Hadn’t the Brigadier mentioned to the authorities that I was a sick man? Obviously not. But surely any properly trained doctor would have observed the signs? Surely they took X-rays of my abdomen to assess the full extent of the bullet wound? Or, failing that, if he cared to take a more than cursory glance at the goo they’d just trawled from my stomach, he might spot something to my disadvantage.
He listened carefully, ignoring my heavy sarcasm. He asked for details of diagnosis and symptoms. They he spoke to my nurse. I caught something about X-rays.
‘You mean you did take X-rays?’ I demanded in mock amazement.
‘Of course. But not such that would necessarily show anything of this cancer. On the other hand, if it has the hold that your previous doctor’s prognosis suggests … you say that it was confirmed?’
‘Yes. Dr Quintero diagnosed it in Venezuela and it was confirmed independently in a London hospital …’
‘Independently?’ he echoed.
‘Yes, that’s what I bloody well said!’ I snarled.
Then it struck me that I was getting angry with this man because he was apparently doubting the very worst news I’d ever been given.
No, I corrected myself. It was myself I was getting angry with. It was my own fear of hope, my own terror of being disappointed once more. I had been absolute for death and now, suddenly, incredibly …
They performed tests. I begged him to let no one know they were performing them, suggesting that it would be unkind to raise false hopes in my many loving friends and relations!
Early that evening, he came back to see me. His face was expressionless, but I could read the answer in my nurse’s eyes.
He made his announcement like an official bulletin being read at the palace gates.
‘Signore,’ he said. ‘We have carried out all the conventional tests and so far as the evidence provided by these goes, it has not emerged that a cancerous condition is presently affecting any part of your alimentary tract.’
He said this in Italian. Then he said it in English. It sounded too convoluted to be true in either language.
I said slowly, ‘No cancer?’
He sighed, more in puzzlement than disappointment, I think.
‘No cancer.’
Even then it was my nurse’s face that was my real confirmation of the news.
I don’t know what they do to you in hell for kissing a nun, but I’ve got it waiting for me. She didn’t seem to mind, so perhaps she’ll be there too, looking for more.
‘No cancer!’ I cried. ‘No bloody cancer!’
Now at last the doctor smiled and shook his head.
‘No, signore. Definitely no cancer. Not now. Not ever.’ That pulled me up short. There were huge and very unpleasant suspicions swirling round my mind and I had to be sure.
‘You mean there never was any cancer?’ I asked. ‘I couldn’t have had it and then had some kind of miraculous cure?’
The nurse’s eyes lit up again, this time at the prospect of being privy to a case of miraculous healing, but the doctor was too jealous of the skills of his profession to allow that possibility.
He made a dismissive gesture and shook his head again.
‘It was Tyrrhenian water you were full of, signore, not Lourdes. No, the initial diagnosis was mistaken. And the confirmatory diagnosis in London too.’
Mistaken!
Oh no, far from it, I thought grimly. I thought of Quintero’s embarrassed uneasiness which I’d put down to the emotional strain of having to tell an old acquaintance such bad news! I remembered Hunnicut’s equal uneasiness in the London hospital which I’d ascribed to much the same causes. At least old Honey would have been forced to play along “in the national interest” or some such phrase, but that greasy little abortionist Quintero must have done it solely for hard cash. And no doubt the assurance that I’d never return.
And the symptoms—the stomach pains, the blood on the toilet-paper—these too must have been arranged probably via bribery in Margarita; and since then, I now worked out, every time I’d suffered a bout of gut-ache, I’d recently taken something provided by Reilly’s fair hands!
‘So,’ concluded the doctor. ‘No more thoughts of death. You will be robbing yourself not of a few painful weeks as you thought, but many happy years. Agreed?’
I smiled and nodded and wept a little and clasped his hand. It was a highly charged emotional Latin moment. But deep down inside of me, there was a hard Northern coldness which was as resistant to joy as permafrost is resistant to the sun.
Pa had been finally proven right in his sublime egotism. What a vast importance he must have had for such steps to be taken in his pursuit! I had been deceived out of my exile and put on his trail. It must have been a complicated and expensive operation, but by Christ it had worked! I had led them to him as surely as any hound-dog. And now he was dead, and Kate was dead, and Angie was dead, and Vasco was dead, and for all I knew, Teresa might be dead also.
The previous day I had decided that all these deaths were meaningless and that the deaths of those who might be responsible would be meaningless also. But I hadn’t been thinking straight. My so called ‘real’ reason had been as fallacious as both my bullshit and my asshole reasons.
Now I felt the life-force running strong through my veins once more.
And it was telling me to kill.
24
… the staircase to Paradise …
A driver called for me the following day with papers authorizing my transfer to the Policlinico in Rome.
I took a genuinely fond farewell of my nurse. Every sick man should fall in love with his nurse, especially if she’s a nun and can’t take advantage. The doctor assured me he had put full details of the cancer tests they’d run on me into my file, plus a recommendation that they be double-checked in Rome. I thanked him, but I didn’t feel it would be necessary.
I was wheeled carefully down to the car park and transferred to a luxurious Mercedes estate-wagon ambulance. The Brigadier was doing things in style.
I was lightly strapped down on a well-cushioned bed, but I still groaned a couple of times as the suspension absorbed some minute unevenness in the road surface.
‘Take it easy, will you?’ I begged the driver, who glanced down at my haggard, pale face and grunted indifferently.
A couple of miles later while we were still a little way from the autostrada I cried out in pain and managed to pierce his indifference. What came was irritation rather than concern, but it was a step in the right direction and after another long juddering cry, he drew in to the side and came back to look at me.
‘I think I’m bleeding,’ I gasped.
He undid the strap to have a look. Up to this point I’d had rather mixed feelings about this fellow who might after all just simply be a genuine ambulance driver with mortgage worries. But as he leaned over me I saw a familiar outline under the left armpit of his white linen jacket, so when I chopped him below the ear, I didn’t feel the need to go too easy.
It was a 9mm Makarov he was carrying, which is really a nothing weapon except that it’s better than nothing. I took it and the holster, plus his trousers, shoes and jacket. Traffic was heavy along the road but the opaque windows gave me protection and I just had to hope that no Good Samaritan or nosey cop stopped to offer a hand.
Whatever the status of my driver, the ambulance was genuine enough and I bound his wrists and ankles with a roll of surgical tape before covering him with a blanket and strapping him down as tight as I could manage. Finally I inserted a piece of tape beneath his lips and stuck his gums together so that to the casual gaze he looked OK while lacking the power of articulate speech.
I quite enjoyed the ride after that. If you have to drive a couple of hundred kilometres on a red hot
Italian day, then an air-conditioned Merc ambulance is the vehicle to do it in. The driver had thoughtfully provided a hunk of crespone, a couple of peaches and a flask of iced coffee, all of which I found in the glove compartment
and enjoyed as we bowled along. Eventually the driver woke. I assured him casually that if he made the slightest effort to draw attention to himself as we went through the tolls, I would put two toy bullets from his toy gun up each of his nostrils.
I was going to need somewhere quiet to talk with this fellow eventually and a parked ambulance tends to attract attention. I’d been lucky once, but I didn’t want to push it unless I had to. I thought of turning off the autostrada somewhere in the Castelli and finding a nice quiet little sideroad, but my recent experience with the peasantry had reminded me what a suspicious, inquisitive race they are.
Eventually it occurred to me that the one place in which no one would take any notice of an ambulance was outside a hospital. So I did what the driver’s papers had said he was going to do and headed for Rome Policlinico.
Here I parked in an area marked ‘Private’ alongside another ambulance and spoke quickly but firmly to my passenger.
I told him I was going to take the tape out of his mouth and that when I did, he had thirty seconds to tell me what his orders were. If he obeyed, I would leave him to be found eventually. If he didn’t, I would still leave him to be found eventually. The only difference was the state in which he would be found.
I took the gun from its holster, ripped loose the tape and glanced at the dashboard clock. ‘Talk,’ I said.
He talked extremely rapidly. I listened. When he stopped I said, ‘Liar,’ and pressed the gun to his ear.
He talked again. I thought he’d set an all-time record before, but this beat it with seconds to spare. In essence it was the same as he’d said the first time, with assurances on his mother’s grave that no one had spoken truer since the Archangel Gabriel had forecast the Virgin Birth.
What he told me sounded a little more likely than that.
He was merely a hired hand and he’d taken his instructions from Reilly (he didn’t know her name, but there was no mistaking the description). He had been given a telephone number to ring from the Frascati self-service about ten kilometres outside the city, where he was to have received final instructions about his destination.
I noted the telephone number. There was a room number with it so it probably belonged to a hotel. Then I cut another piece of tape and sealed my driver’s mouth.
I said, ‘I’m going to make a phone call. I won’t be more than ten minutes. You’d better have been telling the truth.’
Making sure I’d locked all the ambulance doors, I moved swiftly away from the car park like a man who knew where he was going. Once out of the hospital precincts I slowed down. I was a lot stronger than I’d pretended when I was picked up that morning, but a lot weaker than I’d realized. Other pedestrians glanced at me strangely as they passed. It was hardly surprising. The ambulance driver had been a shorter, fatter man, and the difference showed in my borrowed clothes. Fortunately investigation revealed he’d also been a richer man. His wallet was bulging with notes. Reilly must have paid him in advance. No—knowing Reilly, half in advance!
I was drifting along the Viale de Policlinico which intersects the Viale dell’ Università. There was a great deal of pedestrian movement down this latter road, with banner-waving and a lot of noise. As I got nearer I realized it was the tail-end of some student protest march which must have started in the nearby university complex. There were several police cars cruising slowly around and my first instinct was to retreat before my odd apparel drew their attention, but it struck me that the best place for an eccentric dresser to hide is among a crowd of the eccentrically dressed and I joined the march. It turned right when it reached Stazione Termini, Rome’s mainline station. Here I dropped out, noticing a small, rather scruffy men’s outfitter’s in a side-street. Clearly it catered mainly for small, rather scruffy men but I eventually found an awful battleship grey suit which almost fitted me. I also bought a straw hat and at a neighbouring chemist’s the biggest pair of sunglasses I could see.
By now I needed a pick-me-up. I went into the station, dumping my borrowed clothes in a wastebin en route, and made for the refreshment room. I ordered a grappa. I’d have preferred whisky but feared that my preference might tempt me to excess. After one grappa I was able to turn to coffee and food. And finally I felt fit enough to go in search of a telephone.
It rang for five minutes and I was beginning to think I’d been wrong about the hotel. But it must only have been a receptionist taking a long siesta, for suddenly the phone was lifted and a voice said with all the resentful contempt of the breed, ‘Hotel Cristallo.’
I asked if they had a room. I was told that it was the height of the tourist season, and that vacancies were rarer than Papal errors, before this devout shit admitted they had. I was suitably, that is grovellingly, grateful, booked it in the name of Albino Ratti which I’d found on the papers in the ambulance driver’s wallet, and asked for directions from the station, saying I’d just arrived from Brindisi.
The Cristallo proved to be in easy walking distance, only a loud prayer’s length away from the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. I invested some more of my borrowed money in a cheap suitcase, which I roughened up against the corner of a wall in a narrow side-street behind a trattoria. Kitchen rubbish had been dumped on the pavement for collection later in the day and I shoved a couple of cardboard boxes containing what looked like non-noxious matter into the case as ballast.
The Cristallo proved to be a pretty modest establishment of the third or fourth class. The young man on reception was obviously rehearsing for better things. Like most Romans, he thought that anything from the deep south was three-quarters African and my scruffy luggage, cheap suit and strange gruff accent (I affected a heavy cold) merely confirmed his prejudice. I signed in as Albino Ratti, inventing an address in Brindisi, and accepted my key with bobbing servility. The key to 211, Reilly’s room, was missing, I noted.
The receptionist started sniffling as I turned away and for a moment I wondered if by the power of suggestion alone I’d given him my imaginary cold. Then my own authenticating sniff caught a wisp of some foul odour like the stench arising from a midsummer midden. It took only a second to trace it to my suitcase. My ballast can’t have been as hygienically based as I thought, and heat and confinement must have triggered off a reaction. Fortunately it wasn’t the kind of place where porters leap out to assist guests, as by the time I reached the fourth floor, I was trailing a visible miasma.
In my room, I opened the window wide and set the case on the sill. I hoped to God Reilly and the Brigadier were both here so I could get finished and away quickly.
Then the ghoulish humour of the situation struck me. I was planning to commit a double murder and my mind was mainly occupied with a suitcase full of garbage!
I checked the Makarov. Like I say, it’s not much of a gun, but it fitted snugly into my pocket so I wouldn’t have the awkwardness of drawing it from the shoulder, and at close quarters it would be as effective as a Magnum.
I left my gently rotting room and descended the stairs to the second floor. My plan was vague. People like Reilly and the Brigadier didn’t open hotel doors casually. I had a thought of setting off the fire alarm and blasting them both as they came running out, but that was quite literally a hit-or-miss scheme and besides I couldn’t see anything in the corridors of the Hotel Cristallo vaguely resembling an alarm system.
But as I reached the second-floor landing, my problem was solved.
Down the corridor, a door opened and I heard Reilly’s voice. I couldn’t catch what she was saying, but I’d recognize that double-bass brogue anywhere. I went into retreat faster than a nervous novice. Then the door closed and her footsteps came towards the stairs. By the time she reached them I was out of sight on the next landing. I heard her going down, gave her a few seconds start and followed.
She was at the desk talking to the receptionist. I guessed she was making sure there’d been no phone calls or messages for her. The receptionist was reassuring her in a manner far from supercilious. I smiled al
most affectionately. Reilly wouldn’t take any hireling crap.
I was ready to retreat again, imagining that Reilly and the Brigadier must be getting worried at the ambulanceman’s silence. But she took me by surprise, picking up a small canvas grip which was resting at her feet and heading out into the street.
I rushed to follow her, tossing my keys on to the desk in passing. She turned left out of the hotel and set off towards Santa Maria Maggiore, skirting the church with a fine disregard for the speeding traffic and making down the long descent of Via Agostino Depretis. She was carrying the grip Roman-style, under her arm with the strap over her shoulder. Her hands were thrust deep into the pockets of a denim bomber jacket, and her head was bowed as though in solemn thought. But I kept my distance all the same. It would be second nature for Reilly to check for tails, and once she spotted I was following her, it wouldn’t take long to penetrate the flimsy disguise of my hat and dark glasses.
Arrow-straight the street soared upwards now, till it became Via delle Quattro Fontane and plunged down into Piazza Barberini where I’d been staying what felt like a lifetime ago. I thought perhaps Reilly might be making for the same hotel, but she kept going at an unchecked pace up Via Sistina which ends at the piazza in front of the Church of Trinità dei Monti overlooking the Spanish Steps. I was beginning to labour heavily up this last hill and I didn’t take much notice at first of a new noise which was being added to the usual Roman cacophony. It sounded like a rhythmic chanting with its beat marked by a clashing of cymbals. It wasn’t till after I’d seen that there was a marked thickening of the crowd ahead and forced myself to speed up in order not to lose Reilly in the crush that I put the two things together. This must be the focus of that student protest I’d briefly joined after I left the Policlinico.
I got within a couple of yards of Reilly by the time we reached the piazza. She shouldered her way to the balustrade and paused. I squeezed in two or three people away. From here the view over Rome is magnificent. But no one was admiring the distant prospect today. It was the foreground that held our attention.
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