Finished Business (7 page)

T
he rain had slackened off again to a drizzle, but the sky wasn’t looking too cheerful: a solid iron-grey lid that, as far as I could see, covered the whole city, with some ominous-looking black bits over to the west that were getting steadily closer. Bugger. I reckoned a couple of calls – a quickie at the Five Poppies off the vegetable market, just to confirm a suspicion I had, plus one on Lawyer Venullius – and that would do me for the day. Certainly not a trip all the way over to the Vatican, which was the only other thing I had on the cards at present; I wasn’t going to risk getting caught out in the open proper when Jupiter chose to send down the mighty flood, and in any case I didn’t know for sure that Tarquitia would actually be in residence. That I could only hope for, because if she wasn’t – if she was still keeping up the flat that Surdinus had got for her in the dizzy early days of their romance, for example – then I was screwed.

I made my way back along the south side of the Circus and up through Cattlemarket Square to the veggie market and the Poppies. Fortunately, Vulpis was around again, and he gave me the confirmation I needed. Not that I’d been in much doubt that he would, because it fitted in too neatly, and it was the only explanation.

I was heading for Market Square and the Aemilian Hall when the heavens opened in earnest. Bugger. Double bugger. I had on my hooded cloak, of course, but it was wringing wet already, and the dampness was beginning to reach my tunic. Time for another wine shop, at least until Rainy Jupiter decided not to piss down on poor quivering humanity quite so hard. There was one place I knew, Tasso’s, at the foot of the Palatine’s Market Square edge, that catered for the imperial and senatorial admin staff from the government offices round about. Pretentious and overpriced, sure, and normally I’d’ve avoided it, but beggars – especially wet ones – can’t be choosers. At least they served decent wine, albeit at twice the price of anywhere else. I found it, pushed open the door and went inside.

‘Marcus?’

I’d been taking the cloak off to hang on one of the pegs by the door, where it could drip in solitary comfort. I turned round.

Gaius Vibullius Secundus and I go a long way back, practically to childhood. We didn’t see a lot of each other these days, mainly because he’s a big wheel in army admin and our lives have pretty much diverged, but we bump into one another occasionally. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, mind, not since I’d picked his brains about Gaetulicus and the German frontier legions. A nice guy, Secundus. And, of course, since he was based at Augustus House on the Palatine, this was his local.

‘Hi, Gaius,’ I said. ‘How’s it going? Skiving off work early as usual, are you?’

‘I’m on a flexible lunch break.’ He indicated what was left of a plate of cheese and olives in front of him. ‘Boss’s privilege. Pull up a stool and join me.’ I did, and he raised a hand towards the bar. ‘Hey, Quintus!’ he shouted. ‘Let’s have a half-jug of the Massic over here, OK? And another cup.’ He turned back to me. ‘So. How are you doing? How’s Perilla?’

‘She’s fine. You, uh, got a replacement for Furia Gemella yet?’ Gemella was Secundus’s ex-wife. Ex as of a month or so before I’d last seen him. Loud, brash, went in for large earrings. We hadn’t got on. Mind you, she and Secundus hadn’t, especially, either.

‘Not as such, no,’ he said. ‘At least, no one official. I might keep it like that. Makes things much simpler.’ The wine came, and he poured. ‘Help yourself to the cheese and olives. I’ve had enough.’

I took a bit of cheese. ‘You in the same job?’ I said.

‘More or less. I’ve moved up the ladder a notch, mind, since old Curio got his wooden sword, but yeah, more or less.’ He took a swallow of the Massic. ‘How about you? Still bumming around with the sleuthing?’

‘Off and on.’

‘Which is it currently? Off or on?’

‘On, as it happens. Old guy had his head flattened by a lump of falling masonry.’

He set down his cup. ‘Naevius Surdinus?’ he said.

‘Yeah, that’s him. You heard?’

‘Sure I heard. But I heard it was an accident.’

‘Yeah, well.’ I took a swig of the Massic. Beautiful. ‘It wasn’t. Most definitely not. Even so, I’m surprised the death is common knowledge. From all reports, he’d been out of the loop for years.’

Secundus shrugged. ‘He was an ex-consul, Marcus,’ he said. ‘Suffect, sure, only for six months and that ten years back, but a consular none the less. A consular’s death gets noticed, and when it’s as unusual as Surdinus’s was, it gets talked about as well. And out of the loop the guy might have been, but when old Aulus Plautius told him it came as a real shock to his ex-colleague, at least, I can tell you that.’

‘Ex-colleague?’

‘In the consulship. Cassius Longinus.’

‘I thought Longinus was Asian governor at present,’ I said.

That got me a sharp look: Secundus might not be the brightest button in the box, but he wasn’t stupid by any means. Despite having made it, in his time, to city judge’s level.

‘You developed a sudden interest in who’s who in current politics, Marcus?’ he said. ‘Or does Longinus figure somewhere in that case of yours?’

‘Neither,’ I lied: friend or not, I wasn’t going to tell him about Cornelia Sullana’s little admitted indiscretion. Besides, it was probably just coincidence: bed-hopping, in the circles people like Sullana and Longinus moved in, was pretty much taken for granted as a fact of everyday life. ‘I just happened to know, that’s all.’

‘Mmm.’ Secundus swallowed some of his wine. ‘Yeah, right. He was, certainly.’

‘Was what?’

‘Asian governor. Not any more, though. The emperor recalled him ahead of time, so as of ten or twelve days ago, he’s back in Rome.’

‘Recalled him? Why would he do that?’ Governors were governors; they were fixtures, at least until their term of office expired naturally. Plus, Asia was one of the senatorial provinces, in fact the plum appointment. Oh, sure, ever since Augustus’s day the emperor has had overriding proconsular authority where appointments and removals are concerned throughout the empire, no matter what kind of province is at issue, but it’s not been used all that often, certainly not blatantly, and never without a reason in the case of a senatorial governor. Senatorial provinces are the concern of the senate; imperial ones – where most of the legions are – are the concern of the emperor, and neither treads on the other’s toes. At least in public. If Gaius Caesar had shoved his oar in and removed one of the senate’s prime appointees from office ahead of time, then he must have given a reason. A bloody good one, too.

Secundus shrugged again. ‘Jupiter knows,’ he said. ‘No cause that I’m aware of. Or anyone else, for that matter. Including – or so he claims – Longinus himself. All he got was the order to get his arse back to Rome asap, and that’s been that.’ He moved his head closer and dropped his voice. ‘Mind you – and naturally I’m not implying any criticism here – Caesar’s been acting a bit … well, a bit arbitrarily these past few months. Longinus is just another example.’

Arbitrarily
. Oh, sure: like
tired and emotional
was a euphemism for
pissed as a newt
. Yeah, well, there were no surprises there: in my long and not inconsiderable experience of the neurotic, overbred bugger who was currently our emperor, he’d always been several sandwiches short of a picnic. In many ways, he couldn’t’ve mustered the hamper. ‘That’d be a bit more arbitrarily than usual, I assume?’ I said.

I’d spoken at normal voice level, and I saw a few heads at the nearest tables – senior civil service types to a man – turn to look at me. Secundus glanced around, grinned nervously, and lowered his voice to a whisper through clenched teeth.

‘Gods, Marcus, you stupid bastard, either shut the fuck up or keep it down, right?’ he hissed. ‘I know most of those guys, and they’re safe, but one or two I don’t. And these days you do
not
kid around where talking about the boss is concerned. Get me?’

The hairs rose a little on the back of my neck. Shit, he was serious; deadly serious. This wasn’t the Gaius Secundus I knew.

‘Yeah, OK, pal, I’m sorry,’ I said. I lowered my voice to match his. ‘Arbitrarily like what?’

‘Well, for a start there’s the business of the statue in the Jerusalem temple.’

‘I thought the Jews were dead against that kind of thing. Having statues of gods in temples. God, singular. Whatever.’

‘Damn right they are. Only this wasn’t one of theirs; it was one of ours.’

‘
What?
’ I’d raised my voice, and he winced. ‘Sorry, pal. Won’t happen again.’

‘Caesar wanted to set a statue of himself up in the Jewish holy of holies and make them burn incense to him.’

‘But that’s crazy!’

‘Tell me about it. Offend those touchy stiff-necked buggers and you’d have a mid-east war on your hands before you could say “zealot”. Caesar’s advisors managed to talk him out of it, luckily, but the idea was there. Rumour is, he’s planning to do much the same thing here, in the city. Establish a formal cult, temples, priests, sacrifices, the lot. That’s “cult” as in personal cult.’

‘Shit.’ I was appalled; even for Gaius, this was going too far. Oh, yeah, sure: worshipping a living person as divine has been standard and accepted in the East for centuries – witness Postuma’s pal, Alexander – and every provincial town, outwith the Jewish bounds, of course, has its statue of the emperor to whom it’s only polite to offer a pinch of incense, but he’s there in image to represent the power of Rome, not
propria persona
. And within the city boundaries we like our deified mortals to be comfortably dead first. ‘He’ll never get away with it.’

‘Who’s to stop him? He’s the emperor.’ Secundus took a swallow of his wine and raised his voice a fraction. ‘Anyway, all this is by the way. Leave it. What’s your interest in Cassius Longinus?’

‘I told you. I don’t have one.’

‘Come on, Marcus! Give me a break! With your peerless grasp of affairs I’m surprised you know the names of the current fucking consuls. That’s if you do know them; me, I wouldn’t risk a bet. And yet you come straight out with the fact that Longinus is the governor of Asia. He has something to do with the case you’re working on, hasn’t he?’

I grinned. ‘Yeah, OK. His name just came up in passing, never mind how or who gave me it: that’s strictly confidential. And it wasn’t mentioned in any sort of way that’d connect him with Surdinus’s murder, either. I was surprised to hear that he was in Rome, that’s all. Satisfied?’

‘Not really. But I suppose it’s all I’ll get.’ Secundus took an olive. ‘OK, just to fill you in on the guy. Not that you want filling in, no, of course not, perish the thought.’ I said nothing. ‘Just for the fun of it. Longinus is an old friend of the family; I mean
old
, long before he and Surdinus had their joint consulate. Which was why Plautius made a point of telling him about Surdinus’s death; Plautius had the consulship the year before the two of them, so he’s always had a friendly eye for Longinus. Incidentally, he was only appointed Asian governor this year, and he seems to have been doing all right – no major cock-ups, certainly, and as far as honesty goes, word has it you could play the stone-and-scissors game with him in the dark. Shit-hot jurist; he’s written books on the subject. Oh, and a straight-down-the-line Stoic, like his great-grandfather.’

The Cassius who’d put a knife into old Julius. Yeah, I got the picture, and by the sound of things great-grandson was out of the same mould: a good old-fashioned damn-your-eyes Roman with an integrity you could bend iron bars round. Interesting that he should be a Stoic, mind: Stoic philosophy seemed to be cropping up pretty frequently in connection with this case. But there again, Leonidas the estate manager had said that most of Surdinus’s friends were on the philosophical side, and he was a Stoic himself, so maybe that wasn’t so strange after all.

‘You happen to know where I can find him?’ I said. ‘Should I want to talk to him, that is.’

‘Which you don’t.’

‘Which, at present, I don’t.’

He grinned again and filled up my cup. ‘Right. He has a place on the Quirinal, off High Path and near the Shrine of Mars. You’ll probably find him there, because he hasn’t got much else to do at present but stay at home grumbling and twiddling his thumbs. You can tell him …’ He stopped. ‘Oh, hell.’

The door had just opened and a freedman-clerk had come in. He looked round, fixed on us, and came over. Secundus sighed.

‘Yes, Acastus. What is it?’ he said.

‘The departmental accounts committee meeting, sir.’ The freedman touched the brim of his cap. ‘It’s in less than an hour’s time. You asked to be reminded.’

‘Bugger, so it is.’ He stood up. ‘Sorry, Marcus, I’ll have to go. Finish the wine, OK?’ He waved at the barman. ‘My tab, Quintus, right?’ The barman nodded, and Secundus turned back to me. ‘Use my name as an introduction to Longinus if you like,’ he said. ‘Not that you’ll need to; he’s a perfectly amiable guy. And you know where to find me. Any other questions regarding the case you don’t want to know the answers to, I’ll be happy to help. Or, depending what they are, tell you to go and screw yourself. Fair enough?’

I grinned. ‘Fair enough. Thanks, pal, the next one’s on me.’

‘Damn right it is. See you remember,’ he said, and left.

I settled down and poured the last of the Massic into my cup. Yeah, well, I didn’t know how much of all that had been relevant, but it had certainly been interesting. So Longinus was in Rome, was he? And, from what Secundus had said, he’d arrived back just before Surdinus was topped. Probably coincidence, but still …

Plus – and I couldn’t see how or whether it fitted in with the murder, or indeed why the hell it should – there was the question of why the emperor had suddenly decided to bring Longinus back. Why should a paranoid bastard like Gaius go over the senate’s head and recall their top governor, who was not only holding his end up where the job was concerned, but was by all accounts so squeaky-clean-honest that you could play
morra
with him in the dark?

Yeah, right; there was only one answer to that, really. Whether or not, as I say, it was relevant to the case was another thing entirely. We’d just have to see what the future brought.