Solid Citizens (15 page)

The duster paused. ‘Yes, master. It’d be a pleasure.’

Ampudius grinned toothlessly. ‘Bugger off, Desmus. Well, he was a good son, Quintus. He knew where his duty lay, however unpleasant it was, public or private.’

Shit. ‘And he used his friend Publius Novius to get it done? The certifying?’

‘Who else would he use, boy? He was the family lawyer, and it had to go through legal process. Besides, he’s a smart man, Publius. There’d be no querying anything he drafted.’

My brain was buzzing. I stood up. ‘Thanks for your help, sir. You’ve been very informative.’

‘Don’t mention it. My pleasure. I don’t have many visitors these days, and I don’t get out much myself. I was sorry to miss young Quintus’s funeral. A good man, that, and a good citizen of Bovillae. It isn’t often you get them both together, and the town’s a lot poorer without him.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, so I imagine.’

‘You nail the bastard who killed him. You won’t find us ungrateful, boy.’

‘I’ll try,’ I said, and left.

W
here to now?

Well, you win some, you lose some: that conver-sation had blown out of the water the theory that the will was a fake engineered first to last by Novius and Caesius together. Old, Ampudius might be, but he’d certainly got all his faculties intact, there was nothing wrong with his memory, and he’d convinced me absolutely on that score. So scrap the idea that Aulus Mettius had been blackmailing Caesius and his employer, got himself framed and relegated as a result, and stiffed his uncle in revenge as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Which didn’t, of course, let him off the hook altogether: even if his reasons for hating Caesius hadn’t been as clear cut as a trumped-up charge and a ten-year relegation would’ve made them, the hatred he’d shown at the funeral had been there in spades, whatever the cause of it had been, and the timing still fitted. So Nephew Mettius was still firmly in the frame.

There again, there was still the question of Quintus Caesius’s power of attorney – or whatever the legal phrase was – to consider. Even if his father’s will itself had been genuine, the business of the old man having been certified towards the end of his life was something I’d known nothing about, and it might well be a key point where relations between the two brothers were concerned; Ampudius had been pretty definite that Caesius Senior had been in sound mind when he disinherited Lucius, sure, no arguments, but he’d also said that the guy had known he was failing during his latter years and had relied increasingly on his elder son’s judgement. Influence – possibly undue influence, based on personal motives – was a grey area, and if it’d been a factor in the disinheritance then it might be relevant, both where Lucius himself – and possibly even Mettius, if he’d come to know about it in some way – was concerned.

So another chat with Anthus was in order. Plus, following my interview with Baebius, he might be able to provide an update on the missing figurine; my gut feeling was telling me that that fitted in somewhere or other along the line, and I’d bet we hadn’t heard the last of it. Also, since it was cropping up too frequently to be ignored, I thought I might give the burned-out wool store a quick look-over, if only for completeness’ sake.

Even so, we were halfway through a busy morning here. Like I’d said to Perilla, I was officially on holiday, and after dutifully talking to Baebius and Ampudius I reckoned I deserved a break and a cup of wine. So back towards the centre of town and my usual wine shop.

On the way – what made me do it, I don’t know; call it instinct, if you like – I happened to glance over my shoulder. I hadn’t been looking out for my pal the lounging freedman recently, but there he was, large as life, a dozen or so yards behind and keeping pace. Uh-huh. Coincidence, nothing, not this time: Bovillae wasn’t all that small. Maybe it was time we had a word. I turned.

The guy had almost reached a corner. He slowed noticeably, then abruptly took a left.

Bugger this for a game of soldiers. I was getting too old for running suspicious tails down, particularly where it would involve pushing my way through the pack of Bovillae’s usual morning crowd of strollers and shoppers. Chummie could wait until I had a better chance at him. That would come, I was sure.

At least now I knew that it hadn’t been my imagination. The guy had questions to answer.

I found the street with the brothel and carried on down it. The ruined warehouse was on the same side, a few dozen yards past the door, its roof gone but with the burned timber and tiles cleared away, so that it was no more than a shell formed by the original stone walls reaching up to their original height. Like the watchman Garganius had said, the locals had been lucky the place was separate from the surrounding buildings: it’d been a fairly big place, and if its frontage had been flush with the rest of the street, with properties attached either side, fires in town being what they are, when it went up it would probably have taken a good chunk of the centre with it. As it was, what was left was surrounded by an open courtyard.

There was nothing much to see, really, but I reckoned that having made the effort I might as well do things properly. I’d just stepped off the pavement when I felt a hand grip the back of my tunic, hard.

My pal the wandering freedman. I turned round, fist raised to punch the guy’s lights out—

And stopped. It wasn’t the freedman; it was a little guy dressed in what had probably once been a sack, with a bulbous head far too big for his body that wobbled on his scrawny neck, a hunched back, a mouth that was mostly drool, and eyes that were looking everywhere but straight at me. He stank, too.

Gods. I lowered my fist. Some things I just can’t take, and madness comes top of the list every time. From the looks of him, chummie here evidently wasn’t just a couple of tiles short of a roof, he was missing the whole thing, and the rafters as well.

‘Uh … Hi, pal,’ I said. ‘You wanted something?’

He stepped back. When I’d turned, he’d shifted his grip to my tunic’s front, and he was still holding on tight. My blood went cold and I had to fight the urge to pull myself free.

‘You’re the Roman, aren’t you?’ he said. At least, that’s what it would’ve been, if the words hadn’t been slurred and drooled half to hell. ‘From Rome.’

‘Yeah,’ I said carefully. ‘That’s me. Roman from Rome. Well done, sunshine, you’ve got it in one. What can I do for you?’

‘I didn’t kill him. The old man.’

The hairs were beginning to crawl on the back of my neck, and I had to stop myself from shivering.

‘I know that,’ I said. ‘No one’s claiming that you did.’ Jupiter! ‘You, uh, like to let me go, maybe?’

‘You got to believe me. I never touched him. Never. I wouldn’t. It was someone else.’

‘Right. Right.’

‘You believe me?’

‘Yeah, no worries. I believe you.’

‘Thass good. Because it wasn’t me that done it, it was someone else. Not me. Someone else.’ The head twitched, scattering spit …

And he’d suddenly let go of me, turned, and was shambling off up the street, back the way I’d come. I watched him go. I was shaking like a leaf.

Gods, that had
not
been pleasant! Maybe I’d forget the tour of inspection and head straight for the wine shop. Sleuthing could wait; right now, what I could really do with was a cup of wine. In fact I could do with the whole jug.

I took a deep breath, pulled myself back together again, and carried on towards the main drag, turning right when I reached it in the direction of the market square. I’d got about halfway to the wine-shop street when I heard my name shouted. I turned; it was Aulus Mettius.

‘Yeah?’ I said when he’d caught me up. I wasn’t at my best, currently, and impromptu interviews with suspects I could do without. ‘What is it?’

‘I was hoping to bump into you,’ he said. ‘How’re things going?’

‘OK,’ I said cautiously.

‘Turned up any more dirt?’ I just looked at him. ‘I hear you’re interested in the wool store business. Our local arson scandal, although it’s best not to call it that too openly.’

‘Who told you that?’ I said sharply.

‘Word gets around. And it’d be natural enough. But if you are then I might have a tip for you.’

‘Is that so, now?’ I kept every smidgeon of encouragement out of my voice. Unsolicited information tends to make me suspicious at the best of times, and this Mother’s Little Helper pose from someone who was himself definitely in the frame was just a bit too much to be credible.

‘If I were you I’d have a talk with a man called Ulpius. Marcus Ulpius. He runs a small carter’s business near the circus, theatre side, and he owes me a favour. Just tell him I sent you. Or wait, that might not be enough.’ He took a copper coin from his belt pouch, then followed it up with his penknife, and scratched a letter ‘M’ on the face. ‘Show him this. That ought to do it.’

I pocketed the coin. ‘One question. What’s in it for you?’

‘Suspicious?’ He grinned. ‘Well, you needn’t be; I’m no murderer. There’s nothing in it for me, I promise you. Just personal satisfaction.’

‘In terms of what?’

‘I told you when we met at the funeral. I don’t like hypocrites, particularly when they paint themselves whiter than white and are crooked bastards underneath. The more paint gets scraped off, the better, and if I can lend a helping hand in that direction then I’m more than happy to do so. Talk to Ulpius. I’ll see you around.’

He turned to go.

‘Hang on, pal,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’

‘You happen to know a crazy guy, looks like something out of an Atellan farce, stinks like a dead cat in a heatwave?’

‘Dossenus. Sure.’ He frowned.

Dossenus. Well, I’d been spot-on with the Atellan farce bit: Dossenus is one of the stock figures in the plays, the hunchback. ‘That his name?’

‘Not his real one. But if he ever had another nobody uses it any more. I doubt if he even knows it himself. Sure, I know Dossenus, everyone does. He’s a local character, been around for years. A tramp, crazy, like you say. Sleeps rough, lives on garbage and whatever he can scrounge. You run into him?’

‘Yeah, a few minutes back. Or he ran into me, rather, at the old wool store.’

‘What did he want with you?’

‘To tell me he wasn’t the murderer I was looking for.’

Mettius laughed. ‘That’s Dossenus, all right,’ he said. ‘He gets these ideas into his head, largely because they haven’t got much competition. You don’t need to worry about him, Corvinus, he’s harmless for all his looks. Give you a start, did he?’

‘A bit of one, sure.’

‘Yes.’ He was examining me closely. ‘Yes, I can see that he did. Anyway, you get on over to Ulpius’s. You’ll find what he has to say interesting.’

And he was gone.

I carried on to the wine shop. This time of day, it was pretty busy with punters on their early lunch break, but I still wasn’t up to company and conversation. I took my second cup of wine – I’d sunk the first as soon as it was poured, and it hadn’t touched the sides – to an empty corner table and sat down.

Two more cups along the road, I was feeling more myself again. I set out in the direction of the circus.

It’s in the lower quadrant of the town, between the centre and the Arician Gate, with the theatre close beside it; not a bit of Bovillae I know very well. However, I found Ulpius’s yard easily enough – it was the only carter’s business in the area – and went in through the open gate. There was a big guy with his back to me, chewing on a hunk of bread and watching a couple of slaves grease the wheels of a cart. I went up to him.

‘You Marcus Ulpius?’ I said.

He turned round. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘Name’s Corvinus.’

That got me a suspicious look. ‘The Roman? Looking into the death of the censor?’

Like Mettius had said, word gets around. Evidently, it had even got this far. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s me.’

‘So what do you want here?’

Instead of answering, I took out the marked coin. ‘Aulus Mettius said to show you this.’

He took it, looked at it and slipped it into his belt-pouch. ‘And?’ he said.

‘Search me, pal. That’s all there is to it. Only the implication was you knew something about the burning down of the wool store six months ago.’

He looked wary. Then he nodded abruptly and tossed the rest of the bread away. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll go inside.’

I followed him into the big shed in the corner of the yard where the hay and straw for the horses were kept. He sat down on one of the bales, and I sat opposite.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Let’s get something clear before we start. This is a favour, right? I owe Mettius one, never mind for what, and for some reason he’s calling it in. The favour’s to him, and you’re not involved. No comeback, no follow-up, no extras. It ends here, and when you leave I don’t know you from fucking Romulus and I never saw you before in my life. Agreed?’

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘So. You have the ball. Ask away.’

‘You transported the missing wool for Marcus Manlius, right?’ I said.

He scowled, then grinned. ‘You’re not as green as you’re cabbage-looking, are you, Roman? Yeah, I did. And brought in the bales of rags that replaced it. Took me quite a while, I can tell you.’

‘You start the fire as well?’

‘Nah, wasn’t my job. And I was taking enough risks for what that bastard was paying me already. He got one of his own men to do that.’

‘So where did it go? The wool, I mean?’

‘To a wholesale merchant in Aricia, name of Gnaeus Pompeius.’ He sniggered. ‘Yeah, like the old general. No relation, though, and no “Magnus” tacked on the end. Would’ve been a joke if there had been, because he was a little runt of a guy I could’ve snapped in half with one hand. Big man locally, mind. He’d an empty warehouse on the edge of the town, and I just dropped the loads off there. What happened to it after that I don’t know, but no doubt Manlius and him were doing nicely out of the deal. Now. That’s all I can tell you.’

‘What’s Mettius got against Marcus Manlius? Specifically, I mean.’ Yeah, sure, he’d told me he was giving me Ulpius’s name out of pure altruism, but like I said I’ve never trusted suspect characters who provide unsolicited information
gratis
. The chances were that he had an axe to grind somewhere or other, and it’d be interesting to know what it was.