Harry's gaze shifted off, and the room became a blur. Until now he had been certain they were mistaken, that they had the wrong man, but this changed everything.

'What about the bus…?' He looked back, his voice barely a whisper.

'Whatever Communist faction was behind Parma 's murder, killing one of their own to shut him up?… The Mafia doing something else entirely?… A disgruntled bus company employee with access to, and knowledge of, explosives?… We don't know, Mr Addison. As I said, the bombing of the bus and the cardinal's murder are separate investigations.'

'When will all this be made public?'

'Probably not while the investigation continues. After that we will, in all likelihood, defer to the Vatican.'

Harry folded his hands in front of him and stared at the table. Emotions flooded. It was like being told you had an incurable disease. Disbelief and denial made no difference, the X rays, MRIs, and CT scans stared back from the wall just the same.

Yet, for all of that – for all the evidence the police had presented, one solid piece stacked upon another, they still had no absolute proof, as Pio had admitted. Moreover, no matter what he had told them about the substance of Danny's phone message, only he had heard Danny's voice. The fear and the anguish and the desperation. It was not the voice of a murderer crying out for mercy to the last bastion he knew, but of someone trapped in a terrible circumstance he could not escape.

For some reason, and he didn't know why, Harry felt closer to Danny now than he had since they were boys. Maybe it was because his brother had finally reached out to him. And maybe that was more important to Harry than he knew, because the realization of it had come not as a thought but as a rush of deep emotion, moving him to the point where he thought he might have to get up and leave the table. But he hadn't, because in the next moment another realization had come: he wasn't about to have Danny condemned to history as the man who had killed the cardinal vicar of Rome until the last stone had been turned and the proof was absolute and beyond any doubt whatsoever.