“One question,” said the man, who Mary Verney suddenly realized had a thick Sicilian accent.
“Yes?”
“Where is Lungotevere … what did you call it?”
“Oh, Christ,” she muttered under her breath. “Do you have a map?”
Five minutes later, they were under way, Mary Verney clutching the map in one hand and the icon in the other. She thanked God they didn’t have that far to go. Otherwise they’d have got stuck in the traffic and never made it. The driver took the route up the via della Scrofa, then swung round at the Porte Ripetta, and headed south again. Mary’s heart began to thump with nervousness. She took the icon out of the bag she’d been carrying it in, and laid it on her lap.
“Into the nearside lane now,” she said, noting that the traffic was heavier than she’d hoped. “Slow down.”
Then she saw him, standing beyond the bus stop, hands out of his pockets.
“Stop.”
The taxi stopped, and she held up the icon to the window. Mikis stared at the icon, and she stared at Mikis. It lasted for about ten seconds, then he nodded, and took a step forward. He put a hand in his pocket.
“Now! Go! Fast!” she shouted. “Get us out of here.”
The car lurched forward as the driver, now thoroughly enjoying himself, slammed his foot on the accelerator and let out the clutch. There was traffic everywhere; twenty metres further on the lights were at red and the road was blocked with two large trucks.
“Keep going,” she shouted to the driver. “Whatever you do, don’t stop.”
He needed little encouragement and swerved with a thump on to the pavement, put his hand on the horn and his foot on the pedal. The taxi shot along, gaining speed until the pedestrian crossing at the bridge; then he cut left across the traffic, swerved to avoid a tourist and barrelled over the crossing so fast that, had anything been coming towards them, they could not possibly have missed it. He went faster and faster in the direction of the Piazza Navona, then cut right down the old cobbled streets that surround it.
“You’re going to kill someone,” she shouted as he swerved to avoid an old tourist eating an ice cream.
No reply. He kept on driving, almost like a professional racer. Then he slowed abruptly, and turned sharply into a cavern underneath an old apartment block.
The engine died as he cut it off, and the pair of them sat in silence for a few seconds. Mary was trembling from terror.
“Where are we?”
“My brother-in-law’s garage.”
He got out of the car and pulled the big old doors closed, cutting out all the summer light with a frightening suddenness. The weedy light bulb he switched on was no substitute. Mary breathed deeply several times to calm herself down, then fumbled in her bag for a cigarette, and lit it with shaky hands.
“Thank you,” she said when the driver came back. “You did a marvellous job.”
The driver grinned. “Normal driving for Palermo,” he said.
“Here.” She handed him a bundle of notes. “The additional 100,000 I promised. And another 200,000. You never saw me before. Don’t recognize me.”
He pocketed the money, and gestured to the door. “Thank you. And if you ever want another lift …”
“Yes?”
“Don’t call me.”
Mary nodded, dropped her half-finished cigarette and ground it into the dust with her feet, then picked up the icon in its wrapping.
“How far is it from here to the via dei Coronari?”
The taxi driver, pouring himself a drink from a bottle he’d found in a rickety desk, pointed. She walked out, back into the brightness of a Roman summer.
Five hundred metres away, in an entirely different street, pointing in the wrong direction and encased on all sides by cars and trucks, Paolo wept with frustration and humiliation. It was the sudden acceleration and the appallingly risky driving of Mary’s taxi that had caught him unawares. When pushed to the test, he wasn’t that willing to die. He beat his fists against the dashboard of the car, then picked up his phone and spoke reluctantly into it.
“Lost her,” he said.
“Oh, Christ,” Flavia said, her heart sinking. “Paolo, you can’t have. Tell me you’re joking.”
“Sorry. What do I do now?”
“Ever thought of suicide?”
“What the hell are you playing at?” Mary Verney, now she’d had a drink and had calmed down, was furious by the time she found the public phone in the bar and called Mikis again. “We had a deal. You had nothing to gain by pulling a gun.”
“I was not pulling a gun,” Charanis said at the other end.
“Oh, come on.”
“I was not pulling a gun,” he repeated. “As you say, what would I have to gain by shooting you? Nothing. So stop being hysterical. I want to get this over and get away.”
“Did you see the picture?”
“Yes.”
“Are you satisfied?”
“Enough. Until I can examine it properly. In about quarter of an hour you should receive a phone call. I will ring back in half an hour and you will tell me where the picture is. And it had better be there.”
There was no pretence at the urbane suavity he normally affected; he was serious now. Mary Verney looked at her watch; somehow she felt the next fifteen minutes would be vital. It would either work, or blow up in her face. Dear God, she wished there had been another way. If anything went wrong …
She looked at her watch again, thirteen minutes. She lit a cigarette, another one but at her age what did it matter, and ran through the list of things that could go wrong.
The phone went. She grabbed it, fumbling slightly in her impatience.
“She’s at liberty.” Oddly formal in its phrasing.
There was a click and the line went dead.
She dialled her daughter-in-law’s number, fumbling badly and dialling the wrong number the first time she tried, and the second. The third time it connected.
“Hello, Granny.” The bubbly, infectiously childish voice at the other end brought tears to her eyes; the moment she heard it she knew she’d won. She’d done everything she set out to do. She managed to mumble back a few words, but Louise would have to wait.
“Is your mummy there?”
She stopped her daughter-in-law from talking; she’d always talked too much, and once she got going it was difficult to stop her.
“She’s all right?”
“She’s fine. I don’t know what happened …”
“I’ll tell you later. Take Louise, get in the car and go.”
“Go where?”
“Anywhere. No. The police. Go to the nearest police station. Sit there as long as possible and say you want to report a missing dog, or something. I’ll send someone to get you when it’s all over.”
“When what’s all over?”
“Just do it, dear. It should only be another hour, or so.”
Her heart sank as she put the phone down and looked at the small package by her side. She would now have to deliver it and hope nothing went wrong. She took a deep breath, and walked off to begin the final stage.
When Flavia picked up her phone and heard Paolo’s frustrated, apologetic explanation of how he had lost Mary Verney in the traffic, she all but hurled the instrument across the room in rage and frustration. Of course there were risks something would go wrong. Something always does. But already, and such an absurd blunder? Paolo had years of experience; he knew the streets of Rome better than anyone. He was an alarmingly fast and incautious driver. Of all the people who should have been able to hang on to a foreigner who barely knew the city, he would have come top of her list.
And now it was all over. They would have to sit back, and hope that they could pick one or both of them up as they left the country. How very disappointing. How embarrassing. How humiliating. How stupid.