Finished Business (3 page)

T
he villa, like I say, was huge: a central block with two flanking wings reaching out to enclose symmetrical hedged walks studded with bronze and marble statues. In front of the main entrance was a big fountain: Centaurs and Lapiths fighting, with the water coming out of their mouths. Impressive as hell. I glanced over at the wing to the left: it was older and just a bit shabbier, and sure enough it wasn’t properly integrated with the main building. Also, it had an entrance of its own. No sign of Tarquitia, though, and the place looked deserted.

What the two entrances had in common was that both of them were hung with greenery, the sign of a house in mourning.

There was a bell-pull to the right of the door. I pulled it, and the door was opened immediately by a slave in a mourning tunic.

‘Marcus Valerius Corvinus,’ I said. ‘I’m here at the request of your dead master’s niece, Naevia Postuma.’

He didn’t answer, but bowed and stepped aside, opening the door wider. I went in. The vestibule was bigger and more expensively fitted out than our atrium.

‘The young master is in the library, sir.’ The door slave took my cloak and laid it on top of an inlaid chest that could’ve belonged to one of the Ptolemies. ‘If you’d like to follow me?’

The library, it transpired, was on the first floor, and getting there took us a good two minutes’ walk. The slave opened the cedar-panelled door, bowed me inside, and said to the guy standing by the window: ‘Marcus Valerius Corvinus, sir.’

‘That’s fine. You can go,’ the guy said. Then, as the slave bowed again and went out, closing the door behind him: ‘Pleased to meet you, Corvinus.’ Yeah, well, he didn’t sound it, and the look I’d got when the slave had given him my name would’ve frozen the balls off a Riphaean mountain goat. ‘Sit down, please.’

I did, on one of the reading couches. Perilla would’ve loved the place, because the walls were lined with book-cubbies, and all of them looked occupied. I hadn’t seen anything like it outside the Pollio Library.

Lucius Naevius Surdinus Junior was tall and thin, with a dissatisfied twist to his lips that reminded me of the old emperor. Tiberius. The Wart. The nickname would’ve suited Junior here, too – all in all, not one of Rome’s best lookers, particularly since, being in mourning, he hadn’t shaved. Wading birds in moult came to mind.

‘I’m …’ I began, but he held up a hand.

‘Yes, I know exactly why you’re here,’ he said. ‘Cousin Postuma sent a messenger yesterday afternoon. She’s a very forceful lady, besides, as you know, being the wife of a man to whom the emperor granted the honour of a suffect consulship for the latter half of the year, and both of these facts make her difficult to refuse.’ The dissatisfied twist became an actual scowl. ‘That doesn’t mean that you’re particularly welcome.’

Shit, I wasn’t having this. ‘Look, pal,’ I said. ‘Just remember that coming here wasn’t my idea, right? Judging from what Naevia Postuma told me, I’d say she was off with the fairies and your father’s death was a complete accident. But, like you said, she’s a hard lady to refuse. So if you’d just cut me a bit of slack and let me go through the motions to my own satisfaction, then we can all get on with our fucking lives with a clear conscience. OK?’

He’d blinked and bridled, but the scowl had faded.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Anything you can tell me, basically. And then if you’d let me take a look at the scene of the incident, maybe let me talk to any of the staff who might’ve been around the place and seen something, that should more or less do it.’

He grunted. ‘That seems fair enough. Although as for myself I can’t tell you very much.’

‘You weren’t here at the time?’

‘Yes, I was, in fact. But in my own suite, in the east wing.’

‘Alone?’

The scowl was back. ‘I’m not married, if that’s what you mean. I was, but my former wife and I decided to part company.’ Jupiter! Marital discord and divorce seemed to be par for the course in this family. ‘So, yes, I was alone. We’re talking, by the way, about very early morning, halfway through the first hour, four days back. At least, according to the slaves, that’s when my father went out. And his body was found an hour or so later, when the workmen arrived.’

‘He made a habit of visiting the tower that early? When there was no one around?’

‘Not the tower, specifically. He liked to walk around the grounds after he’d breakfasted, if the weather was good. And the tower was on his usual route. He generally stopped off there, just to see how the work was progressing. If he wanted to talk to the workmen about anything in particular, then of course that was a different thing.’

‘So where is this tower exactly?’

‘In our south-east corner. In fact, it’s part of the boundary wall.’

‘And he was found exactly where?’

‘At the base, next to the entrance. The block of masonry that fell on him was beside the body. It’s still there, of course. The workmen have checked, and it came from the parapet directly above.’

‘No one was around at the time?’

Junior shrugged. ‘None of the workmen, certainly. As I said, they don’t come until later, and then only if the weather is good. And none of my outside slaves has reported seeing anything, which is not surprising. The gardens where they all usually work are mostly on either side of the main drive, or around the house itself.’

‘Anything else you can tell me?’

‘About the accident? No, I think that’s all.’

‘About your father, then.’

That got me a long, slow stare. ‘Nothing that’s relevant,’ he said at last. He turned away, towards the window. ‘Apropos of which, I notice you were talking to the woman Tarquitia before you arrived.’

‘Yeah? How did you know that?’

He indicated the window. ‘The view from here is superb, which is why it’s one of my favourite rooms. You can see right down the drive, almost to the main gate. You can certainly see as far as the rose garden.’

‘All right. Yes, I met her and we talked. So?’

‘Let me be clear about this, Corvinus. As far as I am concerned, that woman has no connection with our family, and no claims on it. She’s a troublemaker and a gold-digger, and my advice to you would be to take anything she says with a very large pinch of salt.’

‘Would it, now?’ I said. ‘So does that mean she’s not the owner of your west wing? What she called the Old Villa?’

The scowl was back in spades. ‘At present, unfortunately, yes,’ he said. ‘But I’m contesting her ownership. And
that
is frankly none of your business.’

‘Does she feature in your father’s will at all?’

‘
Valerius Corvinus!
’

I shrugged. ‘It’s just that, if she is a gold-digger, I thought that she might. And that’d be quite interesting. If, which it won’t, of course, the death turned out to be murder after all.’

Again I got the long, slow, considering look. ‘As a matter of fact,’ Junior said finally, ‘she is one of the beneficiaries, and quite a substantial one. My father left her the interest on fifty thousand sesterces, the capital to be hers absolutely on marriage.’

Shit! Fifty thousand sesterces was a hell of a lot of gravy, particularly to an ‘entertainer’. And the interest, at the average rate of eight to ten per cent, would come to just shy of five thousand a year. Quite a respectable income, to put it mildly.

‘Does she know?’ I said.

‘I expect so. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t; he was open enough with her where everything else was concerned. But, of course, you’d have to ask the lady herself. If you can trust her to give an honest answer.’

I let that one pass. Still, it was something that needed serious thinking about. By the gods, it did. I stood up.

‘Well, if that’s all you can tell me, Naevius Surdinus,’ I said, ‘I won’t take up any more of your time. Thank you for talking to me, and of course my condolences. If I could just have a look at the tower?’

‘Certainly.’ There was a bell-pull beside the door. He walked past me and pulled it. ‘My estate manager, Leonidas, will show you it. I’ll have him fetched. Good day, Corvinus.’

D
espite his Greek name, Leonidas turned out to be a bustling little Sicilian, officious and desperate to be of use, who prattled all the way. Which was absolutely fine with me.

‘He was a lovely man, sir. A lovely man, and a lovely master. No one could’ve asked for a better, I’m sure. And so quiet-living. Give him his books and charts and his astro-what-d’ye-call-’em thingies, or a couple of them clever friends of his to sit with over dinner and a cup or two of wine of an evening, and he was happy as a sandboy.’

‘You happen to know any of their names?’ I said.

‘The friends? Well, now, let’s see.’ He stopped. ‘There was the two Julii, Canus and Graecinus. No relation, although as you’ll guess from the family name, they was both Gallic gentlemen originally. Graecinus, he’s one of the city judges this year. Then there’s Aemilius Rectus. Rectus by name and Rectus by nature, you might say. He’s a proper stiff one, that gentleman. Comes of being a … what’s-its-name, begins with an S. Sort of philosopher.’

‘Stoic?’

He beamed. ‘The very word, sir, well done! Comes of being a Stoic, like. They all was, the master included, come to that, but he was the real article, right down the line, accept no imitations. Not that he couldn’t be affable enough when he was in the mood. A senatorial gentleman, like Graecinus, been a city judge himself in the past. There was plenty of others, on and off, but them three was what you might call the master’s regulars.’

We set off again, along a side path off the main drag. ‘Your master wasn’t political himself?’ I said.

‘Bless you, sir, no, not these many years. He gave that sort of thing up altogether after he’d done his consulship.’

‘You know why?’

‘No, sir, I don’t. Not for sure. But between you and me I think it had something to do with the troubles after that bastard Sejanus was chopped. Pardon my Greek.’

‘Is that so, now?’

‘They sickened him. That’s my view, anyway, for what it’s worth. All those men dead, some of them no more guilty of treason than I am, just because they were too friendly with the man or they were some sort of relative of his. A witch-hunt, my master called it. You heard of a gentleman by the name of Blaesus?’

‘Junius Blaesus, sure.’ He’d been Sejanus’s uncle, and the Wart had forced him into suicide.

‘Well, he and the master had been thick together for years, and he said Blaesus hadn’t a treasonous bone in his body. Very upset over the death, he was. My belief, it finished him with politics, and after that he hadn’t a good word to say about the old emperor, or the whole boiling of them. Here we are, sir. You can see the tower just ahead.’

From this distance, it didn’t look too bad: like Postuma had said, it was an old watchtower, thirty or so feet high, at the corner of the boundary wall, pierced with three sets of windows, one above the other. It was only when we got closer that I noticed the poor condition of the masonry, the gaps between the stones where the pointing cement had crumbled away, and the ragged line of the top. The ground in front of the entrance had been cleared, and there were the usual signs of building activity in progress: piles of dressed stone, a stack of wooden props and planks, and a mixing trough with several water buckets beside it. This being November, the bags of cement themselves and the workmen’s tools would be inside, under cover.

‘The master was lying here.’ Leonidas walked over to a spot just in front of the entrance and stopped. His voice had lost its chatty tone and he spoke softly, like he was standing next to a grave. Which, in a way, I supposed he was, or the next thing to it.

I joined him. Two feet or so out from the threshold and slightly to one side there was a large block of dressed stone, with old masonry covering its exposed top and edges. I stood beside it and looked up at the parapet above. Sure enough, I could see a matching gap.

Bugger. Well, it had to be done.

‘Can I get up there?’ I said.

Leonidas’s eyes widened. ‘You’re not serious, sir!’

‘Sure I am. Unfortunate, but there it is.’

‘It’s dangerous. And I don’t think the young master would allow it.’

‘Yeah, well, I won’t tell him if you won’t, pal.’ I stuck my head inside and took a look. As I’d expected, the ground floor, if you could call it that, was fully taken up with cement bags and builders’ tools, but there was a ladder leading upward through a hatch in the ceiling to what had to be a newly constructed first floor. Presumably when I reached that there would be another to the second storey, and so on.

Right, then. Here we went.

The first bit was easy-peasy: whoever Surdinus had contracted knew their stuff and were making good on each level before moving up to work on the next. The first-storey flooring was solid, and built on top of sturdy beams laid at their ends on stretcher stones tied into freshly cemented masonry. So was the second, when I reached it. And the third.

The fourth, on the other hand, was what had to be the parapet level, right at the top of the tower …

Oh, hell. Now we came to the difficult bit.

The ladder was there, sure, plus a couple of bits of scaffolding reaching up from the third storey, but where the parapet level was concerned, the builders had only got as far as putting in the framework that would eventually take the tiles, or whatever arrangement Surdinus had had in mind for the topmost level of his hideaway. There was flooring of a kind, but it was no more than a skeleton of loose planks. Above it was the parapet itself – waist-high, it would be – and the open air.

Fuck.

Still, it was better than nothing. And at least I’d established that someone could get all the way up from below. Plus, if I’d come this far, I couldn’t very well give up now.

I climbed the ladder and stepped gingerly sideways on to the plank laid across the set of rafters that would form the ceiling of the tower’s third storey and the roof of the tower itself. It gave slightly under my weight, but it felt firm enough, and there were other planks around the perimeter allowing access to the parapet on all of its sides. I was in the open air now, of course, and at this height the wind was a major problem. I rested my palms on the top of the parapet to steady myself and leaned out, to look below and get my bearings …

The stone I was leaning on shifted, and I let go quickly, straightened, and stepped back – a bit too far back, because my heels found the edge of the plank and for a moment I teetered between falling backwards between the beams and down to the floor below and forwards over the parapet itself. I got my balance finally and stood sweating.

Shit. That had been close.

OK. Fine. So we’d do this next bit carefully. Very, very carefully.

I was on one of the flanking sides of the tower. Its front – where there was a gap in the stonework – was the stretch to my left. Keeping my eyes firmly on my feet, and trying to avoid using the parapet as a handrail, I edged along the plank and round the corner to the matching one on that side. The gap was halfway along; only ten feet or so, but it felt like forty. I got to it at last, and stood for a couple of minutes sweating like a pig and breathing hard before I felt confident enough to take a proper look.

There was still a good half-inch of cement covering the top of what had been the stone below the fallen block. It was old and crumbling, sure, but there were clear marks along its length of what must have been the knife or chisel that had been used to prise the missing block free. And on the plank beneath the marks, where I was standing, was a scattering of cement granules.

Shit. It had been murder after all.

Score one for Alexander.

Leonidas was waiting for me when I got down, looking anxious as hell, as was quite natural: the life of a slave responsible for one of Rome’s social elite falling and breaking his over-privileged neck while he’s a guest in the master’s household would not’ve been worth a copper quadrans, even if it were said purple-striper’s own stupid fault. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t’ve put him at that kind of risk. Only the circumstances weren’t ordinary, and the risk had been justified. In spades.

Leonidas wasn’t alone. There was a big guy with him, a good head and shoulders taller than him and built to match, dressed in a tunic two sizes too small for him that looked like it’d doubled as a bag for carting earth in. Or more likely (I caught his scent, and wished I hadn’t) carting manure. He was looking anxious as hell, too.

‘All right, Cilix,’ Leonidas said to him. ‘Tell the gentleman what you’ve just told me.’ Then, turning to me: ‘This is Cilix, sir.’

Twice Leonidas’s size or not, the big guy was shooting him worried sideways looks like Leonidas was some sort of ogre that might any minute leap on him and gobble him up. Leonidas, on the other hand, was puffed up like a bantam with self-importance.

‘Go ahead, Cilix,’ I said. ‘You’re one of the garden slaves, right?’

Not a difficult guess to make, that one, given the tunic and the smell.

He swallowed. ‘Yes, sir. It’s about the day the master died, sir.’

Long pause.

‘Go on, boy.’ Leonidas sounded dangerous. ‘Better out than in.’

‘I … saw someone, sir. A stranger.’

My interest sharpened. ‘Here? At the tower?’

He shook his head. ‘No, sir. Level with the house, he was, more or less, moving through the bushes close in to the wall. Stealthy, like. There’s a bit of the wall collapsed just shy of the north-east corner, that hasn’t been fixed yet, and I think he was heading for that. But he was coming from this direction, right enough. And it was about the time when the master … when he …’ He stopped and swallowed again.

Shit! ‘Can you describe him at all?’

‘Oh, yes, sir. He passed quite close. He was a freedman, sir; at least he was wearing the cap. A bit bigger than Master Leonidas here, but not much, and not so … not so …’ He reddened and glanced down at Leonidas’s stomach.

I grinned again. ‘Not so fat,’ I said. Leonidas gave a soft growl, and the guy winced and nodded. ‘Age?’

‘Not all that young, sir, but not old, neither.’

‘Thirtyish? Forties, maybe?’

‘The second, yeah. Yes, sir. Least, that’s what I’d guess. An’ he had a big mark here.’ He touched his finger to his left cheek. ‘Black. A sort of blotch, like a stain.’

‘Dirt?’

‘Could of been, sir. I didn’t see it clearly. But it dint look like dirt; it looked like one of them what’s-their-names.’

‘Birthmarks?’

‘Yeah. Or maybe a scab or a scar of some kind from a disease he’d had. I’d a mate of mine, once, sir, he got this manky disease when he was—’

‘Stick to the point, boy!’ Leonidas snapped.

‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’

‘And he just walked right past you?’ I said. ‘Just like that? Close enough for you to see the mark on his cheek? He didn’t say anything to you, and you didn’t say anything to him? You just ignored each other.’

The guy had reddened again. ‘S’right, sir. More or less. He dint see me, you see.’

‘Didn’t
see
you?’

‘No, sir.’ If he’d been any redder he could’ve doubled as a six-foot-six beetroot.

‘Tell the gentleman why not,’ Leonidas said through gritted teeth.

‘’Cos I was crouched down in the bushes at the time, sir,’ Cilix mumbled. ‘Havin’ a … you know.’ He swallowed again. ‘Havin’ a crap, like.’

Jupiter! ‘Ah … right. Right.’ I glanced at Leonidas, who was quietly fizzing. ‘That would explain it.’

‘I’d of got up and said something to him, sir, all the same, because I thought he might be a poacher, like, but things’d got a bit messy just then and—’

‘Cilix, the gentleman doesn’t want to know!’ Leonidas snapped.

Spot on the button: the precise details were things, in this case, that I could do without. ‘So why haven’t you told anyone about this before?’ I said.

Cilix glanced anxiously at Leonidas, but said nothing. Leonidas cleared his throat.

‘That’d be because the garden slaves aren’t allowed to ease themselves in the grounds, sir,’ he said stiffly. ‘Master’s orders.’

Cilix nodded violently. ‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘I thought I might get into trouble, sir. Over the crap side of things, like. I’d never of done it, honest, unless I was desperate. Which I was – you know how it is when you’re caught short on the job, you’ve got to go, whatever. Pissing’s OK, you’re allowed to piss, all right, no problem, so long as there’s no one from the house around and you do it well off the paths and out of sight, like, but crapping’s—’

‘
Cilix!
’

I was grinning. ‘That’s OK, pal,’ I said. ‘I get the general idea.’

‘Only I thought now you being here, an’ the master’s death maybe not being an accident after all, I’d best say.’

Joy in the morning! Me, I’ve given up trying to work out why slaves know everything that goes on practically instantaneously by osmosis, but they do. Even the Cilixes of this world. I took out my purse, reached for his hand, turned it grimy palm up and slapped a half-gold piece into it. He stared down at the coin, then up at me, mouth open in astonishment.

‘Thanks for the information, sunshine,’ I said. ‘Enjoy. It’s cheap at the price, believe me.’ It was: six got you ten our loose-bowelled friend had just described Naevius Surdinus’s killer, and that doesn’t happen too often, particularly within what was, in effect, only five minutes of the start of an investigation. We were miles ahead of the game for once, and a half-gold piece in exchange wasn’t OTT, by any means.

All we had to do now was find out who the guy was, and why he’d done it. Oh, and of course break the glad news to Surdinus Junior.