The Vatican Rip

CHAPTER 13

Befuddled but determined, I waited in the gloom of the church doorway. The petite woman emerged, looking from side to side and obviously puzzled. The minute the restaurant door had swung to I dived to the left and raced across the street. The great facade of the Sant' Andrea della Valle gave only little cover and the main street was well lit but I trusted the sudden switch from a cosy interior to a place of pedestrians and cars would momentarily disconcert her. I pressed back in the doorway, trying to seem casual because a cluster of people opposite were waiting for the 64 bus.

She dithered for a second, half-heartedly made to start one way, then hesitated and finally gave up. She wasn't daft, though. She pretended to stroll one way, then suddenly turned down the Corso del Rinascimento, walking at a hell of a lick. All this was in case somebody was following, which of course I was. Some instinct made me dart across the road and into the zigzag alley which leads off the main street. I ran into the dark and emerged a few seconds later in the Navona. By lounging against the corner shop and looking as though I'd been there for days I could see into the Corso with little chance of her seeing me.

Sure enough, she turned into the square within minutes, starting down it past the first of the two splendid fountains. This was a problem, because apart from the great central obelisk and the fountains there was no shelter for me if she suddenly looked back, and I already knew she was suspicious-minded. The square is racetrack-shaped. Popes and suchlike used to flood it in the old days for water pageants, and indeed it used to be a racetrack, but now it has a couple of good cafés and a load of artists and drifters.

Indeed, some were still drifting. She was halfway down when I finally made up my mind and streaked off left into the parallel street to wait, breathless now and still woozy from the grub and the wine, by the alley corner.

I was almost level with the second fountain, Bernini's great and spectacular Nile figure with its hand to its eyes. As I waited; listening to her footsteps approaching down the square, I had to smile. Bernini's friends used to joke that the statue was hiding its gaze from the sight of Borromini's church across the square. Gianlorenzo Bernini was Borromini's boss, and probably the greatest religious architect of all time. He was everybody's darling—except Borromini's, who was a sullen, withdrawn, paranoiac genius and who hated his witty, eloquent, talented gaffer. Borromini's supporters retorted that in any case Borromini's beautiful church was designed to support Bernini's obelisk should its base crack, like that ghastly fiasco at St Peter's when Bernini's proposed south tower cracked its wonderful Maderno base. There was no love lost between these two geniuses, such opposites of temperament. I always wonder if Bernini actually cracked the base deliberately—Maderno being Borromini's close relative and all that. Anyhow, their hatred died only when Francesco Borromini, that great sour and brooding genius, committed suicide during a fit of despair in 1667 leaving the field clear for Bernini. I'm actually on Borromini's side, though I'm completely unbiased—

'Lovejoy?'

I nearly leapt a mile. The woman was standing a couple of yards behind me. I cursed myself for a fool. The vicinity of such lovely statuary had distracted me. Daft to lurk so near antiques of such quality.

'Yes. Erm…' My heart was thumping. She'd scared me out of my wits.

'Why are you following me?'

'Erm, no, miss. Erm…' I was thinking, God Almighty. What if she screamed for the police? 'I thought you were following me.' It sounded lame. 'How do you know my name?'

'I have a message for you.'

I was getting a headache. It was all too complicated. I realized I was dog tired. 'From whom?'

'An old lady. A friend of yours. She says she has a proposition.'

'I don't know any old… wait!' It wasn't far from here that I'd done Carlo over and recovered some of my money from the old cow. 'Anna?'

Anna had mentioned a spare room, suggested I lodge with her, in fact. And there'd been something about a daughter… I asked what was the proposition.

'You'll have to come.'

A passing couple sniggered across the alley in the darkness. They were assuming the worst, that we were making a proposition of a different kind under concealment of night. I shivered suddenly as the glamour of the Navona faded in the chill night wind.

Abruptly I was washed in the cold realization that it was here poor Giordano Bruno had been burned alive. Original and brave thinker, he had walked this very spot, been led on to the wood pile simply to provide a spectacle for the nerks of this world. Even when the poor bloke came to London to try to scratch a living by teaching bored young ladies, we'd been so offhand he'd been driven away. And tonight was the first night Marcello would spend in his grave, the first of eternity. And the first night of widowhood for his wife. And the first night as orphans for his two infants. I swear my teeth chattered from the cold.

There was sweat on my face and my forehead was burning. I leant back against the wall, bushed.

'Are you all right?' the bird was asking.

'Will she help me?'

I felt her smile. 'She offered once before.'

I walked with her then among the narrow streets. It was only when she pulled a door open and stepped inside that I realized we were in the alley where Carlo and I had had our disagreement.

Gingerly I followed into the passageway. The minuscule light just about reached the floor from its furry flex. Plaster was off the walls. It looked unswept.

'Er, one thing, miss.' I didn't want knifing.

'What is it?' She paused, key in a door by the stairs.

'Erm, where's Carlo these days?'

'Recovering in hospital,' she said pointedly. 'At considerable expense. Come in.'

'Erm, wish him better.'

The room was tidy but small with a couple of curtained alcoves. A dressing-table with hooped lights of the sort you see in theatre dressing-rooms occupied one end. A divan, two small armchairs and a vase of flowers. A radio. A curtained window. A faded photograph of a man and a woman smiling. A table lamp.

'This is it, Lovejoy.' It wasn't a lot, but I'd have settled for anything. She motioned me to a chair.

I asked anxiously, 'I suppose Anna's gone to bed?' I somehow had the idea I'd get a better deal from the old devil than this quiet young bird.

She made no reply, just looked at me as if I'd come from Mars.

I floundered on, 'Look. The trouble is I have no money for rent. Not yet.'

'Until after you do the job?'

'That's right,' I said before I could stop myself, then I thought, oh what the hell if she knew. I was exhausted, unutterably weary. 'How much is the rent?'

'We'll decide tomorrow. You sleep there.' She indicated the divan.

I was too tired to argue. I'd hardly slept for the past two nights. And the days had been hell. She discarded her swagger jacket and started putting things away. I waited foolishly.

'Erm… are you upstairs, then?' Old Anna must already be snoring her stupid head off.

'No. There's another divan behind the curtain.'

I cleared my throat. Well, if she said so. 'Was this Carlo's?' I noticed a man's coat hanging behind the door. Tired as I was, I didn't want there to be any misunderstandings that might cause old Anna to come creeping in with an axe to defend her gorgeous daughter's honour.

She was getting out a couple of blankets. 'Use this cushion for a pillow. You're hardly conscious. There's a loo second door under the stairs. The hall light's always on. If you're shy you can undress under the blankets.

I got my shirt off while she wiped her face with some white cream stuff at her giant illuminated mirror. She was beautiful sitting there. 'Incidentally,' I told her, thinking I was being all incisive and knowing. 'Tell your mum Carlo's a drunk. He drank umpteen bottles of wine when he was supposed to be following. I knew he was there all the time.'

She was quite unperturbed, creaming away. 'You evidently pride yourself on your powers of observation, Lovejoy.'

'I'm not bad,' I confessed, chucking my trousers out and hauling the blankets up. I decided to take my socks off the minute I got warm.

'You're not all that good,' the luscious creature said. By turning my head on the cushion I could watch her wiping her lips with a tissue. It was so lovely I had to swallow. She looked good enough to eat.

'No?'

'No,' she said. 'I'm Anna.'

There was a century pause, give or take a year. I cleared my throat. Anna's decrepit clothes hung by the alcove. And on that dressing-table stood boxes and tubes and sprays and paints and cylinders—enough make-up to service the Old Vic in season.

'You're who?'

'Cretino!' she said scornfully. 'Go to sleep.'

My head was splitting. This bird had just said she was old Anna. Sometimes things get too much. It's always women's fault.

My cortex groped for its one remaining synapse and switched to oblivion.