'Halt! Hait!'
'Get him!'
Along the stone avenue, with shots going everywhere and people shouting. I glimpsed Arcellano directly against the metal railing. He swung over ahead of me and dropped lightly to the sand, to my level at last. But he carried a shiny slate blue length in his hand. For a big man he moved like a dancer, soft and easy. I moaned in terror at the sight. He was only twenty yards off and floating like the hunter he was, his teeth bared in a silent hiss. I'd never been so frigging scared of anything or anybody. I limped to the right. More shouts and a small fusillade of echoing shots. Somebody screamed. It wasn't me, thank God.
'Lovejoy!' some lunatic yelled, as if I wasn't out of my skull with horror.
Gasping, I lumbered along the arena wall and across the straight avenue of standing stones. The bastard was gliding away from me, looking from side to side. I must have made a noise, maybe scraped on a stone or something, because he spun instantly and the blue thing in his hand flashed. The air near me warmed and splinters flicked blood splashes from my face. I tumbled to, one side, scrabbled lopsidedly across to the far side where my chain hung. The only place I could go was my recess. My own bloody prison.
The space was the size of a large room. Masonry tools lay scattered. Chisels, hammers, mallets and set- squares, some as Valerio and I had dropped them during the dark hours. Too late to think of using those now. I made it to the coil of chain and gave it a yank to set it firm on the pulley. My throat was raw with fright. Somebody shouted again up on the terraces. I heard rather than saw Arcellano step towards the gap through which I'd come. I flicked the chain once, released it and stepped aside as the dull rumbling began.
Arcellano came into the space. The fucking gun looked enormous.
'Okay, Arcellano,' I yelled, though he was only a few feet off. 'I surrender! I'll say it was me!'
'Too late, Lovejoy.' He was smiling now. 'You're resisting arrest, you see.' He raised his voice and shouted, 'The table, Maria! Just push it off that stone. It'll smash.'
'Who?' I asked dully. He'd said Maria.
The gun lifted. My belly squeezed. He glanced up then. Maybe it was the sudden swiftness of the rectangular shadow, maybe the rumbling of the descending block. I don't know. It was all in an instant. But he glanced up and froze, appalled at the sight of the massive block plummeting towards him. He hesitated, started to step back.
'Forward!' I screeched. 'Step forward, man!'
He halted, then leant towards me into the space left for the great stone, his eyes on mine. It was only then that I realized I'd told him wrong. I'd said forward when I actually meant to shout back. Either way I'd have been safe, but somehow my mind got the words wrong. It was unintentional. I swear it. Honestly, I never meant him to suffer like he did. The great stone settled into its allotted area with a faint scrape and hiss, pressing Arcellano's broad shoulders down and crushing blood into his face, and forcing the very life out of his mouth. His eyes popped in a spurt of blood that sprayed over my face. His face puced, swelled, burst out of its expression in a splatter of blood. The gun in his hand cracked once, sending splinters round the confined area. Needles drove into my neck and thigh but what the hell.
Maria. He'd shouted instructions to Maria. His woman, Maria. To push the table, my evidence, off the central stone and break it to smithereens. I suddenly remembered why the table was up there on the stone, and drew a great breath.
'Maria!'
The name echoed round the Colosseum. 'Maria!' No sound but a distant shout—man's voice—and rapid footsteps.
I screeched. 'Maria! Don't touch the table. Please! For Chrissakes, leave it—'
Her dear voice came clear as a bell over the great arena. 'It's no good, Lovejoy.' Then those terrible words I'd give anything to forget. 'Get rid of him, darling.' Her voice had a finality I'd hoped never to hear. 'Do it.'
She wasn't talking to me. She meant this dead thing under the stone. She obviously couldn't see—hadn't seen —the block fall on her man Arcellano. Frantic, I drew breath to scream a warning, but she was telling her man to do it. To kill me. Me, who loved her.
And I uttered no sound.
I slumped to the sand. It was all happening too fast. Dully I heard footsteps, people running. I sat against the wall of the recess, staring at that horrid mess of Arcellano's popped face squeezed bloodily from between the giant stones. His arm protruded in a great purple sausage. The other arm was nowhere to be seen. Tears streamed down my face, for what or why I don't know to this day.
The explosion came exactly four seconds after I heard the table crash to the ground.
The whiplash crack of the hand grenade's plug against the stonework sounded near my head. I didn't even flinch. They always say, don't they, that the plug of a grenade seeks out the thrower. Maria did not even have time to scream before she died.
I don't know how long I was there, sitting in the sand of that accidental prison. The first thing I remember is a face grinning over the edge up there against the blue sky and saying into the scream of sirens, 'What is it? Filming?'
It was the drunk, wakened by the war. 'Yes,' I told him.
'Where are the cameras?'
'Hidden.'
I saw him fumble and bring out a tiny bronze disc. 'Want to buy a genuine ancient Roman coin?'
I squinted up against the light. The same old acid patina, two days old. 'It's phoney.
You've used too much acid to get the verdigris.'
He mumbled, nodding. 'I told my mate that. He's a know-all.'
He made to withdraw. 'Hey,' I said. 'Want to buy a genuine antique?'
Somebody up there was yelling everybody to freeze because this was the police, that the place was
