Jupiter Myth

XXVIII

She was leaning on a doorframe as if she had been there a long time waiting for me.

"Olympus, you made me jump, you fiend! Are you watching the lawyer's house?"

"What lawyer? I was looking for you, darling." Chloris ignored Helena. Helena's gaze was fixed on me. "What's it about, Chloris?"

"The Briton in the well."

Anything else could have been brushed aside. This I had to pursue. I turned to Helena, giving her the choice. With an angry shrug, she left me to it. As she strode off alone, a fool might have taken her departure for a sign of trust. Not me.

Chloris looked pleased with herself. "That was easy!"

"Wrong. Make it quick."

"We can't talk in the street."

"Find a bar then."

"My house is nearby."

It was not that near. "We'll go to a bar," I said tersely. We walked to a foodshop, fairly neat and tidy, called the Cradle in the Tree. I obtained the usual unappetizing British cold snacks.

We sat on a bench in the street. This was some way from the wharves so I felt we were probably out of the extortionists' patch. Even so, by instinct I checked to see if the proprietor was leaning on the counter above, listening. He had gone inside.

"You look tired," commented Chloris, who looked immaculate. Arena performers are fit and they know how to present themselves. "Is your snooty goddess a goer? Rumpled bedclothes all night, was it?"

"Chloris, get on with it."

"This is no way to approach a witness."

"Witness to what?"

"The death scene."

"Oh yes? Look, don't mess me about on this."

"You just assume I know nothing," she complained. She could have been nagging me for not paying her enough attention. Well, perhaps she was.

"Right." I would do this properly. "I am investigating the death of a Briton called Verovolcus, a visitor to Londinium from a tribe on the south coast. His body was discovered headfirst down a well at a filthy mead kennel down towards the river, four days ago. It looks as if he was robbed. There could be more to it. So, do you, Chloris, know anything that might help me find his killers?"

"How about, I know who did it?"

"Who?"

"Ask me questions. I'm a witness."

"You'll be a suspect at this rate-and the questioning will be done by the governor's horrible torture squad."

"I won't talk to them."

I opened my mouth to say everyone talked to the quaestiones. Then I stopped. She was not boasting.

"They could even kill me," sneered Chloris. "But you know all I would say to them would be, Stuff you!"

"So charming. In that case, they certainly would kill you… Tell me then. Were you there that night?"

"Close enough."

"In the bar?"

"No, but right outside looking in." There were windows, though I remembered they were small and barred. "What brought you there?"

"Tailing a man who has been bothering us."

"He's brave! Name?"

"That was one thing I was hoping to find out."

"Helena Justina told me you are being pressured by an entrepreneur."

"He won't get us."

I sighed patiently. "I know that, Chloris. But then I know you, while he's not so well informed. I'm sure you will make him quite aware of his mistake! He's a Roman?"

"He's a bastard."

"I deduced that… Either help or shut up. If you just want to tantalize me, I'm off."

She grinned. "I'll help. The tantalizing comes later."

"Oh please! Just get on with it."

Chloris licked her fingers clean and stared up at the blue sky. "I'll say this for the wife-she knows how to keep him skewered to the home bed!" I said nothing. My food lay uneaten alongside me on the bench. In this company I was not touching stuffed flatbread-or indeed, anything else; I felt a distinct lack of appetite. Chloris continued, as demurely as she did anything: "The big punter-or he thinks he is-had been at our house nagging us again about letting him take over. We sent him off, then I slipped after. I followed him half across town to that dump, the Shower of Gold. Outside, he had a muffled meet with those other bastards, Pyro and Splice."

"I've seen them."

"Pigs," Chloris denounced them, without much feeling. "They held a confab then all went inside the joint. I sneaked up close. Soon the Briton came along. He took an interest-"

"In the place?"

"No, dummy."

"In you? That's Verovolcus. He would."

"You knew him then, Marcus?" She sounded surprised.

"We had met. That's how I came to be involved in the case afterwards. You shook him off, I take it?"

"He stood no chance."

"Why not? He had a nice big torque." That reminded me: I had to find out what happened to it.

"And a nice big opinion of himself. How could I fall for him, after I had been with you, darling?" Chloris laughed. "I may have moaned about you, Falco, but you show up well against a hairy Britunculus any day."

"Thanks for nothing."

"Pay me back later… He was going into the Shower of Gold, but there was no way I would join him in there. I didn't want the big fellow to know I had come after him."

"But it sounds as if the Briton may have had a prearrangement?"

She nodded. "He said somebody was waiting."

"What happened when Verovolcus went inside?"

"Not much, for some time. I couldn't see much anyway, the window was too small. I had decided to give up and leave. Then I overheard them all arguing."

"Listen-would you say that they knew each other prior to that?"

"It seemed so. I could see them all sitting at the same table. Your Briton had gone straight up to them; they were definitely the people he had arranged to meet."

"Could you tell what they were discussing?"

"No. But Verovolcus was getting the worst of it. There was a lot of talk, then it clearly got nasty. Looked as if Verovolcus was blustering but he was out of his league. Our mighty would-be manager was running it. He did nothing-just sat at the table-but I saw him give the nod."

"To Pyro and Splice?"

"Yes." She paused. Chloris lived at the crude end of society; she had seen much envy and anger in action. Even so, she shuddered when she talked about murder. "Pyro and Splice grabbed the Briton. It looked as if they had planned it. When their leader gave the signal they picked him straight up, turned him over, and dragged him off out the back. He must have known that he couldn't trust that group, but he stood no chance."

"Of course you couldn't see what went on out in the yard?"

"I didn't need to. They poked him in the well and left him there. Everyone heard about it the next day-anyway, I saw the way they laughed when they came back into the bar."

"Who took away the neck torque?"

"Pyro, I suppose. He is the swag-carrier."

"But you're not sure?"

"No, I didn't see for certain."

"Don't get clever, then," I warned. "Tell me only what you saw yourself. What happened next?"

"What do you think happened, darling? The bar emptied like magic. Everyone knows what reputation Pyro and Splice have. I lit out of there just ahead of the crowd. I wasn't going to be found spying on that lot. If I didn't know you, I'd be making sure I forgot about it. I know what's good for me!"

I sat quiet.

Chloris had absorbed my mood. "This is bad stuff."

"The whole of Londinium seems to be full of bad stuff. Chloris, I need to know about this man, your would-be manager-" "I knew you would ask."

"Sorry to be predictable."

"Ah, you don't change…" I had no idea what that meant. "He's a mystery" she said. "He turns up out of nowhere when he wants to have a go at us. We don't know where he's staying, though we know he came from Rome. He has Rome written all over him, and I don't mean the pretty parts. He never even says his name. He demands to take us over- and makes it very clear that he'll be very unpleasant if we keep saying no."

"Can you describe him?"

"He's a nonentity."

"That doesn't help, Chloris."

"No-could be any man! She giggled. "Don't ask me. I only look at men I might go to bed with, darling."

"Try, please."

"He's nothing, Falco. If you passed him in the Via Flaminia you wouldn't look twice at him."

"So how and why does this unobtrusive bastard get to worry you so much?"

"Silent threat. But I'll get him."

"Be careful. Leave this to the professionals. I'm here to go after these gangsters-and as a matter of fact, so is my old friend Petronius."

"Well, I'm chuffed to hear that," Chloris muttered derisively. "You remember Petro?"

"I remember the two of you, mucking about like idiots."

I smiled, but I was thinking hard. "Chloris, would you be prepared to make a statement about the killing?"

"Why not? For you, I can be a witness."

"I warn you, if you give us a formal deposition, it will be dangerous."

"Oh, you'll take care of me!" I would try.

"Is that it, darling?" she murmured. She sounded like a girl who had been let down by a man in bed.

"Unless you can think of anything else helpful?"

"No. So are you coming home with me now?"

"We've had our chat."

"When was chatting any fun?"

"Sorry. I have other things to do."

She stood up, not pushing it. "I won't intrude, then! Another time…"

Chloris could take a rebuff now, apparently. I remembered when my saying no would have been a challenge. But in those days she had known that I really wanted to be won over.

She marched off, swinging along the pavement with the easy stride of a trained athlete. I sat on for a moment.

Suddenly I had a witness. This was not all good news. I could arrest Pyro and Splice when I wanted, and interrogate the pair of them… That was all I could do. If they failed to crack, I was nowhere.

I had a witness, sure enough. At least she had described what happened that night. But I could never use her statement. Chloris was a gladiator-legally infamous. Information from her was even worse than information from a slave. If she made us a hundred statements, she could not appear in court. Any good lawyer, especially a crooked one, would have a fine time in his speech for the defense, if someone of her low calling-and female too-was our only source of evidence.

I stood up to leave. The proprietor must have sensed it; he had appeared behind his counter. I wondered how long he had been there, but he did not look like a man who had overheard the story Chloris told. "Anything else, sir?" he asked me deferentially.

"No thanks." I still had not touched my food. "The Cradle in the Tree," I said, looking up at his sign, where a yellow crib among a few spindly twigs made its faded point. "That's an unusual shop name!"

He just smiled and murmured, "It was called that when I took over."

Names given to foodshops were starting to be of some interest to me.