Solid Citizens

EIGHT

So, onwards and upwards. Time to talk to the brother and — as far as the cui bono aspect of things went — prime contender for wishing Caesius dead and burned. If I could get a hold of him …

My barman friend Scaptius had said that Lucius rented a room in the street to the right of the market square, above a bakery. That should be easy to find, although at this time of day he probably wouldn’t be at home, unless he was sleeping things off. Which, I supposed, was possible.

I came back down the steps. Before turning left and heading towards the centre of town, I happened to glance the other way, up the road in the direction of the baths at the end of it. And I noticed something odd.

It was a quiet street, virtually a backwater. When I’d first arrived, there’d been only one other punter in evidence, on the far side of the road but walking parallel at the same pace: a big guy in a freedman’s cap. When I’d gone into Novius’s office he’d kept on going, presumably bound for the baths. But now there he was again, leaning against the wall and communing with nature a few yards up from me.

Uh-huh.

I set off slowly down the road, gave it a couple of minutes, then turned round as casually as I could manage. Chummie was tagging along, a few dozen yards behind, moving at the same unnaturally slow speed. So. Unless my paranoia was getting worse in my old age the bugger was tailing me sure enough. The big questions, of course, were why and who for?

OK. The first thing was to rule paranoia and coincidence out of the equation. I crossed the next street, stopped on the far side and turned round. Chummie, a dozen yards behind, slowed almost to a halt and became very interested in the sandals on display outside the shop just shy of the corner itself. I ignored him, but instead of retracing my steps, or carrying on past the street, I turned down it: by my reckoning, it would run parallel to the top end of the square, so it’d bring me out more or less where I wanted to go in any case.

It was much busier than the street I’d been on. A couple of dozen yards further along it was a guy selling poppy-seed bread rings from a hand cart. I stopped and bought one, glancing behind me as I took the copper coin from my belt pouch. There was no sign of the freedman. OK; so maybe it had been straightforward paranoia, after all. Or maybe — which was just as likely, if not more so — the bastard had realized he’d been sussed and decided to cut his losses for the present. Whatever the reason, I’d lost him.

The strange thing was that, when I’d turned round at the corner and got a proper look, something about him had rung a bell. Not his face, which I’d seen clearly; I’d be ready to swear that to my knowledge I’d never clapped eyes on the guy before in my life. It was just the way he moved and held himself …

Memory tugged.

Ah, bugger. Leave it. No doubt if I wasn’t actually on the brink of wearing my underpants on my head and he had been tailing me for some reason it wouldn’t be the last time he did it. Next time, I’d be ready.

I carried on along the street and took a right at the corner. Yeah, this was the street the barman had meant, all right: I could see the bakery a few yards down. On the other hand, there was a wine shop a bit further along, on the opposite side, just after the entrance to an alleyway. Maybe a better place to try, at least in the first instance: the chances were that one so close to home would be Lucius’s local. I crossed the road and walked towards it, glancing down the alleyway as I passed.

It was a cul-de-sac, with two small shops in it: a general merchant’s and a bootmaker’s. Check. Yeah, I’d thought there was something familiar about the street I was on. I’d come down it, or the bottom half of it, rather, the day before, heading for the main drag and Caesius’s house, after I’d left the brothel by its back door. The alley was the same one, the one behind the brothel, seen from the other direction.

I carried on to the wine shop, pushed open the door and went in.

The place was pretty basic, cheap and not particularly cheerful, not much more than a stone counter beside which stood two or three barflies who looked like they’d come as a package with the furniture and fittings. There wasn’t a lot of choice on the board, either. Still, I wasn’t there for the wine list or the ambience. I waited until the barman had served the punter on my immediate left with his cup of wine and then caught his eye.

‘What can I get you, sir?’ he said.

‘Actually, I was looking for a Lucius Caesius,’ I said. ‘He come in here at all?’

The guy grinned. ‘He does. In fact …’ He turned towards the punter at the end of the row to my right and raised his voice. ‘Hey, Lucius. You’ve got company.’

The punter was half-slumped over the counter on his forearms, a jug and a cup in front of him. He raised his head. I recognized the resemblance straight off, but where Quintus Caesius’s silvery hair had been carefully trimmed his brother’s grey equivalent looked like he’d cut it himself. Sawn at it, rather, and with a blunt knife at that. Younger brother or not, he wouldn’t’ve passed for seventy, let alone ten years short of it. His tunic hadn’t seen the inside of a fuller’s for quite some time, either, and from its condition probably wouldn’t survive the experience if it did.

The phrase ‘human wreckage’ came to mind. Well-preserved, bursting with self-respect and in good shape for his age he was not.

‘Who wants me?’ he said.

I made another quick inspection of the wines on offer; none of them looked very promising this time round, either. ‘Make it a half jug of your best, pal,’ I said to the barman. ‘Whichever that is.’

‘That’d be the Arician, then.’

‘Arician it is.’ I moved over to join what was left of Lucius Caesius and pulled up the stool next to him. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘The name’s Marcus Corvinus.’

‘Corvinus?’ He gave me an uncomprehending poached-egg-eyes stare. ‘Is that so?’ Then he nodded. ‘Oh. Right. I’ve got you now. You’re the Roman those bastards in the senate have got to look into my brother’s death. Doing the rounds of the suspects, are you?’

‘More or less,’ I said easily. The barman came over and set the jug and cup down beside me. I paid and poured, then held the jug poised. ‘You want some of this?’

‘If it’s going spare, sure. Mine’s dead.’

I filled his cup. ‘Health,’ I said, and sipped from my own. Actually, maybe I’d misjudged the place, because it wasn’t bad stuff, certainly a lot better than I’d been expecting. Mind you, if you can’t get a decent house wine in the Alban Hills then where else can you get it? And Aricia wasn’t far away; the landlord probably had family connections with the vineyard.

Lucius took a good long swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Mind if we talk?’ I said.

‘Suit yourself. You’re buying, and I’m not doing anything special.’

I glanced behind me. There was one small table with a couple of stools, squeezed away in a corner. ‘Over there?’ I said. ‘It’s more private.’

‘I’ll be saying nothing that I’d be ashamed gets overheard,’ he said. But he picked up his cup, levered himself off the stool and walked carefully to the table. I followed and sat down opposite him. ‘Now. Talk away.’

‘You weren’t at the funeral,’ I said.

His face with its three-day-old stubble split into something between a grin and a snarl. He wasn’t doing so well in the teeth department, either. I reckoned four or five, all told, but I might’ve been overgenerous. ‘Bugger that,’ he said. ‘I’d no truck with my brother when he was alive and I’ll have none with him now he’s dead.’ He drained his cup at a gulp and edged it over in my direction. Wordlessly, I refilled it. ‘Shock you, that, does it? Offend your nice Roman-patrician sensibilities? Well, disapprove all you like. I’m no hypocrite, and I don’t do platitudes.’ He must’ve noticed my expression, because he said, ‘Also, I’m a drunk by choice and inclination. That doesn’t mean I’m a monosyllabic oaf. So don’t patronize me either, right?’

Jupiter! Talk about having a chip on your shoulder! The one this guy was carrying around was so big you could use it as a doorstop.

‘I wasn’t going to, pal,’ I said. ‘And no, it doesn’t shock me at all. Still, you’re his heir, aren’t you?’

‘Indeed I am, seemingly.’ He half-emptied his newly refilled cup and smacked his lips. ‘The Caesius now. The only living representative of the family. No surprises there, then.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘“Concerning the dead, nothing except good.” That how the old tag goes? Well, since I can’t in all honesty manage the qualifi-cation without gagging I’ll settle for the first option and say nothing. I can afford to, after all; I reckon I’m worth a good million plus now, thanks to dear brother Quintus, what with his own money and my late sister-in-law’s dowry, and if that means drawing a line under his sacred memory then so be it.’ He belched. ‘Pardon. He had his head beaten in, they tell me, coming out of our local knocking shop. That right?’

‘Yeah. More or less.’

‘Couldn’t’ve happened to a better person. And that fact in itself is a glittering wonder and marvel to all who knew and loved him. Or didn’t, as the case might be.’ He chuckled to himself and took another swallow of wine. I said nothing. ‘So. Rest his bones, whatever the truth of it. Concerning the dead and so on; I’ve no quarrel with him now. How’s your investigation going? If I’m allowed to ask?’

I shrugged. ‘As well as can be expected. I’ve just started. As you say, I’m just doing the rounds of the suspects at present.’

‘That’s nice. I’ll tell you what.’ He struggled to his feet, swaying. ‘Put the interrogation on hold for a minute, will you, while I take a leak round the back. The old bladder’s not what it was. I promise I won’t run.’

‘Sure. No problem,’ I said.

‘You’ll excuse me, then?’

I waited while he staggered out of the door and closed it behind him. Then I got up and went over to the bar.

‘Yes, sir,’ the barman said. ‘You want the other half?’

‘No. Just the answer to a quick question, pal, if you will. Four nights ago. Was Lucius in here at all, do you remember?’

He shot me a look. ‘The night of his brother’s murder?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Sure. Same as he always is, from the time we open right up until closing time. He was where you’re sitting now, talking to Roscius.’

I stared at him. ‘Roscius? You mean Quintus Roscius?’

‘Yeah. Farms just outside town on the Castrimoenium road.’

Shit! ‘He a regular?’

‘He comes in now and again.’

‘Pally with Lucius?’

‘Not especially, but it was a quiet night, what with the weather being so bad. They were the only two in the place.’

‘Until closing time, you said. Sunset, would that be?’

‘About an hour after.’

‘That late?’

‘I wasn’t in any hurry. Lucius is a good customer, and I didn’t have the heart to throw him out. My brother has an olive farm, and he lets me have the oil cheap. It’s not the best stuff, third pressing standard if that, but it’s good enough for the punters I get from around here. And keeping open the extra hour sometimes is good for business. These days, you have to make use of every edge you can get.’

‘They leave together?’

‘Yeah. When I closed up.’

‘Thanks, pal.’ I went back to my seat. Bugger! There went straight-as-a-die Roscius’s alibi! When the bastard had told me he’d been at home the evening of the murder he’d been lying through his teeth!

Lucius came back in and sat down with a sigh. ‘That’s better,’ he said. He topped up his cup from my jug. ‘Now where were we? Oh, right. Your investigation. You’ve just started, you say.’

‘Yeah.’ No harm in putting out a few feelers and seeing if they produced any result. ‘I was round at Publius Novius’s earlier. The lawyer.’

‘I know who Novius is. Scumbag.’

‘He tells me that you were disinherited in your father’s will, ten or so years back. That so?’

Lucius scowled. ‘My father never made that will, Corvinus. Oh, sure, we’d had nothing to do with each other for twenty-odd years before that, but he wasn’t the bastard that Quintus was. He wouldn’t’ve done that to me, disinherited his own son.’

‘Hang on,’ I said carefully. ‘You’re saying the will was a fake?’

‘Of course it was. It must’ve been. I’m telling you, my father would never have cut me off without a penny. Quintus and that slimy lawyer pal of his cooked the will up between them. Did Novius tell you I challenged it?’

‘What?’

‘No, he wouldn’t, the canny bastard. Certainly I did. In open court. For all the good it did me.’ He emptied his cup again; at this rate I’d have to get the other half jug after all, but at least it didn’t seem to be having much effect. If anything, the old guy seemed to be sobering. Mind you, it was only halfway through the morning, and he was used to it. ‘Novius and Quintus and their like lead the senate by the nose. They are the senate. And the senate provide the aediles, and the aediles do the judging. Two solid citizens and a jury stacked with their pals against a drunk with a grudge? What do you think the verdict’d be?’

Yeah, well, that was true enough, whatever the ins and outs of the rest of it: you couldn’t buck the Old Boy network, whether it was in Bovillae or Rome, once they’d made their minds up about something. I took a sip of my own wine. ‘Still,’ I said, ‘your brother carried on paying your allowance.’

‘Novius told you about that as well, did he?’ Lucius said sardonically. ‘Talkative little shit, isn’t he? Oh, yes, I got that regularly enough every month, for what it was worth. Then, at least. But did he mention that Quintus had stopped it recently?’

‘No. No, he didn’t.’

‘Fact. A couple of months ago, it was, just after Vatinia died. You know who Vatinia was?’

‘Your brother’s wife. Sure.’

‘My brother’s, as you say, wife.’ He gave the half-grin, half-snarl and sank another mouthful of wine. ‘Yes. She was OK, Vatinia. A real lady, patient and tolerant as hell. She had to be, mind, the bugger didn’t deserve her. Well-off, too, in her own right. She’d money of her own, quite a bit of it, a lot more than he had, originally. When he married her, Quintus got by far the best of the deal, and not just financially. Anyway, the allowance came from her, or from the income from her own holdings. She was the one who insisted that he pay it. When she died, Quintus decided that wasn’t necessary any more, so when I went to see Novius as usual on the next kalends to pick up my month’s cash I got the straight finger. Still’ — after pouring me a token splash, he topped up his cup with the rest of the wine in the jug — ‘all’s well that ends well, isn’t it? Novius’ll just have to grit his teeth and cough up the whole boiling. I’m all right now.’

‘Yeah. You are.’ He was, at that — by his own estimate, about a million sesterces all right. I picked up the cup, drained it, and got to my feet. ‘Thanks for the chat. I’ll see you around.’

‘You leaving?’ he said. Surprised, evidently, but that was his business.

‘Yeah. No more questions. Interrogation done and dusted.’ There was the business of his hobnobbing with Roscius the night of the murder to go into, sure, but I wanted to think that one over before I faced him with it. Roscius, too, for that matter. Besides, I’d had about enough of Brother Lucius as I could stomach for one day. Personally, my sympathies were with the dead Caesius; brother or not, the guy was a useless git, and a prime sponger. The fact that he was obviously intelligent only made things worse. ‘Things to do, places to go.’

‘Yeah? Where would that be, then?’

I hadn’t really thought about it, but if I had I wouldn’t have told him. Out of there and away from Lucius bloody Caesius was enough for me, for the time being.

So where was I going? There was still a fair slice of the day left, but I’d no one else to see, not at present, anyway, barring the rival collector (Baebius, wasn’t it?) that the old guy in the antiques shop had said had gone home furious with Caesius for stealing a march on him over the purchase of a Greek figurine. I could easily go back to the shop and get his address, sure, but I reckoned that could wait; Baebius hadn’t exactly sounded the type likely to hang around the back of a brothel after sunset waiting to zero his co-auction-goer in a fit of pique. Mind you, it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility: some of these antiquities nuts were, well, nuts. Look at Priscus. No, Baebius would keep; I’d got enough to think about at present. Maybe I should just go back home, talk with Perilla and start putting things together.

Only there was one other place I could go to follow up an angle I knew about already. It probably wouldn’t take long, and since I was in Bovillae in any case with time on my hands I might as well do it now. When we’d been talking about the wool store fire in the wine shop the argumentative punter (what was his name? Battus, right?) had mentioned a night watchman who lived over by the meat market. Garganius. Sextus Garganius. I might as well look him up, see what I could get.

One good thing about a small town like Bovillae, as opposed to Rome, is that everywhere’s practically within spitting distance of the centre. The meat market was only a few hundred yards further along the Hinge from market square, in the direction of the Roman Gate. I cut back through the square and turned right.

This time of day, the market was crowded with the local wives and bought help shopping for the evening’s dinner. The guy running the third stall I asked at pointed me towards a side street closer to the gate, and an old biddy trudging along the pavement lugging a string-net bag full of assorted root vegetables and chitterlings narrowed the search to the last house along, next to an oil shop on the corner. I knocked on the door and it was opened by a youngish woman holding a baby on her hip.

‘Sextus Garganius live here?’ I said.

‘Yes.’ She hefted the baby. ‘Who wants him?’

‘He doesn’t know me,’ I said. ‘I just wanted a quick word, if that’s OK.’

She frowned, but opened the door wider and stepped aside. ‘You’d best come in, then,’ she said, then shouted, ‘Dad! Someone to see you!’ She turned back to me. ‘Go ahead. He’s in the kitchen, round to the right. Excuse me, I was just going to change Quintus here.’

Yeah, I could smell that that was pretty urgent. She took the kid off to some inner fastness to repair the spreading damage while I followed her directions.

Garganius was standing next to the kitchen brazier, stirring a pot of bean stew: a little old guy with grizzled hair and a wall eye. He looked round.

‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Who’re you?’

I gave him my name. ‘It’s about the fire a few months back. In the town’s wool store. I understand you were the night watchman.’

His single good eye looked me over suspiciously. ‘I was,’ he said. ‘So what?’

‘I was hoping you’d tell me what happened.’

‘What’s to tell? The place caught fire and burned down. That’s all there was to it, and you could’ve got that much from anyone.’

‘I was talking to a guy named Battus.’ No point in complicating the issue. ‘He said it wasn’t an accident.’

The suspicious look toned down a tad. ‘I know Battus, sure. He send you here?’

‘More or less. He told me where to find you, anyway. I’m looking into the death of Quintus Caesius. The censor-elect. Seemingly he was planning to open an investigation.’

That got me a grunt. ‘Maybe he was,’ Garganius said. ‘But that isn’t going to happen now, is it?’

I shrugged. ‘It might. It all depends.’

‘Depends on what?’

‘Maybe on what you tell me.’

He went back to stirring the pot. A minute passed in silence. Then without looking at me, he said, ‘You down here from Rome?’

‘Sure.’

‘Official?’

‘More or less, again. Where Caesius is concerned, certainly.’

‘Fine.’ He nodded, like he’d made a decision. ‘OK. They’re saying I knocked over a lamp when I was drunk. That’s a lie. I wasn’t, and I didn’t. Truth is, I’d nothing to do with starting the fire.’

‘Who did, then?’

‘Search me, pal. All I know is that I was in my cubby just inside the door as usual. Oh, I may’ve been dozing, sure — what do you expect at that time of night — but I was stone-cold sober. I woke up and found the place full of smoke, so I got the hell out and raised the alarm. For all the good it did. By that time the rafters’d caught and the roof was coming down.’

‘This wouldn’t be the burned-out warehouse just off the main drag the other side of the market square, would it? In the same street as the brothel?’

‘That’s right. It was lucky the place was free-standing, or the whole middle of town could’ve gone up. Specially at that time of year. Everything was dry as a bone.’

‘Could someone have got in? To start the fire, I mean?’

‘Sure. No problem, it would’ve been easy enough. I told you, I was inside, wasn’t I? You think I locked the door behind me? And after all, who’s going to steal a warehouse worth of fucking wool bales?’

‘Unless they’d been stolen already.’

He gave me a long, considering look, tasted the bean stew and put the spoon back in, all without a word.

‘Of course,’ I went on, ‘that would’ve been pretty difficult to cover for, during daylight hours, considering the number of bales that must’ve been involved.’ No response. ‘I mean, something on that scale would tend to get noticed, wouldn’t it, during the day? A night operation, now, small loads, a bit at a time spread over a month or two, single-cart stuff, early hours of the morning, well, that’d be different.’ Still silence. ‘Come on, pal! If that was how it was done then you must’ve known all about it from start to finish. And if so you’re up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Now, I don’t want to make trouble, especially for the little guy who probably had his arm twisted and only got a handful of silver pieces out of it. I’m not even a fucking Bovillan citizen, for the gods’ sake. Arson’s not my business; I couldn’t care less about a little thing like that. What is my business, however, is murder. All I want is to get the facts straight so I can get on with my job. Clear?’

He took a deep breath. ‘OK, fair enough,’ he said. ‘Let’s say — just for argument’s sake — that most of the wool was already gone and what was in nine tenths of the bales was rags; that I may’ve suspected it, but I didn’t know for certain because I made damn sure that I didn’t; that I had nothing to do with the switch; and that you forget you were here talking to me. No names, no pointing fingers, and no comeback, right? I’m just a dumb watchman who doesn’t know zilch. That do you?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ll settle for that.’

‘Good. We have a deal.’ He went back to stirring the pot. ‘Mind you, putting me in the frame wasn’t nice. I don’t like that. The guy who had the wool contract. Name begins with “M”. You know who I’m talking about?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I know.’

‘Well, he might be able to help with a few facts, too. I’m not saying he will, you understand, just that he might. Only a suggestion. Fair enough?’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Thanks, pal.’ I turned to go.

‘Not a word, right? And it stops here?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Cross my heart. Thanks again.’

Well, I reckoned I’d got enough to be going on with. Back to the water trough by the Tiburtine Gate where I’d moored my horse, and then home for a think.

On my way along the main drag, I thought I spotted my pal the lounging freedman walking parallel to me on the opposite pavement. But he was only one face in a crowd, and I could’ve been wrong.

There again, there weren’t any flying pigs.