The Accusers

XXXIX

THE ADJOURNMENT provided a respite and an opportunity. Honorius went off by himself, looking exhausted. Flushed with his success at tracking down the hemlock-salesman, Aelianus volunteered to seek out Olympia, supposedly consulted by Calpurnia as a fortune-teller. Honorius had previously been looking for this crone, or so he said, but with no results.

`Where will you start, Aulus?

I have my methods!'

I knew he had only one method, to which he stuck with a rigidity I would need to shatter. But it served here. Any highborn ladies would know how to reach this star-gazer. Once again, Aelianus was going home for lunch. There, he would ask his mother.

The principled Julia Justa would never have handed over any of her tight household budget to a fashionable seer, but she might possess acquaintances who did. I could imagine my dear mother-in-law reproving them for their daftness in her silky, sarcastic way. Even if she had been extremely rude in the past, that would not stop her now. I don't suppose her cronies would admit to being scared of the noble Julia, but she would get an address for her boy.

I was glad to have back-up from Aelianus. With Justinus away and Honorius resting (or whatever he was up to), we needed to deploy our resources well. I myself had to tackle someone else: I grabbed sustenance, then headed off to stick my mark on Licinius Lutea.

The one-time near-bankrupt lived in an apartment not far from that in which he had established Saffia. He managed to rent half a house, divided up tastefully in what had once been a rich man's mansion. Lutea had the part above the sausage shop, the least desirable to discerning tenants – though it must be handy for a divorcee who owned no slaves. I guessed he lived on hot pies from the bakery and cold pork sausage – when he was not cadging dinners from old friends who could not shake him off.

I found him in a reading room, stretched on a couch. There was not much else in the elegant space, just a couple of lamps. I call it a reading room because there was one silver scroll box; I wondered if it had been a gift from the grateful Saffia – and instinctively, I reckoned it was empty. The whole apartment was extremely bare, its decor standardised by a landlord – though one who had used expensive designers for the black and vermilion paintwork.

`Isn't this place a bit above your price?' I asked Lutea frankly. `I heard you had no credit.'

Lutea gave me a sharp look. Rallying from his listlessness, he admitted in a douche way, `Yes, it is. I survive, though.'

`They call you an entrepreneur. It usually means a confidence trickster, in the world I come from.'

`Then you inhabit a tragic world, Falco.'

`It's improving. How about yours?'

`One lives in hope.' He pretended to be too subdued to argue, though I wasn't fooled.

Lutea kept acting out low in spirits. Underneath, he remained the brazen, well-manicured type with a flash tunic and no conscience. I was glad I had not brought Helena. Her open disapproval would not win his confidence. I myself would feel dirty afterwards if I played the sympathetic playboy with him, but that was nothing to me. You can scrub off the taint of lousy immorality like his.

I had noticed there was no sign nor sound of a child in the house. I asked after his son.

`Lucius is being looked after. Poor little terror. It's very hard on him – well, it's hard on both of us. Oh we shall both miss darling Saffia!' That might be so, but they would miss her in different ways.

`You seemed remarkably attentive to your ex-wife. Was the split from her a subject for regret?'

`I was heartbroken. Her damned father…' Lutea tailed off sadly. `I had hoped when she left old Birdy, I might bring Donatus round again. No chance of that now…' Every time he wafted off into misery I felt it was staged. `Saffia and I were a wonderful team, Falco. Nobody to touch us. It can be like that, you know.'

`I know.'

He shook his finger at me. `I see it! You have a wife and you love the girl.'

`She's very sharp,' I said quietly. That was true; Lutea was a lifelong fraud, but Helena had seen through him. Clearly he had no recollection that he had met her with me last night. He had blotted out the cold assessment with which her eyes had raked him. `She runs the home – and she runs me.'

`Excellent!' Lutea beamed at me. `That's how it should be. I am pleased for you.'

I was leaning on a wall, since Lutea was still lying on his couch and there were no other seats. I enjoyed myself, smiling slightly, as I thought of how Helena viewed him. Here he was, a man in his early thirties. He lived in a luxury he did not need, on promises he would never fulfil. What had he been doing before I arrived? Dreaming up schemes. Dreaming so hard that the fragile lies from which he built his life became his reality.

`Helena was anxious about your boy,' I said. `Maybe I can see him, to reassure her?'

`No, no,' Lutea murmured. `Lucius is not here. He went to his old nurse.

`Someone he knows,' I said, without judgement.

`Someone familiar,' Lutea agreed, as if this excuse had just struck him.

Different men react in different ways. If my children lost their mother, I would be inconsolable. And I would never let the children from my sight.

`This is good of you,' Lutea said, fooling himself as he tried to fool others. `Taking the trouble to bring your condolences. I appreciate that.'

I straightened up. `I'm afraid there is more to it.'

Lutea smiled at me, allowing himself to sink into a grief-stricken half-trance. `Nothing too terrible, I'm sure.'

`Oh no.' I walked over to him. I slung his feet off the couch and sat down with him. I shook my head like a concerned old uncle. If he stiffened up, he hid it. `Just this. It is being said that your sweet little Saffia blackmailed the Metelli. And I think that you were in the project with her. Any comment?'

Now sitting upright, the ex-husband let a bemused expression fill his features. Maybe he had been accused of bad practice before; the display was good. `That is a terrible thing for anyone to say about poor Saffia! Now she is dead and cannot defend herself against such accusations. I don't believe it – and I know nothing about any of it.'

`She knew their secret. Did she tell you?'

`What secret?' Lutea gasped as if the whole idea astonished him. `Oh come on! The secret that made you two decide to move in close to them. So close, Saffia actually left you and married herself to Birdy. Divorcing you was a sham. Poor Birdy knows it now. I wonder how long it took him to realise.'

`I have no notion what you are talking about, Falco.'

`Well that's a shame. Call yourself a friend of Birdy's? Don't you know that your very best friend is being made somebody's pat-ball? And don't you see why the evidence is pointing straight at you?'

Lutea shook his head in wonderment. A faint whiff of fine oil came my way. As with all the best confidence tricksters, his personal grooming was immaculate. If this scam failed, he would be able to build an extensive career preying on the rich widows of exotic commodity traders. He would like that. He could plunder their attics of stored commodities, not just empty their bankboxes. The widows would get plenty out of it – while his attentions lasted. I saw them playing dice with him, their be-ringed fingers flashing in the light of many lamp stands, while they congratulated themselves on their cultured catch. Better to paw a spiny sea urchin, in fact, yet there would never be unpleasantness. Lutea would leave them flat broke; even so, they would remember him with few hard feelings. He was good-looking and would play the innocent. Not wanting to believe he had deceived them, his victims would never be quite sure it really was darling Lutea who had robbed them.

I knew how it worked. I had dreamed of doing it, in the hard, lost days before I was rescued by improvements in my fate. But I recognised bad dreams for what they were. As an entrepreneur that was my tragedy. But it was my salvation as a man.

I stayed another hour. Lutea feigned shock, disgust, outrage, reproof, anger and near-hysteria. When he threatened litigation if I libelled him, I laughed at him and left.

He had confessed nothing. Still, I became certain that he and Saffia really had conspired together in a complex scheme – and one which might still be operational. Lutea denied it – but Lutea was undoubtedly lying through his teeth.