Free The Vatican Rip by Jonathan Gash Page B

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 halfheartedly 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