THE ROMAN THEIF........

He steals with swift, simple hands in the yellow Roman sun. The crowds are bulging, swollen, and he bobs amongst them as silent as a jellyfish. At night his soul is stirred by bad dreams, his slumbered eyes perturbed by the glare of police lights. But not so in the day; in the day he is calm, and he is precise.

There are tools to this trade. Thin knives for slicing handbags and rucksacks, tricks of the fingers, and shuffling movements which allow the hands to fish inside zipped pockets and withdraw with a phone or wallet. The thief doesn't do jewellery, though there can be better money in it. When he sees a distant tourist patting empty pockets, he is, for a brief moment, pricked with regret. But then he remembers. He remembers his wife and his son. And so, he moves onto the next.

The outfit is important, there's an art to it. The thief has it easier, his skin is a canvas – a balanced starting point. But for Hari, for Christopher, for Omer, the game is harder and likely to end badly. The thief paints himself into the swathes of people, blending with cheap sunglasses, plain t-shirts, eternal khaki shorts. Pointillism.

The thief has other jobs, too. He works cover shifts at a tourist-heavy pizzeria near the Trevi fountain. Lena gets him odd jobs with the cleaning agency she works for, though they must work different days so that Jakub is not left alone.

A bunch of pink-faced Americans with baseball caps and slow strides make for easy morning pickings. The thief leans against a wall counting his winnings. €260 in crisp notes. He could go home for the day. He tucks the money away as a black-haired bluster of a woman blows towards him. She's short, about his age, tipping 30.

Oh Jakub. Just three-years-old and such a sun; warm and vitalising. The thief has watched Jakub's white moon face turn golden from days outside. In the mornings, when he wakes him – buongiorno orsacchiotto he hears his accented Italian echoed back as pure as a bell –buongiorno papà. It will be Jakub's authentic tongue, but not his only language, not if he's to make a bigger life.

The thief speaks four languages. He sees the tourists with their big, oblivious faces – the monolinguals. And yet...it's not worth thinking about. Letting resentment seep into the process is like lead in the water. He doesn't wish to be bitter or sadistic, not in any profession.

It is a bone-dry Thursday. Jakub has been dropped at the crumbling daycare and Lena has been walked to work. The manic traffic beeps its annoyance at the crowds barging the roads in oblivious swarms. Wobbling above the heads of the always-moving visitors are the national flags of a world of walking tours. The eternal city clings to its time-trampled ruins, the Roman Forum desolated by neglect and weather and people, but now, glorified once again. How they flock to see it.