Parthian Shot

8

‘Zariadres?’ I said.

‘That’s right.’

Oh, hell; we’d got our body after all, only it wasn’t the one I expected. ‘What happened?’

There was a lurch as the litter-bearers took the strain and we were off. At a cracking pace, too: Vitellius had obviously given the lads their instructions beforehand, and they were practically sprinting.

‘His throat was cut in his sleep. And before you ask, that’s about all I bloody well know myself at present, all right?’ Vitellius sounded distinctly unchuffed. ‘I wouldn’t even know that if we hadn’t had a meeting scheduled for this morning to which the bugger naturally failed to turn up and after a great deal of humming and hawing the others vouchsafed that he was dead. It took some little time subsequently to screw the extra information out of them that he hadn’t exactly keeled over from an apoplexy.’ He snorted. ‘Fucking Parthians! Wouldn’t give you the time of day if they were standing next to a bloody sundial!’

‘They know we’re coming?’

‘Sure. This is Rome, not Parthia, Isidorus insisted on it in the Emperor’s name, you’re the expert here and Phraates has given his gracious but reluctant agreement to co-operate. Not that we’ll be too welcome, I can tell you that now. Especially since one of the other three has to be the killer.’

‘What?’

‘We’re not fools, boy. The delegation’s not official, so there’s no Praetorian standing outside the front door, but they’re important foreign nationals all the same. Isidorus had men in plain clothes watching the house front, back and sides last night, and no one went out or in. Zariadres was killed by one of his colleagues.’

I was still digesting that particular gobbet of information when we arrived. The slave who opened the door and ushered us into the lobby was a different one from the last time, big and thick-set with straight black hair, yellowish skin and slanted eyes.

‘Lucius Vitellius and Marcus Valerius Corvinus,’ Vitellius said to him. ‘Your masters are expecting us.’

The guy stared at us like he was two tiles short of a roof.

‘Don’t waste your breath. He’s Hyrcanian; he doesn’t speak Greek.’ That was Osroes, striding in from the atrium, aquiline nose well to the fore and looking annoyed as hell. He snapped something guttural at the slave, who cringed back bowing into his cubby. ‘Come in, if you must.’

Yeah, well, not exactly a smiling welcome with open arms, but then Osroes hadn’t struck me as the cheerful, backslapping type last time we’d met, either, and now he had even less cause to blow the squeaker. I could see this visit turning out to be a real bundle of laughs.

‘Just a moment, pal,’ I said. I ignored the resulting glares — Osroes’s and Vitellius’s — and examined the inside of the door. In addition to the normal lock there was a hefty pair of bolts, top and bottom. Fair enough. A lock can be picked from the outside, given favourable circumstances — and I was keeping an open mind on that one — but there ain’t no arguing with two three-foot lengths of iron. If, naturally, they’d been shot at the time. ‘Where’s the other slave?’ I said. ‘The one who was on the door last night?’

Osroes shot me a look the full length of his nose. ‘He’s dead,’ he said. ‘On my instructions.’

Oh, shit. I could see that even Vitellius was taken aback. ‘You like to tell me why?’ I said carefully.

I thought he wasn’t going to answer, and for an uneasy moment or so I wouldn’t’ve given long odds against him spitting in my eye. Finally, he said:

‘I found him asleep and the door ajar.’

‘Uh-huh,’ I said neutrally. ‘And what time would this be?’

That got me a look that would’ve been appropriate for a mentally-disadvantaged prawn. ‘This morning, of course. When we discovered that Zariadres was dead. Do you think under ordinary circumstances I’d have had a valuable slave killed just because he’d left a door open?’

Maybe it was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but me, in this bastard’s case, I wouldn’t give odds. I glanced at Vitellius, eyebrow raised. He didn’t say anything — obviously this was my show and as far as he was concerned I could damn well sink or swim — but he made a slight negative movement of his head. So. Vitellius hadn’t known about the open front door either. I wondered what else he didn’t know. I turned back to Osroes.

‘You don’t think that killing the man before anyone had a chance to talk to him was a little premature?’ I said.

Osroes smiled briefly. ‘Oh, I talked to him first, Corvinus. Very urgently. And I assure you if he’d known anything about anything he would have told me. Especially towards the end.’

My skin crawled. ‘That so, now?’ I said. I was having a struggle to keep the dislike out of my voice. Again, sure, given the circumstances the master of a Roman slave would have an equal right to question the guy under torture, but even allowing for that the matter-of-fact tone made me feel sick to my stomach. ‘So what did he tell you?’

‘Only what I knew already. That he’d been asleep on duty.’

‘Soundly enough for someone to take the key from his belt, unlock a door and slip back two heavy bolts three feet away without waking him?’

‘Yes. As soundly as that.’

‘Was he deaf?’

‘No. Of course not.’

Our eyes met, and for a split second the barriers were down. We both knew what he was saying, and what the implications were. It was possible — given, like I say, favourable circumstances — that someone might’ve picked the lock or unlocked the door from the outside using a duplicate key, sure, but drugging the door-slave and slipping the bolts were another matter. Nothing had really changed: we were still looking at an inside job, even if we did now have the added question of why the door had been opened at all. And that was something, pace Vitellius, that Osroes wouldn’t admit to; certainly not to me, or to any Roman. After that split second, his expression settled into a careful blankness.

‘So why have the poor bugger killed if it wasn’t his fault?’ I said.

I thought for a moment he was going to damn me for my impudence. However, he only said: ‘Because he failed in his duty. That was reason enough. Now if you’re quite finished…’

‘Who leads the delegation, by the way, now that Zariadres is dead?’

He’d been on the point of turning, assuming the conversation was over, and I thought the question might catch him off-guard. In the event, he didn’t so much as blink, but he took his time answering, and when he did his tone was cold as a Riphaean winter. ‘In practical terms,’ he said, ‘as the next in seniority I do. Does that answer your question?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, thanks.’

‘You’re welcome. Prince Phraates was very insistent that you should be satisfied. You must ask what you like. This way, please.’

He led us into the atrium. Satisfied. Interesting choice of word. I wasn’t too sure about the way he’d said the prince’s name, either. Maybe it was my imagination, but I had the distinct impression that he didn’t think all that much of Phraates. Not that that meant a lot, mind: I doubted if this sour-natured bastard thought much of anyone besides himself.

The other two delegates were lying on couches. Callion was wearing a short-sleeved Greek lounging tunic that showed off his muscles, and he was giving me a stare that was definitely unfriendly. Peucestas — the only one of the three I hadn’t met — had on what was probably the Parthian equivalent of Callion’s tunic, a soft woollen affair sleeved to the wrist over baggy cotton trousers. The close-up view confirmed what I’d seen at the party: he must’ve been a very powerful man in his day, and he still looked more solid muscle than fat. A soldier; maybe a wrestler or some sort of athlete, although whatever games he’d be good at would be ones where heaviness and strength counted more than speed and agility. His dark, almost black eyes rested on me expressionlessly.

‘Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen.’ Osroes waved us to two more couches and pulled up a cushioned chair for himself. Slaves came forward silently and set cups of wine and plates of fruit on the tables beside us. ‘Now.’

I glanced at Vitellius, but he was already digging into the fruit, oblivious. Quite deliberately so, too; the more I saw of Lucius Vitellius the more I appreciated that he was a much sharper cookie than I’d originally taken him for. Yeah, well; this was my job, after all, and from the way they were ignoring him and concentrating on me all of them clearly knew it, whether I had any official standing or not.

‘Maybe you can just start by telling me what happened,’ I said. ‘Who found the body?’

‘I did,’ Peucestas said. It was the first time I’d heard him speak. His voice was soft and controlled, a light tenor, not the squeaky treble I’d expected. ‘The door was open. Zariadres was lying in bed with his throat cut. When I saw that he was dead I roused the others.’

Callion glanced sharply at him, and a message passed that I couldn’t read. Interesting. ‘What time was this?’ I said.

‘About an hour after dawn. The time I usually wake.’

Right. Well, all that was pretty straightforward. ‘Where’s the body now, by the way?’ I said.

Osroes’s lips pursed. ‘We arranged for it to be preserved in honey. For eventual shipment back to Parthia.’

‘He’s not being cremated? That’d be easier, surely?’

I knew I’d made a mistake as soon as the words were out of my mouth, although what it was I didn’t know. Osroes positively hissed, Peucestas looked scandalised, and Callion — for the first time — grinned widely. Vitellius was glaring at me from behind a bunch of grapes.

Bugger, I thought. Here we go again. ‘Uh,’ I said quickly, ‘that is, -’

Vitellius trod on my foot, hard, and I shut up like a clam. Then he said smoothly: ‘Forgive my colleague, gentlemen. His knowledge of Parthian custom is very limited. If you’ll excuse me a moment, please?’ He turned and whispered in rapid Latin: ‘Listen, you prat! To a Zoroastrian — and two out of the three of them are just that — fire’s the most sacred bloody thing there is! Burying a corpse is bad enough, but suggesting that they should burn it is like suggesting they should share the bugger out for breakfast! Now shape up, you stupid bastard!’

‘So what do they do with the corpses?’

‘They lay them out for the vultures and collect what’s left after the fucking birds have finished. What else would they do?’

I felt faintly sick. Oh, shit; the east-west divide had never seemed so broad. I took a slug of the wine the servants had left and we hadn’t touched, then turned back to Osroes. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s start again. I’m sorry if I caused any offence. I really didn’t know.’

Peucestas nodded stiffly, but Osroes was still giving me a look like I’d pissed on his lunch. Callion glanced at him, and his grin widened. Yeah, right; he was a Greek, and so normal. Well, at least I’d broken the ice there.

‘Of course you didn’t know, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘Unless you were being intentionally crass, that is. Nevertheless, if I were as ignorant about Parthian customs as you seem to be I’d be seriously wondering what I was doing in the diplomatic service.’ Grin or not, there was that questioning look in his eye I’d noticed when we’d first met. I had the feeling that Callion couldn’t quite place me, and it was worrying him.

‘Hear bloody hear!’ Vitellius murmured, in Latin.

‘I, uh, assume no one heard or saw anything?’ I said quickly. ‘Where the actual murder was concerned, that is?’

‘Zariadres’s room was down a corridor of its own to the left at the top of the stairs,’ Osroes said. ‘Our rooms are all to the right, well to the other side.’

‘What about the slaves?’

‘They sleep in the kitchen, or in the attics.’

‘And there was no one else in the house?’

Osroes was still looking at me like he had a month-old fish under his nose, and it was Callion who answered.

‘No one,’ he said.

‘Perhaps you’d like to see over the house yourself now, Valerius Corvinus,’ Osroes said. ‘I’d be very happy to show you.’

That I didn’t believe for one minute, but at least he’d made the offer and saved me the embarrassment of asking. I got up. ‘Vitellius? You coming?’

‘I’ll stay here,’ he grunted. ‘I’ve got things to discuss.’ Then he added, in fast Latin: ‘You just remember, boy: we’re here on sufferance. So no more screw-ups, right?’

‘Right,’ I said. Yeah, well, I’d sort of taken that on board already, especially where Osroes was concerned. Sufferance was a good word. I nodded briefly. Callion was still grinning. I wondered if he’d understood. He was smart enough, certainly.

Osroes rose to his feet. ‘This way, then.’

We went through the passage at the back of the atrium into the small hallway beyond. One of the doors leading off it, I knew because I’d been through it myself, was the dining room. There was a staircase straight ahead and a corridor on the right next to the dining room itself.

‘This part of the house we don’t use,’ Osroes said briefly. ‘A smaller reception room, a study, some general rooms. You can see them if you like.’

I opened the doors one by one and looked inside. The rooms had that too-neat, empty, stale feel to them that all unused rooms have. ‘Where does the corridor lead?’ I said.

‘To the kitchen and the side door.’

I went down it. There was a line of store cupboards, mostly empty, along the right-hand wall, and then on the left — past where the dining room would be — the entrance to the kitchen. I glanced inside. A guy was shovelling out the ash from the top of the cooker, chatting in a language I didn’t know to another man who was peeling onions. They looked up, saw me and Osroes beside me and were suddenly very quiet and very busy. Osroes ignored them.

The side door was beyond. It had two massive bolts, which were firmly shot and locked into their guards. Yeah, well; no mileage there. Still, for the sake of completeness I pulled them and looked outside. The door opened onto the garden; not the pretty-pretty part, that was on the south side of the house where it’d get the most sun. This bit was purely functional: herbs and salad stuff and dug-over ground. There was a high, blank wall beyond.

‘This part of the property is none of our concern either.’ Osroes was looking over my shoulder with his month-old-fish-under-the-nose expression on. ‘I’m afraid our cook has a very poor opinion — fully justified, I’d say — of the quality of your Roman vegetables and salad leaves. If you’ve quite finished we’ll go upstairs.’

Supercilious bastard. I closed the door and re-bolted it.

At the top of the staircase he turned left. There were three doors along this stretch of corridor, one on the right, two on the left.

He opened the door on the right and stepped back to let me past without a word.

Parthian decor obviously extended to the bedrooms: the place was kitted out like a five-star cat-house. The only discordant note was the bed itself and the floor area immediately beside it. The bed had been stripped and the side-mats were missing. No prizes for guessing why: if Zariadres’s throat had been slit there would’ve been a lot of blood splashed around.

The room opened out onto a balcony overlooking the city. I went over and checked it out. Scrub that idea, then: anyone trying to get in this way, from any direction including above, would’ve had to have had monkeys in his ancestry.

‘Nice view,’ I said.

‘It’s the only bedroom on this side which has one.’ Osroes was still standing by the door. ‘That’s why we don’t use the other two.’

‘Did you see the body yourself?’

Oops: mistake. The guy’s nostrils flared, and he took his time answering. Finally, he said: ‘No, I did not. Not, I may say, from any squeamishness on my part. Magians are forbidden even to look at a corpse. I understand your High Priest of Jupiter is subject to the same restriction.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.’ Fair enough. Add it to the collection. Well, there wasn’t much to be seen here, especially since the room had been cleaned within an inch of its life. ‘Let’s go back down, shall we?’

‘Certainly. You won’t, I hope, want to look inside our private rooms?’

‘No, that’s okay,’ I said. Then, as diffidently as I could: ‘Who has which, by the way?’

‘I’ll show you the corridor.’ We went back to the landing. ‘All of them are on the left along the outside of the house overlooking the city. Callion’s is the first, then mine and finally Peucestas’s.’

I glanced along the passage. Sure enough, there were three doors, plus another two — presumably more unused bedrooms — on the right, with a blank wall beyond. ‘And no one heard any movement during the night? No creaking floorboards?’

‘You asked that before.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I did.’ I turned round just to check that from where I was standing, at the junction of the second corridor and the top of the stairs, I could see the door of Zariadres’s room. I could, just. Then I stepped aside and let Osroes lead the way back downstairs.

Vitellius was talking when we came back into the atrium, but when he saw me he clammed up. The other two stared at me expressionlessly. I walked over to the couch I’d had before and lay down.

‘So,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘Why what?’ That was Callion.

‘Why was he killed?’

‘Who can say?’ Osroes raised his shoulders. ‘If we were in Parthia the answer would be easy: traitors die, and Artabanus would not hesitate to kill someone he viewed as a traitor, as he would view any of us. Also, no doubt there he would have his private enemies. But here in Rome? Who is there in Rome, apart from us?’

Three pairs of eyes — Vitellius’s included — locked on to him, and the room was suddenly very quiet. I’d lay good money that that was the first time the thought had been put into words, although the suspect short-list must’ve been obvious to all of them from the outset. It was interesting that Osroes had brought it up. He’d done it deliberately, that was for sure, and I wondered why.

‘I had no reason, personally, to kill Zariadres,’ Peucestas said softly. ‘I swear it.’

‘Nor did I.’ Callion sipped his wine.

‘And I didn’t kill him either. I didn’t like the man, I admit it, but I did not kill him.’ Osroes smiled; on that face it was like a razor drawn across where his mouth should be. ‘There, Corvinus, that’s done. You have three sworn denials. Of course, one of us may be given over to the Dark Lord, in which case a lie would come easily to him. Still, there is your question of why to answer.’ He paused, and then added carefully: ‘Plus the question of the door and the drugged porter.’

‘The obvious explanation for that is that someone killed Zariadres and then slipped out,’ I said.

‘No,’ Callion said, quietly but firmly. ‘I told you, Corvinus, and I’ll swear to it. There was no one in the house last night who shouldn’t have been here and who was unaccounted for when Peucestas found Zariadres this morning.’

‘To your knowledge.’

‘To my certain knowledge.’ He smiled. ‘I’m afraid that you will have to think again.’

‘So why the drugged door-slave and the open door?’

No one answered. Suddenly, I felt angry; so angry that for two pins I’d’ve chucked the whole boiling, gone straight round to Isidorus’s and told him in words of one syllable just what he could do with himself…

Just for a moment. It was a close thing, though.

I gritted my teeth, unclenched my fists and tried to keep my voice a notch this side of civil. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So tell me. Who drugged the porter and unbolted the door, and why?’ No response. Well, I hadn’t really expected one, although that’s not to say I didn’t believe that at least one of the slippery bastards could’ve provided it; in fact, the belief was practically a certainty. I stood up.

‘Thank you for your time, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘And your help.’ And fuck you all, all three of you.

We left.