David Wishart: In at the Death

Sure I did. Reading between the lines, I’d guess the kid had been spoiled rotten and grown up a handful. Still, that was nothing unusual in the top bracket, especially these days when single-parent families or parents with their own social lives to think of were the rule rather than the exception. ‘So where does the money come from?’ I said. Money there would have to be: spoilt brat, lad-about-town pursuits didn’t come cheap.

‘Hasta was well off. He settled part of the estate in Leontini on her before he died, plus the income from some property in Capua. Also, of course, when the divorce went through she got part of her dowry back. She’s not rich, but she’s comfortable enough.’

‘And she never thought of remarrying?’

‘No.’

Just the bare negative, and Natalis had closed up tighter than a constipated clam. Uh-huh. Well, there could be lots of reasons behind that, and probably none of them were relevant, or my business. I took a swig of the Massic. ‘Okay. This tenement. Where was it, exactly?’

‘On the river-side slope of the Aventine, near the start of Old Ostia Road. One of the newer blocks. The manager lives on site, which was why Sextus was there that day. Or presumably it was. That’s something else I don’t know for sure.’

‘Name? The manager’s, I mean?’

‘Caepio. Lucceius Caepio. He’s — he was — responsible for two or three other properties that got burned down in the fire.’

‘Fine. Last question, pal, for the present at least. Given the kid did actually kill himself, why do you think he did it?’ He opened his mouth to answer and I held up a hand. ‘Yeah, sure, I know, but you must be able to hazard some sort of a guess. Gut feeling, no comeback.’

‘I knew Sextus all his life, Corvinus. And I’ve already told you. He wasn’t the brooding type.’

‘But?’ There was a but : I could see it in his eyes. I waited. ‘Natalis. Come on. I’d have to start somewhere, okay?’

He frowned. ‘Like I say, he had racing in his bones, maybe one day if things’d turned out different he might’ve sat in this chair. But this last month — he was round here a lot in that time, more than usual, if anything — I’d the feeling he had something other than the cars and horses on his mind.’

‘You’re saying he was worried?’

‘No. Worried’s too strong. Preoccupied, maybe. That the word?’ He shook his head. ‘Hell, I don’t know, not to be sure about, let alone swear to. I could’ve been imagining things, and if I wasn’t it could’ve been for any of a dozen reasons. You know kids. Certainly he didn’t say nothing, which he usually would rather than to his mother if something was biting him. Maybe it was just me; the Plebeian Games’re next month, the Blues’ve been winning lately and the whole place is on edge.’ He cleared his throat and suddenly the hard-nosed businessman was back. ‘So I can’t afford the time to think about it, okay? That’s your job, Corvinus. If you want it.’

Despite everything, I was more than half-ready to say No: after all, Natalis was no friend of mine, I didn’t owe him, and raking through the whys and wherefores of a suicide never does anyone any good. Then I saw the look on his face that maybe he hadn’t wanted me to see, and I knew I couldn’t.

Besides, I’d got that prickly feeling at the back of my neck. And fifty thousand sesterces is serious gravy by anyone’s reckoning.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I want it.’

‘Fine. Then we have a deal?’ He stood up and held out a hand.

‘Sure,’ I said.

We shook.

When I got back home Bathyllus had the door open and the obligatory wine-cup ready poured and waiting. As usual. How he does it Jupiter only knows. Oh, yeah, sure, all good major-domos come equipped with precognition as standard to some degree, but Bathyllus’s is something else. A couple of years previous as an experiment I’d tried taking off my sandals round the corner and sneaking up on the bugger barefoot, just in case it was something to do with the distinctive sound the leather soles — my leather soles — made on the marble steps. I never even got half way. Getting caught by your major-domo outside your own front door in broad daylight with your footwear in your hands and a good half jug into the game, which I was at the time, doesn’t do much for your master-of-the-house gravitas, either: you could’ve heard the bastard’s disapproving sniff in Baiae.

I took the offered cup and sank the first restorative mouthful. ‘Have a good morning, Bathyllus?’

‘Not particularly, sir, no.’

Uh-huh. Now that was a sniff. Not to mention a snap, which put things a stage higher. Also, now I came to notice, the little bald-head didn’t look too cheerful all round; in fact, on a pissed-off scale of one to ten I’d rate him a good fifteen, and that meant trouble. Real trouble.

We were talking seriously peeved here. In terms of gravity the military equivalent would be losing Syria.

I set down the wine-cup. Carefully, so as not to spill it on the polished table-top: a seriously-peeved Bathyllus can leave you with third-degree sarcasm burns just for provocative breathing.

‘Uh…everything okay, little guy?’ I said. ‘I mean, generally speaking, as it were?’

He drew himself up to his full five feet nothing.

‘I suggest you judge for yourself, sir,’ he said. ‘In the atrium.’

You could’ve used his tone of voice to pickle mummies. Shit; make it Syria plus the Rhine-and-Danube. Whatever the trouble was, we’d got it in spades. I left the wine-cup where it was, hared off through the lobby and into the atrium…

‘Oh, hello, Marcus.’ Perilla looked up from her chair with a bright smile. ‘You’re back early.’

I was goggling at the thing lying next to her. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘Don’t be silly, dear. What does it look like?’Good question. All I could see was an anonymous mound of greyish-black hair. ‘It’s a dog, of course.’

‘Perilla, where the fuck did you — ?’

‘Don’t swear. She’s a Gallic boarhound and her name’s Placida. We’re looking after her for a few days.’

‘We are what?’

‘While Sestia Calvina’s in Veii. Didn’t I tell you?’ Like hell she had. Quite deliberately not. ‘Say hello to Marcus, Placida. Nicely, now.’

The mound of hair gave a huge sigh one end and farted at the other. Our atrium, big and open as it was, was suddenly not the place to be.

‘Look, lady — ’

— which was as far as I got before the mound opened a bloodshot eye and erupted to its feet. Paws. Whatever.

‘Ow — Oo-oo-oo! Ow-ow-ow-ow-oo-oo-oo!’

Oh, bugger! I stepped back. Quickly.

‘Perilla…’

‘Placida! Placida! Nicely, I said!’

‘Ow-oo-oo-oo!’

I took another step back, but I was running out of atrium. Gods! This was a dog?

‘Placida! Down! Behave yourself!’ Perilla had a grip on the brute’s collar. Not that it seemed to notice, mind. ‘Don’t be silly, Marcus, it’s only a howl! She’s quite harmless.’

‘Is that right, now?’ Jupiter Best and Greatest! I had my back to a pillar and I wasn’t going nowhere. I’d seen beasts half that size given star billing at the games and matched against tigers. Winning the match, too, paws down. Standing, its muzzle was above the level of my groin. Not a happy thought, given the distance between us.

The brute shook its head, spattering everything inside three lateral yards with white-foamed drool, farted again and grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow fangs. My balls shrank.

‘There,’ Perilla said, letting go. ‘That’s much better. Good dog. Good dog, Placida! Who’s a clever girl, then?’