Dead Men's Sandals (Marcus Corvinus Book 21) Page 2

  He got up, mopped his lips with his napkin, and ambled back towards the house, leaving me with Laughing Boy himself.

  Gods!

  2.

  Perilla wasn’t exactly over the moon about it, either. Understandably.

  ‘Marcus, we’re only just back,’ she said when I told her. ‘And the setup down there seems very dubious, to say the least.’

  ‘Really? My, you don’t say.’ I threw myself down on the couch, reached for the wine cup that Bathyllus was in the process of setting down on the table beside it, and sank the contents. ‘You care to go over to the Pincian yourself and ask Eutacticus to make other arrangements?’

  ‘Of course not. Even so. Besides, Clarus and Marilla are expecting us.’

  ‘You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, lady. You could go on ahead to Castrimoenium and I can catch you up later.’ That just got me a look. Bathyllus refilled the cup. ‘Fine. So stop beefing, okay?’

  ‘How are we getting down there? Ship or road?’

  ‘Road. Satrius is bringing round a sleeping coach an hour before dawn the day after tomorrow. Alexis can tag along behind in the luggage cart with Bathyllus and Meton.’ Alexis being, technically, the gardener, but also, and more relevantly, the smartest of our bought help; in view of Satrius’s shortcomings in that direction I might need an extra someone with brains on the team.

  Bathyllus, on the point of exiting with his tray, froze.

  ‘We’re taking Meton, sir?’ he said. ‘Again?’

  So might Thyestes have looked when he pulled his sons’ remains out of the stew pot.

  ‘Yeah, I thought we might, Bathyllus.’ I gave him my best smile. ‘The accommodation’s arranged, sure, thanks to Eutacticus, at least I hope it is, but we may as well have a decent chef along. You got any viable objections?’

  ‘None whatsoever, sir.’ If his teeth had been gritted any further you could’ve used them for a corn mill. Our major-domo and our chef do not get on. To put it mildly. Cat and dog doesn’t even come close.

  ‘Good. Just checking.’

  Bathyllus sniffed and buttled off.

  ‘We’re not staying with the family, are we?’ Perilla said.

  ‘Uh-uh. According to Satrius we’ll have the use of a house in town. Seemingly it belongs to a guy who had to go abroad suddenly for the sake of his health.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Don’t knock it. It means we’re independent. And it may even be true. Brundisium isn’t the most salubrious of places.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Come on, Perilla! We’re stuck with the case. We may as well make the most of things.’

  ‘Did Satrius tell you anything else?’ She shifted on her couch. ‘In the way of background, I mean?’

  ‘Not a lot, beyond what I knew already. Only that what’s-his-name, Marcius, was killed half a month ago and it was his daughter who discovered that the ring was missing. That’s begging the question as to whether the two crimes are connected, of course. There, your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘You asked him about the ring?’

  ‘Of course I did. He was just as cagey on the subject as his boss had been.’ I frowned and reached for the wine cup again. ‘Which was screwy in itself. I mean, Eutacticus told me the thing was worth a bomb, yes, and anyway given someone has taken the risk of half-inching it that much would go without saying. But that’s not the end of it. Not even part-way there.’

  ‘You think it was originally stolen property?’

  ‘Yeah, well, knowing what kind of people we’re dealing with I’d say that was a fair bet, wouldn’t you? And if it was as valuable as all that I can see why he might be loath to supply too many details. Like who it belonged to before his pal got his hands on it and how the switch was made.’ I took another swallow of wine. ‘Even so, it’s still weird. Oh, sure, when we had our conversation last time round over the missing necklace, the one that Bathyllus’s brother and his partner pinched, Eutacticus was at pains to say he’d bought it legally. Or as legally as that bastard is capable of, anyway. This was different; the circumstances weren’t the same, the ring wasn’t his, and he knows I know the sort of business he and his pals are in, so he wouldn’t be admitting to anything I couldn’t’ve guessed, anyway. But still for some reason he was playing coy. And Eutacticus just doesn’t do coy. Like I say, weird.’ I shrugged. ‘Ah, hell, it’s a mystery. No point in theorising; leave it.’

  ‘He told you nothing else? Satrius?’

  ‘Uh-uh. Close as a clam. Mind you, that could’ve been out of sheer bloody-mindedness, because that’s how the bastard’s built. Anyway, we’ll have plenty of time to soak him for information on the journey.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Ten days plus in a coach with a hired thug for company. That I am really, really looking forward to.’

  ‘Come on, lady! He won’t necessarily be in the coach itself. And in any case we’re hardly out in the sticks; we’ll be on the Appian Road the whole way down. If there’s no particular hurry we could even stop off for a few days, at Capua and Tarentum, say, maybe a couple of other places. Make it a holiday like Eutacticus said, do a bit of sightseeing.’

  ‘And stay where? Marcus, I am not putting myself under any obligation for an overnight stay to one of Sempronius Eutacticus’s associates, let alone putting up anywhere that Titus Satrius recommends. If we are going we’ll sleep in the carriage, thank you. And as for inns and guest-houses you can forget them.’

  I sighed. ‘Fair enough, it was just a thought. We’ll do the trip in a oner if you like.’

  ‘Liking doesn’t come into it.’

  Bugger. I’d hoped that the prospect of a bit of sightseeing might’ve brought down the hackles a tad – Perilla’s a total sucker for anything that constitutes local colour, and Capua, at least, has more ancient monuments than you can shake a stick at – but evidently even there we were on a hiding to nothing. Ah, well, when the lady is in that sort of mood you may as well talk to the wall for any good it’ll do. Besides, I agreed with her: if we had to go, as we undoubtedly did, then it was best to get the thing over and done with as fast as possible.

  Extra holiday nothing: as cases went, this one was turning out to be a real bummer before it got started.

  Fuck!

  So there we were two days later twiddling our thumbs in the atrium, all packed and ready, waiting in the prelude to what promised to be a grey and overcast dawn for Satrius to show up with the sleeping coach. Me, I’m a morning person, always have been, although getting out of a warm bed half way through the final quarter of the night was pushing things. As for Perilla, she normally doesn’t surface until the sun’s well clear of the horizon, and where her current mood was concerned grouchy didn’t even begin to hack it.

  In short, all agog with excitement and anticipation about the forthcoming trip was something we were not.

  Bathyllus buttled in.

  ‘That’s the coach arrived, sir, if you’d care to come out,’ he said.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Alexis and Meton all set?’ We’d put most of the luggage and supplies in one of our own covered carts the night before, and it was parked ready to go in the alleyway behind our garden wall.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ A sniff; but this early even one of Bathyllus’s disapproving sniffs lacked the usual zip and zing. ‘They’re on the cart with Phryne.’ Phryne was Perilla’s maid. ‘I’ll join them now, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Sure. Go ahead.’ I got up off the couch. ‘Come on, lady, stir your stumps. Show on the road.’

  She fixed me with a look reminiscent of lightly-poached eggs.

  ‘Marcus, dear,’ she said. ‘If you intend to be insufferably cheerful at this hour then I am going straight back to bed. You can go to bloody Brundisium on your own.’

  I grinned; she didn’t really mean it. ‘You’ll be okay when you get into the coach.’

  ‘Really? Define “okay”.’

  Some people have no sense of adventure. I led the way outside, to where Satrius and
a Significant Other had parked in the main drag in front of the house.

  ‘Morning, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘You ready for the off?’

  ‘Yeah. More or less.’ I opened the coach door and stood back while Perilla climbed in.

  ‘This is Felicio, by the way. He’ll be doing most of the driving.’

  I nodded to the hunched, great-coated and seriously-hatted figure sitting beside him on the coachman’s bench. The tip of his nose was showing, but not much else. ‘Hi, Felicio. Pleasure to meet you.’

  Grunt.

  Yeah, well, mysteries to be unravelled there, then. Probably human as opposed to primate, but with Satrius as my only point of comparison I wasn’t placing any bets. So long as he (or it, as the case might be) could drive it was none of my business.

  I climbed in after Perilla.

  I’m no great fan of these monster sleeping coaches – they’re comfortable enough, sure, if your definition of comfort stretches to having your back molars shaken out while you’re trying to snatch more than an hour’s real sleep from the night’s twelve – but I had to admit that, here at least, Eutacticus had done us proud: seats with cushions stuffed with lamb’s-wool that converted into a couple of proper beds, windows with tight-fitting shutters to keep out the draughts, and a pull-out table with sockets to hold a wine jug and cups. Which, indeed, they were already equipped with. All the necessities, in other words, including, I noticed, the emergency en suite facilities provided in case you got caught short during the night and didn’t fancy risking the great outdoors. Barring the aforesaid problems when the bugger was actually moving – and until some smart-as-paint Greek comes up with something to counteract the combined effect of iron-rimmed wheels, leather-strap suspension and paving-slabbed road surfaces – not by any means a bad way to travel.

  Slow as hell, mark you – arthritic snails come to mind – but you can’t have everything.

  Perilla was already ensconced under a pile of blankets and snoring softly. I settled down opposite her, pulled my own blankets up to my chin, and joined her.

  There was a sudden lurch and off we went.

  Oh, the joys.

  I must’ve managed to doze off, because the next thing I knew it was full daylight. I glanced through the open shutters to check out the position of the sun. Still inside of the first hour, and not a bad morning after all, weather-wise; the covering clouds and threat of rain had gone, and it looked as if it was turning into a very respectable early-autumn day. We were clear of the city itself, but judging by the number of tombs bordering the road not by all that much. Which, of course, given that our top speed was practically walking pace, wasn’t surprising.

  Perilla was still snoring away in her cocoon of blankets. I stuck my head out of the window.

  ‘Hey, Felicio!’ I shouted. ‘You want to pull up for a moment? Comfort break.’

  Grunt.

  The coach slowed and stopped. Yeah, well, we’d established communication, at least; basic as you get, but still.

  I got out, stretched, and pissed into the roadside ditch. I noticed that the male members, as it were, of our luggage cart were doing the same, while Phryne disappeared behind one of the roadside tombs. You can’t be too squeamish on these long trips, and when there isn’t much actual ground cover – as on this stretch there wasn’t – the options are pretty limited. Felicio and Satrius had stayed where they were. Either gorillas had cast-iron bladders or, more likely, they’d had their personal comfort breaks earlier while I was still asleep.

  ‘So how far have we come?’ I asked Satrius while we waited for Phryne to reappear.

  ‘We’re doing good. Just passed the fifth milestone.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Far as that, right?’ Like I said, your expectations where sleeping coaches are concerned need to be set pretty low: at this rate if we were lucky we might be in Brundisium by the Winter Festival. ‘You fancy walking for a bit? Fill me in on a few details?’

  ‘Bugger off, Corvinus.’

  ‘Pretty please?’

  He scowled, then shrugged and climbed down. ‘Okay. What d’you want to know?’

  Phryne reappeared, gave me a nod and rejoined the lads on the cart. Felicio clicked his tongue and shook the reins, the mules took the strain, and the coach resumed its headlong career.

  ‘That would be just about everything, pal,’ I said, matching the pace. Not a particularly difficult feat, in the circumstances. ‘Your boss wasn’t exactly communicative.’

  ‘What did you expect? A full fucking narrative epic?’

  I kept my temper. ‘No. Just a bit more than I got, that’s all. So give. Start with this deputy of his, that I’ll be seeing a lot of. What was his name? Cluvius, right?’

  ‘Quintus Cluvius. Yeah.’ He fell into step beside me. ‘Him and Marcius, they’d been together for years. They was practically brothers.’

  ‘You’ve met him?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Me, I’m through to Brundisium on the boss’s business fairly regular, three or four times a year at least. He’s okay, like the boss said your typical old school operator, same as Marcius himself was. You can trust Cluvius. His son, now, Marcus’ – he spat into the ditch – ‘that one’s a real bastard.’

  ‘Even by your standards?’

  He stopped and faced me. ‘Look, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘Let’s get one thing straight. I do what I’m told because that’s my fucking job and it has to be done, right? Doesn’t mean to say I always enjoy doing it. Marcus Cluvius, he’s just evil. You watch him when you meet him. I’m not kidding here.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Oh, whoopee; just what I needed. Anyone that Titus Satrius categorised as ‘evil’ would definitely not be a joy to know.

  ‘Him and Marcius’s second son – Aulus – they’re an item.’ I shot him a startled, sideways glance and he chuckled. ‘Nah, not like that. They’ve got a thing of their own going.’

  ‘How do you mean, a thing?’

  ‘A sideline to the business. In areas that their dads wouldn’t’ve touched with gloves and a fucking barge-pole.’ He spat again. ‘The heavy stuff. Protection rackets, intimidation, GBH; worse, if the price is right.’

  ‘You mean the same sort of thing you do for Eutacticus?’

  He stopped again. This time his hand snaked out and grabbed me by the throat. I froze.

  ‘I won’t tell you again, friend,’ he said quietly. ‘For me it’s a job, nothing more. And the guys I get heavy with usually either deserve it or would do worse to me if they got the chance. For those bastards it’s a pleasure, and more often than not the poor sods on the receiving end are just ordinary punters trying to make an honest living. So cut the snide sanctimonious crap, right?’

  He let me go. We walked on in silence for a bit while I massaged my crushed larynx.

  ‘So,’ I said when I could finally trust myself to speak without sounding like a whispering bullfrog. ‘I assume their fathers know what’s going on. Knew, in Marcius’s case.’

  ‘Sure they knew. That doesn’t mean to say they could do anything about it, does it? Yeah, old Marcius is already dead, but if he wasn’t how long would he’ve had left? Active life, I mean. Five years? Ten? And Cluvius is the same. Then the youngsters’d be in charge and calling the shots in any case. Their daddies knew it, they know it. More to the point, all the lads on the payroll know it. When push comes to shove which way are they going to jump?’

  Encouraging, yes? I was really, really beginning to look forward to this job. Thank you, Sempronius bloody Eutacticus. ‘You said Aulus was Marcius’s second son. What about the elder?’

  Satrius snorted. ‘Titus Junior. Right. He doesn’t figure, Corvinus, or not much. A long, useless streak of piss that even his father had given up on. Nah, now the old man’s gone Aulus’ll be the one to step into his sandals. Although my bet is that his pal will still be running things on that side. Aulus is jackal to Marcus’s wolf. He’d love to be the top dog, sure, but where him and Marcus are concerned he’s not in the same class.’

  ‘
Fair enough.’ I filed all that for later consideration. ‘Moving on. What about the other family? The Pettii?’

  ‘Old Lucius Pettius...well, the boss told you about him. He’s from the same mould as Marcius and Quintus Cluvius, and just as straight by his lights. Oh, sure, him and Marcius’ve been in opposite corners of the ring practically all their lives, but business aside they’ve rubbed along okay. Like the boss said, you live and let live, don’t shove too hard and you won’t get shoved back.’

  ‘Who suggested the wedding originally? Him or Marcius?’

  ‘That was Marcius. Mind you, Pettius, he was all for it from the first. No surprises there: when you came down to it the three of them, Pettius, Marcius and Cluvius, they thought pretty much alike. Old school values, old school ways of doing things.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And the prospective fiancé? Pettius’s son?’

  ‘Sextus.’ Satrius frowned. ‘Yeah, well, I can’t say I take to Sextus much, myself. Able as hell, sure, best of the young bunch, easy, but he’s a cold-blooded bastard at root. Listen hard and you can hear his fucking brain ticking. Me, I’m never comfortable with guys like that.’

  Yeah, that I could understand, Satrius being the towering intellect that he was. Mind you, I had to admit that he’d given me a pretty good run-down of the various personalities involved here. Plenty of food for thought, certainly.

  ‘How about–?’ I began.

  ‘Marcus? What time is it?’

  I glanced through the coach window. Perilla was obviously surfacing; early for her, sure, but travelling always throws your sleeping pattern out of kilter. Not to mention leather-strap suspension and a road that’s mostly bumps.

  ‘Morning, lady,’ I said. ‘Second hour, or near enough. We’re about six miles from Rome.’

  ‘Oh.’ She yawned. ‘Stop the coach, please. I need to freshen up.’ A euphemism, of course. Felicio drew up opposite a convenient tomb and we waited until she’d got the freshening up over and done with.