need to know. But I’ll tell you something else: he had a copy of Jack Cassidy’s memoir in his pocket, personally inscribed to him from Jim Coronado.’

Cassidy felt the blood drain from him. ‘You think he knew Jim?’

‘He says he can’t remember, but when I asked him about the book he said he felt like he was here because of Jim. He said he thought he was here to save him.’