The Vatican Rip (22 page)

Anna had said you couldn’t reach the cafeteria from the Museum entrance in less than four minutes. I had argued and argued but she’d remained adamant, and now I was glad she’d been so stubborn. The small corridors between the decorated chapels were crammed with schoolchildren. Teachers herded classes to and fro. I blundered among them in a lather, trying to keep up a steady count in my mind so I could keep on schedule, but finding to my horror I was starting over and over again at one, two, three . . .

Worse, the bloody cafeteria was bulging though its self-service line was moving forwards fairly quickly. I looked anxiously for Carlo. He was near the front, almost at the till by now and sandwiched between two strapping blondes. Apart from Carlo, I was the only person there not in jeans and tee shirt. If I’d known I wouldn’t have worried about looking exactly right. My spirits hardly rose, but at least they crept cautiously out of hiding an inch or two.

We shuffled forwards. I collared a couple of wrapped sandwiches and moved with the rest, sliding my tray along the chromed rails. Carlo carried his tray to a newly-cleared table by the picture windows which overlooked the garden terrace. He sat and immediately started wolfing his cream cakes.

‘Move along, please.’

‘Er, sorry.’ The worrying thing was Carlo had three glasses of wine, not one. The two blondes were watching him with conspicuous amusement from a table across the aisle. Yoghurt-and-soup queens. Mercifully he was too busy stuffing his face to respond to them. I shuffled on, nervously paid up and tried to get a seat facing Carlo but a sprinting Aussie beat me to it, so I started on my sandwiches with my ears exquisitely tuned, Listening for sudden activity at Carlo’s table behind me two aisles away. Old Anna came through the cafeteria, on the cadge. She plumped opposite me, doing her exhaustion bit and openly nicking one of my sandwiches. I chuckled affably to show my good-humoured acceptance of the old dear, especially when I felt my heavy briefcase slide on to my feet. Idly I checked that everybody was too preoccupied to notice, and edged it beneath my chair. Anna gave me a roguish wink and departed, chewing gummily on my sandwich. By now I trusted her enough to know my briefcase would be emblazoned by a Department of Health sticker. But that Carlo . . .

Ten minutes later I was beginning to wonder if I’d poisoned him all wrong. There was no sound other than the usual cafeteria din. He must have had a stomach like a dustbin liner because at least a third of the rum which I’d given him was a mixture of jalap and colocynth, the most drastic purgatives known to the old nineteenthcentury doctors – and they were experts in drastic purgatives, if nothing else.

It happened just as I was about to chuck it in and abort the whole thing. A chair crashed over behind me. Somebody exclaimed in alarm. Casually, I glanced round in time to see Carlo streak through the doorway into the loo across the other side of the cafeteria.

The eddies created by Carlo’s passage had not stilled when I moved purposefully among the tables and into the men’s loo. Ominous noises came from one of the cubicles. A worried man was hastening out.

‘I think somebody’s ill in there,’ he said. ‘You think I should go for help?’

‘I’m a doctor,’ I said calmly in the best American accent my Italian could stand. ‘Wait until I see . . .’

‘Oooh. Lovejoy—’ Carlo’s voice moaned from the cubicle as I glanced in. I could have murdered the fool, giving out my name, except I was worried that maybe I had. He sounded in a terrible state.

‘That must be his name,’ I pronounced glibly to the man. ‘Signor. I want you to stand just inside this entrance. Let nobody in. I don’t like the look of him.’

‘Yes,
Dottore
.’

‘Don’t you worry, Signor Lovejoy,’ I called loudly to Carlo in the poisonously brisk voice. ‘I’ll have you safely in hospital in no time at all.’

I strode purposefully out into the cafeteria and headed round the queue of people at the paypoint. I had the full attention of the customers. A lady emerged from behind the line of servers. She wore the harrowed look of a superior longing for obscurity.

‘Good day, Signora . . . Manageress? I’m Doctor Valentine.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Is anything wrong? She’d glimpsed the sticker on my briefcase.

‘Have you an office, please?’

‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ she pleaded over her shoulder, leading the way behind the terrace of stainless steel and bright cookers.

‘Nothing that cannot be efficiently handled, signora.’ I kept my Americanese variation of Italian going. ‘A man’s been taken ill after eating your cream cakes—’

‘They are perfectly fresh—’

‘Of course. I know that.’ I smiled bleakly to keep some threat in the words. She trotted ahead into a neat pastelblue office. Her name was on the door stamped in white on brown plastic. Signora Faranada was a pretty thing, understandably distrait but the most attractive manageress I’d yet seen in the whole Vatican. If I hadn’t been terrified out of my wits I’d have chatted her up. She pulled the door to. ‘Signora,’ I said, instantly becoming terse. ‘He is very sick. It looks like Petulengro’s.’

‘Petulengro’s? A
disease?
’

I reached for the telephone, laconic and casual the way doctors always are when putting the boot into suffering innocents. ‘You’ve heard of Legionnaires’? Similar thing.’

‘Legionnaires’ Disease?’ she moaned. ‘Oh my
God
! But—’

‘Nothing that can’t be handled quietly and efficiently,’ I reassured with my wintry smile. ‘You’re lucky. I was just calling on you – courtesy visit. I’m from Communicable Diseases, Atlanta, USA. Currently with World Health, on loan to the Rome Ministry. Here.’ I passed her the receiver as if disgusted with the slowness. ‘Get me an outside line.’

She frantically spun the dial.

‘The Vatican has its own children’s clinic and physicians. Am I right?’

‘Yes, Doctor.’

Impatiently I dialled the number as if I knew it by heart, reading it off Anna’s postage stamp I had stuck to my left wrist. ‘But no resident epidemiologist expert in communicable diseases, right?’ I barked the question, the old lawyer’s tricks of two knowns followed by an unknown, all to be answered with the same word.

She hesitated. ‘I don’t think so, Doctor—’

I turned away impatiently. Valerio came on the other end. A sweat of relief started to trickle down my collar. ‘Doctor Valentine. Get me the epidemic section – fast.’

‘Epidemic!’ moaned Signora Faranda.

‘Hello?’ I made a conciliatory gesture to the lady as I spoke commandingly into the phone. ‘Hello, Aldo? Great! There’s a rather problematic issue here – Vatican Museum. Cafeteria. Looks like a case of Petulengro’s . . . No. Only one, a man. I’ve got him under control in the toilets . . . Of
course
I applied emergency treatment, brought him round . . . No. The place looks really superbly clean . . .’

‘We scour and disinfect every half-day,’ Signora Faranada bleated, tugging my sleeve.

‘Sure, Aldo.’ I laughed reassuringly, the expert all casual in the presence of somebody else’s catastrophe. ‘No, I agree. We can’t take chances . . . Look, Aldo. Can I leave it to you to . . . ? Fine . . . No, no sirens. Quietly does it . . . The least noise the better. No sense in being alarmist . . .’ I smiled and nodded at Signora Faranda. ‘So you’ll send an ambulance . . . ? Good . . . No. I’m sure the manageress can handle that . . . Agreed?’

I slammed down the phone.

‘I’ll get back to take charge,’ I told the lady. ‘I’ve arranged hospital transport.’ I stilled her protests with a raised hand. ‘Infectious diseases are always sent to a special unit because they are, erm, infectious.’ I smiled a cut-rate Arcellano smile. ‘You know how patients just love to sue places these days, I don’t doubt.’

‘Sue?’ she gasped, the poor thing.

‘It won’t come to that,’ I said smoothly. ‘I promise.’

‘What must I do?’

‘Do you have a rear entrance to the cafeteria, where the ambulance can pull up?’ She nodded anxiously and reached towards the top filing drawer. ‘The gate will need notifying,’ I said, ticking off the items. ‘Aldo – that’s Doctor Cattin of the Public Health Division – said St Anne’s Gate. Is that acceptable?’

‘Yes, yes. I’ll telephone—’ She clutched feverishly for the phone.

‘And the table. It may be contaminated. For taking specimens, and disinfection.’

‘I’ll see it’s brought round—’

I snapped, ‘Tell everyone it’s in need of repair, wobbling or something. Use your discretion.’

‘Yes, yes. Discretion,’ she gasped, dialling frantically.

‘Get your duty security man. I’ll need that terrace quietly sealed from the public. It overlooks the drive-in, correct?’

‘Yes! Yes! I’ll get him right away—’

‘Do you have a store room?’

She was gasping. ‘Yes. By the loading bay.’

‘Good. And I’ll seal the lavatory cubicle until it’s proven clear. Don’t worry.’ I rounded on her like I’d seen on the movies. ‘Do as I say and people’ll hardly notice. You have a beautiful clean restaurant here. We don’t want to attract attention—’

‘Thank you, Doctor!’

She was in a worse state than I was when I left and strode commandingly through the cafeteria. I cautioned Carlo’s relieved custodian to silence and thanked him for waiting. Carlo looked so bad I grew really frightened but there was nothing I could do.

The duty security officer was a stout Turin chap with the intriguing name of Russomanno. He was delighted at the whole thing and determined to be pompous, thank God, and proudly showed me the tiny loading bay. Signora Faranada wanted instructions so I told her to parcel up Carlo’s table and the utensils he had used in sealed plastic. She dashed off up the steps.

I glanced about. There were occasional faces peering from the Vatican Museum windows overlooking the tiny roadway and the loading bay, but with an ambulance backed in all sight of the loading steps leading into the rear of the cafeteria would be blocked off. From the other side walkers on the upper terrace could see over.

‘I wanted that terrace cleared,’ I said tersely.

‘It’s entrance will be closed immediately,
Dottore
.’

An ambulance was trundling slowly down the narrow thoroughfare. Time the security man went. ‘You’ll have the numbers of diners checked, of course?’

‘Of course, Doctor.’ He looked quite blank.

I smiled, nodding. ‘Forgive me. I forgot I was dealing with a professional. Rest assured my team will be discreet and swift.’

The stout man puffed up the steps as Valerio reversed the ambulance – a full-blown, genuine ambulance – smoothly up to the loading bay. Patrizio sported a moustache, to my alarm. Did ambulance men wear them? Both he and Valerio wore some kind of dark blue uniform. Valerio’s peaked cap bore an impressive but anonymous badge.

We had one nasty moment when I couldn’t yank the door of the store room open, but Patrizio’s hand gently pushed me aside and turned the handle.

‘The table, Lovejoy.’

My work of art – still apparently nothing more than ordinary steel-and-formica cafeteria furniture, though with a thicker top than usual – was wedged between the two stretcher slots. I stood on the steps ready to use delaying tactics should the manageress come fluttering down to do some ground-level panicking. Valerio and Patrizio carried my table into the store. I mopped my forehead.

‘Let’s go. Bring the stretcher.’

Eight minutes later Carlo was inside the ambulance with Captain Russomanno standing proudly on the running board. Poor Carlo was ashen and almost comatose. Anna would go for me if I’d really killed him. With him went the table at which he had been sitting, his plates and drinking glasses.

I trudged upstairs, nodding confidentially towards the worried Signora Faranada to show everything was in hand. ‘I’ll seal off that one toilet cubicle,’ I said in an undertone. ‘It might be contaminated. The rest of the loo can be used with safety. Then I’ll slip out. I’ll return tomorrow. Just tell your staff to continue as normal.’

‘Very well. Doctor, I am so grateful—’

I smiled nobly, wishing there was more time for this sort of thing. She was lovely.

‘Only my job, signora,’ I said, smiling. ‘If only I met such charming people every day . . .’

The cafeteria was full as ever. I melted among the crowd and made my way over to the loos. Inside my grand case I had tape labelled ‘Hygiene. Sealed by Order’ to seal the cubicle.

And in the sealed cubicle would be me, sitting silently waiting for the closing hour. The ambulance by now would be rolling into the Via Porta Angelica.

For the rest of my team the rip was practically over. For me it had only just begun.

I sat in the loo, that powerful creative location, thinking and listening.

Sealing the outside of the cubicle door with that impressively worded sticky tape had been a simple matter. I had written ‘Out of Order’ on a piece of cafeteria notepaper and stuck it to the door then climbed inelegantly over and dropped inside. There was enough of a hubbub in the cafeteria to convince me the manageress would assume I’d slipped out as I’d promised. Now, short of some nosey-parker peering in, I was safe.

People came and went in gusts of noise from the cafeteria. I heard all the languages under the sun. I learned a dozen new jokes, but only one was even vaguely amusing and anyway I always forget the endings. There was a two-inch gap under the cubicle door, so at the faintest sound of approaching customers I sat with my knees hunched and toolbag on my lap, just in case. Once I actually dozed, probably reaction to the state of abject terror in which I’d lived all day.

Somebody wiser than me – or even more scared – once said hell was other people, or something. Sitting in the foetal position there on one of His Holiness’s loos was the loneliest place I’d ever been in my life. I’d have loved to go out for a minute, just for a cup of coffee, with normal happy people all around and noise and light reassuring me that everything was as it should be. But there was no chance of that. While blokes came and peed and chatted and were replaced by others I sat miserably on, convinced it was the end of the world. Hell, I couldn’t even have a pee myself in case of noise.