Requiem for a Slave

Seventeen

I turned Radixrapum gently over, but I knew what I would find. The same cruel biting mark of rope around the neck, the bruise where the ligature had been savagely pulled tight, the same protruding tongue and purpled face. But where Lucius had still been pliant and, if not actually warm, at least no more than cool, my poor turnip-selling friend was as cold and rigid as a stone image of himself. Already, over the scent of sweat and turnips, the distinctive sick-sweet smell of death was beginning to appear. He had been dead for hours — if I had not seen him myself the previous afternoon, I might have wondered if he’d been killed with Lucius.

There were other signs as well that this was not a recent death. Blood was already pooling in his arms and thighs, as I could see where his tunic had ridden up them to reveal the flesh. I am no medicus, but I know that this occurs when the body has been lying in one place for several hours. But not this place, necessarily, I thought.

I looked again. There was evidence of abrasion all across the skin, from his ankles to his armpits, as I soon ascertained, and on both front and back, though worse across his chest and around the tattered modesty binding that he wore round his loins. There was no doubt that the scuffing had happened after death. And the toes of the sandals had scraped fresh tracks on the floor, right across the area where the Apollo piece had been. Like the pie-seller, this man had been killed elsewhere and dragged in here afterwards.

I let him roll back on to his front again, so that I was not obliged to look at his distended face, and stepped back abruptly. I was upset and furious. The death of Lucius had been a shock, but somehow this one upset me even more. I had not known the turnip-man very long or very well, but he had proved himself to be intelligent, and when I was in trouble, he’d set out to help: that was almost a definition of a friend.

‘Citizen!’ The agitated exclamation brought me to myself. The tanner was tugging at my toga in dismay. ‘This man did not just die. Somebody killed him! Strangled, I would say. Look at that red mark around his neck.’

I had forgotten that he did not know the details of the earlier death. I nodded wearily.

‘Robbed him of his purse too, by the look of it,’ the tanner pointed out. ‘It has been chopped through at the cord where it was hanging at his belt.’

I hadn’t noticed that, but it was significant. If Radixrapum had been killed and robbed last night, then Minimus was already locked up in a cell and could not have taken any part in it. I looked at the severed loop that the tanner was pointing at. ‘You are right, of course.’

The tanner was delighted by his own cleverness. ‘So, pavement-maker, you are not the only one to notice things, you see,’ he said with glee. ‘Though you have a reputation for solving mysteries.’ Then he saw my face and asked more soberly, ‘But I see this person was a friend. Do you know who did this?’

I shook my head. ‘I only wish I-’ I was interrupted by a noise outside. Almost without thinking, I picked up a heavy hammer from the table-top, ready, if necessary, to defend myself. ‘Who is it?’ I said loudly. ‘Come in and show yourself.’

There was a moment’s silence and then the door was pushed ajar — and there was Junio, my adopted son. I dropped my makeshift club.

‘What is the matter, Father?’ Junio began. ‘You sounded quite alarmed. Were you expecting trouble? It is only me. Maximus is following. We have found the boy who. .’ He caught sight of the body. ‘Dear Jove! Another one?’ He came over and peered more closely at the corpse. ‘And the same killer, by the look of it. The method seems to be exactly what you had described from yesterday.’

The tanner looked from my adopted son to me with an expression of astonishment. ‘You mean the pie-seller was murdered too?’

It was no good blaming Junio — he didn’t know my neighbour as I did — but I felt my heart sink to my sandal-straps. It would be extremely difficult to hush the tanner now — this story would be all over Glevum by tonight. Any chance of quietly locating Minimus and solving this before my patron came would almost certainly have disappeared — along with most of my likely customers.

Junio looked apologetic, but it was too late. The tanner was already saying in his cracked and mumbling voice, ‘And you kept the knowledge from me?’ He was obviously aggrieved.

This was going from bad to worse. He would spread rumours that I knew more about these murders than I wanted to reveal. I could imagine what my fellow citizens would make of that.

There was no help for it. I seized him by the arm. ‘Of course I kept it from you.’ I almost hissed the words. ‘Be thankful that I did. It was obviously safer for you if you didn’t know. Look at the turnip-vendor. He knew that Lucius was murdered yesterday, and now see what’s become of him. Would you want to end like that? Can’t you see that we are dealing with a ruthless killer here?’

The tanner had turned pale, even under the dark colour of his trade. ‘You mean he only died because he saw the other corpse? I knew that he was round here yesterday, but I didn’t realize. .’ He tailed off. The morbid, gleeful interest was gone, and he was staring at Radixrapum now, his boss-eyes glazed with fear. ‘You think that he was killed so that he couldn’t talk?’

I shrugged. ‘What other explanation can there be? He knew about the other body and what was done to it. That’s the only connection I can see between the two.’ In fact, I realized, this was no more than the truth, and it was disturbing. It did seem that Radixrapum’s death had been to silence him. And warn me to silence too. Why else choose my workshop as the place to leave the corpse? Or was there some other connection that I couldn’t see?

‘I suppose it’s possible the two of them were friends,’ Junio ventured in a doubtful voice. As usual, he had been following my thoughts.

I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe so, from what Radixrapum said to me. He only knew Lucius distantly by sight — and that would accord with his reaction when he saw the corpse: shocked and appalled, but not personally upset. In fact, his chief response was curiosity, I think.’

‘And now he’s died for it,’ the tanner said, obviously beginning to apply this to himself.

I nodded grimly. ‘It rather looks that way. Which means that all of us may be in danger too.’ I was increasingly aware that this was very likely true. ‘You, for instance, tanner. The fewer people who know that you’ve been here, the better for us all.’

The tanner stared at Radixrapum. It was not a happy sight. ‘You’ll have to tell somebody about the corpse,’ he said. ‘You can’t just leave it here. Has he got family who’d come and bury him?’

I realized that I did not have the least idea, or any real notion where Radixrapum lived beyond the fact that it was out of town. But it was likely that he had a wife and family, and possibly a plot of land where they could bury him — in that respect at least, he was distinct from Lucius.

‘I’ll report this to the garrison,’ I said. ‘They’ll have to sort it out. Radixrapum was a farmer so he probably paid tax. If so, the authorities will have a note of it. If not, no doubt they’ll send the army cart to move the corpse again.’ Thank heaven I had spent today in front of witnesses, I thought, and had a driver who could swear he drove me home the night before. I might have found it difficult to explain the presence of a second dead body in my workshop otherwise.

The tanner had another unhappy problem on his mind. ‘Burial or carnal pit, it makes no difference. In either case, the killer will know that you were here.’

I looked at him, surprised. ‘He’d know that anyway.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Junio put in. ‘If he was a comparative stranger to the town, he might have thought that no one was using the workshop currently — when Lucius was killed, it was mid-afternoon and there was nobody in sight. Though he knows by now the shop is occupied, since the first body has been moved away.’

I was about to point out that he knew that anyway, because there had been work in progress on the floor, but I remembered the tanner’s wagging tongue and held my peace.

‘That’s right,’ the tanner said, referring to what Junio had said. ‘You go to the army and you make it clear you’ve seen the corpse. If you are right about his motive for strangling this man, then you. .’

‘Must be in danger too.’ I was ahead of him. ‘Exactly so. He must expect that I would come back to this room again — if only to arrange a ritual cleansing of the place — but he need not know that I had company. So, tanner, be careful that you don’t reveal the fact. If you value your own safety, and your family’s, it is essential that the killer doesn’t know that you were here.’

My warning was hardly needed, it appeared. The tanner gulped. ‘You can rely on me. I shan’t say a word to anyone at all. Not even to my wife. In fact, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to her.’ He made as if to move towards the outer shop and street, but as he reached the entrance he stopped and turned to me. ‘Though I shall have to think of something to tell Glypto, I suppose. Do you think that this strangling’ — he gestured to the corpse — ‘was what he heard last night? There was likely to have been a struggle, don’t you think?’

I shot a warning glance at Junio, who seemed about to speak. ‘I’d like to talk to Glypto, as I said before,’ I answered. ‘He may yet know something that may be of help. If you could send him to me, I will deal with him — or, better still, allow him to go out to the midden-pile a little later on and I’ll keep a watch for him and try to meet him there.’ I didn’t mention that Glypto was expecting that.

The tanner sighed. ‘Safer than having him come into your shop and see the corpse and put himself in danger as a consequence? That is sensible. I suppose the killer must be watching quite nearby, or he would not know that the turnip-man was here. Oh, great Jupiter!’ His cracked voice was getting higher and higher in distress. ‘In that case, he’ll see me leaving, as sure as Greeks are Greek. There’s no back entrance to your workshop as there is in mine. Oh dear Mars, I wish I’d never come.’

I glanced at Junio. This was an outcome I had not foreseen. I had hoped that the tanner would make haste to leave, but, instead, it seemed I’d frightened him too much to go at all. ‘I’m sure the killer isn’t watching now,’ I said. ‘I was sitting for a long time on my own outside the shop, and there was absolutely nobody suspicious in the street. I would have noticed it.’

The tanner looked a little mutinous. ‘He must have watched the place. How else did he know about your turnip-selling friend?’

‘Supposing you are right, and he’s a stranger to the town. He kills and robs poor Lucius and leaves him in my shop. He may have come back later on — perhaps to move the corpse — and seen the turnip-man outside the door (which is where I left him when I came to you).’

Junio nodded. ‘He may even have supposed that this was the shopkeeper and decided that for safety he must be murdered too. Presumably he followed Radixrapum when he left and chose a quiet moment where he could strangle him.’

‘It is even possible the turnip-man led him straight back here. I owed him money so he may have returned, and that would have strengthened the impression even more that this was the owner of the premises,’ I went on. ‘So, we assume, the killer strangles him and leaves him in the shop, presumably believing that he is safe by now. He surely wouldn’t want to linger near the scene in case he drew unwelcome attention to himself.’

The tanner was not comforted at all. ‘I suppose all this is plausible. But it is only supposition. If you’re wrong, I’m trapped.’

‘You could get out through the window space,’ Junio observed. ‘I think it’s wide enough, though you’re not very tall. Father and I would have to hoist you up and let you drop the other side. That would bring you into the alleyway that leads down to the pile. It is a little smelly, but it should be safe enough.’

To my astonishment, the tanner looked relieved and, far from rejecting the suggestion as absurd, began at once to think of ways in which it could be done. ‘If we brought the table over, I could stand on that. .’

It was a tight fit through the window space. The man was rather stout, but he was so determined that he managed in the end — at the cost of bloodying his elbows on the shutter-slots. It was not a very dignified descent — he landed in a tangle in a smelly pool — but he picked himself up quickly and, without a backward look, hurried down the alley that ran out to the lane.

Junio and I watched him scuttling away. It would have been comic in any other circumstances, but I was hardly in a smiling mood.

Junio was the first to leave the window space. He gestured to the corpse. ‘The tanner was correct about one thing anyway. You knew the murdered man and liked him very much. I see that in your face.’

I nodded. ‘This is the man I told you of, who helped me yesterday — which meant he saw too much. If he hadn’t done so, I’m sure he’d be alive.’

‘So you meant what you said earlier? You really believe this murder was just to silence him?’ Junio looked and sounded unconvinced.

‘What other explanation is there?’ I demanded. ‘He saw the other corpse. It is the only link.’

‘Apart from the fact that they both sold things in the street,’ Junio pointed out.

‘But it is hardly likely that there’s someone stalking round the town, strangling innocent street-vendors and dumping them on me. I rather think that whatever happened here, it must be something close to what I outlined to the tanner — although, as he rightly said, it is only speculation. I have no proof of it.’

Junio was looking at me with an odd expression on his face: a mixture of pity, concern and disbelief. ‘But of course there’s a connection. A much more likely link. Are you really going to tell me that you don’t see what it is?’

I turned away. ‘Well, there is the manner of their deaths, of course, but I can’t see what else. We don’t even know where Radixrapum was when he was killed, though I’m fairly sure that Lucius was on his way to see me yest-’ I broke off. ‘You mean that that’s the link? Coming to this workshop?’

He shook his head at me. ‘I think it’s more than that. Other people came here — Quintus did for one — and he seems to be all right. And so did Gwellia and the rest of us last night. And the tanner, come to that. What did the dead men see that we did not?’ He looked triumphant. ‘The Apollo piece!’

I had to acknowledge that he had a point, though it was hard to imagine what there was about the pavement that could pose a threat. I said so to Junio. ‘Besides,’ I added, ‘I’ve seen the pavement too, and so have several of Pedronius’s slaves, and up to now, at least, no harm has come to us.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ he acknowledged ruefully. ‘A lot of people saw the pattern too — including me — before the thing was laid. The finished product can’t be different and dangerous, unless you take Pedronius’s superstitious view and think it’s genuinely cursed.’

I laughed, but there was something niggling in the corner of my brain, some other connection that I could not place. It was disquieting. A little shudder ran down between my shoulder blades.

I was about to say as much to Junio when there was a sudden noise outside the shop, followed by a rapping on the outer door.