Читать книгу A Cold Flame: A gripping crime thriller that will keep you hooked - Aidan Conway - Страница 13

Paola walked away from Trastevere Station towards the tram stop. A number 8 was already approaching from the direction of the San Camillo Hospital, descending the curve of the long road skirting round the base of the Gianicolo Hill. It had been ages since she’d been there, and she reasoned that she could get home just as quickly going this way and then taking the 3 to San Lorenzo rather than changing trains. Besides it would be nice to have a wander. Easy come, easy go, she always said, when she had time on her hands.

Her fingers toyed with her phone. Francesco would be in there now, with the commission, or maybe still waiting. He would call when it was all over, so there was no point hassling him anymore. She would send a message later just to let him know they had cancelled and that she’d be home early. Perhaps they could do something together, now that the studying was over, regardless of what happened with the damned interview. She took out her phone to write a message.

Hi Mom. OK if I swing by in half an hour? I’m in Trastevere.

The response was almost immediate.

Great. Will be waiting.

She got off at Piazza Mastai, where office couples and homeless alike had taken up their appointed spots on benches around the hexagonal fountain. To the left she could wander away into the winding streets of Trastevere. It was easy to lose yourself there, but you’d soon pop out somewhere recognizable. She passed a shop front and checked her reflection. Early lunchers were filling the outside tables of the pizzerie and trattorie. Tourists mainly. As they waited, some of their eyes strayed towards her. So, she was looking good. Well, she was a part of the city they had come to see. Better live up to their expectations then and she put an added spritz of elegance into her step.

She continued to walk until she came to Piazza Trilussa. By day, its steps hosted workmen on their breaks and sightseers taking in the scene. The traffic tearing along the Lungotevere, the road running parallel with the course of the river below, was as noisy as a race track. She too was completing a circuit of sorts but at a human pace as the road would bring her first past the Israeli university and then to Ponte Garibaldi.

The narrow footpath along the river was crowded with parked cars randomly slicing the pavement and bullying for space wherever it could be found. She moved into the road to avoid an oncoming mob of students. Her own student days were long gone but she still remembered them fondly.

Back then, she had sent out hundreds of CVs to companies; she too had done concorsi, and she had taken whatever work she could find to get a foot on the ladder, to get away from home and eke out an independent existence. Now she sold textbooks for a publishing house, a job nominally related to her literary studies, but she may as well have been selling cars or insurance for all it was worth. Her own literary efforts were gathering dust in boxes or on a hard drive of an ageing computer.

As she approached the university, armed military personnel stood cradling their automatic rifles and scanning the passersby near the entrance. There were bikes outside, chained to the waist-high railings providing an unobtrusive security cordon of sorts. A soldier began waving in an agitated manner at a white jeep that had pulled up.

“No, no, signora. Via! Via! No parking here. No parking.

At least someone was doing his job. Paola glanced at the selection of new and innovative bicycles she presumed must have reflected the considerable spending power of the students. One had a sophisticated-looking kilometre counter and all of its expensive-looking lights still attached. Lights, at this time of the year? And risky that, in Rome. If it wasn’t nailed down it was a goner.

Her thoughts moved again between the present and the past. This place where they would come on Friday nights and where they used to meet foreigners and students from all over the globe. It was a window on the world, and it had been a time of fun. But that was gone. People were settling down. She thought of the melancholy and so true line from a Joyce story: “Everything changes”.

But does it? thought Paola as she passed. Does it?

Then, unseen to her and the smoking, chatting students, the seconds on the digital, liquid crystal display flipped from 58 to 59 to 00 and, as the detonator nestled deep in the explosive charge packed into the bicycle frame did its brief job, everything did.