Marcello's voice went funny. 'Arcellano?'
'Yes. Tell him I can't do it. Nobody can.' I sailed on. 'Just pass the message on that Lovejoy resigns. Tell him to ask the SAS instead.'
'Lovejoy! You know Arcellano?'
I was too mad and too despondent to chat about things that were pathetically obvious.
'See you, Marcello.'
'Lovejoy!' He shouted so desperately loud the phone crackled. 'Lovejoy! Tomorrow morning! Six o'clock! The Colosseum! See me there—'
'Nice knowing you,' I said, and put the receiver down.
Everybody else has a thousand excellent ideas about your work. Ever noticed that?
It was only when I was actually on the point of going for a quiet glass of wine that I realized my money was missing. Then I recollected how close Anna tended to walk with one, how trustingly she'd taken my arm—on the wallet side. The old bitch had dipped me, the evil old cow.
Apart from a few coins I was broke.
CHAPTER 8
Next morning I escaped from the hotel—into the worst day of my life.
Usually I'm a night owl. I'm up early too, which is just another way of saying I'm hardly a ball of fire once the day is actually under way. With the extra stimulus of wanting to escape without paying I was tiptoeing out by five o'clock.
The previous evening I had laughingly made several deliberate errors of direction down the corridors. This way I learned there was a separate exit, a kind of alleyway leading to a subterranean car park. Once out of the hotel it would be simple to hitch-hike to the airport. With luck I'd be in the air by late afternoon.
I left my crummy suitcase and my few frayed belongings. The spring weather was not overpowering, so I wore two shirts and carried spare socks in my pocket. My small canvas satchel thing came too. This I stuffed with other belongings—a dictionary, an antiques notebook, passport, air ticket, underpants and singlet—and glided out into the corridor.
There is always noise in hotels, but until five that morning I'd no idea how much. It's a wonder anybody kips at all. Flitting down the stairs, I nearly infarcted whenever the lift banged or hotel staff conversed on the landings. In fact at one stage, pausing in the lift alcove while my heart hammered and my breathing wouldn't start up again, I seriously contemplated nipping down to Elsie's room on the third floor, and throwing myself on her mercy, so to speak, but common sense won. A woman finding a man at a disadvantage can be very friendly company. Be destitute, and that same woman becomes utterly merciless. So I crept on and made it safely out into the street after only seven or eight more infarcts.
Left across the Via Campanella. The great somnolent Vatican stared reproachfully down at me as I marched along the quiet streets. Cheerfully I gave it two fingers, meaning Arcellano and his daft scheme.
The bus I caught from the Piazza del Risorgimento was one of the first out. Rome was waking sleepily. A few cars were already abroad, their drivers wearing the non-toxic air of the early motorist rediscovering the freedom of the roads. In an hour they knew it would be hell. Smiling, I got off the bus as soon as I saw an open nosh bar, and with my last groat had coffee. I'd escaped from the hotel, possibly from Arcellano and his rip. I felt really great.
It's funny how your mind plays tricks. I was honestly listening to two blokes conversing about last night's football match and noshing away when I noticed where I was. I was astonished. No, I mean it. Until then I honestly thought I'd chosen a bus at random, simply got the first one leaving the bus station in order to get clear away. But there, illuminated by the slanting sunlight against the blue sky, was the great silent mass of the Colosseum, the early sun slit by its cavities into beams that stencilled its darkness and only made its prodigious stony bulk loom even more. Almost across the blinking road, for heaven's sake. Can you imagine?
I swallowed nervously. Ever since I'd arrived in Rome events had ganged up on me.
You must have had that same feeling, when no matter how you plan you finish up having no real choice. There was a girl serving.
'Have you the time, please?' I asked.
'Nearly six, signor.'
Six. Marcello's hour, the time he said to meet him at the Colosseum. I hadn't taken all that much notice of what he'd said—being more concerned with getting my own resignation in. Until this chance bus journey, I honestly hadn't the slightest intention of meeting Marcello. That is God's truth. And if old Anna had not pinched my money… See what I mean, about events? I want to get this clearly understood, because the deaths weren't my doing—well, anyhow not my responsibility. If I'd had my way I would have been back in my crummy East Anglian cottage instead of walking towards the curved stone storeys of the Colosseum.
There was hardly anyone about. An ice-cream van arriving, a police car dozing, an almost empty bus wheeling round and a couple of little kids waiting for the day's tourist action to begin. One early car half-heartedly tried to run me down. The city had hardly begun to wake.
The Colosseum's real name is the Teatro Flaviano. It stands at a big intersection of the San Gregorio and the road leading to the Forum. From the outside it has the appearance of a huge gutted edifice still in its undressed fawn-coloured stone. In its heyday it held as many as fifty thousand spectators and is beautifully planned. Believe it or not, it had enough exits and enough room for its audience—an architectural miracle.
Find a modern building that has decent doorways and isn't hell to be in. Lovely.
I stood listening a moment between the pillars of the entrance. There was no sign of Marcello, just a great horde of cats insolently giving me their sneery stare. None bothered to move, and I even had to step over two as I entered between the scagged stones.
An empty ruin can be quite spooky, even in the centre of a bustling city in the bright cold sunlight of morning with the occasional car door slamming and noise of a passing bus. I called Marcello's name. It came out a bleat, for no reason because I wasn't scared or anything. I shook myself and called his name a bit louder. No luck. I trod inside, under the stretching stone.
The actual floor of the amphitheatre itself has long since gone. You come out looking up the length of the Colosseum's open space, with the huge slabbed divisions of the cells below now occupying all that is left of the vast arena. All round and climbing upwards are stone galleries for the spectators of long ago. I went to the right along one of the contoured terraces. A sprinkling of cats yawned and prowled after me.
I called softly, 'Marcello?'
A pebble dislodging somewhere practically made me leap out of my skin. There was a light echoing thud, probably some moggie nudging a piece of crumbling mortar off a stone buttress. For some reason I had the jitters, but then I'm like that, always on edge over something that isn't there. Cats are nice, yet when you are in a place like that you can't help thinking of their bigger relatives noshing Christians by the hundred, and spectators howling for blood.
Like a fool I found myself going on tiptoe round the terrace, and this with an ice-cream-seller whistling outside as he put out his awning and in clear shout of that splendid police car out by the pavement and, and…
The terrace ended about half way round the great ellipse. An iron railing barred my way. To the right lay the outer wall and its splendid arched fenestrations showing the city of Rome slugging out of her kip. To the left, the central cavity of the arena. If I hadn't been in such a state I'd have found time to marvel at the construction.
As it was, I barely had the inclination to glance ahead and down to where the buttressing was being restored. The new giant blocks of stone were symmetrically arranged on the sand to either side of… of Marcello.