another friend to meet us at the apartment. They’ll help me make things clear.’
They walked through to the Campo de’ Fiori, where several market stalls were still open for business. Francesca seemed to know the stall-keepers well, and bought a quantity of vegetables, cheese and fish. Next to the fish stall stood an arch leading into a narrow alleyway.
Francesca led them along it, explaining that it was a short-cut through to the Via Grotta Pinta. Half-way along, the alley became a covered passageway, dark and smelling of urine. They passed heavy iron gates on either side, and Patrick noticed that, behind them, the ground was littered with used hypodermics. Francesca glanced behind her.
‘You have to take care round here,’ she said. ‘Never come this way alone at night. There are muggings, sometimes worse.’ She walked on, her feet echoing between the passage’s narrow walls. ‘The old campo,’ she went on, ‘used to be the place where executions were carried out. They burned Giordano Bruno there in 1600. Because he said the earth wasn’t the centre of the universe, that nothing was finite.’ She paused and looked back again at Patrick, at the rusting hypodermics. ‘Do you think it hurts,’ she asked, ‘to be burned alive? Slowly, without strangulation? Would ideas help? Like a drug.’
‘Ideas?’
‘Beliefs, convictions, some sort of certainty.’ She looked into his face. He thought he saw traces of tears at the corners of her eyes. ‘Do you think it would ease the pain, believing the universe to be infinite? Do saints or scientists feel less than criminals when it comes to the stake?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ he said. ‘No one can.’ Assefa stood near them silently.
Francesca said nothing. She looked along the dark passage to a patch of sunlight that indicated the position of the square.
‘No,’ she said at last. ‘No one has ever been able to give me an answer.’
She turned and walked quickly away down the passage.
FORTY-THREE
When they got back to the apartment building, two men were waiting for them at the street door. Francesca smiled and greeted them warmly, kissing each briefly on the cheek. The taller of the two was a heavy man of about fifty, dressed in a short leather jacket and lightly checked trousers. His companion was Quadri, whom they now saw clearly for the first time. He was elegantly dressed, in his early thirties, and very thin.
‘Patrick, Assefa,’ said Francesca, calling them closer, ‘let me introduce Father Dermot O’Malley. Father O’Malley is an Irishman by training, but an Italian by profession. He’s lived here almost as long as I have. And he speaks better Italian.’
The older man stepped forward and shook hands. He was robust, built more like a soldier than a priest. At one time, he had sported red hair, but the life had gone out of it years ago, leaving a thick grey mop that had broad streaks the colour of an old russet apple. Patrick fancied his sermons would lean towards the declamatory. He noticed that he did not wear a dog-collar.
‘You’ve already met Roberto,’ Francesca continued, turning to the younger man. ‘When he isn’t rescuing strangers from mysterious islands, Roberto works with Father O’Malley. That’s why he looks so tired, isn’t it, Roberto?’
Patrick detected the concern underlying the mockery in her voice, and for a crazy instant felt something like a pang of jealousy. But he felt only grief for Francesca now, not love; what right had grief to jealousy?
Quadri shook hands a little formally and stepped back. Patrick thought he looked ill. The handshake had been that of a sick man.
‘Patrick,’ said Francesca, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but Father O’Malley wants you to go with him while I take Assefa and Roberto up to the apartment. We’ll all meet here for lunch in about two hours.’
Patrick felt a prick of disappointment. He was gradually growing accustomed to the thought that Francesca was not dead after all, and he had been anticipating an opportunity to ask some direct questions about what had happened to her. The questions, he supposed, would have to wait.
‘Yes, that’s fine,’ he lied. He wished someone would explain just who these people were and what their connection was with Francesca.
O’Malley had parked his car, a Fiat, further down the street. As the priest lurched off into a maelstrom of honking traffic, Patrick braced himself for a rough ride and asked where they were going.
‘A mystery tour, Mr Canavan, a mystery tour. Not very magical, perhaps, but I think you’ll find it interesting.’ He spoke in what Patrick recognized as a broad Cork accent, an accent that thirty-odd years in Rome had done nothing to diminish.
‘Why just me? What about Assefa?’
‘Now, Mr Canavan, you must have noticed that your friend is not inconspicuous. There are people everywhere looking for the both of you. I don’t think they know yet that you’re in Rome, and I’d as soon keep it that way. I’m sure you would too. To be honest, I’m taking risks enough with yourself, but Father Makonnen is another matter entirely. He has far too many friends in this city for him to be wandering the streets. As it is, he should never have been out this morning.’
The car swung across the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, joining the traffic on the other side like a bee taking its place in a fast-moving swarm. As they headed up towards the Tiber, Patrick took a deep breath. He had guessed where they were going.
O’Malley glanced sideways at him.
‘Relax, Mr Canavan. Or may I call you Patrick? You’ll be perfectly all right with me. We won’t stray within a million miles of Cardinal Fazzini’s office. Or a number of other offices I could mention but won’t.’
As they drew closer to the Piazza Paoli, the traffic began to thicken and snarl up. Finally they came to a complete standstill among a pack of honking cars and motorcycles, yards from the bridge. O’Malley slipped into neutral and pulled on his handbrake.
‘We’ll be here for a little while,’ he said. ‘It’s a bad time of day. But then, in Rome it’s always a bad time of day. Suppose we fill in the time by your telling me how you came to be mixed up in all of this.’
Bit by bit, Patrick went through the events that had brought him here, while all around him the traffic roared and drivers took out a lifetime’s frustrations on everybody in sight. The priest listened to him in silence, his manner growing increasingly serious as Patrick’s story unfolded. He asked no questions, showed no surprise, expressed no sentiments of either outrage or sympathy. By the time Patrick had finished, the brawling, angry world around them seemed to have been switched off, leaving them quiet in the sunshine, ringed by darker shadows and menaced by a different anger.
‘How well did you know Eamonn De Faoite?’ the priest asked finally.
‘Very well. I met him first when I was a student, in my Freshman year. He helped me a lot. You speak as if you knew him yourself.’
O’Malley nodded.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, gazing out through the small windscreen at rays of sunlight falling on metal and glass, ‘Eamonn and I were old friends, very old friends. We met when I was a seminarian at May-nooth. He used to hear my confessions.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Jesus, I was never done confessing my sins in those days. I think I had the idea that, since I was going to be a priest, I had to be better than everybody else, get absolution for the most trivial act. Well, Eamonn got me out of that habit soon enough. Mind you, if I thought I had things to confess then ...’
There was a roar outside as the traffic began to loosen up. O’Malley let in the clutch and moved off honking loudly.
We kept in touch after that, a bit like yourself and him. In fact, I think he mentioned your name to me once or twice. From time to time he’d come to Rome for a visit, and we’d have a week or two together then. He never could stand to stay at the Irish College. And I didn’t blame him: they think the only food in the world is champ and carrots.’
Patrick could tell that O’Malley was struggling to smother powerful emotions, that Eamonn De Faoite’s death had brought him intense and permanent personal pain.
They turned into the Via dei Corridoni, heading down towards the Vatican. On their left, the massive dome of St Peter’s struggled above the rooftops as though aching to be free of the nervous, jostling streets that hemmed it about like relatives about the bedside of a dying man.
On the Via di Porta Angelica, they turned left through St Anne’s gate, the Vatican’s service entrance. It was
