Jail Bait (21 page)

Claudia gulped down the last of the sherbet. All Orbilio need do now is work out who X is and life was hunky-dory once again, she could repay that little loan, maybe treat Tullus to a toga, calm him down, and whoopee, life was back on course. Terrific. She clapped her hands. Case closed. And Supersnoop can shove his wretched tit-for-tat.

In celebration, she twirled round and round the pillar until she made herself and Apollo quite dizzy, and it was only when she stopped reeling that she became aware of just how much sound did carry upwards from below.

‘Marcus Cornelius Orbilio?’ a puzzled voice echoed, setting Claudia’s ears aflap. Down on the path, a dispatch rider, his hair plastered down with sweat and his tunic clinging in dark patches to his back and armpits, was holding out a letter to a shrugging lackey. ‘Never heard of ’im,’ the servant said.

Oh, but I have…

‘Yoo-hoo.’ Claudia waved both arms to catch the rider’s attention. ‘Up here,’ she trilled. ‘But don’t bother to fetch the letter up, you look like you’re in need of a rest. I’ll nip down and fetch it.’

‘We-ell.’ The courier was torn between duty and the prospect of a bath. ‘My orders,’ he called back, ‘are to hand this over personally. Do you know where I can find him?’

‘Oh, I’ll see he gets it,’ Claudia assured him, with a comforting wave of her hand. ‘I’m his wife.’

XXII

For a new town rising from a grassy plain beside a lake, Spesium was taking no prisoners, Marcus noticed. Even in this searing heat and with crippling hangovers all round, craftsmen went doggedly about their business, the silversmiths and cobblers, the carpenters and fullers. But then that’s country life, he supposed, sauntering down the main street past the temple. Cows still needed to be milked, that milk needed to be sold, and the same applied to eggs and fruit and meat. Nevertheless, Dorcan’s stall was not among those set up in the Forum, neither could Orbilio find the bearded charlatan in any of the taverns or the lodging houses. The big man obviously had more sense than the locals and was taking a long lie-in.

Behind the Temple of Spes, tantalizing aromas from the baker’s oven overlaid the smell of dust and dryness, tempting Marcus to part at a corner shop with a brass sesterce in exchange for a pudding of cinnamon and nutmeg deep fried in olive oil and smothered in honey.

He had noticed in the gateway to Atlantis, a poster advertising a foot race in the grounds this afternoon. No doubt Dorcan would be drawn by the hoards willing to hand over silver in exchange for a genuine shell of swan’s egg from which Helen of Troy had been hatched. Clearly the giant’s information wasn’t urgent, or he’d have sent a message suggesting an alternative meeting point. Orbilio would simply have to wait.

With his fingers and chin sticky from the pudding, he was making his way towards the pawnbroker’s to wash up when who should come his way? None other than the Spaniard, with his long, dark hair and fancy clothes. Something speared at his gut when he thought about this self-styled stud sucking up to Claudia. Mother of Tarquin, what did she see in him? Yet the professional in Orbilio could not help but admire the professional in Tarraco. Slow, orchestrated movements, designed to show off every well-worked muscle. That well-practised half-glance, expressions veiled by the fall of long hair. On impulse, he stepped in front of the Spaniard and blocked his way.

‘Are you down for the foot race?’

‘Me?’ The Spaniard gave an insolent shrug. ‘I never compete.’

Like the half-glance, the half-smile, even his words were spartan. Doled out sparingly, designed to add to the enigma and mystique. Orbilio bunched his fist, but resisted the urge to rearrange the long, straight nose in front of him.

‘Then the race is mine,’ he said cheerfully. ‘To the winner—’ he shot a wicked grin over his shoulder, to where Atlantis perched on the promontory ‘—the spoils.’

Tarraco’s eyes narrowed and colour suffused his cheeks. ‘You?’ he sneered, but the tendons in his neck stood out like bowlines on a merchant ship. ‘No chance.’ Dark eyes flashed a glance at the rock before travelling with contemptuous slowness over the drips of cinnamon and honey on Orbilio’s patrician tunic, his sticky hands and mouth. ‘I beat you by a furlong.’

‘You’re on,’ replied Marcus, rubbing his hands together in glee. ‘Until this afternoon, then—and be sure to give Lais my love.’

Furrows formed between the Spaniard’s eyebrows. ‘You know Lais?’

‘Never met her in my life,’ Marcus said. ‘Just wanted to give her my love, seeing as how any old bod round here can,’ and leaving Tarraco smouldering in anger, he ambled down Quince Lane and turned left past the grainstore, where the presence of a ginger tomcat washing on the top step of the entrance could not have sent a louder signal to the rats.

Arrogant bastard, he thought. Marries one middle-aged woman, Virginia, who conveniently drowns in the lake and what does he do? Not content with one fortune, he courts Tuder’s wife. Such was the isolation of that wretched island, Orbilio had not been able to establish whether Tuder had died before Tarraco came on the scene or afterwards, but it was a curious coincidence that both Tuder and Virginia were dead—and that Lais had subsequently disappeared.

And if there was one thing guaranteed to make an investigator’s hackles rise, it was the word coincidence. And when it came to coincidence, as with vampires and werewolves, he was an emphatic nonbeliever.

Further down the street, warehouses gave way to high-rise tenements, where babies bawled through open windows, fathers argued with growing sons and wives scolded errant husbands. Irrespective of the fact that he had not come to Atlantis to
investigate a dead banker (or his widow), Orbilio decided he would not consider his visit wasted if, when he left, a certain Spanish gigolo lay rotting in a jail awaiting
trial…

Surprisingly, the pawnbroker’s shopfront was shuttered and he was forced to make a tortuous detour round the back of the tenement, through the building and out the back, to where the sun rarely penetrated and across a yard criss-crossed with limp wet washing, and not for the first time he thanked Jupiter for his privileged upbringing. For the piped water which flushed his drains. For there being no question of
his
mother fetching water from a standpipe down the street and emptying night soil on the middens! Remus, from the yard it was difficult to tell one apartment from another—which was the pawnbroker’s? Which tiny window in the roof marked out his own rented garret? On one of the narrow stone steps, a stout squab of a woman sobbed into the hem of her tunic, revealing calves too meaty to warrant further interest and it was therefore with a ripple of revulsion that Orbilio recognized the pawnbroker’s wife.

‘Oh, sir, it’s you.’ She made an effort to pull herself together in the presence of nobility.

‘Here.’ Orbilio held out a handkerchief, which would have cost more than her coarse woollen tunic and cheap leather sandals put together. ‘Is—is there some way I can help?’ Her face was swollen and blotchy, her eyes puffy and red, and any fool could see this was not a question of some minor mishap or a squabble with her husband.

‘No, sir,’ she sniffed. ‘No, sir, there ain’t.’ She scrubbed her eyes with the velvety cotton.

He peered at this allegory of despair. ‘Maybe you’d just like to talk?’

‘We-ell.’ The woman bit her lower lip. ‘I don’t suppose you’d have heard about that trouble down the smokery…’

‘I gather the couple had an argument resulting in a spot of damage—’

‘Is that the word that’s been put out? A row? Well, what about the baby, eh? How did they pass
that
one off?’ She blew her nose like a conch shell. ‘That lad’s shed was reduced to firewood, his stock ruined, and you can take it from me, sir, that weren’t no row. A gang of thugs ripped that place apart. And the tragedy that resulted, that poor bairn’s death, that was nothing short of bloody murder and if you ask me, they should be crucified, those villains, right there on the lakeside for what they put that young couple through and we’ll be next, I know we will, if we don’t cough up the extra every month.’

A tingle shot through Orbilio’s veins. The tingle he always experienced whenever his pick hit a rich stream of gold ore. Kicking aside a cabbage stalk, he squeezed beside the beefcake on the step.

‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘you’d better tell me the whole story start to finish.’

*

Across the other side of Spesium, a fat bluebottle buzzed around the rooftops. She’d been attracted by an appetizing smell, and this wasn’t just offcuts of offal thrown into the gutter or the remnants of an unwanted pie. Curious, the bluebottle headed for the window on the fourth floor of the apartment block.

The shutters were latched together, but by crawling through the gap by the hinge,
the fly could squeeze into the room which so attracted her. She was disappointed to find she wasn’t the first. Hundreds of her relatives were already feasting and she was forced to buzz around the room to orientate herself to this unexpected situation.

Through her multi-lenses, she could see an open stove in the corner, clean and neat, the skillets and the ladles hanging tidily on the wall. An open trunk revealed cheap and faded but distinctly feminine attire, of a type worn by girls who plied their trade in brothels. Nothing there for a fly on a mission! She circled the footstool then the table, which had been wiped too thoroughly to be of any interest. Ah, that’s better. All those scented pots and potions in a trunk inside the door, and a strange collection of curios to boot, but the jumble of jars and phials only served to confuse the more appetizing aromas in the air. Including something which smelled like cardamom…

Now that’s more like it! A bed. And beside the bed, in a small flat terracotta dish, a handful of coins. Payment for services rendered. And on the bed, a woman, lying naked. But the gash across her throat was obliterated by gorging flies making it impossible for the bluebottle to settle down and lay her eggs in it. She’d be nudged aside in no time.

Buzzing round the tiny room for inspiration, she realized with a start that the thing was so damned big, she’d missed it first time round. Wow. She circled round and round—so much choice! So much flesh for baby maggots to grow strong in!

Round and round she flew again, taking in the forward sprawl of the man’s body, the face twisted in pain, until finally she settled on an area just south of the great bushy beard and, only when she was satisfied her precious eggs would not be disturbed, did the bluebottle move round to feast on the rivulets of dried blood.

Of course she could not get near the wound itself for companions who’d staked an earlier claim, but that didn’t really matter. There was more than enough to go round on this giant of a man, and when she’d finished, she perched and cleaned herself quite happily on the metal flesh hook which protruded from his back.

*

‘I’ve taken your advice,’ Pylades said, ‘and added in a foot race, plus there’s a pageant organized for Thursday afternoon. After all—’ his hand slipped under Claudia’s elbow ‘—we don’t want our guests to be bored.’

Bored? Surrounded by a rash of mysterious deaths, with the military on my back, a Spaniard after my money and bankruptcy a distinct possibility?

‘I trust that’s good news?’ Pylades indicated the scroll in Claudia’s hand and, as he steered her along the path towards the museum, insisting he show her personally his collection of marble busts, either Claudia was getting fatter or the Greek was moving closer.

‘Merely a stuffy progress report from my bailiff,’ she breezed, covering the distinctive heron seal with her thumb and wondering how the Head of Rome’s Security Police might react to the news of his new appointment.

Across the glistening clear waters of the lake, grebe and dabchick dived for snails, and on the stone wall which ran along the path, a snake flicked out its tongue as it tasted the air.

‘Whatever brought you to these sweet Etruscan hills,
Pylades,’ she said, keeping her gaze firmly on the bubbling cloudbank, ‘you were very lucky to find a spring on this promontory.’

The hand under her elbow became rigid. ‘Luck had nothing to do with it,’ he replied.

‘I’m sure it didn’t.’

There was a moment’s hesitation, a stumble in his step, then— ‘Mosul tells me you haven’t yet taken the waters,’ he said smoothly. ‘You should. Most beneficial.’

Why should you and that mole-eyed priest be discussing me? ‘I have it scheduled for this afternoon,’ she lied. ‘I meant to tell Leon.’

‘Leon?’ The Greek seemed sad. ‘Leon, I regret, is leaving us today. He has, I’m told, proved entirely unsatisfactory. Clumsy, forgetful. Mosul doesn’t feel the boy has the makings of a true vocation with our gentle Carya.’

‘As others before him have discovered.’ Claudia emphasized the last word. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as unusual?’

A flicker passed over the Laconian’s face. ‘It is not my place to comment on the priesthood,’ he said coldly, withdrawing his arm and muttering ‘I mustn’t keep you from your business’ as he disappeared at great speed through the first available entrance.

On the shore, gangs of workers were busy constructing the grandstand for the foot race and since the sawdust tickled her nose, Claudia sauntered out along the jetty. The planks were warm as she sat down and swinging her legs over the side, she unrolled Orbilio’s letter. Around her the lake glistened like broken shards of glass and garganey drakes threw back their heads in vigorous displays of courtship.