Terror of Constantinople (37 page)

    ‘That could be days and days away,’ I said. ‘I’ll think of something by then. For the moment, we’ll stay indoors. If anyone in the Legation asks why we’re not going out to Sunday service, we’ll plead indisposition from too much drink. The day after tomorrow can take care for itself.’

    I needed to sit down and think all this through. But that would have to wait. Now was the time for action.

    I took the letter from Martin and staggered over to the stove. I held it over the charcoals for a moment. Though I could smell the scorching of reasonably new papyrus, no secret writing emerged on either side. I let go of the sheet. As it fell into the fire it buckled upwards in the heat, the tightly pressed strips of papyrus reed coming apart as the glue melted. Then, with a sudden flare of light, it turned to ashes.

    Now there was no letter. There had been no letter.

    ‘Where do you suppose we can dump a body in this city?’ I asked. This wasn’t Rome. People had a habit of asking about stray bodies in the street. There’d be more to this, if noticed, than paperwork and a few clerking fees.

38

After an age of shaking and slapping at his face, I eventually managed to wake Authari. To be on the safe side, Martin had moved his sword out of reach.

    No, I wasn’t angry that he’d nodded off for a moment. No, I didn’t think he’d been bribed into looking the other way. Yes, I would want the duplicate key to the wine store, though not until morning. No, I didn’t think he’d been drugged – though I was beginning to wonder about that wine Alypius had brought down to me in the Circus.

    I simply wanted his help in disposing of the body.

    ‘Cut the thing up,’ he said, looking ferocious. ‘Cut it up in the lead bathtub. Wrap the body parts in old cloth and dump them one at a time into the rubbish bins placed at the main street junctions.’ Authari spat on the body and gave it a hard kick.

    Inventive advice, but easier given than followed. Hacking off limbs in a fight was nothing to either of us. But we weren’t butchers, and dissecting a body neatly into its component parts takes a skill we hadn’t acquired. Besides, there was the blood to consider. Even if the three of us could lift that lead bath, the chances were that we’d give ourselves away carrying it down to the bathhouse.

    Then there was the matter of disposing of the body parts. The streets might not be so crowded with armed pickets as earlier, but it was still too risky to go about dumping suspiciously shaped packages into the public bins.

    No. We’d have to get the whole body out of the Legation, and then out of the city centre. Just inside the walls, it would be more like Rome. There’d be plenty of room for dumped bodies.

    But how to get from here to there?

    ‘What about a public chair?’ Martin suggested. ‘Get it here in the morning, while most people are at Sunday service. Take the body in that.’

    That wouldn’t work either. Public carriers will do most things for cash, and usually keep their mouths shut afterwards. But smuggling corpses out of the Papal Legation might not be among these things.

    Besides, I wanted that body out of the way now. The longer it remained here, the more chance that it would need explaining.

    We discussed dumping it in the sea. But how to get it past the guards on the shore? Even if we found a boat, it would only take us into the Golden Horn, which no tides ever washed clean. Even if we weighted the body, it would break loose and float to the surface.

    The course of action we finally decided on was still risky, but it was the best we could manage at short notice.

    Getting out of the Legation was easier than we’d expected. No longer just drunk, the doorkeepers were all asleep. From their stillness and shallow breathing, they had clearly been drugged. That removed all need for lies or concealment.

    On the other hand, it raised the problem of how to get back in. Before leaving my suite, we’d decided to close and bolt all the window shutters. If one killer had got in, who was to say another wouldn’t? The door to my suite would have to be left unbarred as everyone else was asleep, but we took the precaution of locking the door to the nursery.

    Leaving the main gate of the Legation unbarred wasn’t an option, now that all the doorkeepers were out cold. I needed someone to stay behind and look after things, so we spent more time slapping some life into Radogast, who was now the most senior of my Lombard slaves. He had all the strength and loyalty of Authari but none of his resourcefulness. Still, he would easily be able to lift the heavy bar into place behind us, and then to let us in again.

    ‘Sit over there,’ I said, motioning him to a bench against the wall. It was midway between the gate and the doorway to my suite. ‘If you see anyone strange, kill him.’

    He nodded. There was no point giving him more detailed instructions.

    At last, we set out. It was still blackest night and while the streets were brightly lit, there were fewer people about than when I’d been carried back from the Imperial Palace. Mostly drunk, the Circus Faction bands took no interest in us. No one asked us for identification.

    We’d dressed the body in a long hooded cloak. Similarly clad, Authari and I walked on either side of it. The leather thongs about its wrists that we clutched tight to our chests made it look as if the dead man had his arms around our necks for support. The hood was of a stiff enough fabric to hide how the head flopped low on the chest, and the length of the cloak to some extent concealed the fact that the feet weren’t stumbling beside us, but trailing along the ground.

    Authari and I swayed gently from side to side as we dragged the body along, giving our best appearance of a trio of drunks – one being helped along by the others.

    Also hooded, Martin walked a few yards ahead, keeping an eye out for Black Agents or anyone else who might be inclined to give us more than a passing glance.

    We dumped the body in the cellar beneath a derelict wine shop where the stench of decayed human shit and other filth was already overpowering. Martin struck steel on flint to get our lamp going and, as in Rome with any dead burglar, we stripped the body. He slid a ring off the signet finger for later dropping through a drain cover.

    As a final precaution, Authari took out the short sword he’d brought along and cut the head off the corpse. Then we heaped rubble over the body, and hoped the rats would find it before anyone else did.

    ‘Murderous fucking Greek!’ he snarled, spitting on to the mashed-up brains.

    ‘I’ll see you in Hell!’ Martin added with uncharacteristic passion.

    ‘Mustn’t the Last Trump sound first?’ I asked with a deliberate lack of relevance. My own head was coming on to ache again.

    After disposing of what remained of the head in a neighbouring cellar we crept back to the Legation by a different and very circuitous route, arriving there just as dawn was preparing to fringe the eastern sky with rosy fingers.

    I couldn’t speak for Authari. He was now in impassive freedman mode, carrying out his duties without question. But I know Martin and I were feeling rather better for having got rid of the body. So I was surprised by the argument that broke out between him and Authari as we approached the Legation.

    ‘I told you,’ Martin whispered, ‘not to leave him alone.’

    ‘Don’t moan at me,’ came the reply. ‘I left the dinner earlier than you. I only nodded off for a moment.’

    I turned and shut them up. This was not the time or the place for discussing anything – not even what Alypius might have been doing in my bedroom earlier.

    ‘We’ll sleep,’ I said firmly as I knocked at the Legation gate and Radogast raised the bar. ‘We’ll sleep until the sun is well up. Then we’ll decide with clear heads what to do next.’

    Inside the main hall I helped to lower the bar on the gate, then I led the way towards my suite.

    Just at that moment Demetrius burst through the door to our right.

    ‘There you are, sir!’ he cried, his eyes wide with terror. Other officials milled around him, silent in their panic. ‘Oh, sir – we’ve been looking for you everywhere. Do come at once and help. I fear His Excellency the Permanent Legate has come to grief.’

39

The Permanent Legate had his private rooms arranged almost as a mirror image of my own suite. Where mine were to the left of the main hall, his were to the right. For the first time since my arrival, the door leading in was unlocked and open.

    With an involuntary but brief pause at the doorway, I stepped through into the corridor and made for the staircase, which was in the same relative position as my own. I hadn’t before realised how my suite had come to differ from other parts of the Legation because we’d improved it by a series of incremental touches over the past few months – a rug here, an ornament there, and so on. We’d made it into a home.

    Over on this side, there had been no improvements. The change of season had combined with the dilapidated externals to produce a damp smell on this side of the dome. Paint was flaking off the plastered walls to reveal brown stains beneath.

    At the top of the stairs I encountered the legal official, Antony. He was dancing from side to side with agitation. Behind him, a slave was pushing in vain at what I took to be the door of the Permanent Legate’s bedroom.

    ‘Oh, sir,’ Antony cried, ‘the door is locked and bolted from the inside. We fear the worst.’

    ‘What are you talking about?’ I shouted above the wailing of the slaves.

    ‘Shut those fucking slaves up,’ I added with a snarl, ‘or I’ll have them flogged.’

    There was silence. Then Demetrius embarked on a babbling explanation in his wretched Greek. Just before dawn, he’d been woken by a scream coming from the Permanent Legate’s room.

    ‘Where do you sleep?’ I broke in. He indicated quarters beyond those of the Permanent Legate, in the right arm of the Legation. I wondered if he’d managed to hear any of the disturbances in my suite much earlier in the night. Perhap he’d been drunk in any event.

    Demetrius explained that he’d got the key to the Permanent Legate’s rooms – they were normally locked, he added – and had gone up to knock on the door.

    ‘All I heard,’ he said in a sepulchral whisper, ‘was a shuffling, and then nothingness.’

    ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you have the key. Get the door open, and we can see for ourselves.’

    ‘I tried opening the door,’ he replied. ‘The key pushes and pulls from the outside but the door is bolted on the inside. Look—’ He pushed the key in and out again, and rattled the door handle, to make his point. He fumbled again with the key.

    ‘Let me,’ I said, pushing him out of the way. I wanted my bed and I wanted to see the Permanent Legate. I’d achieve neither unless I took matters into my own hands.

    I banged hard on the door. ‘Your Excellency,’ I shouted, ‘please unbolt the door. We need to speak with you urgently.’

    Nothing.

    ‘Please, Your Excellency,’ I tried again, ‘we fear you are in some trouble. Please open the door, or at least reply. Otherwise, we must force the door.’

    Still nothing.

    The officials were looking agitated again. Martin’s face was a blank of tired confusion.

    I turned to Authari. ‘Go back with Radogast,’ I said, nodding towards our own suite. ‘Find something we can use as a battering ram. We’ll get in there soon enough.’

    It didn’t help that the narrowness of the corridor gave us very little room for battering the door down, or that it was tougher than expected. While Martin kept the officials out of the way, the three of us – big strong Northerners all – smashed again and again at what was as unyielding as a brick wall. By the time we’d loosened the door in its frame, the oak bench from our own kitchen would never see service again except as fuel for the ovens.

    With a massive splintering of wood, the door was at last off its hinges. We’d damaged most of the frame and part of the wall in our assault. Once the dust had settled, and it was clear that no one in the room was moving, I was first through the doorway. With the window shuttered, the room was as dark as night.

    ‘Give me one of those lamps,’ I called to the Legation slaves as I gently prevented Authari from going past me into the room.

    ‘Whatever we find,’ I explained, ‘mustn’t be disturbed.’

    The lamp only allowed my eyes to confirm what my nose had told me. There was a pool of blood on the floor. It was perhaps six foot across. It began just short of where I’d stopped on first entering the room. Another few inches, and I’d have been sliding on the stuff.