Wolf Whistle

XXX

‘I know he’s in there.’ Claudia pounded her fist against the heavy, holm-oak door. ‘Dammit, Tucca, open up!’ Heads poked out of windows, doves took flight, dogs barked. This was a respectable suburb on the Quirinal, the residents were unused to disturbances. A small child began to bawl. Claudia continued to batter.

Click, clunk, graunch. Finally, the door swung open a hand’s span.

‘Where is he?’ Claudia shoved her weight behind the timber and sent the mute reeling. ‘I know you’re here, Kaeso. Come on out!’

Tucca picked herself up and stumbled after the intruder, gargling and gesticulating with her raw, red hands that Kaeso didn’t live here, please go now. Undeterred, Claudia swept down the atrium, her magenta wrap flapping like batwings as she flung aside curtains, doors and shutters and peered into every dismal, empty room along the way. Nothing. She marched into the peristyle, still deep in shadow where the sun had not yet risen above the surrounding apartment blocks, and swore. The garden, if possible, looked gloomier than ever. No brindle dog to cheer it up, no puffs of white narcissus or scented squills, and the room of curios was strangely silent, too. The grate had been swept clean and only a lingering hint of woodsmoke suggested a fire had ever danced here. The collection of carved animals-rearing horses, diving dolphins, licking cats-seemed static somehow, lifeless, and the gap where the leaping billygoats had stood glared mournfully back at her.

The vitality of the room, she realized with an irregular thump of her heart, had been generated solely by Kaeso.

Tucca stood beside the polished cypress door, hands on solid hips as though to say I-told-you-so. Claudia’s eyes narrowed as she slowly retraced her steps to the atrium. The doors she’d flung open Tucca hadn’t bothered to close. Another smack in the face for her visitor. He was here, though. Goddammit, he was here…

Methodically she cast her eye over the atrium decor. Unimaginative was the word, that geometric mosaic, those boring blocks of colour on the walls, that mean little pool. Claudia looked up at the neutral stuccoed ceiling. Janus, the silence in this house was creepy! Then she remembered how Kaeso was predisposed towards tricks. Aha! With a judicious shove, two concealed doors in the far wall gave way, exposing a hidden room washed with blues, greens and silvers, sparkling with the reflections from a polished silver mirror. A shrine to an unfamiliar figure filled the far corner, although she recognized the Babylonian cherubs that were clinging to the ceiling.

‘Now tell me what were you doing at Arbil’s,’ she demanded.

And still there was nothing straightforward about Kaeso. The linen of his tunic was neither green nor blue, yet it could pass for either, and in the early morning light, his shaggy mane shone silver. Even in the privacy of his well concealed bedroom, it transpired, Kaeso resorted to camouflage.

He hadn’t so much as blinked. ‘Don’t you want to know about Magic?’ he asked, sweeping his arm to indicate the chair.

‘No.’ Claudia remained standing. ‘His tirade of filth has stopped.’ There had been nothing for two days. Perhaps she’d killed him, after all?

Kaeso straightened a marble bust which stood upon a podium by the wall. There was a Greekness about it, suggesting great antiquity.

‘I am here,’ she said, ‘to talk about Arbil, and why, when you were engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse involving Magic, and doubtless several other commissions besides, you felt obliged to look up a few old friends half a day’s ride out of town.’

‘And just what business might that be of yours?’ he asked, so quietly she had to strain to catch the words.

Well… now you ask. None actually.

‘Furthermore, what gives you the right to barge into my house then root me out like a truffle?’ He padded across the room and his grey eyes bored into hers, but he couldn’t quite hold back the amusement which danced in them. ‘But most importantly, Claudia Seferius, how the bloody hell did you find out about this room?’

He’d been washing, she decided, when she’d burst into the house. There were splashes of water round the bowl and on the floor, and the towel was soaking wet.

‘Your conjuring tricks.’ Against her will, she smiled back. And that was why Kaeso was dangerous. ‘I spent a long time waiting in your atrium-’ (was it really only eight days ago?) and I had a feeling then I was being watched.’ In fact, I suspect the peephole is behind the statue you’ve just straightened. ‘Also, that story you spun about Tucca, something didn’t quite ring true. Is she your mother?’

‘Commendably close.’ He adjusted the buckle on his belt, reinforcing the notion of recent and hasty dressing. ‘She worked as a nursemaid for Arbil, we grew close and as you’ve already guessed, it’s me and not some fictitious daughter who looks after her. But,’ he gave a twisted grin, ‘the part about her husband is the truth. His bones do lie in the garden, and I should know, because I buried him myself.’

Between the bay tree and the yew, if I recall…Claudia turned to examine a painting on the wall. It was a rustic scene, shepherds on some hills, the sea calm and blue beyond, but nowhere that she recognized.

‘A girl was killed in my garden.’ Straight to the point, atta girl. ‘Her name was Annia, she was raised by Arbil, and she’s the latest in a number of similar attacks.’ Why mention that the killer mistook Severina for his intended victim?

Kaeso’s brow furrowed only slightly, but his answer was a long time coming. Finally he sat down on the bed and leaned his weight back upon one elbow. ‘The Market Day Murders. I see.’

She did not appear to have rattled him, but then a man who hides within his own house has long learned to curb emotions.

‘Arbil knows certain of his girls are being picked off one by one,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘Since tracking was what he trained me for, I volunteered to help.’

The bed he lay across was a combination of Roman frame and Babylonian springing, though from the badly ruffled counterpane and sheets, it would appear Kaeso suffered badly from insomnia. Or else had company.

‘Plausible,’ Claudia smiled. ‘I’d give you seven out of ten for quick thinking.’

Kaeso laughed, and the sound was by no means unpleasant. ‘Then before you pull my toenails out to get the truth, I’d better come clean about the urgency-and incidentally the secrecy-for that visit.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘The thing is, Claudia, Sargon feels his father’s mental frailties are sufficient to warrant not only a takeover, but a huge expansion in the industry.’

The word industry was not lost on her. ‘Has he divulged his new policies?’ she asked innocently. A trail of drips led from the washbasin to a wall covered by a large tapestry, where a puddle was starting to form round brown protruding toes.

‘Only that the financial rewards will be huge and my skills will be required on a permanent basis. With Arbil’s rapid deterioration in health, he intends to move quickly and asked me up there because he wanted to know whether I was in or not.’

‘And are you?’ Before nightfall, Sargon will be marched into Rome charged with peddling children for sex. Will you be in chains alongside him, Kaeso? Will you?

‘I haven’t decided,’ he shrugged.

Claudia walked over to the shrine. The figurine was cast in silver and appeared, from above, to be sexually ambivalent. She resisted the urge to lean down and determine its gender. The libation jug had dried out, only a red ring remained at the bottom, but the posy of flowers beside it was fresh. They were fragrant white lilies and she held one to her nose to inhale its heady perfume. Suddenly her magenta gown seemed garish in this room of seascape colours.

Without a word, Claudia tossed the lily in his lap and swept out of Kaeso’s bedroom.

At the far side of the atrium, she paused to glance over her shoulder. The green and yellow blocks of colour on the walls revealed no trace of the concealed doors that had closed seamlessly behind her. It was as though they’d never been. And for an instant, Claudia, too, was tempted to believe it was pure imagination, a figment of the light and lack of sleep.

The house did that to you.

It was intended to.

*

The figure that stepped out from behind the tapestry in Kaeso’s room was frowning. ‘What did that meddling bitch want?’

The man’s tracker eyes were still fixed on the pair of double doors. ‘She’s having trouble with a stalker. He attacked her, and she wants him dealt with.’

‘She didn’t look very scared when she came barging through your front door, pushing Tucca to the ground.’

‘I never said she was frightened,’ Kaeso pointed out. The other person sighed away their irritation, slowly inching up their tunic, first above one knee and then the thigh, then the other knee and thigh. Only when the body was fully revealed in its exquisite beauty, bathed in gold from pools of sunlight, did Kaeso wrench the whole of his gaze away from the doors. Sinuous arms coiled around his neck.

‘You do love me, don’t-?’ But the lips were silenced by the placing of two gentle fingers over them.

‘Ssssh.’

Teeth made a playful grab for the admonishing fingertips. ‘What’s that you’re hiding in your hand?’

He unclenched his fist. ‘A lily,’ he replied. ‘Nothing but a lily.’

‘It smells better than that perfume she’s left in the room.’ Expert hands began to unbuckle Kaeso’s belt. ‘Do you think she suspects?’ a voice murmured in his ear. ‘About you and me, I mean?’

Grey eyes pierced the lily he still clutched in his fist. ‘Not a chance.’

His belt clattered to the floor, but when fingers gently tugged the tunic upwards, they were stilled by firm and downward pressure.

‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Not just for the moment.’

Hurt replaced lust in the eyes. ‘Why not?’

Kaeso smiled, but in his eyes there was no emotion to be read. None at all. ‘Because I have to go out for a while, that is why.’

*

The last person Orbilio expected to see when he returned to his own house was Annia, and several emotions hit him at once. Relief, of course, that she was safe. Anger, aimed at himself for not keeping proper tabs, and at her, for being irresponsible. And other, less rational feelings. Irritation, compassion and, it has to be said, pride. Watching her feeding the caged birds in the courtyard with seed from the palm of her hand, her long, fair hair tumbling down her back just like her mother’s, he felt a constriction in his breast, which he could not explain. So slight, he thought. So fragile. He followed the liquid pleats of her tunic down to the hem. How could Daphne have been so callous?

The thought was an ignoble one, but he was glad it was Severina last night…

‘I only did what you told me.’ The strain showed clear upon Annia’s pale and scrubbed face as she brushed the birdseed from her hands. ‘Go home and stay there, you said.’

Weary to the bone, Marcus had no defence. He did not recall using the word home, but, he admitted to himself, that was precisely how it felt. Whenever he was with Claudia, wherever they might be and whatever the circumstances, it bloody well felt like home.

‘You look awful,’ Annia tutted, straightening his crumpled clothes and smoothing the nap. ‘You look like a man who hasn’t slept, you need a shave, and really, Marcus, if you’re going to make an impression on the Emperor, you ought to have a haircut. How is Augustus? Have you spoken with him personally? What’s he like?’

She was relentless. What’s the latest on the crisis? Has the Emperor appointed an heir? What about his stepson, Tiberius, is he in the running? She questioned him about the coup, how did he feel, he a proud aristocrat, mixing among the lowlife of informants? And then, as he caved in to the demands his growling stomach insisted upon, Annia broached the subject which he’d so far managed to skirt.

‘Did…did anything happen yesterday?’

He drank the wine she poured him. Should he tell her? Would not telling her be protecting her? Having overstretched himself these past few days, he could hide under the umbrella of exhaustion without a conscience. But then she’d find out somehow, either from the servants or from gossip at the baths, and in any case she’d require an explanation for being shipped off to the country, which was the best (and possibly only) way he could guarantee her safety for the moment.

He broke a steaming roll in half and formed a ball of dough between his fingers. ‘As a matter of fact…’ With only the barest of encouragement, he recounted the facts, and by doing so clarified them in his mind.

‘Oh, Marcus!’ Annia buried her head in her hands. ‘What am I going to do? I’ll never be safe!’

Marcus was seven years old when Penelope knelt on the parapet of the Aemilian Bridge one heavy, thundery night. As the lightning crackled and thunderbolts rumbled, she knotted a lump of masonry round her waist and then calmly pushed it over the side. Passers-by had rushed to the spot, but Penelope had timed her moment well. In the dark, churning waters there were no discerning ripples and no splashes. Then the rain began to fall in buckets.

The blonde head emerged from its burial place and pushed the hair from her face. ‘It was selfish of me, wasn’t it? Not going to Arbil’s with Claudia?’

He tossed an apple from hand to hand. ‘Being frightened is nothing to be ashamed of,’ he said slowly.

One shoulder rose and fell. ‘You say that, because you’re brave. When those thugs attacked you last week, you said yourself you weren’t scared.’

‘Angry,’ he said. ‘I was bloody angry, mainly for allowing myself to be cornered so easily, but that’s different. The blood’s up, emotions are running hot and they’re running high. But inside, we’re all frightened of something.’

She twisted her head on one side. ‘What scares you, then?’

‘Me?’ He bit into the apple. ‘Losing people I care about.’ Passion deepened his voice. ‘That scares the hell out of me.’

Annia brightened. ‘Then you’d better tell me what Claudia found out at the ranch. Maybe together we can come up with some answers!’

Even as Orbilio relayed the information Claudia had passed on, his mind travelled to an altogether different plane. With so much going on, he’d overstretched himself of late. Well, he wasn’t the only one under pressure. Suppose the killer, too, had overstretched himself? Suppose that by staging the last murder in Claudia’s garden, he’d tried just that bit too hard to be clever?

‘I have to get some sleep,’ he told Annia, because he needed to be alone with his thoughts. Break the problem into segments then deal with them one at a time, that was the rule that he worked by, and right now he was paying the price for ignoring his own advice. By juggling three demanding cases, he’d not been true to any.

He splashed cold water over his face. Segment one, the Magic problem seemed to have sorted itself out-no more letters, packets or ripped dolls had been delivered and Orbilio’s theory was that, unable to frighten Claudia, he’d moved on to terrorize another, weaker victim. In a way, he was relieved. The pressure was off, Claudia was safe-but now what excuse did he have to hang around?

As for segment two, the plotting merchants, that was easy. Had a coup been imminent, he would know about it.

Which left the maniac who preyed on the Children of Arbil.

In a fresh linen tunic, with his hair combed and a glass of chilled wine under his belt, Orbilio decided that, having deposited all the facts in his investigative cauldron, it was time to let them stew for a while. In his experience, it was through exercise that his thought processes honed themselves, and that was precisely what he intended to do now. He smiled to himself as Annia’s high-pitched trilling instructed his steward on the merits of employing women rather than men to clean the silver, their hands are every bit as strong but far more flexible, and really, in an atrium of this class, more lampstands were in order, didn’t he think, plus extra gilding on the ceiling. Making no attempt to rescue the poor man, Orbilio made his exit through the back.

The athletics yard was packed, a battleground where young blades showed their muscle tone and old men overreached. Orbilio cut a straight line through the grunting and the wheezing, through the javelins and wrestling towards the gymnasium where, oiled and naked, he gathered together a team to play small ball. It was the only game he knew which exercised every single muscle of the body and while his body worked out, his mind could rest. Afterwards, while his flesh was pummelled by a masseur, his refreshed brain would begin a workout of its own.