Graveyard of the Hesperides (24 page)

Liberalis had the grace to nod. “Yes, he was rather like that.”

“Don't model yourself on him then! Ever heard of Gavius?”

“I know him. He sells marble as a fascia for bar counters. Acting as a middleman for all the big quarries. He reclad both of our worktops recently.”

In that case, it was indefensible that Liberalis had previously claimed to know nothing about the salesmen and their evening drinks. I wanted to know why he had lied, then more about the salesmen, possible witnesses, and their connection with the bar. “Was this work done after you took over, or was Thales still living?”

“No, he'd gone. It was my first improvement, straight after the bar came to me. What of it?”

“Well, to start with, you were present the night Rufia vanished. So when I asked who was here then, you strung me along deliberately.”

“All right, I thought it might have been them.”

“No, you knew! Now if the Gavius crew are not our five buried skeletons, I ask you yet again. What other group came to the bar that night? Who are those dead men?”

The new landlord applied an innocent expression, still pretending he was quite different from his more raffish predecessor. “Sorry, I can't help.”

“Maybe Gavius will tell us,” Tiberius mumbled through a mouthful of stew, trying to scare Liberalis for me.

“Good thinking, love.” I played along. “I'll call on him next. The marble crew won't remember drinking or shagging a barmaid ten years ago; they probably do that every night. But having a big row with Thales should have stuck; they can tell us who was here then. They may even say what Julius Liberalis was doing that evening, since his own memory is so vague.” Liberalis shuffled anxiously.

Had Thales quarreled with the marble-suppliers deliberately, to make them go home before the real trouble started? Was he clearing the bar, to leave no potential witnesses to what he already had planned?

“So tell me,” I broached Liberalis, changing my tone, “what brings you here today, looking so anxious?”

I hoped he had had a serious rethink. No chance of that, unfortunately. “I came to see the damage to my bar,” he grouched instead.

I refused to sympathize. “Well, you came too late, man. You're using a good contractor; it is already cleaned up and reinstated.”

“Yes, I can see. But Manlius Faustus sent a message about what it was like this morning.”

Manlius Faustus stayed on his sacks, methodically spooning up stew.

“I saw it myself, a total mess. Liberalis, all you cared about from the start is whether this will hold up the work.” Exasperated, I went fully onto the attack. “Of course the real problem is that we have uncovered a serious crime, the culprits are clearly still out there, yet nobody—especially you—has the sense to tell us who they are. There would have been no damage to your place if we had had these people in custody. It's time for you to cooperate, I'd say!”

Liberalis looked shifty but made no reply.

“Oh come on! You already admitted it was Gavius in the bar. So who else did you see that night?”

He shook his head as if the answer was nobody. I had never believed that. So he was still stubbornly lying.

I snapped at him to get a grip. I was thoroughly riled. I mentioned how we once presumed Menendra's heavies were involved, although our eyewitness discounted them. That was when Liberalis finally burst out with a completely new complication: “Eyewitness? If somebody saw who did it, you tell him to be careful! I don't want anyone else getting hurt. These people mean business.”

“What people? What business are they in?”

He sighed. He was pulling at his hair again as he admitted unhappily, “The bar business. If I'm right, Flavia Albia, this was aimed at me.”

For once he had startled me. Even Tiberius stopped eating. While he, like a sharp contractor, probably began thinking that if the site intrusion was a customer's own fault, the customer would have to pay for the damage, I asked severely, “What have you done, Liberalis, to deserve such punishment?”

He squirmed, his usual reaction to pressure. Then he finally owned up: “I told them I saw no reason to pay any protection money while the bar was closed for work.”

“
Protection money?
”

Out of a corner of my eye I saw Tiberius pass his bowl to his slave. Dromo complained it was empty, then started to lick out the gravy. His master came over to us, mopping his mouth with a napkin and, full of official interest, demanding that Liberalis explain.

It turned out all the local bars paid a gang for “protection,” which of course meant bribes not to harass their premises. This came as no surprise; it is a centuries-old crime that the authorities will never stamp out because bar owners are always too scared to complain.

Tiberius was growling under his breath at the landlord's accepting attitude. When pushed, Liberalis told him that in the High Footpath neighborhoods, including the Ten Traders, the leading villains were the Rabirius gang. Tiberius glanced at me; we had come across them during a previous case.

“I'll just have to pay up now.”

“You could try reporting it!” Tiberius answered sternly.

Liberalis shrugged, very matter-of-fact. “It's only an overhead.”

“No, it's extortion.”

“I don't want to watch my bar burn down.”

“Is that how they intimidate you? Who does it? The elder or younger Rabirius? Roscius is the youngblood's name.”

“Not sure. They send agents. Thales knew Rabirius quite well,” said Liberalis. “Old cronies, or pretended to be. I've never had a personal visitation, just a couple of henchmen come round like door-to-door sponge-sellers. Only they are not vending anything, and they are very menacing. They stand up close, then don't smile.”

“Shark tactics!” This situation annoyed Tiberius. “Rabirius is supposed to be getting on in years. The next generation want to wrest control from him—we anticipate a crime war. Are threats the only way they lean on you?”

“That's all. Leave it, Legate.”

“Have they tried the trick of forcing a man of theirs on to your staff?”

“A plant?” Clearly Liberalis was worldlier than he appeared.

“That's what I mean. Observing you, taking charge of the cash box, creaming off profits, letting you know
they
know everything that goes on in your place?”

“No, it's simple protection. If I pay them, we all rub along fine. This is how things are done in the trade.”

Ideas were jumping at me. “So did Thales always pay up?” I wondered whether the five dead men could have been enforcers; had Thales fought back? He would have been a brave man, which did not fit with what I had heard. But his heir assured me Old Thales paid up sweetly. There had never been bad feeling. “Do the Rabirius men habitually drink here?”

“Oh no. They have their own places where they spend time; they never mix business and leisure. All they ever take from us is a quick hospitality beaker of wine.”

“Formally sealing the deal? So civilized!” I scoffed.

Liberalis missed the point. “Well, we've always given them our top quality, the flagon we hide in the cupboard, to make sure they leave happy … You need to explain to her,” he told Faustus crossly, “how the business world works!”

“I think she knows” was the quiet answer.

*   *   *

Liberalis was feeling the pressure; he flounced off. Over his shoulder he threw one last barb: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Flavia Albia, buying a meat dish from a bar. You should know that contravenes the Emperor's food regulations!”

I knew that too. But sometimes the law is plain ridiculous. For me, if a decree seems outrageous, I stand up to it.

Of course if it's a decree from Domitian, I do it discreetly. I'm not stupid.

 

XXXVIII

When I went looking for Gavius, I took along Tiberius. Marble was his speciality. He wanted to come and meet the supplier.

Tiberius took the bowl back to Gran at the Brown Toad. He thanked her for the hot pot (angling for more another day) and followed his usual routine of asking a nitpicky question; this time he wanted to know
whose
granny the old granny was. Flattered and giggly, she said, “Pretty well, everyone in the High Footpath district.” He asked if she knew where the fascia salesman might live nowadays and she then said in Mucky Mule Mews, which she had told me already.

I led him to the dungheaped alley, where we could ask the man's parents for the actual house Gavius lived in nowadays. They let us pat the dog Gavius had left with them, a slobbering, happy creature who greeted us like old friends even though we were strangers. But she was a large girl, and when we first arrived she let out a sonorous bark. It might deter intruders, if they were cowardly. The parents gave directions to the other end of the mews, only for us to find Gavius was out. If he was working, he could be anywhere; he might even be visiting a quarry miles from Rome.

We became a little despondent, then we heard his other two dogs barking loudly indoors. So he was coming back eventually and could not have gone far. We walked to the street end to escape the high smell of sun-warmed dung, but decided to wait. This was a hazard of being an informer; it was not all mint tea and walnut cake. However, Dromo spotted a stall selling fruit tarts so he dragged us over there. While we were watching his meticulous choosing process, Gavius arrived home to give his dogs their afternoon exercise. We knew him because the stallholder called out a greeting. So he was popular.

We followed Gavius back to his house, though not for long.

“They're barking so much because they heard you and thought you were me coming to take them out! You will have to trot along with us. The girls will go mad if I don't take them straightaway now they've seen me.”

Apparently these dogs took precedence over everything else, but he let us accompany their walk. I was still digesting my lunchtime pie, plus stew, but was now forced on a hike the whole length of the Viminal. Most of our journey was uphill. Nothing else, we were assured, would do for the Three Graces (including Euphrosyne, whom Gavius had collected from his parents as we passed).

“I can't leave her behind; she'll soon let me know what she thinks of that.”

At first we humored their owner and let him warble about his pets. They originated in the Pyrenees, so were quite unsuitable in Rome. They were huge flock-guarding dogs, with long, white, merrily shedding fur that was thickest over the folds of flesh on their great shoulders; on all three, the white fur had large dark blotches over their heads and upper bodies. Gavius actually said he bought them as pups “from a man in a bar.” I had not thought people really did that. But of course crowded bar counters are packed with dodgy dealers selling all kinds of things.

According to their owner, the Three Graces possessed the gentlest, calmest natures; they loved children, adored having visitors to count, but would ferociously protect their home and family against intruders. (Despite our experience of being happily slobbered at his parents' house?) They adored going on walks so they could look around, check out the neighborhood and make as many friends as possible. We saw them even try to lick a potter's raven through the bars of its cage. The bird told them to get lost. Well, it was ruder than that, but they wagged their long tails anyway.

Gavius himself was sized in proportion to the dogs he doted on. In his case it derived from many hours of leaning on bar counters, sampling snack bowls as he discussed marble requirements. He was unmarried and, apart from visiting his parents every day, even his social life consisted of drinking with his colleagues, as he freely told us. I would never have guessed this heavily paunched, fat-faced, easygoing fellow was the son of the worn, fleshless, anxious-seeming couple I had met. When they were all together he must look like an outsized cuckoo in a meadow pipits' nest.

After we had worked through enough canine lore, Tiberius opened a discussion of marble. Every caupona, popina, thermopolium and mansio throughout the Empire has one or more counters faced with stone crazy-paving pieces. These make food shops instantly recognizable, besides being attractive and easy to clean down.

Gavius was knowledgeable. He liked to chat. Tiberius had begun by mentioning that the counters at the Garden of the Hesperides had just suffered damage. “Some idiot looks to have landed a couple of blows with a lump hammer.” Gavius exclaimed in horror at that; he had provided the marble so recently. They discussed repairs.

Gavius quickly saw that Tiberius had the kind of professional knowledge he respected. “Well, you know how it is around here, sir, they want everything for nothing, with goat bells on. We provide whatever they will pay for, and sometimes I do squeeze a commission with exotics—Cipollino, Brescia. But the bars around here tend to have a mix of Luna and Pentelic, same old white and gray you see everywhere, not much of a challenge for me and the boys.”

“Do you mainly supply reclaimed pieces?”

“It's legit!” Gavius protested, as if Tiberius was suggesting his supplies were stolen.

“I know, I know. The reclaimers even have a guild in Rome. I am not criticizing you, Gavius. It's understood—when a property is to be rebuilt, the contractor has a right to any materials he takes out, which he is allowed to sell on. Do you have contacts in the building trade or the quarries?”

“I know everyone. That's good business.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Fifteen years, easily.” Gavius thought Tiberius had merely asked a polite question but it was useful to me; the marble-supplier had definitely been trading as long ago as the Hesperides killings. “We do obtain offcuts from quarries, though I mainly pick up suitable pieces after renovations. I often buy on spec, keep the bits at the yard. One source for me recently was Domitian's Temple of the Flavians. Nice and close. Absolutely slathered in gorgeous new marble—have you seen it? He was so choosy, they had a lot of rejects. The builder practically paid me to take them away.”