Highlights

They had breakfast next morning on the rooftop terrace, which did, strictly speaking, have a view of the Forum. A distant wedge of ruined wall could be glimpsed between the neighbouring house and the awnings on the roof terrace of the much grander hotel in front of them. Their own roof terrace had a bar with a coffee machine, half a dozen tables with paper cloths clipped against the breeze, and pots of geraniums wired to its wrought-iron railings. Colin said, ‘You can just see the top of the dome of S. Luca and S. Martina; which is indeed two churches, S. Luca on top and S. Martina beneath. It’s rather fascinating.’

It seemed unlikely, from Archie’s look, as he spread some red jam on a white roll, that anything had ever fascinated him less. He leaned back to signal to the waitress for more coffee. ‘It’s by Pietro da Cortona,’ Colin went on.

‘Right…’ said Archie.

‘Well, you’ll see,’ said Colin. ‘I hope it will be open. Last time I was here it was closed for restoration.’

Archie brightened a little at this. ‘You are going to take me shopping, aren’t you?’ he said.

‘Well, what do you want?’

‘I don’t know yet, I want to see what there is. And we’ve got to get you sorted out, too: get you some nice jeans, something a bit more casual, Colin. That’s my task for this weekend.’

Colin drank his little glass of concentrated orange juice. ‘We’ll want to do some sightseeing first,’ he said. ‘You haven’t forgotten about the two Bs?’

To his relief this seemed to be a game Archie was prepared to play. His smile was happy, and confusingly like smiles he’d given Colin in the past. ‘Ah yes, now…who are they?’ he said.

‘You can’t have forgotten,’ said Colin, still excited by the remembered smiles.

‘They’re B…B…’

‘Bernini,’ Colin murmured.

‘Bernini! Yes, they’re Bernini and…B…’

‘Borromini,’ said Colin.

‘Exactly!’ said Archie.

It wasn’t clear who’d won the game, once they’d played it. Archie sipped his hot coffee and sank back into a vaguely critical silence. Though the silence itself, the untuned and rhythmless hum and squeal and nearby clatter of the city, had for a minute or two past been eaten into by the strident electronic bleeps of a reversing vehicle. Only their recurrence, after nine or ten seconds of peace, made Colin start to picture the van, some narrow negotiation in the street below.

‘God, I can’t stand that noise,’ he said.

‘Forget about it. It’ll stop in a minute,’ said Archie, who tended to meet impatience with patience, and vice versa.

Colin got up and leaned over the railing, but he couldn’t see where the noise was coming from. ‘I wonder if a single injury has ever been prevented by those bloody things,’ he said.

‘Well, we’ll never know, will we?’ said Archie. ‘I mean, you can’t
count things that don’t happen.’

Colin sat down again, frowning madly, wondering if Archie would let him make a joke about the things that hadn’t happened the night before. ‘How very true,’ he said.

Archie was cool and practical. ‘We need to get going,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got much time here, you know.’ But just then there was a different bleep: Archie had a text message, in fact two text messages. He sat there thumbing and chuckling to himself for the next ten minutes.

Next page: As soon as they were in the street they saw where the noise was coming from.