Solid Citizens (6 page)

I blinked. ‘What? Oh, the plaque. Yeah. For my stepfather. A birthday present.’

‘I hope he likes it, then. And if he’s in the neighbourhood perhaps you’ll suggest he steps in and has a look round for himself. No obligation to buy, none at all. We’re always open, I don’t see many people as a rule, and I enjoy a bit of a chat.’

So much was obvious, given that the chat all went the one way; still, I wasn’t complaining, because it had added another name to my list. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘Thanks, pal. See you around.’

‘Give Quintus Caesius my regards, sir, when next you talk to him. I’ve got every respect for the gentleman, professionally, whatever the master may think of him. It’s nothing personal, on my side.’

‘I’ll do that, too,’ I said. ‘If I see him again.’

I left.

The wine shop was quietly busy. I nodded to the other barflies, parked myself on a stool at the counter, and ordered a cup of Alban. Just a cup: if you’re going to a funeral, even as a bystander, it’s not quite the done thing to turn up smashed. Still, because the owner knew his wine, we at least had quality here: the Alban was pretty good – not the best stuff, of course, from one of the top vineyards; that all goes to well-heeled buyers in Rome, and it’d be far too pricey even in small amounts for the local punters – but a decent-enough
deuxième cru
which some of my more weak-chinned acquaintances would say amused by its brash pushiness.

‘You want anything to go with it, sir?’ Scaptius, the barman-owner, asked. ‘A bit of garlic sausage and pickle, maybe?’

‘Yeah, OK.’ I took out my purse.

He put the plate, plus the filled cup, in front of me. ‘Down here from Rome again, then, are you?’

Like I say, this was my local on the rare occasions I came through to Bovillae while we were at the villa. I couldn’t be called a regular, mind – as I would be at Pontius’s in Castrimoenium – but you don’t see many Roman purple-stripers in a provincial wine shop, and they tend to get noticed. Besides, I took it for the conversational opener that it was.

‘Well, obviously,’ I said.

Scaptius grinned. ‘Going to the big funeral?’

‘That’s the idea.’ I sipped my wine.

‘I hear the senate’s asked you to look into the death. That true?’

‘Did you, now?’ Well, I shouldn’t’ve been surprised, really. Gossip in a wine shop goes both ways, and in a small town like Bovillae most secrets don’t stay secret for long. Not that there was anything to hide in this instance. And it made asking straight questions easier. ‘Yeah, it’s true enough. Popular man, was he, old Caesius?’

‘He was OK. For a politician. Straighter than some.’

‘Straighter than fucking Manlius, for a start,’ said one of the other punters further along the counter to my left. ‘Him and his mate the fucking quaestor, they’re a right pair of chancers.’

Par for the course: slagging off the local politicians over a jug of wine is the national pastime wherever you go. It’s done on principle. Me, I don’t pay much attention, normally: if the guys weren’t crooked in some way, or at least on the make, then they wouldn’t be in politics in the first place. Ipso facto.

Why state the obvious?

There were a few chuckles, and I noticed one or two heads nodding. Scaptius grunted.

‘Manlius?’ I said to him. ‘Who’s he?’

‘One of the aediles,’ he said. ‘Quaestor’s Sextus Canidius.’ The aediles were the two top magistrates in a normal year; the quaestor was the guy in charge of the town’s finances. ‘Manlius ran against Caesius for censor. He’s big in the wool business.’

‘Big in the wool
burning
business,’ the guy along the row said. Chuckles again, and a ‘Too bloody right, mate’ from someone else in the line.

‘Well now, Battus, my boy,’ Scaptius said equably, turning round to face him, ‘we’ll never know the truth of that, will we?’

‘Yeah, that’s for fucking sure.’

‘Indeed it is. So just shut it, please. And watch the language.’

I took a bit of the garlic sausage. Strong stuff – more garlic than sausage by the taste of it. I’d be pretty unpopular when I got back home. Maybe I’d stick with the pickles.

‘Wool burning?’ I said.

Scaptius turned back to me and shrugged. ‘The town farms out the right to broker the sale of wool from the public herds every season to a private dealer,’ he said. ‘This year the guy’s business folded just after the contract was signed, and Canidius got the senate to transfer it over to Manlius. The bales were stored in a warehouse that caught fire and burned down—’

‘
Mysteriously and unaccountably
caught fire and burned down.’

Scaptius sighed, but this time he didn’t turn. ‘Sod off, Battus,’ he said. ‘I’m telling this, right? Anyway, it burned down, June, that’d be, just after the shearing, with a year’s worth of wool in it, and—’

‘What Manlius
claimed
was a year’s worth of fucking wool.’

Scaptius’s hand slammed down on the counter and he glared along the line. ‘Battus, you bastard,’ he said, ‘one more word – just one – and you’re barred until the festival, right? And I’ve already told you: less of the sodding language, OK?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

He turned back to me. ‘Anyway, when Caesius ran for censor he promised that if he won there’d be a full investigation. That’s not going to happen now, is it? Not with Manlius himself practically dead cert to replace him.’

I tried a pickle and spat it out. Jupiter! The gods knew where Scaptius bought them from, but I was surprised they hadn’t burned a hole in the jar. When he was crossing the Alps, Hannibal was supposed to have broken up the boulders from avalanches by heating them and pouring on vinegar. This must’ve been the stuff. Come to that, it could’ve done the job on its own. ‘There’ll be a new election, surely,’ I said when I’d stopped coughing. ‘From scratch.’

‘Oh, sure, but the chances are that no one else’ll run. With Caesius gone Manlius has the senate in his pocket. Or he and Canidius have between them. Their two families have been the top ones in Bovillae for the past three hundred years. Caesius, sure, he was old-Bovillae too, but his family’s only notched up one magistracy to every ten of theirs. And they’re rich as Croesus into the bargain. If Caesius hadn’t been so highly thought of, Manlius could’ve bought his way into the censorship easily. When he lost it really put his nose out of joint.’

‘He can buy my vote any time,’ a punter – not Battus this time – growled. ‘And he gives decent games; you have to say that for him.’

‘Come on, now, Thermus,’ Scaptius said wearily. ‘You’re the sort of materialistic bastard that keeps these sods in office!’

‘Yeah, that’s me. Materialist to the core. Wouldn’t be anything else. Proud of it.’

I pushed the plate of suspect nibbles away to where it wouldn’t do any more damage and took a throat-clearing swallow of wine. ‘So,’ I said. ‘This fire. No one knows how it started?’

‘Sure they do,’ Scaptius said. ‘That was just Battus sounding off. The night watchman was drunk; he tipped over a lamp and set some straw alight. Or that’s the official version, anyway.’

‘Fucking right it’s the official version.’ Battus again. ‘And it’s a lie from start to finish, because old Garganius never touched a drop in his life when he was on duty. If you want to hear the true story you talk to him, pal. Sextus Garganius. Lives over by the fucking meat market.’

‘Battus, I warned you! Out!’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ The punter set his cup down. ‘It’s OK. Keep your hair on, Scaptius, I was just going anyway. See you later, guys. Enjoy the festival.’ There was a chorus of grunts, whistles and cat-calls. He lurched towards the door, and – finally – through it.

‘Prat!’ Scaptius muttered and reached for a cloth to wipe the counter.

‘Just out of interest,’ I said to him, ‘do you happen to know where I can find Caesius’s brother?’

‘Lucius?’ He gave me a sharp look and put the cloth down. ‘What do you want with him?’

‘I just need a quick word, that’s all. For the sake of completeness.’

‘To do with the death?’ I said nothing. ‘Well, it’s no business of mine, sir, and no skin off my nose. Sure I know. Far as I remember, he rents a room in the first street to the right of the square, above Cammius’s bakery.’ He turned to the other punters. ‘That so, lads?’ There were a few affirmative grunts. ‘You might see him at the funeral, but I wouldn’t count on it. He and his brother weren’t exactly on friendly terms.’

‘So I’m told,’ I said.
Rents a room
, right? So the guy was obviously seriously strapped for cash. Something that was probably just going to change, and pretty drastically, from what I’d seen of the Caesius
ménage
; if he was the dead man’s only heir, he’d be worth quite a bit, shortly. I sank the remaining wine in my cup and stood up. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Catch you later.’

‘Have a good festival if we don’t see you before,’ Scaptius said.

‘You too, pal.’

Right. Back to the job in hand. Or at least to the victim’s funeral.

T
he market square was beginning to fill up, with crowds starting to form in the porticoes which surrounded it. They’d erected a temporary dais in the centre, wreathed along its edges with cypress, and there were a few curule stools on top for the dignitaries and the actors that’d be playing the dead man’s magistrate ancestors. I found a place with a good view, next to a pillar, and leaned my back against it to wait.

‘Down from Rome, are you, sir?’ the guy beside me said. He was chewing on a sausage.

‘Yeah. Just through for the festival.’

‘That’s it,’ he said smugly. ‘I could tell straight away from the haircut. Me, I’m a barber by trade. That’s a Big City haircut you’ve got there, right?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It is.’

‘Thought so. Easy to spot, when you know the trick of it.’ He nodded in the direction of the dais and took another bite of his takeaway lunch. ‘They’re giving him a good send-off, at any rate, the randy old devil. Visiting brothels at his time of life, eh? Who would’ve thought it, a respectable man like Caesius, too. You live and learn, don’t you, sir?’

‘Yeah. You certainly do.’

‘Still, good on him, whatever anyone else says. Showed he was human after all, with a bit of red blood in his veins. That’s what a lot of these cold bastards need, a bit of good red blood. Too much thinking – well, it isn’t good for you, is it?’

I grunted vague agreement and looked away. The facts of the case had got around fast enough, that was for sure. Not that it was surprising, mind: Bovillae’s a small place, and nothing spreads quicker than scandal. Plus the guy was a barber, after all. Gossip – particularly salacious gossip – is part of a barber’s stock in trade. Forget the Daily Register: if you want to keep up with the breaking news anywhere in the empire the way to do it is to go down to the local market square every morning for a shave and trim.

We were about ready for the off: I could hear the wailing of flutes and the clashing of cymbals from the direction of the Arician Gate, and a couple of minutes later the funeral procession itself appeared. They were giving him a good send-off, right enough; the Bovillan Senate, bless their little cotton socks, had pulled out all the stops. The musicians and professional mourners came first, then the bier with the dead man on it. Behind were his magistrate ‘ancestors’ in mourning mantles, the actors wearing the original death-masks. Scaptius the barman had been right; there were only half a dozen of them, quite a poor showing. Finally, the senate themselves, the town’s greatest and best, led by the two current aediles with their attendant rod men. Among the follow-ons, I recognized Nerva and the fugitive from an Egyptian tomb that was old Publius Novius, Bovillae’s sharp-as-a-knife lawyer.

The procession filled the centre of the square. The death-couch was set down, and the ‘ancestors’ plus the chief magistrates and top town officials took their places on the dais. One of the aediles raised his hand for silence. The music stopped. He took a scroll out of his mantle-pouch and unrolled it. So. They hadn’t asked Brother Lucius as next-of-kin to read the eulogy, which would’ve been the normal way of doing things. Or – and I guessed it was the more likely explanation – he hadn’t offered. Interesting.

‘Who’s giving the speech?’ I said to my barber pal.

He spat a piece of gristle from the sausage into his palm and threw it away. ‘Marcus Manlius,’ he said.

The guy involved in the wool-store scam. If it was a scam. Yeah, Scaptius had said he was one of the aediles. I took a more careful look. A bit younger than Caesius had been, mid-fifties, maybe, with that sleek, plump, self-satisfied look you often get with rich political types: the fat-cat who’s swallowed the canary and then gone on to lick up whatever cream’s going before complaining that they’ve been short-changed, and besides, who had been responsible for providing the cream in the first place?

Manlius was definitely someone else I had to talk to.

‘How about Canidius?’ I said to the informative barber. ‘He here?’

‘The quaestor?’ He pointed. ‘That’s him, behind Manlius’s shoulder. The long drink of water.’

I followed the pointing finger with my eye, and grinned: ‘long drink of water’ summed the guy up perfectly. Tall, thin as a rake, early- to mid-forties, pasty-faced, looked like his nose had a permanent drip, and that there was something nasty under it. A prime candidate, obviously, for a pint or two of my barber pal’s good red blood.

Manlius was getting into his stride. As eulogies went, it was standard, off-the-peg, ten-sesterces-the-yard stuff, delivered in the po-faced, self-consciously pious manner common to politicians and priests everywhere: pillar of the community, honest, reliable, honourable, life devoted to the service of the people of Bovillae, tragic loss, never see his like again. Pick-and-mix, like I say, all pretty general, but with the noticeable omission of the usual bits concerning sterling moral rectitude and the closeness of the dead man’s family ties. Either Manlius – if he’d written the speech himself, which was possible, judging by its banality – wasn’t a total hypocrite, or more likely he just wasn’t risking catcalls from the less respectful members of the crowd. That sort you always get, at politicos’ funerals, and if their comments aren’t always exactly PC at least they inject a bit of honesty into the proceedings.