Read Online The Vatican Rip by Jonathan Gash - Free Book Online Page B

fell over the damned thing. Simply nicking the rent table was definitely out.
    A mixed party of Italians and Germans raced through. I could feel the floor vibrate and felt sad. Sad because the vibrations were small in amplitude, which meant a very substantial solid flooring. You feel these by rocking back on your heels as somebody walks past. And the lovely ceiling was an arched miracle of painting. Note that: the most difficult kind to penetrate from above. So no way in from above, through the windows, the walls, or through the floor. Gawd.
    Miserably I tagged on to a group of Americans and plodded downstairs leaving Arcellano’s beautiful table standing there.
    The rip was impossible. Arcellano had had it. Now I had to tell him.
    I phoned the number Marcello had given me. A young woman’s voice came on, to the background of an infant’s loud abuse. Pausing breathlessly to admonish the infant, which only made another sprog burst into discordant song, she told me Marcello was still on duty, and could she give him a message.
    ‘On duty,’ I said pleasantly, but not liking the phrase. ‘Please tell him Lovejoy rang.’
    ‘Right. I’ll phone him at the station. Where can he reach you if he can’t get away?’
    That was a bit difficult. ‘May I ring you again, in, say, an hour?’
    ‘Yes. That will be fine.’
    I kept listening after we said our goodbyes. I didn’t like that word ‘station’, either. Her receiver went down without any special clicks full of ominous implications to an antique dealer like me. No special significance in the woman’s voice, either, obviously just a young housewife doing multihanded domestic battle with her two riotous offspring. Which in its way was as ominous as anything I had yet encountered since arriving in Rome.
    I had bad news for Marcello. This rip needed Murph the Surf, not me. I cheered up and went out for a gander at the streets. It was high time other people started getting bad news, as well as me. Share and share alike, I always say.
    You’ve never seen such neat shops as there are in Rome. I knew from Maria’s relentless teaching that the shops shut for the afternoon and open again about four-thirty. They were just opening for their second rush.
    I went down the Andrea Doria, a wide and pleasant street. You have to be an olympic pole vaulter to get across safely but I made it. Two cups of
caffé-latte
with a cake
columbe
the size of a tram and I felt full of myself. Within one hour I’d be free of the rip, the whole bloody thing. I’d simply tell Marcello the Vatican was a fortress, protected by vigilant guards who were obviously wise in the ways of the horrible old world. Then, duty done, I would spend a few happy nights in this lovely city’s museums and art galleries until my money ran out, then off home. What was impossible was impossible. No two ways about it. I wandered on in a welter of relief. Even Arcellano would have to accept the obvious.
    It was coming up to Easter. I’d never seen so many Easter things in my life. Shop interiors were hung all about with chocolate Easter eggs done in scintillating coloured papers, each egg decorated in a spray effect for all the world like a grenadier’s badge. And windows with a zillion chocolate shapes, chocolate baskets full of tiny eggs and little creatures doing their thing. You couldn’t help but be fascinated. I saw one that I don’t know to this day how it stayed upright, a giant floating dove cake in creams and puff pastry. Marvellous.
    Marvellous, that is, until I saw old Anna struggling in the grip of the proprietor, her hand pointing imploringly at me and screaming blue murder.
    ‘Nephew! Nephew! Enrico! He’ll tell you the truth!’
    I looked round. The old bat meant me.
    Shoppers gathered instantly, volubly joining in and having a whale of a time explaining opinions.
    ‘Are you her nephew?’ the proprietor demanded.
    ‘Yes! Yes!’ Anna screamed, yelling it was all a misunderstanding which her nephew