Wolf Whistle

XXIX

He’d needed a drink. They both had. Perhaps she more than he.

Claudia gulped greedily at the heavy vintage wine. Finding the body had been shock enough, but when she’d watched Marcus sag like a waterlogged sponge, it felt like her insides had been plaited up like rope and then hauled on. Now, long after the blood had been mopped up and the servants’ fears assuaged, long after the rich, red wine had hit him, Orbilio’s hands and voice were still shaking.

‘I’ve screwed up, Claudia.’ He spiked his fingers through his hair as he paced the tiny office. ‘But for me, that girl would still be alive.’

Claudia drew her wrap tight around her shoulders. In their haste to load up the body, the undertakers had trampled half the planting, obliterating the gagging stench of blood. Mint and oregano wafted into her office on a cool night breeze.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ she protested. ‘We don’t even know who she is.’

‘Her name is Severina,’ he said wearily. ‘She was murdered, because the killer must have seen her with Zygia and mistaken her for Annia. They look very similar.’ He paused in his pacing and looked straight at Claudia. ‘And, dammit, Claudia, I could have saved her.’

Go ahead, whip yourself. ‘How?’

‘A couple of hours ago. Maybe three. I was…passing.’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘I heard the whistle, and I ignored it.’

Claudia’s head jerked up. ‘Three short notes?’

‘You heard them, too?’

She shook her head. ‘I was at the theatre. The late show.’ So many spectaculars, they don’t all fit into daylight hours. ‘I know you questioned the household,’ she added. ‘Any luck?’

Dawn was starting to break, a faint opalescence over the Esquiline.

‘Some heard scuffling, others whistling, but their overriding feeling-’ Orbilio shot her a knowing look ‘-is that unusual happenings in this house are not exactly rare.’ She studied him. The bruises from the beating outside Weasel’s had turned to shades of green and yellow and with his pallor deathly white, he fair resembled a cadaver himself. Any other man would listen when told a hundred people whistle along that damned road every night, it’s a busy street she lived on, and brawls break out twice a week. But Orbilio was not Any Other Man. Claudia drew up her knees in a high-backed wooden chair and hugged them. Marcus would carry Severina on his conscience to his grave.

He had resumed pacing. ‘The choice of killing ground was quite deliberate,’ he said slowly. ‘Can you imagine the risk? Until today, this house was a warren of activity, yet you saw yourself the quiet spot he picked in the Argiletum.

No chance of disturbance. ‘These girls,’ he added quietly, ‘take a long, long time to die.’

Claudia heard pebbles rattling in a bucket and realized it was the chattering of her teeth. ‘So what are you saying? The killer has made the connection between Annia and my visit to Arbil?’

There was no need to look at him to know the answer. Somewhere a water clock dripped with infuriating regularity.

Marcus pulled up a chair and took her hands in his. ‘You’d better tell me everything that happened up there, Claudia-and I mean everything.’

Grim-faced he listened. By the end of her narrative, Claudia was sure she’d missed nothing out and she stretched awkwardly in her chair. The sky had passed the blush stage, the air was now alive with birdsong, and the scents of crushed mint and oregano grew stronger by the minute. There was nothing in the garden to suggest a young girl had existed, much less been butchered, and Claudia resolved to grow tall spikes of hollyhocks against that wall. Or maybe a hibiscus. Plus a statue of a nymph with flowing hair.

‘There has to be a connection,’ Marcus said. ‘There has to be. Except Arbil’s people wouldn’t cover up a heinous crime like that-’

‘Wrong.’ Claudia shook her head so firmly, a hairpin fell out. ‘They’re so fiercely loyal, closing ranks is second nature. Right from Day One they’re taught that, but for Arbil, they’d be dead.’

‘Does wonders for one’s self-esteem.’ Orbilio leaned down and picked up the hairpin. ‘Brainwashing on that scale.’

‘You have to be there to understand.’ Claudia puffed out her cheeks. ‘The whole complex is so claustrophobic in its foreignness, that even when the children leave, it’s Rome which feels alien to them. Arbil’s slave farm represents security, and they look back on their childhood with fondness and affection. Is this getting us anywhere?’

Orbilio rolled the pin round and round between his fingers. ‘We’ve got five major suspects, suppose we run through the list, starting with Tryphon?’

‘I’m pretty sure that if the Captain wanted to kill someone, he’d stick them like a pig, not slice them slowly to ribbons.’ That man was a born soldier.

‘All right, then. Dino. He slopes off when he visits Rome, according to your gossip.’

Claudia smiled a slanting smile. ‘Dinocrates appears to live the high life, but peer closer, my friend, and you’ll see it’s the same few shirts he wears, the same old boots, and he never touches the women they go out with.’ She paused for impact. ‘He saves it all to support his wife and tiny son.’

‘So-o?’

‘The woman is a Persian-and you don’t need too powerful an imagination to picture Arbil’s vengeance, were he to discover the man he raised as a son has not only committed himself in marriage to one of Babylon’s sworn enemies, he’s fathered a child to boot. The Persians, remember, did a Trojan Horse on Babylon by sneaking up the Euphrates to capture the city and wounds like that never heal. Arbil’s barbaric bronze laws would have Dino flayed alive as a traitor.’

Marcus tossed the pin up in the air and caught it. ‘Any time you want a job in the Security Police, Mistress Seferius, I’ll resign to make way for you.’ He jabbed the pin into a cushion. ‘Arbil, then. What do you make of those trips to Rome, the blackouts?’

Claudia swivelled sideways in her chair and swung her knees over an armrest carved in the shape of a sphinx. ‘What trips to Rome?’ she said, folding her hands behind her head. ‘On whose word do these phantom journeys hinge? Who, exactly, verifies their authenticity? Arbil is many things. He’s shrewd and ruthless and obsessed with himself, he’s organized and religious and partial to date liqueur. Have you ever tasted date liqueur, by the way?’ Marcus shook his head, more in bewilderment than the negative.

‘Well, don’t. That’s my advice. It’s thick and strong and peels layers off your tongue, but boy, can you slip things in it without the imbiber being any the wiser.’

He stiffened and leaned forward. ‘Such as?’

‘Conjuring tricks rely on distracting the eye and creating illusions. One sees what one is led to see, believes what has been fed you. In Arbil’s case, it was the floppy, pouchy skin. Are you with me so far?’

‘Not even close. What you describe are classic products of a dissolute lifestyle, and that ties in with Arbil.’

‘On whose say-so?’ The truth had come to her when she awoke in Arbil’s guest room. ‘A few dirty pictures, a leggy young wife, a tipple of liquor of dates. Does that smack of degeneracy? Or a normal middle-aged man with a healthy sex drive and a regular bowel? Suppose, instead,’ she flashed a grin, ‘Arbil’s skin sags from an administered substance?’

Orbilio’s mouth moved up at one corner. ‘Such as?’

‘In the Indus Valley the oleander shrub is known as “the horse killer” because it’s so potent. Did I ever mention Angel-’

‘-is Indian? Once or twice.’

‘Then we have our old friend, thorn apple,’ she smiled. No wonder the girl looked so shaken when Claudia burst into her bedroom and saw those white, trumpet-shaped flowers! ‘Depending on the strength, it can make a man excitable, act out of character-making amorous lunges at his house guest, for example. A stronger dosage, he’ll start having delusions, hallucinations-and I can only guess at the cocktail which brought on the blackouts. All it needs is a tinksy bit of help, and one can get away with…murder.’

Orbilio leaned back, crossed his legs and for the first time in hours, began to relax. ‘Naturally, you have no idea who Angel’s helpmate might be?’

‘Funny you should ask.’ Claudia kicked off her sandals. ‘There’s a young groom name of Lugal-he’s the one who’s supposed to drive his master to Rome, yet no one else has ever seen them leave, and you know, it’s a strange thing about Lugal. The lad never takes his eyes off the master’s pretty wife.’

Well, I’ve warned her. It’s up to Angel now, and if they have one ounce of common sense, those two, they’ll be half way to the Adriatic by now, and not stopping to look over their shoulder. When Claudia upended that jug of date liqueur over Arbil, she had unwittingly set his detox in motion. First he’ll attribute his clear thinking to having exorcised Lamashtu, the demon, but Arbil’s a clever man. It won’t be long before he sees his wife’s hand in his behavioural changes and blackouts-and when that happens, Lugal and Angel will be tied face to face and thrown in the river to drown. You don’t mess with us Babylonians.

‘That’s three of our five suspects demolished.’ Orbilio stroked his jaw. ‘What about Shannu?’

‘The obvious candidate,’ Claudia said. ‘Unfortunately he has a watertight alibi, that room is locked at all times, repeat all times, which is a pity, because Shannu has the perfect temperament for this crime.’

‘You think so?’ Marcus frowned. ‘These are sophisticated killings, carefully planned and thought through, and I can see Shannu being bright enough and cunning enough to carry them out, but it’s the control aspect that doesn’t fit in.’

She pretended to be surprised. ‘Control?’

‘The binding of the ankles and the wrists,’ he explained. ‘Not easy with just one hand, and it suggests a need to dominate the victims, show who’s boss, and the longer it takes, the better. So then.’ Orbilio closed his eyes. ‘Suppose you tell me why you know it isn’t Sargon.’

The lids were shut, but you could still see the sparkle. He knew. Goddammit, he knew she didn’t think Sargon was the killer, he’d been stringing her along all the time! How the hell could he have guessed? Claudia’s fingernails drummed against the woodwork. Of course. If she’d suspected for a second that any of those men had been a butcher, she’d have contacted him straight away, instead of waiting for him to come to her. He knew she would not have risked another tattooed life.

‘I don’t know it isn’t Sargon,’ she said, with no attempt to disguise the petulance in her voice. ‘The wolf, the whistle-whit, whit, whit. He comes in on a market day, sneaks away from Dino and the Captain, and yes of course he has a secret. All men do.’

One lazy lid opened and slowly closed again.

‘Sargon,’ Claudia continued, ‘intends to wrest the reins from Arbil and operate from Rome, there are letters in his chest to that effect. Unfortunately, he intends to change his father’s moral strictures.’ She tossed across the two folded documents, the contract and the invoice, she’d purloined from Sargon’s satchel. ‘This is merely a sample.’

Orbilio’s breath came out in a hiss and he moved across to scrutinize the papers by the ever brightening sky. ‘The bastard plans to sell children into brothels! He’s drawn up a pricing structure, for gods’ sake.’

That’s the trouble with peace, thought Claudia, remembering all too clearly Sargon’s tariffs for brothels the length and breadth of the country. Peacetime brings boredom, boredom breeds hedonism and hedonism clearly pays handsome. Suddenly there was a nasty taste in her mouth.

‘I’ll bloody put paid to that,’ Orbilio was saying. ‘I’ll send soldiers right now to arrest him, and even then, we’d probably be doing him a favour. Janus knows what retribution Arbil would extract.’

I dread to think.

‘I just wish we had a motive for the slaughter,’ he said, tucking into his belt the evidence which would shortly sink Sargon. ‘Annia can’t recall any incident which might have triggered-where is she, by the way?’

‘Search me,’ Claudia shrugged.

‘Gladly,’ he grinned. ‘Can we start now?’

But all he got was a look that would have burnt holes in cobblestones.

He stared across the garden, where bees buzzed round the fan-trained peach and blizzards of apple blossom cascaded on to the path as a small boy climbed the branches. The first of the slaves were up, laying out breakfast, stoking the furnace, putting out crumbs for the birds. Had it not been for the dim light of the peristyle, the killer would have seen Severina had no tattoo and instead he’d have run Annia to ground. A sharp pain ran through Orbilio’s gut. Maybe the bastard already had…

‘Think carefully, Claudia. Think really carefully. Severina was killed here on purpose, a message to you-and they don’t come much clearer than that.’ She heard the rasp where he scratched at his stubble. ‘Is there no one else you can think of who has a connection with Arbil?’

A mental picture flashed across Claudia’s vision. One man talking earnestly with two others in a cool and shaded courtyard. A man who was surprised to see her there. A man who likes to control…

‘No,’ she said irritably. ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

Around now, bakers would be cooling their first batches of the day, cats and dogs would stretch and scratch their fleas. Canopies would be unfolding under which tribunes would sit to hear petitions. Temple priests around the city would kindle up their sacred, aromatic fires.

Claudia feigned a yawn.

‘I’m sorry.’ Marcus jumped out of the chair and held open the door of the office. ‘I ought not have kept you up all night.’

She fluttered a grateful feminine smile and shuffled wearily into her sandals. Once in the hall, however, those same shoes barely touched the floor as she dived into the bustling street.

Claudia did not believe those tales about werewolves who lusted after human blood.

But she believed in men who did.