David Wishart: In at the Death

‘That’s just for listening,’ he said. He picked up his cup and took another mouthful of the wine. He was looking less nervous now. Maybe it was the wine, but it was probably the money. Guys like Natalis really believe in the power of the check. ‘Fifteen minutes of your time. You want to tell me to get lost at the end of it, that’s your privilege. Completely. No reasons from you, no argument from me. Give that to my banker and he’ll cash it anyway without a murmur. But if we do end up with a deal, and you deliver the goods — as I’m pretty sure you will — I’ll make it up to the round fifty.’

Sweet gods! Fifty thousand sesterces was a small fortune. Me, I don’t do gobsmacked, not all that often, anyway, but I must’ve gaped. Natalis was watching me closely, half-smiling. If you could call an expression that made the guy look like he’d just bitten on a lemon a half-smile.

‘Well, Corvinus?’ he said. ‘What about it? Do I have that fifteen minutes or not?’

I remembered to close my mouth before I answered: we had a certain degree of good old purple-striper gravitas to maintain here, and I was buggered if I was going to let him see he’d rocked me. ‘You’ve got the ball, friend,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Fine.’ He set the cup down. All business now, and not a trace of nervousness. ‘I want you to look into a suicide. A young lad by the name of Sextus Papinius.’

Well, that name rang a bell, at least. And I’d got my mental faculties, such as they were, back into gear. ‘Any relation to Papinius Allenius the consular?’ I said.

There was the barest hesitation. ‘His son. But it’s the mother’s side of the family I have connections with. If you’re wondering, which I suspect you are.’

Yeah. I was, at that. Natalis had started off by saying this had nothing to do with faction business, which meant it had to be private. No one shells out fifty thousand silver pieces unless they have a serious — and personal — vested interest in the matter somewhere along the line. If the lad had been a relative of his I could’ve understood, but the son of an ex-consul put that right out of court: consular families and those of ex-slaves, even stinking-rich ones like Natalis, don’t mix socially, let alone intermarry; not nohow, not never, even in this lax day and age. The obvious alternative explanation I didn’t even consider: unless my judgment was way off beam Natalis just wasn’t the type to have boyfriends. And that didn’t leave much for guesswork.

‘The mother’s side?’ I said.

‘Her name’s Rupilia. She’s from Leontini.’ Natalis took another sip of his wine. ‘Same as me. Her father was Rupilius Hasta, and old Hasta was my first real patron. You getting there?’

Yeah, I was, and it fitted, at least the Sicilian bit did. Something I did know about Natalis from former acquaintance was that he’d started out as a humble driver in Sicily before coming to Rome as third-stringer for the Greens. After which he’d worked — or clawed — his way up the ladder, all the way to the top. And if this Rupilia was the daughter of his first patron then -

‘The family was the oldest in the region. Big in horse breeding and racing, always had been. Hasta took an interest in me — I was never his slave, but he liked to help promising drivers — and when I had the chance to move to Rome he lent me the cash.’ Natalis got up and moved over to the wine jug. ‘Without that money I’d still be in Sicily, probably on the scrapheap by now. And like I told you, Corvinus, I don’t forget easy.’

Uh-huh. Check. That’s the way Sicilian minds work: you have a debt, either way, then you pay it, QED, end of story. Things were beginning to clear. ‘So,’ I said, ‘when the daughter came to Rome and married Allenius you renewed the link?’

‘I’d never broken it. And I kept it up with young Sextus, gladly. The boy was the spit of his grandfather and he’d racing in his bones.’ Natalis held up the jug. ‘You want a refill?’

‘Sure.’ I took a long swig and held the cup out for more.

‘I don’t mean he was a gambler, mind.’ He poured carefully. ‘Oh, the lad liked to gamble, like any youngster, but he never went overboard, he’d more sense. What he was really interested in was the other side, my side, the cars and the driving. Although interested’s not strong enough, not by half: he loved the whole business, loved it as much as I do. He’d’ve made a driver himself, if things’d been just a bit different. He had the guts for it, certainly, and the heart, easy; he’d guts and heart in spades, Sextus Papinius. But he never had the skill, and knew he never would. Even so, he spent a lot of his free time here, right from when he was knee-high, especially after I became faction-master.’

‘So,’ I said. ‘What happened, exactly?’

‘I told you. Two days back he killed himself.’ Natalis sank a neat quarter pint of the Massic at a gulp.

‘Killed himself how? Slit wrists? Poison?’

‘Neither. He jumped from the top floor of an Aventine tenement.’ I must’ve looked as surprised as I felt, because he shrugged. ‘Yeah. The flat was empty at the time, and the tenement was on his visiting list. So that’s what he used.’

‘“Visiting list”?’

‘He was a junior investigation officer. With the claims department of the emperor’s new fire commission. ’

Right; that made sense. Of a kind, anyway. A couple of months back there had been a major fire in the Aventine and Racetrack districts. The Wart had appointed a commission headed by his four sons-in-law to assess the damage and arrange compensation and rebuilding. I didn’t know yet how old exactly this Sextus Papinius had been, but for a kid from a consular family, age say eighteen or nineteen, which would fit the spirit of things, junior investigation officer would be a logical first rung on the political ladder.

‘Why did he do it?’ I said.

Natalis gave me a long look. ‘That’s the point,’ he said finally. ‘I’ve no idea. None at all. That’s what I’d be paying you to find out.’

‘Is the reason so important?’

He shrugged again. ‘It is to me. I thought a lot of the kid. And I don’t like not knowing. If you can understand that.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I can understand that.’ I could even sympathise: in his place I’d’ve wanted to know too, just for my own peace of mind. And I had to admit that he had me hooked. ‘Okay. You have your fifteen minutes.’

‘Fine.’ He leaned back. ‘The floor’s yours. You got any questions, you ask them and I’ll answer if I can.’

‘Let’s start with the boy himself. He the suicidal type at all? Moody? Get depressed? That sort of thing?’

Natalis shook his head. ‘Not so’s you’d notice, or not all that often. Certainly no more than any other kid his age.’

‘Which was what?’

‘Nineteen. He’d just had his nineteenth birthday.’

‘What about his character? A loner? Run about with any of the fast crowds?’

‘He had his fun. Girls and wine, a bit of wildness here and there, but nothing serious. You know the sort of thing.’

I nodded; yeah, I knew, I’d’ve been surprised if it’d been otherwise, given the family background. Par for the course. So: your typical rich young lad-about-town, feeling his oats and kicking up his heels before life grabbed him by the balls and turned him into a pillar of society. Only in Sextus Papinius’s case it never would, now. ‘He get on well with his parents?’

‘Parent, singular. Rupilia and Allenius are divorced, have been for years, and Sextus lived with his mother. There’s no contact, none, at least as far as I’m aware. I doubt if I’ve heard the boy mention his father more than two or three times in all the time I’ve known him. You’ll want to talk to Rupilia, no doubt; the house is near the Octavian Porch, one of the old properties on the Marcellus Theatre side. They got along okay in general, as far as I know, although Rupilia’ — he hesitated — ‘well, bringing up a teenager without a man in the house isn’t easy, and Rupilia’s not the strong-willed disciplinarian type. You understand me?’