Finished Business (15 page)

‘So how does Surdinus fit in?’

Felix’s brow furrowed. ‘Surdinus?’

‘Naevius Surdinus. My victim. The guy whose death I’m looking into.’

‘Oh, yes. Of course. That, I’m afraid I don’t know. He wasn’t on our list, certainly.’

‘That’s odd. Me, I’d bet it was mentioning that I was investigating Surdinus’s murder – not his accidental death, that was the point – that had me targeted. And he knew about the conspiracy, that’s for absolute certain.’ I told him about the Hipparchus business.

‘Ingenious,’ Felix said. Yeah, well, I’d thought the little guy would like that bit; it’d appeal to his warped, labyrinthine brain. ‘All I can say is he comes as news to me. Which isn’t surprising, really: you and I approached things from different directions, and as I said we still don’t know the names of everyone who was involved, just as there are several guilty parties you never found out about and whose names would mean nothing to you. Still, if the man’s already dead then the whole thing’s academic.’

‘Well, maybe so, but—’

‘I’ll tell you what.’ He was beaming. ‘If it’s still important, then why not sit in on the interrogations? I’m sure Caesar won’t mind, although naturally I’d have to clear it with him first.’

‘Ah …’

‘In fact, I insist. I know how you feel about leaving loose ends, and I really do want you to be satisfied. You can ask the question at first hand. I’d suggest Julius Graecinus, since he was one of your four original suspects. I’m certain he’ll come up with something useful.’

Gods! ‘Listen, Felix …’ I said.

‘That’s settled, then.’ He stood up. ‘Shall we say tomorrow, at the palace? Not too early; no doubt you have private business to attend to, and you deserve a little time to yourself. The seventh hour will be fine. Just give your name to the officer on duty at the gate and he’ll bring you down. And now I won’t keep you any longer. Can I get you a litter? We are, incidentally, just on the edge of the Subura, near the Temple of Tellus.’

‘No, that’s OK. I’ll walk. I need the fresh air and exercise.’

‘Very well, sir, as you like. You may get a little wet, though, because it was raining when I came in. My best regards to Rufia Perilla, and, of course, my apologies, both to her and to you. Until tomorrow, then.’

Jupiter!

B
athyllus’s eyes widened when he opened the door for me, and for once there was no cup of wine waiting on the lobby table.

‘Sir, are you …?’ he began.

‘Yeah, Bathyllus, I’m fine. Still a bit of a headache, but no bones broken. Perilla at home?’

But she was already there, practically flying through the atrium entrance. I might’ve been wrong about the
no bones broken
, because she was hugging me so hard I felt my ribs creak.

‘Hey, lady,’ I said. ‘Pull back a bit. I’m pretty bristly.’

‘Marcus,’ she said, the words muffled against my shoulder, ‘I will
kill
you!’

Ouch. Nothing like a touching reunion when you’ve been away on business for a couple of days.

‘Felix told me he’d sent a message,’ I said.

‘Of course he did.’ She hadn’t let go. ‘Three days ago, to say you were at the palace and being taken care of. Just that. There hasn’t been anything since. What was I to think?’

The bastard. Oh, sure, he’d done as he’d said, all right, but although it was accurate enough as far as it went, the wording left a lot to be desired:
taken care of
would’ve worked pretty well as a euphemism. If the words were Felix’s, that was.

‘Uh … who was the messenger, lady?’ I said. ‘You see him?’

‘Yes. He insisted on telling me personally. A big, rough-looking man. Could have been an out-of-uniform soldier.’

Trupho. Right. And he’d done it deliberately. I promised myself that if I ever met that particular bastard again I’d do a little negative dental work on my own account.

‘It wasn’t the palace exactly,’ I said; she’d stopped hugging me now, and I massaged my ribs. ‘But the other bit was true enough. Felix just wanted me kept out of the way.’

‘Out of the way of what?’

I explained.

‘So the case is over?’ she said.

‘Not … exactly,’ I said cautiously. ‘Look, can we go somewhere a bit more comfortable?’ I turned to Bathyllus. ‘Let’s have that wine, little guy. Oh, and see that the furnace is properly fired up. I’ll want a bath.’ Too right I would; I wasn’t particularly aware of it myself, but after three days in the cellar I’d bet I stank. Still, expecting Felix to provide bathing facilities might’ve been pushing things a bit.

‘Yes, sir. Certainly. And let me say that I and the rest of the staff are delighted to have you back safely.’

He buttled off, although I had caught the slight, possibly this time involuntary, sniff before he did: accumulated body odour was right.

We went through to the atrium and settled down on the couches.

‘What do you mean, not exactly?’ Perilla said.

‘Yeah, well, we don’t know who killed Naevius Surdinus yet, do we? And there are some puzzling points that need clearing up. We’ve got some unfinished business here.’

She was glaring.

‘Marcus Valerius Corvinus!’ she snapped. ‘You listen to me! These last three days have been appalling. I
never
want to go through that again. Is that very clear?’

‘Ah … yeah. To be fair, mind, it wasn’t exactly my—’

‘We were going down to Castrimoenium in any case within the next few days—’

‘Come on, Perilla, hardly the next few days! Before the Winter Festival, we said, and that’s half a month off!’

‘But I’m sure Clarus and Marilla won’t mind if we make it earlier. Such as tonight, or first thing tomorrow morning at the latest. Marcus, please read my lips here: I am
not
going to have you faffing around in Rome in the aftermath of a conspiracy. It is just too – bloody –
dangerous
. Now, do you understand, or do I have to get Bathyllus to tie you hand and foot and throw you into the carriage?’

I grinned. ‘You think he’d be up to that?’

‘I’ll make sure that he gets all the help he needs. Look, I am
serious
! This time, no arguments.
Do you understand?
’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘So will you tell the emperor or shall I?’

That stopped her. ‘What?’

‘Gaius – or at least Felix, but it comes to the same thing – wants me round at the palace tomorrow just after noon. He was pretty insistent.’

‘What for?’

‘Just a chat,’ I said easily. I wasn’t going to tell her about the interrogation-under-torture side of things, no way. I felt bad enough about it myself without inflicting it on her as well.

‘A chat?’

‘It shouldn’t take long.’ I had my fingers firmly crossed that it wouldn’t. ‘An hour or two, at most. And then I promise we’ll go straight to the Alban Hills and stay there as long as you like.’

She was looking at me suspiciously. ‘So I can tell Lysias to get the carriage ready for early tomorrow evening, yes?’

Lysias was the coachman. ‘Sure,’ I said. I couldn’t approve of Felix’s means, to put it mildly, and I certainly wasn’t looking forward to seeing them in operation, but the odds were we’d have the rest of the case stitched up by then. Besides, when Perilla was in this mood, rational argument went out of the window; she hadn’t been kidding about Bathyllus, for a start. And it’d only take a few hours to cover the distance between us and Clarus and Marilla’s place. ‘Go ahead, lady. Make what arrangements you like.’

‘And I have your absolute firm commitment that you won’t be sloping off back to Rome at the first opportunity?’

‘Cross my heart and hope to—’

‘
Don’t say that! Don’t
ever
say that!
’

Jupiter, she
was
serious. The lady was shaking.

I got up, went over and kissed her. ‘We stay as long as you like,’ I said. ‘That’s a promise. You make the decision. After all, Clarus’s estimate of when the kid’s due might be out. The birth might not be for another month, at least.’

She smiled weakly. ‘I hardly think so, dear.’

‘Yeah, well. Medical science has been proved wrong before.’

Bathyllus shimmered in with the wine in one of our best dinner-party cups, with more of the same in the matching jug.

‘I thought the Special, sir,’ he said, ‘since it’s an occasion. And Meton says that after your unscheduled absence he will make a particular effort where dinner is concerned. That will be immediately after your bath. Say in two hours’ time?’

‘That’d be great, Bathyllus.’ I took the wine cup and sipped. Not the imperial Caecuban I’d been getting used to (I should’ve had the nous to lug the rest of the jar with me, even if it’d meant taking Felix up on his offer of a litter; too late now), but very nice all the same. And
a particular effort
? Now there was a phrase you didn’t hear very often from Meton. If to my suspicious mind it hadn’t had a certain Meton-ish ambiguity about it (a particular effort in which direction?), especially taken with the
after your unscheduled absence
bit, I would’ve been quite touched.

It was good to be home.

I lounged about the next morning and went down to Market Square for a proper shave before turning up prompt at the palace at the seventh hour, wearing my best tunic and mantle. I wasn’t exactly sure of the sartorial code where attending torture sessions was concerned – let’s not mince words here, and I wasn’t looking forward to it, to put it mildly – but a visit to the emperor was a visit to the emperor, and I couldn’t’ve done any less. I gave my name to the Praetorian tribune on duty and he delegated a squaddie to take me in.

We bypassed the usual state apartments and went down a plain stone staircase to the vaults. Shit, it was a different world down here; not a pleasant one, either. When we walked along the bleak, torch-lit, evil-smelling corridor past a row of cells (some of them, judging by the sounds I tried to ignore, obviously occupied), I felt the bile rising to my throat.

Not that it seemed to faze the squaddie, mind, but then maybe, for him, it was all part of the job. We reached a low, iron-bound door, and he stopped.

‘In here, sir,’ he said. He pushed the door open and stood aside.

Oh, bugger. Here we went. I moved past him, ducking my head to clear the lintel. The smell – a mixture of human shit, urine and vomit, plus the flat-iron tang I recognized as old blood – hit me straight away. That and the heat: the place was like a furnace. Or maybe an antechamber to hell would be a better parallel.

I retched.

‘Marcus, petal! How lovely to see you again! So nice of you to come!’

Oh, gods! The man himself!

There were things in the room. And people, one of them fastened naked to a table in the centre and barely recognizable as such. Graecinus, evidently. Him, after that first glance, I tried not to look at. I tried not to look at anything, and not to breathe through my nose.

‘Caesar,’ I said.

‘You’re just in time, dear. We were going to start without you.’ He was wearing a light tunic, crisply laundered, and he looked like he’d just stepped out of the bath. In that room, he was as out of place as a flowering rose in a latrine. ‘You know Julius Graecinus, I think?’

‘Yeah.’ I was still keeping my eyes off the thing on the table. ‘Yes, sir, we’ve met.’ Not, I was sure, that when I did look at him I’d recognize the poor bastard for the dapper figure I’d seen at Longinus’s villa. I felt suddenly angry.

‘Oh, jolly good. Splendid.’ Gaius gave me a sunny smile. ‘Off we go, then. Felix? Your department, I think. Don’t mind me, I’ll just keep Marcus company here on the sidelines.’

‘Sir.’ Felix stepped forward. ‘Valerius Corvinus.’ He turned to one of the other two guys in the room: a slave, stripped to his loin-cloth. ‘The hot iron, I think. Nothing major, just enough to get his attention.’

The slave put on a leather glove and picked up a poker from the charcoal brazier while his partner freshened up the coals with a pair of bellows. He touched the tip of the poker to Graecinus’s thigh; it was no more than a touch, but I could hear the hiss as it made contact and smell the burning flesh.

Graecinus screamed.

There was a bucket next to me. I bent over it and was lavishly sick.

Gaius tutted. ‘Oh, Marcus!’ he said. ‘
Really
now, petal, don’t be such a big girl’s blouse! If you’re to be allowed to stay then you must behave.’

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t have.

‘If you’d like to ask your questions, sir?’ Felix murmured. Then, more loudly: ‘Sir! Valerius Corvinus!’

‘Yeah. Right.’ I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and forced myself to look at Graecinus’s face rather than at the scarred, twisted and scorch-marked obscenity that the rest of his body had become. I’d been right in thinking I wouldn’t recognize him, but then the condition he was in, I doubted that even his closest friend would. He stared back; one eye was almost completely shut, and from the look of it possibly missing altogether, and his face was a solid mass of bruises. ‘Graecinus, I’m sorry about this,’ I said. ‘Really, really sorry.’ No answer, just the one-eyed stare, with pure panic behind it. ‘Only two questions, and if you know the answers, please tell me them.
Who had Naevius Surdinus killed, and why?’

His head moved slowly from side to side. Then he cleared his throat and mumbled: ‘Don’t … know.’

Just the two words, and I had a struggle recognizing them, too. Shit; he’d lost his teeth, or most of them, maybe part of his gums as well. A thin trail of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and ran down his cheek.

Sweet immortal gods!

‘Graecinus!’ I said. ‘Come
on
!
It can’t matter now!’

‘Don’t … know.’

‘Again,’ Felix murmured to the slave with the poker. ‘On the testicles. Leave it there for longer this time.’

I turned away before the scream came, but I could still smell the stench and hear the hiss, counting in my head to stop myself thinking. The count went to ten before the hissing sound stopped, by which time I was biting down hard on my lower lip and clenching my fists so tightly the nails pierced the palms.

‘Corvinus, sir?’ Felix said calmly. ‘Try again, please.’

I nodded, and turned back, forcing myself to bend down with my lips close to the man’s ear. ‘Graecinus, for the gods’ sakes!’ I whispered, ‘I don’t want this either, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Just tell me, OK?’

‘Don’t … know,’ he gasped. ‘Swear. Don’t
… know
!’ The look in his eye now was a mixture of pain and sheer animal terror, and the words were almost unintelligible. ‘Don’t … know … any … more. Ask … them … kill … me.
Please!
’

Shit, I couldn’t take this, not even with the emperor involved. I raised my head and tried to keep my voice steady.

‘Felix, give this up, right?’ I said. ‘There’s no point. The poor bastard doesn’t know anything about Surdinus’s murder. You’ve had all you’ll get from him already.’

Felix glanced at the emperor.

‘Marcus, dear, you are so terribly, transparently
squeamish
,’ Gaius said. ‘Gullible, too. Yes, I know, he
says
he knows nothing about the man’s death. Of course he does. But they can be such persistent liars, the naughties. That’s the whole point of torture. To get behind the lies to the truth in as short a time as possible. Simple but so beautifully effective.’ He smiled. ‘Which reminds me. I must show you something quite amusing that my predecessor had made. A modification, rather, and one of the old man’s better ideas. Watch and enjoy.’ Then, to the slave: ‘Just two turns, I think, to begin with. To take up the slack, as it were.’

The slave bent down and turned a wheel set into the table’s side. The table creaked and moved, lengthening, splitting apart in the middle along a line cutting across Graecinus’s back. Graecinus moaned and shifted, tugging at the bands holding his wrists and ankles which were shackled to iron staples nailed to the wood.

The gap widened to a hand-span, the creaking stopped, and the slave straightened. Graecinus lay rigid, arms and legs fully extended. He said nothing, but his one good eye was staring at me, flecked with madness.

‘That’s lovely.’ Gaius moved to the side of the table with the wheel, and the slave stepped aside. ‘My turn.’ He giggled, and twisted the wheel sharply. The gap widened by the space of two fingers and Graecinus screamed. ‘It’s a pun, you see, Marcus.
My turn
. I always say it, so it hasn’t exactly much freshness to it any longer, but it is so
apt
. Don’t you think?’