A Body In The Bath House

XXV

M'LSi'M served on a building site is disgusting. Unpalatable eve rages must be provided to labourers deliberately, to discourage them from taking time off for drinks. To troops, stuck at the back end of nowhere, marching a long road through a dense forest or trapped in some windswept frontier fort, even sour wine seems welcome whilst in an emperor's Triumph, when the army returns home to Rome in splendour, they are awarded real mulsum. That's four measures of fine wine mixed with one of pure Attic honey. The further you go to the outposts of the Empire, the less hope there is of an elegant wine or genuine Greek sweetener. As nourishment deteriorates, your spirits droop. By the time you reach Britain, life can get no worse. Not, that is, until you are sitting on a building site and the mulsum boy arrives.

Refreshed by my night's rest (that's another bitter quip), I had crawled to my office. Bleary-eyed, I set to, peering at some wages bills in case I could find Gloccus or Cotta listed. I had been first up in our household. There was no breakfast. So I fell on my beaker cheerfully once the sniffing boy arrived. A mistake I would only make once.

"What's your name, boy?"

"Iggidunus."

"Do me a favour-just bring me some hot water next time."

"What's wrong with the mulsum?"

"Oh… nothing!"

"What's wrong with you, then?"

"Toothache."

"Want do you want water for?"

"Medicine." Cloves are supposed to dull the pain. They did not work on my dying molar; Helena had tried me on cloves for the last week. But anything would taste better than the mulsum boy's offering.

"You're an odd one!" Iggidunus scoffed, bumming off in a huff.

I called him back. My brain must be working in its sleep. I had not found Gloccus and Cotta, but I had spotted an anomaly.

I asked whether Iggidunus served a brew to everyone, the entire site. Yes he did. How many beakers? He had no idea.

I told Gaius to provide Iggidunus with a waxed tablet and a stylus. Of course he could not write. Instead, I showed the boy how to create a record using rive-barred gates. "Four upright sticks, then one across. Got it? Then start another set. When you finish, I can count them."

"Is this some clever Egyptian abacus trick, Falco?" Gaius grinned.

"Do one round of the site, Iggidunus."

"I only do one. It takes all day."

"That's hard on the people who miss you."

"Their mates tell me. I leave their cup with a tile on top."

"So there's no escape! Count every mulsum cup you serve. Also, put down a stick for anyone who should get a beaker but who says no thanks. Then bring the tablet back to me here."

"With some hot water?"

"That's right. Boiling would be nice."

"You are joking, Falco!"

Off Iggidunus went. I placed my beaker of mulsum on the floor for Nux. My shaggy hound took one sniff, then stalked off to the clerk's side of the office.

He stared at me. "Gaius, can you find me the tallies for the caterer's regular food order?"

He shuffled around, identified them, heaved them over to me. Then he leaned across, so he saw which records I was already working on and the notes I had scribbled. It took him no time to make the connection. "Oh rats!" he said. "I never thought of that."

"You see my point." I was cradling my cheek gloomily. "Nothing matches, Gaius. The wages bill is high. Money drains away through a sieve and yet look at these food invoices. The quantities of wine and provisions brought in don't marry up for those numbers of men… I'd say the supplies quantities are about right for those I've seen on site. It's the labour figures that are suspect. If you look around outside, we have hardly any of the trades, other than basic heavies who can dig trenches."

"The workforce is low, Falco; that's proved by the way that the programme keeps slipping. The clerk who keeps the programme doesn't care, he just plays dice all day. The project team explained it as "delays due to bad weather" when I queried it."

"They always say that." Trying to employ Gloccus and Cotta back in Rome had taught me the system. "Either rain threatens to spoil their concrete or it's too hot for the men to work."

"None of my business anyway; I'm here to count beans."

I sighed. He had tried. He was just a clerk. He had so little authority everyone ran rings round him.

"It's time you and I counted heads, not beans." I took him into my confidence. "Here's my theory: it looks like at least one of our merry supervisors is claiming for a phantom labour force."

Gaius leaned back with his arms folded. "Whew! I like working with you, Falco. This is fun!"

"No, it's not. It's very serious." I could see a black hole opening up. "It may explain why Lupus and Mandumerus are at odds. There could be a turf war for control of the labour fiddle. That's bad news. Whichever of the supervisors is running the racket, Gaius, listen: take great care. Once they know we've found out, life will become extremely dangerous."

Gaius then continued with his own work rather quietly.

I slipped out later, to look into another aspect. I had been thinking about Magnus and his peculiar behaviour yesterday around the delivery carts. He had claimed he was 'checking a marble consignment'. I thought it unlikely but clever frauds often deceive you not with lies but with cunning half-truths.

I wanted to find the area where marble was being worked. I was led there by the screeching and scraping noises of saw-blades. With Nux at my heels, I made my way into the fenced enclosure. Men were preparing and squaring up newly delivered irregular blocks, using hammers and various grades of chisels. Nux ran off with her tail down, alarmed by the din, but I could only put my fingers in my ears as I hung around, inspecting various upright slabs.

Four men were pushing and pulling a multi-bladed saw to split a blue-grey block into pieces for inlay. The un toothed iron blades were supported in a wooden box frame, its progress lubricated by pouring water and sand into the cuts. By a slow and careful process, the men were slicing through the stone to produce several delicately fine sheets at once. From time to time they lifted the saw, resting their hands. A boy then moved in to brush away the damp powder produced by their labour, the marble 'flour', which I knew would be collected and used by the plasterers, mixed into their topcoats to give an extra fine glossy finish. The boy then fed new sand and water into the saw grooves to provide abrasion, and the sawyers resumed their cutting.

The resulting slabs would then be stacked vertically according to

their thickness and quality. Lying around haphazardly were also a number of broken blocks, which must have shattered under the saw. Elsewhere fine sheets had been laid out on benches and were now being smoothed to a high finish with ironstone blocks and water.

As I wandered around, I was amazed by the colour and variety of the marble being worked on. It all seemed a little premature, given that the new building was only at foundation stage. Perhaps that was because the materials were coming from far-flung places and needed to be acquired well in advance. Preparation on site would take a very long time, in view of the huge scale of the proposed palace.

The head marble mason found me watching. He dragged me into his hut. There I readily accepted the offer of a hot drink- since he had despaired of Iggidunus and was brewing up his own on a small tripod.

"I'm Falco. You're?"

"Milchato." They were a cosmopolitan bunch here. Who knows where he hailed from with a name like that? Africa or Tripolitania. Egypt, possibly. He had grizzled grey hair, but his skin was dark; so was his narrow beard. His origin must be somewhere the web-footed Phoenicians left their mark. Or raking up old sores, let's call it somewhere Carthaginian.

"Worth the fire risk." I grinned, as he blew on the charcoal burner, heating up wine in a small bronze folding saucepan. A man who tolerated life in a temporary camp by bringing his own battery of comforts. It reminded me, with a pang, of my efficient friend Lucius Petronius. Britain was where he and I served in the army. I was seriously missing Petro. "I've been looking at your stock. I thought most of the planned decoration on the palace would be paint but Togidubnus seems to like his marble too. I'm staying in the old house; there's quite a range there. Surely it's not local?"

"Some." He sprinkled dry herbs in two beakers. "You'll see a bluey coloured British stone. Slightly rough." Ferreting among the clutter, he tossed me a piece of it. "Comes from down the coast to westward. And what else has the old fella got? Oh, there's a red from the Mediterranean and some brown speckled stuff from Gaul, if I remember."

"You worked on the old house?"

"I was just a lad!" he grinned.

Like the other craftsmen, he had a vast array of samples scattered around him. Irregular pieces of multicoloured marble lay everywhere. A few had tablets pegged under them, with what must be firm orders for the new scheme. Leaning casually against the hut's doorframe, used as a doorstop, was a superb finished panel of inlaid veneers with a pentagon set in a circle. I picked up a delicate moulding with a seductive shine. It looked like a dado rail or a border between panels. "Fillets!" exclaimed Milchato. "I like a few carved fillets."

"This is exquisite. And I've rarely seen so many types of marble in one place."

Milchato demonstrated offhandedly. They came from places far apart: the blue stone, plus a similar grey, from Britain and then crystalline white from the central hills of distant Phrygia. He had a fine green and white veined type from the foothills of the Pyrennees, a yellow and white from Gaul, more than one variety from Greece…

"Your import costs must be staggering!"

Milchato shrugged. "That's why there will be quite a lot of paintwork including mock-marbling." He seemed relaxed about it. "They've brought a lad over to do it; naturally it's not his field, he's really a landscape specialist-'

"Typical!" I sympathised.

"Oh… Blandus knows him. Jobs for the guild, you know. Some smart arse from Stabiae -it's no problem; I can train him in what marble really looks like. The young fellow's all right, quite bright really for a painter." Milchato drained his beaker. He must have a throat that could swallow hot bitumen. "My contract is big enough to keep me busy and believe me, Falco, I can buy what I want. Free hand. Authority to draw on resources from anywhere in the Empire. Can't ask for more than that."

But could he, though? Was he somehow topping up his salary? I would have to check how much stone was being imported and whether it was all still here.

"I'll be frank," I said. "You know I am here to look for problems. There may be diddling with the marble."

Milchato gazed at me, wide-eyed. He was giving his most careful attention to this theory of mine. If he studied it any more seriously, I would think he was mocking me. "Whoops! Do you think so?"

"I wouldn't insult you by claiming it, otherwise," I replied dryly.

"That's terrible… surely a mistake." He ran one hand over his beard, which rasped as if he had tough hairs and a dry skin.

"Do you rule it out?" Only an idiot rules out fraud anywhere on a building site.

"Oh I wouldn't say that, Falco." Now he was being open and helpful. "No, it's entirely possible… In fact, you may well be right."

This was easy. I always like that. "Any ideas?"

"The sawyers!" cried Milchato at once, almost eagerly. Yes, it was very easy. Loyalty to his labour force was not his strong feature. Still, I was the man from Rome; he would feel even less respect for me. "Bound to be them. Some of them deliberately use too coarse a grain of sand when they're cutting. It wears away more than necessary of the slabs. We have to order more material. The client pays. The sawyers split the difference with the marble supplier."

"Are you sure of it?"

"I have had my own suspicions for a while. This fiddle is famous. Oldest trick in the book."

"Milchato, that is extremely helpful." I rose to leave. He came to the door with me. I slapped him around the shoulders. Tin glad I called on you. This will save me days of work, you know. Now I'm going to leave you with it for a while; I want you to look out for the trick, and see if you can put a stop to it. I could order the bastards to be sent home again, but we're really stuck out here. I can't lose them. Obtaining new labour for a specialism is too difficult."

"I'll jump on it, Falco," he promised gravely.

"Good man!" I said.

It was time to leave. He had another visitor. An elderly man in a Roman tunic, wrapped in a dramatic long scarlet cape and with a travelling hat. He acted as if he was somebody but whoever it was, I was not introduced. Though Milchato and I parted on good terms, I was sure the marble master waited deliberately until I left the area. Only then did he greet his next visitor properly.

It was decent of him to admit the fault. If all the supervisors with scheming workmen came through so well, I would soon be going home.

On the other hand, when any witness in an enquiry owned up too readily, my habit was to look around to see what he was really hiding.

Iggidunus brought his five barred gates late that afternoon. They started off large, then became smaller as he ran out of space on his tablet. I could see at once that if his count was vaguely accurate, my fears were correct.

"Thanks. Just what I wanted."

"Aren't you going to tell me what it's for, Falco?" Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Gaius, head down over his work, looking apprehensive.

"Auditing pottery," I decreed smoothly. "The storekeeper isn't happy. Seems we've had too many beaker breakages on site."

Iggidunus, thinking he would get the blame, scurried off hastily.

Gains and I at once grabbed the tablet and started to set our official labour records against the numbers who were actually here on site according to the mulsum round. The discrepancy was not as bad as I had expected, but then they were still digging foundations and the current complement was low. When the walls of the new palace started rising, I knew Cyprianus was due to take on a very large tranche of general masons, plus stone-cutters to shape and face the ashlar blocks, scaffolders, barrow boys and mortar-mixers. That would be any day now. If we acquired non-existent workers in the same proportions, our numbers would at that point be out by nearly five hundred. In army terms, someone would be defrauding the Treasury of the daily cost of a whole cohort of men.

The clerk was extremely excited. "Are we going to report this, Falco?" \

"Not straight away."

"But '

"I want to sit on it." He did not understand.

Discovering that a fraud exists is only the first step. It has to be proved and the proof has to be absolutely watertight.