Caveat emptor

45

Safely outside the chaos of the Council chamber, Ruso turned to Dias. “I appreciate the personal escort,” he said, “but you must have more important things to do.”

If the guard captain suspected that Ruso was trying to get rid of him, he did not show it. Instead he appeared to be thinking about the idea. Finally he gestured toward one of the offices that opened onto the walkway around the Forum. “I could do with some time over at headquarters,” he said. “We caught a sheep stealer last night, so there’s a flogging to organize. We’ve only got twenty-nine lads and a couple of clerks on the books here, so I’d rather not waste men keeping him locked up till market day.”

It sounded like a speech designed to allay the fears of visiting officials. As a former soldier, Dias must be well aware that Rome kept an eye on native militias. Ruso said, “I’m sure you could have done without extra escort duties.”

“We’ve had two murders already, sir,” said Dias equably. “We don’t want anything happening to you.”

“Do you think it’s likely?”

“I’d say the closer you get to finding out who did it, the more danger you’ll be in.” When Ruso did not answer, he continued, “That note you found this morning. You seemed a bit shaken up.”

Unable to think of a plausible lie, Ruso said, “Someone wants me out of town.”

Dias frowned. “If you’ve been threatened, we need to know. Did you bring it with you?”

“I burned it,” said Ruso, knowing a sensible investigator would do no such thing, but if the writer really was a well wisher, the last thing he deserved was a visit from Dias.

“What did it say, exactly?”

“Get out of town,” said Ruso, getting into the stride of the lie.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” As if assessing anonymous warnings was all part of an investigator’s daily grind, he said, “With everything else going on, I forgot to mention it. The threat wasn’t very specific.” He promised to keep any further notes and Dias agreed to assign some new men to “keep an eye on him” for the next few hours.

It was an interesting choice of words.

“That little man who turned up at the funeral with Gallonius,” Ruso said. “The woman said he used to work with Asper?”

“Nico.” Dias gestured toward the Great Hall. “He’s got an office in there. Good luck.”

Ruso crossed the Forum toward the Great Hall followed by the rhythmic tramp of his new guards. Ahead, above the entrance, was a grand plaque honoring the long-dead emperor Titus Vespasian and some departed governor. As he drew closer he could make out a rough patch in the middle of the engraving. That must be the scar of Titus’s brother Domitian, officially obliterated from memory and now messing things up in death just as he had in life.

The locals had certainly made an effort to keep up. He wondered how many of them could read it. Sadly, since it seemed to have been put up at about the same time that Mount Vesuvius exploded and buried several complete towns much nearer to Rome, he doubted whether Titus had cared what the Britons were building on their remote little island.

Beneath the plaque was a pair of open doors conveniently designed for the entry of a man fifteen feet tall. Inside, the hall was high enough to humble the mere mortals clustered below. The clack of the guards’ studded boots on the concrete sounded like the cracking of whips as they led Ruso across to a range of side rooms stretching into the distance beyond a row of columns.

They passed the town money changer-another man Ruso intended to meet-and three doors farther down one of the guards pointed out Julius Asper’s office. This was firmly padlocked, although damage around the lock suggested someone had already broken in and resealed it. Ruso would need to look around in there later. For now, his target was the man named Nico.

Nico turned out to be not some humble clerk as he had supposed but the finance officer of Verulamium, with an office near the shrine over the underground strong room.

Nico did not seem to be happy in his work. Long after the door marked “Quaestor” in spindly red letters was closed, the little man was still scuttling about putting away documents and muttering to himself, occasionally glancing at the new problem that was standing before him in the shape of Ruso and repeating, “Yes, yes,” in answer to a question Ruso could only imagine. His voice was small, his movements quick and light, and his eyes seemed to be permanently on the lookout for predators.

Ruso helped himself to a folding stool. He sat very still, deciding it must be the recent strain of losing the money that had reduced the man to this state. It was hard to imagine what kind of outfit would put a mouse in charge of large sums of cash.

Eventually Nico had cleared away everything except an abacus, which he set on the windowsill, retrieved, placed on the desk beside his inkstand, and then retrieved yet again. Finally he stood between window and desk clutching it and looking lost. Ruso reached across, took it from him, and put it back on the windowsill. Then he said as gently as he could, “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll see what I can do to help?”

After a final check around for danger, Nico settled behind his desk and began to nibble the top of his thumb. Ruso explained why he was here, not because he thought the man was listening but in the hope that it might calm him down. When he moved on to explain that he didn’t know how a quaestor’s office worked and he needed someone to explain it to him, Nico’s eyes brightened.

As Ruso had suspected, once the man started talking, there was no stopping him. This was largely because every statement of fact had to be followed by a partial retraction and several long qualifications to cover differing circumstances, a pause for consultation as Ruso was asked to confirm whether that was his interpretation of the law also, and then a conjunction consisting of either, “Oh dear, where was I?” or, “Now what else is there?” and occasionally an alarming, “But I’ll tell you about that later on. Don’t let me forget.” No wonder he had so much work to do here that he barely found the time to attend Council meetings.

It was a far cry from Firmus’s fantasy of an exciting investigation. Ruso wished he had brought Albanus, who might have understood some of this. Albanus took an arcane pleasure in the workings of officialdom. He made a genuine effort to listen but found his mind wandering off to the key question of whether or not Asper and Bericus had taken the money with them. Given the complexity of the system Nico was explaining, it was clear that the Council kept thorough records. That meant there was one thing about this business that could be easily proved or disproved. The tax money was either under guard in the strong room (he had listened that far) or it wasn’t. Once he had established that fact, he could tether his theories to it while he tried to untangle them.

“I’m impressed,” he said when Nico seemed to have come to an end.

“Really?” Nico looked nervous again, as if he was afraid his visitor was being sarcastic.

“Really,” said Ruso, and meant it. “You’ve obviously got a thorough grip on the job. Now if you could just show me the strong room records for the day Asper disappeared…”

Nico hurried straight to the relevant box, drew out an exceptionally long writing tablet and flipped it open. Ruso suspected he had been staring at it in despair for much of the last few days. The black squiggle at the bottom apparently showed that the money had been signed out. “There’s a parallel record in Asper’s office,” Nico volunteered before Ruso thought to ask.

“You’ve got his records too?”

Nico looked worried again as he explained how the Council had arranged for Asper’s home to be searched and his office to be broken into. “Just in case he hadn’t taken the money with him.”

“Why wouldn’t he take it with him?” queried Ruso, guessing they had really been hoping Asper had enough money stashed away somewhere to replace what was missing.

Nico looked out the window and around the room, as if he was expecting to find the answer written somewhere on the wall.

“Why wouldn’t he take it with him?” Ruso tried again.

“I don’t know,” Nico confessed.

“Perhaps he was going somewhere else? Did he mention visiting anyone?”

“Oh no, sir, he was definitely going to Londinium.”

“I expect it made sense at the time,” Ruso suggested, recalling the extremes he and the apprentices had gone to during their desperate hunt for the missing letter. “I’ll be checking his office myself. Did he say anything about his security guards?”

Nico’s eyes widened in alarm. “I don’t know about visits and guards. I only know about money.”

“And you’re absolutely sure the money went out?”

“Oh, yes! I was there.” He seemed relieved to have an easy question at last.

“What time of day was it?”

“In the morning.”

“But he didn’t leave town until the afternoon.”

“Oh dear,” muttered Nico. “Oh dear, oh dear…”

“That’s not your fault,” Ruso assured him. “Who would have known that he had it?”

This seemed to be something the quaestor had not considered. “Well-anybody could have seen, I suppose. The Hall’s usually busy in the mornings.” Unprompted, he continued, “We had the guards put a watch on the gates. They called in reserves and sent all their best men out to look. We made a sacrifice to Jupiter and we offered a raven to Sucellus, and still nothing.”

“I heard it was a dog,” said Ruso. “But I’m sure he liked it, whatever it was. Is there any way we could identify the money if it’s found? Anything distinctive about it?” It was something he might never have thought of had Tilla not been given the stolen money that had somehow drawn her into Metellus’s web. When Nico still did not answer he rephrased the question. “Is there any way we can tell your money from anybody else’s?”

“Oh no!” The quaestor shook his head, as if “No” were not a clear enough answer. “No, no. It’s just ordinary money. Mostly silver.” He paused. “You could talk to our money changer. He labels all the bags.”

Ruso, who could think of nothing else to ask, thanked him and got up to leave. He was almost out the door when Nico blurted out, “Nothing like this has ever happened before! What will the procurator say?”

Ruso said truthfully, “I can’t tell you.”