Jail Bait

XXXIII

Kamar didn’t stand a chance.

He had been boiling balsam resin in his tripod to mix into a salve with rue and myrrh to reduce an imaginary inflammation round the stone merchant’s eye when he heard the rap at his door. Cursing at having to leave his brazier at so critical a juncture, he bumbled over to admit the next hypo-bloody-chondriac who needed his services and failed to see the wad of white cotton before it was under his nose. By then, of course, it was too late. Gasping, gagging, sagging backwards to the floor, he also missed hearing the door kicked shut and it was only when he tried to move his arms that he realized they’d been shackled behind his back.

‘What the…?’

‘How much were you paid to kill them?’

‘What?’

‘Answer me, you bastard.’ Claudia crunched home the lock. ‘How much?’

‘I’m a physician,’ he spluttered. ‘My job is to save lives.’

Dropping the wad which had been drenched with white mandrake, Claudia flexed the birch cane she’d found nestling beside the manacles in the adult play chest in the bath house. ‘Tell that to the families of those poor unfortunates ferried across the Styx before their time.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ But his leathery face bore none of the purple bluff of indignation. His complexion had drained to ghostly white.

‘Then allow me to assist your lapse of memory.’ With a whine, the switch cut through the air. ‘There was a silversmith, I believe.’

Kamar yelped when the cane made contact with his calf.

‘A woman who kept cats. Ooh, did that hurt? The middle-aged bride who died on her honeymoon. Gosh, that one made your eyes water, didn’t it? Where was I? Oh, yes, the woman whose heart gave out in the mud room-’

‘Y-you’re mad!’ His tortoise eyes bulging from their sockets, Kamar slithered backwards across the floor.

Madder than a rabid wolf sucking on a red-hot cinder, you haven’t seen the half of it. ‘And let’s not forget that poor orphan boy.’ For him, Claudia brought the cane down hard across the physician’s cheek, knowing it would leave a permanent scar.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ he wailed. ‘You’re not suggesting…? Not seriously…? Oh, come on!’

Claudia paused by his instrument rack and selected a bronze probe, fine and flexible. ‘This should flex nicely up your left nostril,’ she said cheerfully.

‘All right, all right.’ There was a rising note of panic in his voice. ‘From time to time, I may have…eased…a patient out of their distress. I believe I do recollect the silversmith, now you come to mention it-’

‘And the woman who kept cats?’

‘She was ill,’ Kamar bleated, ‘very ill.’ He flinched back from the bronze probe, jarring the leg of a table and sending clouds of white powder into the air. ‘I was only easing her passage-’

Pastilles from a limewood box cascaded on to the floor. ‘The same way you helped Cal?’

The Etruscan’s tongue darted round his lips. ‘I didn’t kill Calvus!’ His voice was shrill in protest and Claudia knew she had him on the run. In fact, one quick flex of the bronze probe was sufficient. ‘All right, all right-I admit, I knew the body had been placed to make it look like an accident, but…’ His eyelids were beating faster than a bumblebee’s wings. ‘I–I-don’t know why I covered it up. I just panicked. Then when everything went quiet…’ His voice trailed off and he offered up a look of utter helplessness.

Claudia waited. And the silence was more effective than either the probe or the cane.

Kamar groaned. ‘Look. Now and again, Pul tips me the wink about clients with terminal illnesses and for their sakes well, yes, I do occasionally help them out of their suffering.’

‘For which the relatives are no doubt very grateful.’

His voice turned to a whine. ‘Why shouldn’t they show their gratitude in tangible form? I’m only doing my duty…’

Goodness gracious, he genuinely expected her to swallow that, too? Heavens, if this man was any dimmer, he’d need watering three times a week.

‘Wh-what are you doing?’

‘Trussing you up like a peahen for the table.’

When Claudia tied his ankles to the table leg with a sturdy linen bandage, his circulatory system was the last thing on her mind. She didn’t even hear him wince. Behind her, his balsam resin spluttered in the brazier and on the shelf above his balances an array of tins and flasks and copper vessels glinted in the lamplight.

‘Now, Kamar, you have a choice. Either I holler and bring Pylades running with a whole host of witnesses to hear what you’ve just told me, or you can whisper in my dainty shell-like ear where I can find him and we can negotiate your departure from Atlantis with some degree of dignity.’

‘Who’s “him”?’ Kamar blinked slowly several times.

Still playing games, eh? Claudia leaned forward and placed the tip of her nose to the tip of his. ‘He sold you out, you know.’

‘Who did?’ A flicker of puzzlement danced across the turtle face. ‘Pul?’

‘I’m after the miller, not the donkey grinding the corn. Where is Tarraco holing up?’

‘How should I know where he is,’ he said testily. ‘He escaped from bloody jail, he could be any…’ His voice trailed off, and a strange expression came over his face. ‘Wait-’ It had to be fear. Yet he looked suspiciously smug. ‘You said Tarraco sold me out, right?’

Claudia nodded.

‘Then why do you need me to tell you where he is?’

Shit. ‘Because.’ Claudia straightened up and to buy time pretended to read the papyrus label gummed to a small horn container. Think, girl. Think! Make it plausible. ‘Because Orbilio-’ (yes!) ‘-believed his story that you were the mastermind behind the racket and he was the innocent dupe, and so he…let him out of jail. Now, of course, we know otherwise, and while Marcus is chasing his tail with the er, paperwork, I’ve been authorized to make a deal with you.’

Kamar’s low brows knitted together. ‘You wouldn’t be lying to me?’

‘Now why should I do a thing like that?’ She smiled. ‘You’ve seen me talking to Orbilio, you know he’s paid for the room. I’m his top undercover agent.’ Had she pushed it too far?

‘A deal, eh?’

‘You have my word.’

‘And you promise that, if I give you what you want, you’ll let me walk away? No repercussions?’

‘My solemn oath.’

‘Very well,’ Kamar said, with what could almost pass as a twinkle in his eye. ‘In that case, I’ll tell you exactly where you can find your Tarraco.’