Jail Bait

XIX

Claudia opened her mouth and screamed. There was nothing subtle about the sound, it was a bug-scrunching, ear-splitting, milk-curdling yell which would have reached as far south as the Libyan deserts and north to the rugged homelands of the Scythians who’d invented this bloody treatment, may they rot with scrofulous sores. She squinted up her eyes, her nose, her entire face and she screamed. She screamed until her lungs were on fire. Until her tonsils were raw. Until, in fact, a whole platoon of attendants came running.

‘Mighty Earth Mother, what’s wrong?’ gasped the Sarmatian supervisor. ‘Are you in pain, dear?’

‘It was a spider,’ an amused baritone explained. ‘A big, hairy black thing which scuttled over her neck, but she’s fine now. I er-’ he lowered his voice to confide ‘-squashed it.’

Tittering broke out behind the curtains and Claudia dared not unscrew her eyes. She knew-she bloody knew that Sarmatian cow would be laughing at her. Her and a dozen others! She waited until the women clopped off.

‘Orbilio, you bastard!’ Her lungs were down to a burning wheeze. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘There’s no segregation in the treatment area,’ he said amiably. ‘I mean, who could make improper advances to a sarcophagus? Indeed,’ narrowed eyes capered the length of her mudpack and his mouth turned down at the edges, ‘who’d want to?’

She’d skin him. Flay him alive and then fly his hide as a kite.

‘I was not crying rape,’ she protested through tightly gritted teeth-and immediately realized her error. Perhaps, with luck, he was too busy sniggering to notice?

‘You weren’t, were you?’

Damn.

Orbilio leaned over, leaving her in no doubt that he had not misread the terror etched on her face when he pulled back the drapes. Watching a pulse beat at his neck and with the smell of his sandalwood unguent tingling down her throat, she waited for him to ask, ‘Who were you scared of, Claudia? Who did you think I was just now?’

Goes to show the scrambled state of your brains, you silly bitch! It sounded utterly preposterous, even to herself, to admit that she’d cowered in fear of her life from a total stranger with whom she’d exchanged not so much as a nod. Claudia sent a silent prayer of thanks to Jupiter that thoughts weren’t as easily communicated as words put down on parchment.

Marcus straightened up and hooked a stool across with his toe. Another time, the scrape of wood on tile would have set Claudia’s teeth on edge. Right now, she didn’t even notice.

‘Why won’t you trust me?’ he asked quietly.

‘Who says I don’t?’ she said. ‘Last night I slept in that wide double couch you so magnanimously paid for and you made no assault on my virtue.’

Orbilio rested one booted foot on the stool and grinned. ‘If that’s a complaint…’

Claudia’s mouth twisted at one corner, while her mind heaved a sigh of relief. Not only was he no mindreader, he hadn’t picked up on her mistake. She’d implied, over breakfast, her night had been spent with Tarraco ‘Claudia,’ he sighed, leaning his weight upon the bent knee, ‘we’ve played mind games long enough. Isn’t it about time you came clean with me?’

‘But my dear Marcus, I shall. The instant this shell is cracked off.’

The quip fell short of its mark. ‘Would it speed our weary progress,’ he suggested carefully, ‘to know I’m aware of your involvement with Sabbio Tullus?’

Claudia heard something crack, and had a feeling it was her optimism, not the mud coffin.

‘What did you take from his strongroom? Uh-uh.’ Orbilio held up a hand. ‘The truth, please. How much did you steal?’

‘The-’ gulp ‘-truth?’

‘The truth.’

Claudia’s eyes followed the plumes of steam coiling round the ceiling and noticed that lamps had been lit to counteract the twilight. ‘Three hundred.’

‘What else?’

‘All right, three thousand, but you can tell Tullus I intend to pay back every single quadran come the end of the month. I’ve just had a cash flow problem with that consignment of wine to Armenia-Orbilio, are you listening?’

Never mind Armenia, his mind seemed to have wandered to the Libyan desert. ‘Yes. Yes, of course I am.’

The eyes refocused and a sharp light hovered round the edges of his pupils. ‘You’re saying it was only money you stole?’

‘Borrowed,’ she corrected sternly. ‘You know what it’s like, a poor young widow struggling to remain in business when every merchant in Rome is trying to edge her out-what else did you imagine I ran off with?’

Something about the set of his face suggested it wasn’t Tullus’ jewels or a rare piece of artwork Supersnoop was worried about.

Orbilio bridged his fingers. ‘Who told you there was a weakness in the wall of Tullus’ depository?’

Claudia thought of telling him she’d noticed a looseness round the stonework some time back in the winter, but his face was steeled and unforgiving, and right now he was every inch the Security Police. Whose function, as if she needed any reminding, was to protect both Emperor and Empire. Not a physical bodyguard like the Praetorians, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio belonged to a small and elite corps of men whose job it was to root out fraud, extortion, treason, forgery-in fact any crime which might undermine the foundations of this new and precarious epoch in Roman history. At the moment, Augustus was without legal heir, and whilst this issue was high on the political agenda, nothing concrete had yet been resolved by way of a legitimate (cynics might say acceptable) appointment.

Suddenly Claudia began to feel very, very cold.

‘The architect,’ she replied, in a voice so croaky she hoped he’d attribute it to the after-effect of her scream. You stupid, stupid cow. You were set up from the outset. ‘He…owed me a favour.’

‘I thought as much.’ Marcus stood up and began to pace around the cubicle, stroking his jaw in thought. ‘Are you aware,’ he said finally, ‘that the day after Tullus reported the break-in, the architect’s body was found in a back alley? His throat had been cut, his purse and rings were missing, but frankly I don’t buy the robbery theory.’ Claudia concentrated on the lamplight making gold out of the silver plumes of steam, because she was unable to cover her ears.

‘I suspect the architect was an unwitting pawn, the same as you were, although I doubt we’ll ever know the reason for his involvement. Blackmail, probably. How did he seem when he imparted the secret of Tullus’ strongroom?’

‘Edgy,’ she admitted, remembering a few weeks back when the architect had been walking towards her, wrapped round a girl younger than his granddaughter. Please don’t tell my wife, he begged. Let’s meet and see if I can’t repay the favour… Suddenly, everything fell into place! His nervousness had nothing to do with his wife finding out, hell, the whole wretched business was a stage set start to finish, the girl no doubt a common streetwalker. And to think Claudia had actually congratulated herself on wheedling out of him the information about that loose brick at the back of the depository. ‘Why me?’ she asked.

‘Nothing personal,’ Marcus said, sucking in his cheeks. ‘Anyone short of cash and willing to take a risk would have fitted the bill. You see,’ he sat down again and crossed his legs, ‘a robbery had to take place and it was imperative Tullus caught the thief in the act.’

‘Codswallop,’ Claudia scoffed. ‘I chose the day, the date, the time-’

‘Did you?’ A smile played around the corner of his mouth. ‘I’m willing to bet that, when you think back over the conversation with the architect, he let slip something along the lines of such-and-such a day is always quiet, especially around dawn-ah.’ He nodded smugly. ‘I see this is starting to ring a bell with Mistress Seferius.’

‘All right, Cleverclogs, so the idea was planted, but I still don’t understand. Someone with a beef against Sabbio Tullus set me up to deplete his fortune-’

‘Wrong. Tullus is a wealthy man, you’d have to make a hundred trips to empty even half his coffers. No, no, they were after something far more precious than gold or silver, and it didn’t belong to Tullus. It was his nephew’s property they were after.’

Who happened to be related, however distantly, to the Emperor’s wife. Brilliant, Claudia! Absolutely brilliant. Now it’s treason good and proper.

‘Then why involve a third party?’ she asked. ‘Surely it would make more sense to sneak in and sneak out, then cement the stone back in place?’

‘Because,’ Orbilio said, cracking his knuckles in satisfaction, ‘it was vital Tullus caught the thief red-handed and drew attention to the robbery. The nephew, you see, had to be made aware of the break-in so that when he checked his casket, he found an empty space inside.’

‘Instead of what, exactly?’ she asked, and received only a vague gurgling from the back of his throat in reply. ‘All right, why not send him a letter, informing him of the theft?’

‘Because the theft had to be publicized. It was important that as many people as possible knew that Tullus’ strongroom had been turned over.’

Claudia’s brain was starting to hurt. ‘I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me the reason,’ she said wearily, although she already knew what his response would be. Several minutes ticked past, when neither of them spoke, then Claudia said, ‘I was supposed to get caught, wasn’t I?’

‘By the time you’d been arrested, brought to trial, etc, etc, etc, the real scent would have gone cold-’

‘Whose scent?’

‘But whether you were caught or not, I suspect they’d already taken what they wanted, probably earlier, during the night-’

‘Orbilio, you miserable sod, will you please tell me who?’

‘Claudia, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be here and neither would you-’ He broke off suddenly, as his implication became clear.

‘And just why wouldn’t I be here, Marcus?’ Claudia asked sweetly. Not only would she skin him alive and fly his hide as a kite, she’d make a rope of his chitterlings and drag him round the Empire on the end of it.

‘Oh.’ At least he had the grace to blush. ‘Well-I thought that if I took the heat off you in Rome by booking this break in Atlantis, you er-’

No, Marcus Cornelius. You erred. ‘Yes?’ she prompted.

‘You might help me on a case,’ he finished feebly. ‘You see, I’m only on a short leave of absence-’ he began, but Claudia cut him short.

‘Typical. When the going gets tough, the toffs get going. Well, do I have news for you. Because if you imagined that, in taking the heat off by whisking me away to Atlantis, you’d have me reeling in gratitude, you were way off course, Marcus Cornelius. To then have the gall to expect said gratitude to manifest itself in the form of my doing your dirty work for you is nothing less than an insult.’ Why did it rankle, she wondered, that he hadn’t just helped her out for its own sake? ‘There are many things,’ she hissed, ‘I stand accused of, but being a copper’s nark isn’t one of them. Now get out, before I have you thrown out.’