The Vatican Rip

CHAPTER 14

A clamouring alarm clock shot me awake at ten past eight. I was relieved because I'd had a hideous dream in which Maria became the bird and old Anna became Adriana, and Carlo and Piero advanced towards me with knives while Arcellano stood by lighting cigarettes. I sweated into consciousness.

Anna had gone. Presumably she was already out on the streets conning the tourists.

Quite a worker. Old Anna's black dress had gone from its hanger. The old bird was nicer than this young one. For the life of me I couldn't think of them as one person.

On her dressing-table stood a paper bag with rolls and jam. One of the curtained alcoves turned out to be a tiny kitchen with an unbelievably complicated kettle that defeated me. Outside I found a shower by the loo but no telephone, which was a setback because I badly wanted to phone Maria. It was at least worth a try.

I washed and ate. Anna had left a battery shaver in clear view, and a note on her chair.

It read:

Lovejoy,

Be here at three. Anna.

Another woman giving me orders. That's all I needed.

Fabio was in a hell of a mood when I reached the Albanese Emporium dead on nine.

'Walk round him, Lovejoy,' Piero advised me laconically. 'He's had a tiff with his boy-friend.'

'Shut up, you great buffoon!' Fabio squealed.

Adriana arrived in time to prevent bloodshed and got us all working, me on a collection of prints she had purchased a week before.

That morning my main intention was to work out the details of the rip. Instead I had two successes and one failure. All three came through Adriana. By elevenish I had picked out the spoiled prints and the forgeries and took them in to the boss. She was ploughing through a catalogue from Sotheby's Rome office—only a stone's throw from us. She pulled a face when she saw how many there were in the dud pile.

'Put them back in an auction,' I advised.

'Brick them?“

'Why throw away good prints after bad?'

To 'brick' a group of sale items offered at auction is to include something really quite good or valuable—or a forgery which appears so—in among the dross. This makes for a better price. The risk you take is that the bidders will be too thick to recognize the valuable antique and you'll finish up having thrown it away for a song. I never brick my stuff. It's an insult to a superb genuine antique to make it live among a load of tat.

I told her, 'Think how you'd feel.'

She actually did begin to smile but throttled it at birth. 'Very well. Into next week's auction.'

I said, 'Erm, thank you for the supper last evening.'

She looked down at her catalogue. 'Not at all. I'm glad you dined well.'

As I made to go I pretended to notice a small stand on her desk, a simple circular base with a neatly turned stem not quite ten inches tall. She kept appointment cards in the slot at its top. It still had its screw. 'Excuse me, please, signora. Do you still have the embroidery fans?'

'The what?' She saw I was holding the stand. I knew she didn't know what it was. Fabio had its partner on his desk.

'There is a crenellated embroidered fan-shaped piece of material which goes with this.'

The penny still hadn't dropped. 'It's a rare American candle screen. Ladies used them to shield their eyes from direct glare when sewing. Seeing you have the pair… Look, signora,' I suggested. 'Why don't I restore these in the workshop? I could clean them up and maybe we can find the screens. They're really very valuable…”

That was my first success, gaining access to the workshop. My second came when Adriana, passing for the umpteenth time to check I was still hard at it, actually came in and commented, 'You seem at home here.'

I was concentrating on milking the screw out. 'I am. Why is it such a shambles?'

She gazed about and did her shrug. 'The business can't run to a craftsman.'

'Because that's tragic' I indicated a small table in the corner. I'd not had time to have a look at it, but it looked a good early nineteeth-century French occasional table. Some goon had stuck its broken leg with sticking plaster. A couple of planks lay across its precious surface. 'The poor little sod,' I said. 'I'll do it for you.'

'Can you? Having them mended costs the earth.'

'I can do better. I'll make you a reproduction piece, something really splendid.'

'The true wood will be expensive.'

'I'll make it pay.' I'd nearly said worth your while. Adriana got the switch and went all prim.

'Do you have a piece in mind, Lovejoy?'

'I think so.' I had a piece in mind all right. 'A Chippendale rent table.'

She thought a second, weighing time against lire. 'All right. Go ahead. But don't botch it. It's a highly specialized—'

That word again. 'I've heard,' I said drily.

Curtly she told me to get on with my work and left me to it, not quite slamming the door.

My failure was my phone call to the Pinnacle Peak Language Academy in East Anglia.

Adriana took some persuading to let me use the blower and even had Fabio, full of sly satisfaction, to sit and time my call. Even the few browsers bulldozing their way through our porcelains could hear as Jingo Hardy came on the other end.

'Maria Peck?' he bawled. 'No, Lovejoy, old fruit. She left the day you did.'

I felt sick. “Why? Where did she go?'

'Dunno, old boy. I'll try and find out if you like.'

'Please.' I gave him the Emporium's number and explained it was in Rome. He fell about.

'Got the language bug, eh?' he chortled. Only people like Jingo chortle. I'd never heard anyone chortle before.

'Er, sure. Listen Jingo. Could you find out the address of the bloke who paid my fees?

It's rather imp—'

'Impossible, old thing. Maria did her own tuition-fee acceptances.'

That sickened me even more.

'Hey!' he exclaimed. 'Would you count Albanian loanwords in the Brindisi dialect for us, seeing you're there—?'

I cut off. I was in enough trouble without linguistics ballsing things up.

Back in the workshop I set about the candle screens again, but started thinking. Until now I'd been like a leaf in a gale, at everybody's whim. And my dithering had helped—

all right, all right: had caused—Marcello to die. And made my friends hostages to Arcellano. It was time to mend my ways and set my sights on the rip. And on killing Arcellano. The kindly affable old Lovejoy image would have to go.

'Lovejoy! Will you stop that riot?' from Fabio in his mini-office up in the showroom. 'My head!'

'Sorry, Fabio.'

I'd been whistling cheerfully. First time for days.

* * *

Watching Anna take off her make-up was one of the worst experiences I'd ever had. I mean to say, I'm normally attracted by women who wear a lot of cosmetics. The more the merrier, as far as I'm concerned, even if the headshrinkers these days are always on about how it shows you're full of primitive urges and all that. In fact I wish women would wear a lot more mascara and lipstick and jewellery. But seeing Old Anna become young again was unnerving. Fascinating, but weird.

'What's the matter with you, Lovejoy? Don't nudge.'

I must have got too near. 'Only looking.' She started to peel some crinkled plasticy stuff off her forehead with little ripping movements. It came like chewing-gum. Lovely smooth skin began to appear. I felt ill.

'Tell me about the Vatican, Anna.'

'Right. Sit and listen.' She started to tell me in an excited rush. 'Nine-tenths of Rome's tourists don't know what the Vatican actually is. That's a proven fact. Like you, dunce.

It is a private city. It has a helicopter pad, railway station, twenty-four galleries and museums, radio studios, a supermarket, bank, barracks, garages for ninety-eight cars, newspaper printers, motor workshop, a fire station, a population—everything.' Calmly she dissected an eyebrow. I hate things to do with eyes and was dreading seeing her start on those stubby eyelashes but couldn't look away.

'You're lucky, Lovejoy, in one way. Ten years ago the Vatican also had its own gendarmerie, Noble and Palatine Guards. They were disbanded. Now there's only the Swiss Guard, but there's a hundred of them and they're good.'

'Don't people just go in to the bank or the shop? Or get the train?'

Anna laughed then, really fell about. 'Cretino! Listen: the bank—called the “Institute for Pious Works”—is guarded inside and out. The railway station accepts no passenger trains, only goods. And as for the Anona supermarket, you have to be SCV.'

'Eh?'

'One of the 450 citizens of the Stato della Città del Vaticano. All except sixty are in Holy Orders—and you obviously are not, Lovejoy. There are nearly fifteen hundred Vatican employees, and nearly two thousand functionaries and diplomatic hangers-on. They can go in to shop at the Anona supermarket and the liquor store—as long as they remember to bring their ration cards and special personal passes. There was once a black market, you see?' She pulled small slivers from her mouth. Immediately her face filled out. Years dropped off her. It was miraculous. 'We Romans joke that SCV means

“Se Cristo Vedesse”! If Christ were to see…

This catalogue of security was getting me down. A bigger shock was seeing her catch at her temple and simply sweep off her wispy hair, shaking out dark lustrous waves almost to her shoulders. I hand it to her: she was a real artist. The pads and teeth caps she placed in a coloured solution. The wig was instantly brushed and hung on a wicker stand. Her eyes caught mine mischievously.

'There are four ways in, Lovejoy. The main Museum entrance, from the street. Museum guards. Then the Cancello di Sant' Anna, St Anne's gate where we met—leading into the walled-in courtyards for the barracks, the Osservatore Romano offices, the whole service area. Swiss Guards, there. Then the two entrances near the front of St Peter's itself, the Portone di Bronzo for papal audiences, also Swiss Guard. And last the Arco delle Campane.'

I knew the giant bronze door. The Arch of Bells has two flamboyantly dressed Guards with halberds. Anna caught me drawing breath.

'No, Lovejoy. There are two more Swiss Guards just inside. Marksmen with guns.' She started creaming her face, a mask of slithery white. Jesus, but Max Factor has a lot to answer for. 'You look put down.' Only her eyes and mouth were showing as she turned on me. 'Look, Lovejoy. I saw you case the Vatican. I've seen it done by experts— real experts, not a bum like you, wet behind the ears. And they all missed out.'

'What's it to you?'

She swung on me then, youthful eyes shining. 'It's never been done—that's what it is to me, Lovejoy! Never. Oh, an army or two have pillaged Rome now and then. But no one living man.'

Light dawned. I stared at her. 'And you…?'

'Why do you think I've worked the Vatican geese for two years?' Her blazing eyes softened into rapture and she gave me a blasphemous blessing. 'I dream of the rip, Lovejoy,' she purred, looking past me into some paradise of her own creation. 'I've schemed and waited. And now you've come, Lovejoy. A man with the same dream. We can do it. I know we can.'

'Me…' wishing I didn't have to say it “… and you?'

'Don't make me sound like a penance, cretino!' She began smoothing cream off with tissues. 'You need me. Together we succeed. Alone, you sleep in the Castel Sant'

Angelo garden.'

So she knew about that, too. She rose abruptly and flung a leg on to the chair, peeling a stretch stocking. Varicosities were clearly painted on the inside. I'd already seen her black buttonstrap shoes and their crafted supports, real works of art. She donned a shabby dressing-gown. 'Don't overestimate me, Lovejoy. I've no private army. Fine, I make a living, though the Mafia don't lose any sleep. But I'm good. You've seen me.

We're ideal.'

She went to shower while I lay back and looked at the ceiling. I now had a job which provided sufficient cover, and an ally whose only fault was that she happened to be the best con artist on the streets. And a place to stay, providing I accepted her as a partner. And a workshop where I could make the Chippendale replica, which I desperately needed for the rip.

As a lurk it wasn't so bad. Maybe it was as good as any I could hope for. And the rip was my one sure way of getting to Arcellano. I should have been quite content, but I don't like coincidences. And for the only two people in the world planning separate Vatican rips to finish up living in the same room was too much of a coincidence for me.

By a mile.