The Vatican Rip by Jonathan Gash Page B

the spectacular ‘accident’, the faint and the phoney fetch were her favourites. I followed, marvelling, and stuck to her like glue.
    It was about two o’clock when it happened. I was reeling bewilderedly after her hunched, limping, amorphous form when I realized the old bag was pausing. She was by Bernini’s fountain in St Peter’s Square, with me thankfully trying to get my breath and her sprightly as ever. She did something extraordinary. Quite openly, she deliberately placed a postcard in the water of the fountain. Just layered it with great precision so it floated. I stared as she moved off at a sedate limp towards the great Colonnade pillars among the tourists.
    Fascinated, I approached the fountain. There it was, a postcard, still floating. I glanced about. People were clicking cameras, gazing at the great architecture, chatting and strolling or simply staring up at the Holy Father’s narrow window in hopes he might show. Nobody noticed the old lady’s odd action.
    It was barely soggy. I got it and turned the picture over. Her writing was large, decisive and brisk.
    Enrico,
    The Ponte Sant’ Angelo, about six-thirty.
    Wait if I’m late. Love, Anna.
     
    I thought blankly, Enrico? Who the hell—? Then I remembered. Enrico was me, her ‘nephew’.
    I put the card in my pocket and set off in the direction she had taken. Within two minutes I realized the old sod had slipped me. Furiously I searched for her high and low but finally chucked in the sponge. She had vanished.
    I slumped exhausted on the Colonnade steps to wait till six-thirty. The old bag had shown an oddly consistent interest in me – particularly
me
– ever since I’d showed up. There was something odd here. I felt pushed, manoeuvred. The same feeling, in fact, I’d had since first meeting Arcellano that day in the auction. Surely Anna had nothing to do with Arcellano?
    I put my head on my knees and pretended to doze. The showy idiot who had been following me since about nine o’clock was now leaning against a pillar forty feet away. He was on his umpteenth bottle of red wine and looked like a villain from bad rep theatre. He was about eighteen and had seen too many cheap movies. He terrified me so much I nodded off.

Chapter 9
    ‘I saved your life, Enrico,’ Anna said, wading into ninety square yards of pizza, a horrible sight. ‘From Carlo.’
    ‘Who the hell’s Carlo?’
    ‘Look back.’
    We were walking at a slow pace away from the Angelo, the great circular castle by the Tiber. We had crossed the bridge and just turned left down the Coronari. A tangle of narrow streets was beginning, the kind I had yet to see in Rome. Anna was clearly at home here, never needing to check direction.
    Behind us the youngish bloke was leaning against the wall of a barber’s shop, cleaning his nails with a stiletto.
    ‘That 1951 Bogart is yours, I take it?’
    Anna cackled. ‘That’s Carlo. He wanted to spit you.’
    ‘Good gracious,’ I said politely.
    ‘He’s armed,’ she said mischievously.
    ‘His sort always is.’
    She fell about at that. ‘You’re great. This way, Enrico.’
    We dived to the right and started going slightly uphill. The streets were no more than alleys hereabouts. A lovely aroma pervaded my nostrils and I started to quiver. Furniture varnish. Several small antique shops, of remarkable elegance for such a crummy-looking district, were dotted in the nooks and crannies of the cobbley labyrinth. Carlo was following, three parts sloshed and weaving from side to side. You have to laugh.
    ‘Visit the Vatican again?’ she croaked as we trotted up the alley.
    ‘Me? No. Why should I?’
    She rolled in the aisles at this as well. I found myself getting narked at the old jessie. And the spectacle of her ravaged senile face smeared with grease did nothing for me, except make me heave.
    ‘That’s no answer.’ She laughed so much I had to bang her shoulders to get her breathing again. As soon as her colour came back she