Jail Bait

XXIV

The army, when it clanked to a halt beside the lake, consisted of one junior tribune flanked by two legionaries, though what it lacked in strength, it more than made up for in enthusiasm. Within seconds of its arrival, spectators had been moved back and out of earshot, grumbling at being short-changed, while the wheelwright’s son pestered for a decision on whether two runners dropping out of the race meant he had won.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the tribune hammered for silence amongst the little group which remained clustered round the corpse, ‘I am Cyrus, the Emperor’s representative in Spesium. Now we have, as you all know, a new town rising on imperial soil, our reputation stands on our results. This applies to all of us and if we are to play our part in the evolving political climate, an ethic based on peace and on loyalty and trust, if Spesium is to take its rightful place among commercial centres, it is essential we get to the truth of this heinous crime and you have my assurance, ladies and gentlemen, my word that I shall not rest until the murderer of this poor woman is brought to justice. It is, of course, and I need not remind you, a capital offence-’

‘That man,’ Orbilio whispered to Claudia, ‘blows more hot air than Vesuvius. Thank you.’ The latter words were addressed to the small boy he’d sent to fetch his clothes. He flipped a copper to the child and pulled on his long, patrician tunic, and he had time to buckle it as well before the tribune’s speech was finished.

‘The victim has not only been strangled,’ Kamar was telling Cyrus, ‘she has been brutally battered around the head. These lesions here…’

Claudia blocked out the grisly anatomical details, leaving them to Cyrus to jot down on a wax tablet. Patrician, like Orbilio, and young, of course-this was a stepping stone in many an aristocrat’s career, be it the army or civilian life-but a certain podginess was beginning to show, a puffiness around the cheekbones suggestive of indulgences on quite a grand scale.

‘When,’ he asked the Spaniard, ‘did you last see your wife?’

Tarraco buffed his fingernails against the palm of his hand. ‘Why?’

Claudia rolled her eyes to heaven. You idiot, Tarraco. Won’t you ever learn?

‘Remorse is not your strong point, is it?’ Cyrus sneered. ‘Well, let’s see what other little weaknesses you have.’ After each question that he fired off, he scratched another annotation on his hinged tablet. ‘Right,’ he said eventually. ‘Let’s see if I have this straight.’ He read back over his notes. ‘The last time you saw Lais was Wednesday, correct?’

Tarraco made no response and the chubby tribune’s hackles began to rise in earnest.

‘Moreover, you say she walked out on you after a row?’

This time he received an imperceptible shrug and, stung, the tribune jerked his thumb at his legionaries. ‘Row out to the island. See whether anyone can corroborate that story.’

For the first time, Tarraco looked Cyrus in the eye. ‘No need for the army to start straining itself at this late stage,’ he said. ‘My staff come today to watch the race. You may interrogate them here, if you wish.’

‘Don’t get cocky with me, you money-grubbing dago,’ Cyrus snarled, jabbing a finger into Tarraco’s muscled chest. ‘I know your game. First it was Virginia, now Lais. What happened, eh? Laughed in your face, did she, gigolo? Told you she was cutting you out of her will?’

A dark flash of anger sparked Tarraco’s brooding eyes, and Claudia realized that Cyrus had hit a raw nerve. The Spaniard’s mouth clamped tighter and the knuckles of his bunched fists turned whiter.

‘In a fit of rage, you strangled her-but that wasn’t enough for you, was it? Consumed at what you considered her betrayal, you rained blow after blow-’

Claudia could not listen. She stared up at a pair of hawks, wheeling overhead, and remembered Tarraco as she had seen him this morning, strutting like a peacock with his gold torque and fancy embroidery. Dressed to kill.

‘Admit it, you snapped and you killed her. You put your dirty hands round her throat and you squeezed-’ Dammit, Cyrus, that’s no way to elicit a confession from a man like Tarraco. And without one, there can be no true justice.

Claudia cleared her throat. ‘Tarraco did not murder Lais,’ she said. ‘He was with me.’

From the corner of her eye, she saw Orbilio’s head shoot up

The Spaniard, too, was taken by surprise, except in his case you’d have to know him well to recognize that sideways tilt of the head.

‘And you are?’ With slow deliberation Cyrus crossed to where Claudia was standing, and her scowl defied him to comment on the mass of tumbling curls which no self-respecting Roman lady would be seen dead with out of doors in daylight hours, let alone with a flaming swelling on her cheek.

‘Claudia, widow of Gaius Seferius, wine merchant in Rome.’

‘Widow? I see.’

No, you do not, you dirty-minded bastard, she wanted to shout, and bit her lip instead.

‘And you were with Tarraco-er, when exactly would that be?’

‘Claudia,’ Orbilio warned under his breath.

She tasted blood in her mouth. ‘Last night,’ she said, adding a forceful toss of her head.

‘Ah.’ Purposefully, the tribune walked back to stand over the corpse, nodding to himself and flipping open his hinged notebook.

Claudia stole a glance at the grotesque creature at his feet. Once a tall and slender socialite, wealthy-ah, but lonely with it-she had married a man for his prowess in bed and… And what?

‘Would that be all night?’

The bastard was relishing her public humiliation. ‘Yes, Cyrus, all bloody night, if you must know.’

Tarraco had looped his thumbs into the waistband of his loincloth and was staring out across the lake as though it was a picnic he was attending. From the side, Claudia felt angry patrician eyes burn into her head.

‘Much depends,’ Cyrus said, ‘upon the testimony of the slaves, but then again,’ he gave a brittle laugh, ‘much doesn’t.’ He walked back and forth across the grass, finally stopping in front of Claudia. By now the little group had fallen silent, and you could have cut the atmosphere with a carving knife and served it up with mustard sauce. ‘Nevertheless you are giving Tarraco an alibi, is that correct?’

‘The message appears to be getting through at last.’

‘Then as I see it, Mistress Seferius, this makes you an accomplice to the crime.’

‘ What?’

‘You imbecile.’ Tarraco sprang forward like a lion on a chain. ‘She is no accomplice, because I am no killer.’

‘It doesn’t really matter,’ Orbilio said, stepping forward, ‘where this lady spent the night.’ He shot a fiery glance at Tarraco. ‘Lais has been dead for several days, is that not correct, Kamar?’

Goddammit, why didn’t someone say so before?

‘Undoubtedly.’ The bald Etruscan nodded. ‘It’s hard to be precise, considering the damage done to tissue by the fish, but my professional opinion is that she’s been dead four days and that, I’m afraid, is the minimum.’

The tribune’s nose wrinkled at the mangled corpse. ‘It’s the lovely widow who is labouring under the impression that Lais died last night,’ he said, ‘not I. I merely make the point that she has, by her own admission, admitted aiding and abetting in a murder.’

Not so much blood and thunder, you silly bitch, as thud and blunder. What were you thinking of?

‘Speaking from experience.’ Smoothly Orbilio took hold of Cyrus’ arm and murmured in his ear. ‘We’re invariably inundated with oddballs either confessing to the crime or else providing cast iron alibis for suspects. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turns out the little lady,’ he flashed a patronizing smile, ‘also suffers from some type of attention-seeking disorder. Ouch.’ He leaned down to rub the place where the little lady’s sandal had connected to an attention-seeking shin.

The tribune was not won over. ‘And you, sir? Who might you be?’ He was even less impressed with the answer. ‘Do you have official jurisdiction to interfere in this investigation?’

‘None whatsoever,’ Marcus said cheerfully.

‘Oh, yes, he does,’ Claudia piped up. ‘I intercepted a letter from his boss, empowering him-’

Cyrus smiled a tight smile. ‘And where is this official authorization?’

‘Stolen by the man who gave me this, of course.’ She pointed to her bruise. ‘He’s an assassin sent to retrieve a certain document, except I palmed him off with…’ Her voice trailed off, as it became clear that everyone, not just the tribune, felt that the heat had finally got to her.

‘Quite.’ Cyrus turned to address the group as a whole. ‘I suppose I have to follow through with this charade.’ He sighed. ‘So can we please clear up the question as to whether or not an intimate relationship exists between these two which might implicate her in the crime?’

‘I fear Marcus Cornelius may be right,’ Pylades said, flashing a sad smile at Claudia. ‘You see, she did not arrive in Atlantis until Thursday, I can vouch for that personally.’

‘As can I,’ put in the constipated tortoise.

‘I’ve a good mind to throw you in jail for wasting time and perverting the course of justice,’ Cyrus snarled in Claudia’s ear, ‘but I need to get this enquiry moving. Ah, the servants.’ With a smile of encouragement, Cyrus beckoned the contingent from Tuder’s island forward. ‘I presume you’ve heard about the tragedy?’

Dumbly they nodded.

‘Good, because I have a few questions to ask concerning your late mistress.’

Shuffling from foot to foot, the servants stared at the ground, at their hands, at anything except Tarraco or the tribune, but the answer from each slave was the same. Yes, they recalled the row on Wednesday.

No, they had not seen Lais leave the island.

‘You are certain of these facts?’ Cyrus pressed. ‘None of you rowed Lais ashore that night, or perhaps the following morning? Think very carefully about this.’

Weights shifted from foot to foot, hands were wrung, noses sniffed, but the reply remained in the negative.

‘None of the rowing boats was missing? You’re positive?’

They nodded in glum unison.

‘It couldn’t be possible, perhaps, that Lais took a boat, rowed over to Atlantis-’

‘Lais could not row,’ one voice put in. ‘She was not strong enough, not for that distance.’ Incredibly, the voice was Tarraco’s. ‘Someone must have come for her.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Cyrus said patiently. ‘Well, then, did any of you see a boat come ashore on the island either that night or during the following day?’

Downcast heads shook as one.

‘No one saw Lais leave?’ He gestured to his legionaries, who each took one step closer to the Spaniard. ‘So what do we conclude from this?’ Cyrus pretended to consult his notes. ‘Lais was alive on Wednesday. She had a flaming row with her husband-’

‘I did not kill her,’ Tarraco said. ‘You get that through your thick skull.’

‘-has not been sighted for three days until, on the fourth day, she turns up, floating in the lake, having been strangled and battered in a brutal and vicious attack which, funnily enough, also took place three to four days ago and where robbery, clearly, was not the motive. Look at her rings, the amber pendant.’

Cyrus clapped shut his wax tablet and snapped his fingers.

‘Arrest the bastard,’ he said. ‘But don’t harm him more than necessary.’ He smiled a lizard smile at Tarraco. ‘I want this specimen in prime condition for our first public execution.’