Man Eater (11 page)

It was a hovel, for gods’ sake! He’d told her straight. Much better to throw the scum out, do the place up, give it a bit of
class.
You should know about class, m’dear, you’ve got it coming out of your ears.

My word, did you ever hear such language from a prettier mouth? Class my arse, she’d said, all you wanted was an income the size of your fat belly. He’d humoured her, reminding her that if she was such a philanthropist, why sell the building in the first place, but all the while she was shouting and wagging her finger (such a suggestive little finger, too), he could think about nothing else but straddling her. Perhaps, if he asked nicely, she’d use language like that in his bed?

Now that his wife had buggered up his Umbrian estate, he’d had to find land further afield and what started out as a straightforward deal escalated into a game of move and counter-move as once again he found himself pitted against the formidable Claudia Seferius. Could she have done what she did out of spite? Gazumped him to teach him a lesson? Who knows, but no sooner had she bought that bloody piece in Campania, she sold it again—and made a sodding great profit. That was the point when Quintilian decided to take action. The Campania Campaign might have been simple retaliation, but he could not afford to take chances.

He acquired himself a spy under her immaculately tiled roof.

Quintilian’s original intention was to discredit her. Remus, the very notion of women in trade was repellent enough, not only to himself but to every decent-minded merchant in Rome, but far from indulging in wild orgies or torrid lesbian affairs (as he’d
very
much hoped), her sole vice appeared to be gambling. In less than a week, she’d squandered the whole of the Campanian profit.

Several students were clotted round the golden milestone, virtually obliterating it in their efforts to hear their master’s rhetoric, even though this wasn’t a school day. That’s because the master was Pera, and Quintilian intended that his sons, when they were old enough, should also learn from Pera. He was truly inspirational, that man.

Unfortunately, although gambling wasn’t strictly legal, the senator was not prepared to pee in waters where his own friends swam. He had waited, patiently paying his spy and biding his time. When not at the races or the games, Claudia Seferius had spent a very dull winter poring over her accounts and when, divinely inspired, he put in an offer for the whole wine business (via a middleman, of course) he was incensed to his gills that she rejected it out of hand.

I’ll teach you, you arrogant, long-legged bitch, not to dabble in matters outside your sphere.

To that end he had sacrificed a pig to Mercury, well renowned for his chicanery in the world of commerce, and, exactly ten days later, Quintilian’s spy reported Claudia Seferius intended extending her estates in Etruria.

Hundreds of other plots were going begging up and down the country, but masculine pride was at stake. Quintilian could not afford to lose this round, and he made his enquiries. With the Seferius bint, it boiled down to a straight choice between Hunter’s Grove and Vixen Hill, both neglected by their peasant owners for reasons stretching back to the civil wars, when conscription took men away for months at a time. With permanent peace came the disbanding of a staggering sixty percent of the army, leaving Augustus acutely vulnerable over his responsibility to his veterans, which he also had to balance against a huge number of prisoners-of-war and the problem of feeding an ever-swelling populace. Not for nothing was this man called a genius.

Many peasants, too poor, too weary, too battle-scarred to start over from scratch, leapt at his Land Purchase Scheme and happily upped sticks to Rome, where they could be housed and fed by the State and where someone else’s back broke under the plough. For others, like the owners of Hunter’s Grove and Vixen Hill, it was more of a gravitational pull, but the Land Purchase Scheme kept on rolling, the answers to everybody’s prayers. So what if the rich got richer? So what if estates grew to obscene proportions? We’ve got slaves from the wars, haven’t we? Let them work my lands, I’ve deserved this break.

Ripe for selling, trilled the agents. Ripe for commission, thought Quintilian. Few were beyond a spot of doctoring—transplanting olive trees, piling the outhouses with grain and vegetables and jars of wine—when in reality the olives would be dead by the time you arrived, the borrowed stores returned to their rightful owners. A good surveyor—correction, an experienced and
honest
surveyor—could name his own price in cases like this, and this is where the Seferius chit came in.

Quintilian turned down a side street, then turned left again to where the buildings closed in.

Claudia had hired such a man to assess the two sites and make an expert recommendation. To the senator’s astonishment and admiration, she had done so with great secrecy, and it was only because of his spy that he found out.

The door that he stopped at abutted the aqueduct and was bolted.

‘Who is it?’ The voice was a boy’s in the process of breaking.

‘Ung.’

‘Eh? Oh, it’s you.’

Quintilian sidled through the small gap that appeared and followed the lad up the wooden steps to an attic stinking of tallow, cabbages and cat pee. In a corner, a short, squat cove with dirty fingernails and chapped lips prised himself off his pallet. Quintilian thought he saw something black scuttle under the bolster and turned his head.

‘Ung!’

An imperial flick of the fingers dismissed the boy and he waited until his footsteps had rattled down the stairs.

‘Nasty swelling you have there, master.’

Quintilian made an impatient gesture and pointed towards a pile of scrolls on a chest beside the doorway. ‘Ung-ung?’

‘No, master. No problems at all. My lad here, he slipped in while our friend was asleep, as we agreed he would, then sneaked back before our friend woke.’ He gave an unctuous smile. ‘Although I will have to charge you extra for the seal.’

The price agreed had been all-inclusive, but this odious individual had him by the balls and the longer he hung around this cesspit, the stronger his chances of the wound infecting.

‘One extra denarius, master, if you please.’

Quintilian pointedly counted six pieces of silver from his purse and flipped them on the chest.

‘Seven, didn’t we agree?’ The man’s eyes glinted horribly. ‘One for the boy, no?’ Realizing he’d pushed too far, he began an oily apology. ‘Quite, quite, I am thinking of another client.’ He clasped his hands together. ‘Always a pleasure to do business with—’

But his visitor, along with the sixth denarius, had vanished.

Later, in the comfort of his own home, tucked up in bed with a poppy draught inside him and a turnip poultice warm against his cheek, Quintilian chuckled quietly. You should not play with the boys, Claudia. I warned you once before you were out of your depth.

Slowly, Quintilian drifted off to sleep, imagining himself moulding Claudia’s firm breasts between his fingers and teaching her, as he turned her on to all fours, that there are dozens of suitable positions for women. And none of ’em in trade.

VIII

One hundred and twenty miles away, with the sun painting the villa walls a deep clover pink and the stench of ordure oppressive in the narrow valley, a young man followed his shadow between the peach trees and the pears towards the seal enclosure. The half-dozen or so show animals whose domain this was had been fed and were settling down for the night, grunting, shuffling, twitching their whiskers and scratching. A late heron flapped silently overhead, and a frog croaked in the reeds. Yet it wasn’t the seals that held Orbilio’s attention, but the back of a young woman resting her elbows on the gate, the sunset turning her hair to molten copper, gold and bronze. Hardly surprising that since her husband had died, proposals of marriage had come flooding in.

The sun had all but disappeared before he stepped forward. ‘I have some good news,’ he said quietly.

Claudia spun round. If that was good news, heaven help doom. ‘You always did excel at creeping.’

‘I’ve perfected the art of silent approach, as well.’ He swept his arm in the direction of the pool. ‘Now, before I come any closer, will you promise not to throw me in?’

I don’t want you any closer, Orbilio. I can smell the wine on your breath, the rosemary on your tunic, sandalwood oil on your skin. I can see your eyes dark with longing and your fists clenched with tension, and there’s a pulse that beats in your neck. Oh, no, Orbilio. I don’t want you to come any closer.

‘Promises are for schoolgirls, but if it sets your mind at rest, I’m saving my strength.’

‘For tomorrow’s trip to the sulphur pools?’

Some hope. ‘I presume you’ve spoken to that imbecile Prefect?’ Distance. That’s what she needed. Distance. ‘Since he appears to have slithered silently back into the hole he crawled out from.’

‘That’s what I came to talk to you about.’

Bingo! If there’s one thing about Supersnoop you can rely on, it’s the fact that, first and foremost, he’s a policeman. Umbria might be out of his jurisdiction, but professional pride would ensure he’d smooth things over with Macer (small wonder the little insect scuttled back to Tarsulae). That same sense of rectitude would also keep him here until Fronto’s killer was unearthed. By which time, she’d be long gone.

‘I take it you kept my bodyguard in Rome?’

As for Rollo—well, I’m sorry to tell you this, old chap, but you can take your urgent summons and stick it in your bathwater. Claudia Seferius is going home. Home, I say! Where I should never have left in the first place.

‘As a matter of fact, I sent him on to your villa.’

Why would you do that, I ask myself? ‘Now that’s a pity, because I’m heading for Rome at first light.’ To find me an advocate I can rely on. And could be I know just the fellow…

‘Yes. Well.’ His face had that haunted look, again.

Either that, or a twinge of indigestion just hit him. ‘What I’m trying to say is—’

I know what you’re trying to say. You rode all this way because you thought I was in trouble and, believe it or not, Marcus Cornelius, I am grateful. No one else could have got me off the hook so quickly. But I know men like you—respectable, respected aristocrats. Now I’m not saying I don’t find you attractive, there is a certain animal magnetism, I grant you, and I realize it’s been a long, long, long, long time since a good-looking man stoked my furnace, but you’re not my type, Orbilio. No way. And besides, Claudia Seferius is her own mistress, not a man’s.

‘You’re staying on.’

‘Yes.’ He sounded surprised. ‘In fact, the messenger taking my explanation to my boss has just left.’ A different expression flitted across his face. ‘I suppose there are worse places to pass time, don’t you think? The scenery’s beautiful—’

What bloody scenery? ‘Unsurpassed.’

Nothing but mountains and woods, and what use are woods, for heaven’s sake? They go green, they go yellow, and then they go twiggy. Fine if you’re a huntsman, but Claudia was no Diana-of-the-Forests, rushing hither and thither with a pack of hounds at her side and a quiver on her back. Claudia belonged to the city. And that, by Jupiter, was where she was heading after breakfast.

He said mildly, ‘So you won’t mind staying on, then?’

With care, she’d be home to catch the final throes of the Festival of Mars, with the Dance of the Salii and processions through the streets. There’d be music in every house, singing in every…

‘What did you say?’

Orbilio was studiously stripping young leaves off a willow. ‘Sergius is a good host, he’ll make us very comfortable.’

‘He can make you as comfortable as he likes. I’m out of here.’

‘We’re only talking about a day or two. Until this thing blows over.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s blown over, and if you think this tacky little ruse is all it takes to separate me from my underwear, think again. And since you asked why I returned your letters, I’ll tell you.’

He looked up sharply. ‘Oh?’

‘You want me in your bed, Orbilio. I know it and you know it. But I have a past, remember? And the thing about men like you is that you never let me forget—Ow!’ His hands had closed round her upper arms and he was shaking her like a woollen doll.

‘Let go of me, you bastard!’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ His face shone white in the darkness.
‘Men like me!’

He released her as roughly as he’d grabbed hold of her.

Claudia rubbed her arms. With luck, there would be horrid purple weals in the morning to gnaw at his conscience.

‘This isn’t about your precious underwear, Claudia, this is about murder. Yes, I had a long talk with the Prefect, and he’s not carting you off to the lock-up—’

‘Bloody right! I’d have his balls in a pie—’

‘For gods’ sake, woman. Haven’t you got it through your thick skull yet? Macer doesn’t believe
you
,
he doesn’t believe
me
,
and if Junius returns, he won’t believe
him
,
either.’ He combed his hands through his hair several times and when he spoke, his voice was level. ‘As far as the law is concerned, you are guilty of coldblooded, premeditated murder for which you were caught in the act.’