White Murder (Marcus Corvinus Book 7) Read online

  I took a last look round. Yeah, well; there wasn’t any more I could do here, and I didn’t particularly want to be caught crouching over the body when Rome’s finest eventually showed up. Some of these Watch guys have very limited imaginations. I walked back to the head of the alley where Renatius was fending off the ghouls. There were quite a few of these by now – Jupiter knows how these bastards click on to the existence of even an invisible corpse, but they do; instinct, maybe – and they were craning their necks like so many silent vultures.

  ‘Everything okay, pal?’ I said.

  Renatius was looking a better colour. Happy, even: he’d had time to think, a murder in your side alley does wonders for business, and although he was a nice enough guy he still had a living to make. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘More or less. Lucius has gone for the Watch and Charax is looking after the store.’

  ‘Charax?’ Oh, hell. ‘You think that’s wise?’

  ‘No. But then again I’m not paying for all the wine these bastards get through while we’re stuck out here and Lucius is up at the Square talking to Valgius.’

  Ouch. I hadn’t thought about that aspect of things at the time. With Charax filling the jugs I’d bet this business was already costing me an arm and a leg. Still, it was too late to worry now, the damage had been done. I glanced across the street.

  Yeah; I’d remembered right. Facing the wineshop door was the entrance to a tenement screened by scaffolding and building materials. Perfect cover for someone who wanted to keep an eye on the comings and goings of Renatius’s customers, especially since I couldn’t see any workmen. Which come to think of it was odd, with so much daylight left.

  Unless...

  I groaned. Oh, bugger! Thank you, Jupiter! Thank you so bloody much! I’d bet; I would just bet..!

  ‘Ah...’ I pointed. ‘That wouldn’t be where Charax and his pals are working at present, would it?’

  Renatius followed my pointing finger. ‘Yeah, it would, as a matter of fact. Although I wouldn’t use the word “working” myself.’

  Never a truer word was spoken; I wouldn’t either, on reflection. In fact, I doubted that, unexpectedly rich though it was, Charax’s vocabulary included any terms in the category “work”. Whoever had given these three deadbeats the job of doing the place up needed his head examined.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I said.

  ‘It belongs to old Atellius over on Tuscan Street.’ Renatius was still grinning. ‘The Buildings Officer threatened to have it condemned unless he fixed it up and Charax made him an offer the cheapskate sod couldn’t refuse. Sure, he and his mates’re just plastering over the cracks but a greased palm or two’ll do the rest. Me – well, let’s just say I wouldn’t spend any more than five minutes in there even with my hardest hat on.’

  Yeah; that made sense. Still, one got you ten that our friendly neighbourhood knifeman had done just that, and stayed a lot longer than Renatius’s five minutes. Cool was right: he couldn’t have known that Charax and his pals were the most unconscientious builders in the history of domestic architecture, and with their local wineshop open and serving just across the road the chances of them coming back this side of tomorrow’s breakfast were about equal to seeing the college of priests do a choreographed striptease on Mars Field. No doubt, though, he’d’ve had a story ready. I was beginning to have a real respect for X.

  The vultures, give or take the odd try-on, were being pretty well-behaved, which was all the more understandable because there were two or three respectable mantles among them pretending they were just hanging around passing the time of day. Most of the pack had been content just to stand and gawp at the brickwork. Now, suddenly, they parted and three big guys with a couple of slaves in tow carrying a rolled-up stretcher pushed their way through.

  The Watch had arrived.

  Not Valgius himself, though: these guys were definitely tunics, and not too friendly tunics at that. I introduced myself and got a concerted glare like I’d just proposed a four-way orgy.

  ‘So where’s the corpse?’ the biggest guy, definitely the leader, growled. Yeah, right; so much for the amenities. I gave him my best smile and stepped aside.

  Wordlessly, Renatius jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the wineshop’s vertical privy. The guy grunted, made a sign to the stretcher-bearers and headed off for what was left of Pegasus, accompanied by his mates.

  ‘Cheerful bugger, isn’t he?’ I said.

  ‘That’s Titus Delicatus.’ Renatius didn’t smile. ‘You’re lucky. This must be one of his good days.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Mind you, it was no concern of mine. Now the professionals had arrived I could head on back to Perilla and – hopefully – a poet-free house with the easy conscience of a citizen who’s done his duty to the Senate and people of Rome. After I’d paid through the nose for the wine that Charax and his pals had sunk in my absence, of course. Speaking of which... ‘I think we can go in now,’ I said. ‘Quickly.’

  We left the future supervision of the vultures to the Eighth District Wonders and joined the party inside. Which was more or less what it was. Evidently Charax had taken the opportunity to round up a few of his local cronies, because there were more customers than there had been, and the Spoletian was flowing free. In both senses of the word.

  Charax was behind the bar. ‘No problem, consul,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ve kept count. I make it five jugs, plus the cheese and olives. Oh, and I grilled Annius here a sausage.’

  A small squat guy with ears that stuck out like the handles of an amphora grinned at me and raised the sausage in question in salute. Bastard. I pulled out my purse and tipped most of the contents onto the counter. Then I poured myself a large one from my own interrupted jug and sank it at a gulp.

  Young Lucius was dithering on the sidelines. I called him over.

  ‘You didn’t see Valgius himself, then?’ I asked him.

  ‘Oh, yes, sir.’ The kid was looking a lot brighter now. Obviously he was beginning to enjoy the situation. ‘Only he was too busy. He sent Delicatus instead.’

  I frowned. Odd. Me, I’d’ve thought a well-known figure like Pegasus would’ve merited the boss’s personal attention. ‘You told him who the dead man was?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And?’

  Lucius shuffled his feet. ‘He just laughed and said “Is it really?” ’

  Jupiter on wheels! This was a Watch commander? ‘He said what?’

  The boy was blushing again. ‘“Is it really?”, Valerius Corvinus.’ A conscientious kid, Lucius, and for all his literalness no bad mimic: I could hear the total lack of interest in the guy’s voice even at second hand. ‘Then he said, “Well, well!” Sort of dry, like, you know?’

  ‘Didn’t he ask..?’ I stopped. The door had opened and the Three Graces came in. These guys were fast workers. Too fast, to my mind.

  Maybe Renatius thought the same, because he frowned and said: ‘You boys finished already?’

  ‘Sure. Nothing to keep us.’ Delicatus helped himself to a piece of cheese from the counter. ‘Knifed and robbed. No hassle. We’ll put in the usual report.’

  My stomach went cold. ‘Hang on, sunshine,’ I said. ‘What’s this “robbed” business? The guy’s purse was still on his belt. I saw it myself.’

  Delicatus stopped chewing. His eyes shifted onto me and stayed there. Then he said over his shoulder: ‘Hey, Sextus? Publius?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Either of you lads see a purse?’ The other two Watchmen shook their heads. His eyes hadn’t left my face. ‘There you are, sir,’ he said. ‘No purse. You must’ve been mistaken.’ His jaws started working again and he swallowed and turned back to Renatius. ‘We’ll do our best to find the killer, sure, but it happens all the time. Like I say, no hassle. Leave it with us.’ He nodded to the company and moved towards the door. ‘Enjoy your day.’

  Holy Jupiter, I didn’t believe this! Sure, some of the guys in the Watch are hardly more than jailbait themselves, but they aren’t st
upid; and filching a corpse’s purse, especially when they’re not first on the scene, comes within the definition of sheer bloody lunacy. Cashiering’s the best they can expect, with a ripped back courtesy of the public executioner thrown in for free, and the game just isn’t worth the candle.

  ‘Wait just a moment, pal,’ I said.

  He stopped and turned slowly. ‘Yeah?’

  I glanced at Renatius. ‘Renatius. You saw the purse, didn’t you?’

  He hesitated, then shook his head. ‘No. Can’t say I did. Sorry, Corvinus.’

  At least he had the grace to look sheepish when he said it. Sure, he could have been flanelling, but that wasn’t how Renatius worked: he was straight-down-the-line honest, he’d no axe to grind, and I could tell from the vibes that he didn’t like Delicatus at all. Besides, there was no reason why it shouldn’t be the simple truth; the dead man had been slumped over facing the wall, Renatius and the others had been standing behind me, and I hadn’t seen the purse myself until I knelt down to look for it. Still, I wasn’t giving this one up; no way, never. ‘Look, friend,’ I said to Delicatus, holding on to my temper. ‘Take it from me. The guy’s purse is there. Or it was.’

  He gave a shrug that set my teeth on edge. ‘Then it’ll still be there now, sir,’ he said. ‘You want to check, maybe?’ He grinned. ‘Just to set your mind at rest and keep the record straight?’

  I pushed past him and through the door. The two public slaves were waiting outside surrounded by the pack of respectful vultures. They’d set the stretcher with the body on the pavement and they watched impassively as I pulled the covering blanket away.

  The guy’s belt was empty.

  I went back in, my brain churning.

  ‘Happy now?’ Delicatus asked. One of his supporting cast sniggered, then turned the snigger into a cough.

  I didn’t bother to answer. We all four knew it was gone, and we all knew where. It couldn’t’ve dropped off, because it was tied on; which only left one other explanation for its absence. If I’d had the nerve and the muscle to frisk these honest public servants I’d’ve found it inside one of the bastards’ tunics.

  Angry as I was, I forced myself to think. What the hell was going on here? Watchmen just didn’t do things like that. If Lippillus had caught one of his lads looting a murder victim he’d’ve strung the bastard up by the balls until he dropped off. Literally. Whistled while he did it, too.

  Unless they’d had definite instructions...

  I remembered what Lucius had said about Commander Valgius’s reaction when he’d told him who the victim was, and the thing suddenly made sense. At least, some kind of sense.

  ‘Which faction do you support, sunshine?’ I said. ‘Not Green, by any chance?’

  Delicatus’s face froze, while his two mates suddenly got interested in their feet. Bull’s-eye! ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ he said.

  ‘Just a question. And your boss wouldn’t happen to be a big Greens supporter too, would he?’

  Silence; but something in the bastard’s eyes shifted.

  ‘Because I was thinking,’ I went on. ‘Pegasus drives for the Whites now, right? Drove. Whatever. One of the opposition teams.’ Jupiter, this was sick; but it shows you just how seriously some of these nuts take their racing. ‘He’d gone over to the other side. Under these circumstances someone who was a big Greens fan himself might not be too sorry to see his name taken off the race card. And in that case he mightn’t exactly be all that desperate to go into the whys and wherefores of the guy’s death, either.’ I paused. ‘Any of that strike a chord with you at all, pal?’

  ‘Listen to me...sir.’ Delicatus was staring at me like he’d cheerfully make two trips with the stretcher. ‘Because I’ll only say this once. The man was knifed for his purse. We’ll look into the matter but like I said it happens all the time. Commander Valgius’ll agree, I can tell you that now.’

  ‘I’m sure he will. All the same –’

  ‘What’s more, so would Sertorius Macro.’ He let the name hang. ‘If you wanted to take it that high.’

  The room went very quiet, and beside me I heard Renatius draw in air between his teeth. Delicatus had just done the equivalent of throwing the title deeds to a Baian villa on top of a pot of pennies. I was being called, and everyone knew it, including me.

  We weren’t dealing peanuts here. Macro was the Commander of Praetorians, and although he didn’t figure in the direct Watch line of command he was the emperor’s representative in Rome. For which read Prince Gaius’s, because that twisted amoral bastard held the real power these days. And Gaius was so fanatical about the Greens that when he was in Rome he held banquets at the stables and invited the horses.

  Oh, shit.

  ‘Macro won’t back Valgius,’ I said. ‘Not in a million years, not over something as small as this. If your boss wants to bury the case out of spite he’s on his own.’

  ‘You want to bet on that?’ He wasn’t even pretending to be polite now.

  I stared back, my fists bunched. No. That was the problem: I wouldn’t bet on it, and he knew I wouldn’t, not with the prospect of a straight slugging match with an imperial in view. However convinced I was. Our current Crown Prince - and so his rep - would be far more likely to buy the bastard who’d zeroed Pegasus a drink than peg him out for the crows.

  One thing was sure, though. Delicatus may have won the battle but he hadn’t won the war. I didn’t give up that easy, especially not after a clumsy threat like that. If Watch Commander Valgius wanted a clear case of murder shoved down a hole and forgotten about then Macro or not he could go and whistle through his ears.

  Not that I was stupid enough to say as much to Valgius’s grinning pet gorillas here. I left them to Renatius and went home.

  3.

  There was no sign of Bathyllus in the entry lobby when I got back, which was strange because whatever time I rolled in our bald-headed hernia-suffering major-domo would be waiting for me with the obligatory jug and wine-cup. Sure, his prognosticative faculties went on the blink occasionally – even Bathyllus was human, if only just – but it didn’t happen often, and there was always a reason. Usually a nasty one, like the last time when the fuller’s pick-up man had fallen over a bucket outside the servants’ latrine and left his nice holystoned kitchen corridor awash with five gallons of mature cleaning fluid. I stripped off my mantle and yelled for him.

  He came at a run, or what passes with Bathyllus for a run, did a quick double-take and slowed down.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘No problem, sunshine,’ I said, and handled him the mantle. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Pardon, sir?’

  Oops; this could be bad: Bathyllus can be deaf sometimes, but his deafness is selective and that’s the time to worry. However, on this occasion it seemed that the question had simply gone past him. He looked – ‘distracted’ was the word, and Bathyllus never gets distracted. ‘I only asked if everything was okay, little guy. No fire in the hypocaust, no skivvies running amuck with carving knives?’

  ‘Certainly not, sir. Everything is fine.’

  ‘You sickening for something, then?’

  ‘No, sir!’ He folded the mantle. ‘Did you have a pleasant afternoon?’

  ‘Don’t ask, pal. Just don’t ask. The poets gone?’

  ‘Yes, sir. An hour ago. Dinner will be served shortly. Meton has been getting a little anxious.’

  Uh-oh; that was a fresh worry. I recognised an expurgated version when I heard one. Our touchy-as-hell chef was obviously nursing a delicate sauce and I’d been within a cat’s whisker of becoming persona non grata; which where Meton’s concerned is not something you want to be unless you happen to like fish paste with your dessert. ‘Fine, fine. The mistress around?’

  ‘In the atrium, sir. I’ll bring you your wine straight away.’

  ‘You do that, Bathyllus.’ I went through. Perilla was sitting by the pool with a tablet and stylus. M
aybe it was something about my face, but she took one look and set them down beside her chair.

  ‘Marcus?’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  I gave her the usual welcome-home kiss, stretched out on the couch, and told her about the body in the alley.

  ‘Oh, Marcus! Not again!’

  Jupiter! From the lady’s tone you’d think I’d iced the guy myself! ‘Look, it’s not my fault, okay?’ I said. ‘I was minding my own business. He just went out for a piss and never came back.’

  She sniffed and retrieved the wax tablet. ‘Corvinus, I trust you to spend a quiet hour or two in a wineshop while I have an all-too-rare cultural afternoon and you go and trip over a corpse. That is not minding your own business.’

  ‘I didn’t trip over it. I just tagged along with the crowd.’

  ‘Do you expect me to believe that? Honestly!’

  I had my mouth open to answer, but at that moment Bathyllus oozed in and plonked down the tray with its jug and brimming wine-cup. ‘Your wine, sir,’ he said. I took a swig of the Setinian. After Renatius’s Spoletian it was like having your tonsils massaged with velvet. ‘Also, dinner is served. Red mullet stewed with aniseed and a bean-and-chicken quiche with cumin.’

  I sighed; when the little guy said ‘shortly’ he meant ‘shortly’; I’d been lucky right enough. Still, I was grateful for the interruption; the climate in the atrium had turned distinctly cool.

  We trooped next door with no let-up in the frost.

  ‘So how was your day?’ I asked finally, while the minions wheeled in the boiled eggs and raw vegetables.

  ‘Don’t change the subject,’ Perilla said. Snapped.

  Uh-oh. I shelled an egg and dipped it in fish sauce. Finally Perilla put down her celery stick.