David Wishart - Illegally Dead

‘Oh, shit!’ He turned away abruptly and threw up. Most of it was wine. Well, I’d told him he could, later, so I couldn’t really object..

I waited until he’d finished and had wiped his mouth on his tunic. ‘You any idea yourself who was responsible?’ I said. ‘Or maybe why?’

‘No! The only real enemy I’ve got is my brother, and Fimus wouldn’t do anything like this! He’s a stiff-necked bastard, true, but he’s not that much of a bastard, and he’s no killer, no way, never!’ He paused. ‘You don’t think it was him, do you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it was Fimus.’

‘Then who?’

I took him gently by the arm. ‘Let’s go, Bucca.’

We dropped him off at the town hall, with a mention of the horses to be looked after in the stables, and I took Clarus to Pontius’s for a cup of wine. This early not even Gabba was in evidence and the place was empty, but I wanted absolute privacy for the next bit, so we carried the winecups — and some bread and cheese; there hadn’t been much time for breakfast — outside onto the terrace.

‘You didn’t think Bucca was responsible from the beginning,’ Clarus said as we settled down at one of the tables. ‘For killing the woman, I mean.’

‘No.’ I took a sip of the wine.

‘Then who was?’

‘Quintus Acceius.’

He stared at me. ‘What?’

‘I know why, too. And who she was. Not her name, just who she was.’

‘Corvinus, I’m sorry, but you’re not making sense.’

‘She was Senecio’s sister. Or his wife, or his girlfriend, or whatever. Senecio’s something.’

He sat back. ‘Ah.’

‘“Ah” is right, pal. The bastard lied to us from start to finish. He wasn’t attacked by a man at all; he was attacked by a woman. The attacker didn’t run off; he killed her and dumped her body in Bucca’s yard.’

‘But Acceius wasn’t attacked anywhere near Bucca’s! He’d’ve had to lug the corpse all the way across town!’

‘Who says where he was attacked?’ I paused for the penny to drop. ‘Right. Acceius does. No one else, there were no witnesses. Just like we’ve only got his word for what happened. Oh, sure, he’d have to cross town to get to your father’s, bleeding like a pig all the way, I never said it was easy. But at least he’d have his story, and if the body was discovered and the whistle blown the Caba gate would be a quarter of a mile off.’

‘It was still a risk. A small town like Castrimoenium, with an attack and a death on the same night. The two would have to be put together.’

‘You’re not thinking, pal. Of course they would, they have been. Acceius couldn’t do a thing about that; the killing was by no choice of his, it wasn’t planned, all he could do was cover the best he could at the time, and that wasn’t much. Me, I think he did bloody well, under the circumstances.’

‘All right.’ Clarus hadn’t touched his wine: like Alexis, he wasn’t a drinker. ‘What happened?’

‘The woman — we don’t know her name, call her Nemesis — had been following him ever since Senecio died, waiting her chance; I knew that, he told me himself he had the feeling he was being watched. Now I don’t know the exact circumstances — that’s something we’ll have to get from the bugger himself — but I’d guess he kept to the truth as far as he could, so I’d bet he was coming back from seeing a client. Only the client was somewhere up by the Caba gate, not the Bovillan. Then things happened like he told us: Nemesis was waiting in ambush, she came out of an alleyway as he passed and stabbed him. The difference was, he didn’t slug her — he couldn’t’ve done, because her face wasn’t marked — but he did catch at the necklace round her neck and strangle her.’

‘Hold on, Corvinus. You said he was keeping to the truth as far as he could. So why not just say there was a struggle, the attacker dropped the knife and ran away? Why invent the punch?’

‘Because Acceius is a smart cookie. The guy thinks, even when he’s desperate, as he had to be. Thinks on his feet, too; he has to, he’s a forensic lawyer. If Nemesis’s body was found — as it was — with no signs of a hefty punch to the face that’d be another reason for claiming she and the fictional attacker were different people. Not much of a reason, sure, but it’d help, and he’d need every edge he could get. Acceius was careful to tell us he’d really socked the man, remember, probably knocked out or damaged a few teeth. My bet is that after the woman was dead he bruised his own knuckles against the wall to give the story credence. Possible? You’re the medical expert.’

‘Possible. Dad might’ve seen a difference, sure, if he’d treated the damage, but he didn’t bother. Not with that slice to the side and back to worry about.’

‘Right.’ I took a swallow of the wine. ‘Then there was the real poser, the problem of the body. Now that’s the really interesting part. The guy’s been attacked, knifed. He’s killed the attacker, fine, but he’s a lawyer, he knows all about killing in self-defence. Like when he killed Senecio. And there’d be no question that he had been attacked and that the intention was murder, not with the wound he’s carrying, so legally he’s safe enough. But what does he do? He doesn’t yell for help or hammer on the first available door. Instead, he lugs the corpse into Bucca’s yard and dumps it, then drags himself all the way across town practically past his own front door just to pretend he was nowhere near the fucking place. Now unless he’s got something major to hide, and I’d bet a rotten fig to a flask of Caecuban that he has, that is weird.’

‘Yes.’ Clarus chewed reflectively on his bread and cheese. ‘He recognised the woman. That what you mean?’

‘Yeah. And it was important, for some reason, that no one should realise that he had.’ I stood up. ‘You finished?’

‘You’re going to see him? Now?’

‘As ever is. The bastard’s got questions to answer, and the sooner the better.’

Clarus tucked the rest of the cheese inside the bread and stood up too.

We went to Acceius’s.

They were at breakfast, Acceius and Seia Lucinda, when the slave showed us in.

‘Corvinus! And Clarus.’ Acceius put down his breakfast roll. ‘What on earth are you doing here at this hour?’

‘We’ve just been round at Bucca Maecilius’s,’ I said. ‘Asking him about the corpse that he ferried over to Caba three days back.’

His eyes widened. ‘Indeed? What corpse is this?’

‘I was rather hoping you’d tell me, pal. After all, you dumped her on him in the first place.’

Silence. Long silence. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Seia Lucinda shoot him a look. Acceius dabbed carefully at his lips with his napkin and stood up, wincing as he did so. Yeah: the stitches would still be in.

‘Perhaps we’d better go into the study,’ he said.

I stood aside to let him pass, with Clarus tagging along behind. I could feel Seia Lucinda’s eyes on my back all the way to the door.

We went in.

‘Sit down, please.’ He indicated the couches. ‘I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind. It makes things rather formal, but standing’s more comfortable for me at present, and besides under the circumstances perhaps a certain degree of formality is called for.’

We sat.

‘Now.’ He took a breath. ‘How did you know?’

‘You admit it?’

‘Yes. No point in a denial, is there?’ He was frowning. ‘I should’ve said I’d killed her — her, not him — straight away. Making up that story was silly. Worse than silly, stupid.’

‘So why did you?’

He closed his eyes. ‘Because I’m a lawyer, Corvinus, and because I’m a man. The first sometimes thinks too much, the second too little. Unfortunately the combination will sometimes act very stupidly indeed. As I did.’ The eyes opened again. ‘As far as the killing went, it followed roughly the same lines as I described, except that the struggle was more prolonged and of course ended…differently. She was a very powerful woman, you must be aware of that if you’ve seen the body. Also…well, she really, really wanted me dead. I managed to turn her round and get a tight grip of her knife hand about the wrist, but that was as much as I could do: she wouldn’t drop the knife and I couldn’t move the arm itself. I…got my left arm up to her throat and my fingers caught in her necklace. I thought if I twisted that and held on tightly, choking her, I could force her to let the weapon fall, or at worst render her unconscious. I…well, I simply held on too long and too hard. When she did finally go limp and I risked releasing her I found that she was dead.’ He paused and looked me straight in the eyes. ‘I swear to you I didn’t mean to kill her. It was like the other time, an accident. I was so damn scared I just acted without thinking.’