A dying light in Corduba

XXIX

From the beginning I felt that, unlike his wife, Licinius Rufius knew exactly why I had come to Baetica. He let me pass some idle remarks about the mad scale of his home improvements, but soon the conversation shifted to agricultural matters, which would lead to the real subject of my interview. We never mentioned the magic word 'cartel', though it was always our point of reference. I began frankly: 'I could say I'm checking over the family estate for Decimus Camillus – but actually my trip out here has an official purpose -'

'There was a rumour of an inspector from Rome,' Rufius answered readily. Oh yes. Well, why pretend? News that Anacrites had planned to send an agent, and that I for one was actually here, would have been leaked from the proconsul's office – and possibly confirmed to all his Baetican friends by the proconsul himself.

'I am hoping to talk to you about oil production, sir.'

'Obviously Baetica is the place for that!' Licinius made it sound as though I was just on a mild fact-finding survey, instead of investigating a vicious conspiracy where agents had had their heads smashed m. I could feel the old man taking over. He was used to sounding off with his opinions. Thinking they know it all is a habit of rich men who build up large outfits of any kind.

'I've been discussing some figures with Marius Optatus at the Camillus estate,' I interrupted as quickly as I could. 'He reckons there may be as many as five million olive trees and a thousand oil presses in the River Baetis hinterland. An owner of standing like yourself could possess maybe three thousand acts. quadrati – say eight or ten centuries of land?'

He nodded but made no comment, which almost certainly meant he owned more. That was a massive area. There used to be an old system of measurement which we all learned at school, where two acts equalled a 'yoke', and two yokes were a 'hereditary area' – that's the amount of land that was supposed to suffice for one person in the frugal republican days. By that reckoning the average oil magnate in Baetica could support seven hundred and fifty people – except that the old method of measurement would have been when farming merely consisted of barley, beans and cabbages for domestic consumption, not a luxury export crop like olive oil.

'What's an average yield per century?'

Licinius Rufius was offhand. 'Depending on the soil, and the weather that year, between five and six hundred amphorae.' So the typical plot we had been talking about would produce between four and five thousand amphorae per year. That would buy a whole forest of Corinthian columns, plus a fine public forum for their owner to endow.

'And how is my young friend Optatus?' Rufius smoothly changed the subject.

'Bearing up. He told me a little about his misfortunes.'

'I was delighted when he took his new tenancy,' the old man said in a tone of voice I found irritating, as if Marius Optatus were his pet marmoset. From what I had seen of Optatus, he would not accept being patronised.

'The way he lost the old one sounds hard. Do you think he had bad luck, or was he sabotaged?'

'Oh, it must have been an accident,' Licinius Rufius exclaimed – as if he knew damn well it had not been. He was not going to support accusations against a fellow landowner. Quarrelling with colleagues is a bad business move. Encouraging victims never brings in cash.

Licinius had sounded fairly sympathetic, but I remembered Optatus' bitterness when he told me the locals had refused to become involved in his quarrel with his ex- landlord. I took a chance. 'I gather Quinctius Attractus conducts business in a pretty ruthless manner?'

'He likes to be firm. I cannot argue with that.'

'It's a long way from the benevolent paternal style that we Romans like to consider traditional. What's your opinion of him personally, sir?'

'I hardly know the man.'

'I don't expect you to criticise a fellow producer. But I would suppose someone as shrewd as you would have firmed up some conclusions after being the man's guest in Rome and staying at his house!' Licinius was still refusing to be drawn so I added coldly, 'Do you mind if I ask who paid your fare?' He pursed his lips. He was a tough old bastard. 'Many people in Baetica have been invited to Rome by Attractus, Falco. It's a courtesy he extends regularly.'

'And does he regularly invite his guests to help him corner the oil market and drive up prices?'

'That is a serious accusation.'

Rufius was sounding as prim as Annaeus when I interviewed him. Unlike Annaeus he did not have the excuse of guests to drag him away so I was able to press him harder: 'I make no accusations. I'm speculating – from my own, maybe rather cynical standpoint.'

'Do you have no faith in human ethics, Didius Falco?' For once, the old man seemed genuinely interested in my reply. He was now staring at me so closely he might have been a sculptor trying to decide if my left ear was a fraction higher than my right.

'Oh, all business has to be based on trust. All contracts depend on good faith.'

'That is correct,' he declared autocratically.

I grinned. 'Licinius Rufius, I believe all men in business want to be richer than their colleagues. All would happily cheat a foreigner. All would like the running of their own sphere of commerce to be sewn up as tight as a handball, with no uncontrollable forces.'

'There will always be risk!' he protested, perhaps rather drily.

The weather,' I conceded. The health of the businessman, the loyalty of his workers. War. Volcanoes. Litigation. And unforeseen policies imposed by the government.'

'I was thinking more of the fickleness of consumers' taste,' he smiled.

I shook my head, tutting gently. 'I forgot that one! I don't know why you stay in the business.'

'Community spirit,' he laughed.

Talking to Licinius Rufius resembled the overblown jollity of a military dining club the night the pay-chest came – when everyone knew the sesterces were safely in camp, but the distribution would happen tomorrow so nobody was drunk yet. Maybe we two soon would be, for Rufius seemed to feel he had led me astray from my purpose so successfully he could now afford to clap his hands for a slave to pour him wine. I was offered more, but declined, making it plain I was only waiting for the nervous waiter to remove himself before I continued the interview. Rufius drank slowly, surveying me over the rim of his cup with a confidence that was meant to beat me down.

I dropped my voice abruptly. 'So I met you in Rome, sir. We both dined on the Palatine. I then called on you at the Quinctius house, but you had gone. Tell me, why did you leave our splendid city so suddenly?'

'Family ties,' he replied, without pausing.

'Indeed? I gather your colleague Annaeus Maximus suddenly developed pressing family ties too! And the bargeman, I suppose – and the negotiator from Hispalis! Forgive me, but for men of affairs you all seem to have made that long journey without enough forward planning.'

I thought I saw him check, but the reaction was slight. 'We had travelled to Rome together. We travelled home in one group too. Safety, you know.' For the first time I detected a slight impatience with my questions. He was trying to make me feel like a lout who had abused his hospitality.

'I'm sorry, but your departure looks suspiciously hurried, sir.'

'None of us ever intended a long stay in Rome. We all wanted to return home for the Parilia.' Very rustic! And he had dodged a direct answer with the glibness of a politician.

'And of course this had nothing to do with Quinctius Attractus trying to promote a cartel?'

Licinius Rufius stopped answering me so smoothly.

We stared at each other for a few beats of time.

'There is no hoarding or price-fixing in Corduba!' His voice rasped so harshly it startled me. He sounded extremely angry. His protest could be genuine. He knew why I had come here though, so he had had time to prepare a convincing show of outrage. 'There is no need for it. There is plenty for everyone. The olive oil trade is now flowering in Baetica as never before -'

'So once the trees are planted you can all just sit back and watch the fortunes flowing in! Tell me this then, sir: why did that group of you really decide to visit Rome?'

I saw him regain control of himself. it was a normal business voyage. We were renewing ties with our agents in Ostia and exchanging goodwill with our contacts in Rome. This happens all the time, Falco.'

'Oh yes. Nothing unusual at all – except that the night your main contact entertained you all in the Palace of the Caesars, two men who had been in the same dining room were later brutally attacked!'

I could see he was forcing himself not to react. He chose to try and bluff it out: 'Yes, we heard about that just before we left.'

Twitching an eyebrow, I asked gently, 'Oh? And who told you this, sir?'

Rufius belatedly realised he had walked into trouble. 'Quinctius Attractus.' A neat dodge, since Quinctius had enough importance in Rome to be well informed about everything.

'Really? Did he tell you who told him?'

'He heard it at the Senate.'

'He could well have done,' I smiled, 'only the dinner for the Society of Olive Oil Producers of Baetica was held on the last night of March. The Senate goes into recess from the beginning of April to the middle of May!'

Licinius almost gave away the fact that he was struggling now: 'Well, I cannot say where he heard it. He is, after all, a senator and hears all the important news before most of Rome -'

'It was never news,' I corrected him. 'An order had been given on the highest authority that the attacks should not be made public. You people left the very day afterwards. At that time only a handful of people on the Palatine – a very small group in the intelligence service and Titus Caesar himself – knew that killers had been at work.'

'I think you underestimate the importance of Quinctius Attractus,' answered Licinius.

There was another short silence. I sensed a worrying force behind his words. Ambitious men like Attractus always do carry more weight than they deserve.

Licinius felt a gloss was necessary: 'The fact that we had dined with two men who died was, Falco, as you are suggesting, one of the other reasons my colleagues and I took our leave. The incident sounded a little too close for comfort. We decided Rome was a dangerous city, and I confess we fled.'

He struck me as a man who would not normally run away from a spot of civic disorder.

Natural curiosity about the tragedy gripped him. He leaned forwards and murmured in a confidential tone, Did you know these two men?'

'I know the one who is not dead.'

I spoke it very gently, leaving Rufius to wonder which one had survived; how well I knew him; and what he had managed to say to me before I left Rome.

I might have taken things further, though I doubt I would have been any more successful. In any case, it was my turn to be called away unexpectedly. An uproar disturbed us, then almost immediately a slave came running to tell me I had better come quick because my borrowed horse Prancer had wandered through the new entrance portico, and into the gracious peristyle garden with the beautiful topiary. Prancer's yearning for foliage was insatiable, and he had lost all discretion. By the time he was spotted many of the clipped trees had ceased to look so elegant.

The Rufii coped with this accident in a terribly good- natured manner and assured me the lions would grow again. They just scoffed when I offered to pay for the damage. We all joked merrily that it was an act of revenge from their rivals the Annaei who had lent me the horse.

They could afford to replace the boxtrees and I couldn't, so I thanked them quietly for their generous attitude – then Prancer and I left, as fast as I could make him trot.