David Wishart - In at the Death

I stepped onto the pavement to avoid a trio of charging, shrieking kids playing catch-as-

catch-can on the road and went up to the nearest brazier.

‘Uh…excuse me, sister,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’ The woman beside it was cutting sausages from a string and laying them on the grill. She looked up, saw the purple stripe and her eyes widened: you don’t get many purple-stripers round the tenements, especially at dinner-time. ‘You lost, sir?’

‘No. I was hoping someone could help me with the answers to a few questions.’

She frowned: the combination of a purple stripe and questions isn’t too popular in places like the Aventine. Then she turned and yelled: ‘Quintus!’

A big guy who looked like he unloaded barges for a living detached himself from a gaggle of male punters shooting the breeze a few yards away and sauntered over flexing his muscles.

‘Yeah?’ he said, looking at me. Friendly as a bear with boils. ‘Problems, my love?’

‘Gentleman says he’s got some questions.’

‘That so, now?’ The friendliness wound down another notch. A bear with boils plus a bad case of haemorrhoids.

I put down the bag of cardoons and held my hands out, palms first. ‘No hassle, pal. I’m looking into that suicide a few days back. The young guy who threw himself from the top-floor flat.’

‘You with the Watch?’

‘No, I’m a…friend of the family.’

‘Then you can tell them it was no suicide.’ The woman sniffed. ‘The Watch need their fucking heads examined.’

My stomach went cold. ‘You got a particular reason for thinking that, sister?’ I said.

‘Now, now, Aristoboule, dear,’ her husband grunted uneasily. ‘Don’t you go spreading rumours.’

She ignored him. ‘The boy had a mother and she’s got the right to know,’ she snapped. ‘What sort of thing is that to tell a woman, that her son’s killed himself when he didn’t? It’s a shame and a slander.’ She folded her arms across her very considerable bosom and glared at me. ‘You talk to Lautia, sir. She’ll put you right. She heard the buggers moving about in there before the lad even arrived.’

Oh, shit. Everything went very still, the cold feeling in my stomach dropped a few degrees, and something with lots of legs began a march up my spine. ‘There was someone in the flat already?’ I said.

‘Aristoboule…’

‘Course there was. You talk to Lautia about it, sir. She lives just across the landing. Lautia’ll tell you.’

Damn right I’d talk to Lautia! I looked round. ‘Ah…which one is she?’

‘The thin girl with a nose like a parrot.’ Aristoboule jerked her head towards the edge of the group. ‘And you can just stop looking at me like that, Quintus Maecilius! How would you feel if the boy had been one of ours? Suicide! It’s a shame and a slander, and that’s the gods’ honest truth!’ She hacked off another sausage. ‘Fucking Watch!’

I edged round the jutting breasts. So might Ulysses have skirted Charybdis. ‘Right. Right,’ I said. ‘Thanks, sister, much appreciated.’

She turned back to her sausages, muttering darkly, while Quintus shot me a look and slunk off to rejoin his mates. I squeezed between the tables — I was getting quite a few looks now, but curious rather than hostile — and went up to the young parrot-nosed woman who was busy feeding an equally-parrot-nosed infant spoonfuls of mashed beans from a dish.

‘Lautia?’ I said.

‘Yeah?’ She scooped a stray bit of mash from the kid’s chin and popped it into the open mouth, then glanced sideways at me. Like the sausage-woman’s, when she saw the purple stripe her eyes widened. Apart from the nose, she was quite a looker, and no more than eighteen.

‘The name’s Corvinus,’ I said. ‘Marcus Corvinus. The lady over there with the sausages said you might be able to help me.’

‘What with?’ She set the bowl down, her eyes still on the purple stripe. The kid grabbed the spoon and banged it hard on the table. ‘Decimus! You stop that right now!’

‘Just some information. No hassle, I promise.’

‘Information about what?’

‘You live on the top floor, in the flat opposite, right?’ She nodded. ‘According to, ah, Aristoboule there you were at home when Sextus Papinius killed himself. Died. Whatever.’

She’d been listening wide-eyed. ‘That was his name?’ she said. ‘Papinius? I didn’t know.’ She swallowed. ‘Look, if you’re from the Watch I’m sorry I didn’t — ’

‘Uh-uh, this is strictly unofficial. I’m a friend of the family. His mother asked me to find out how he died.’ Not exactly true, but on the Aventine family’ll outrank Watch any day of the month. ‘Like I said, sister, no hassle. I give you my word.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Yes. I was in. I’m not usually, but Decimus had a touch of fever, it was raining and I didn’t want to take him outside.’ The spoon came down again and she turned away. ‘Decimus! Behave yourself, I’m trying to bloody talk! Gemella, will you take him for a minute?’

A teenager at the next table smiled at me shyly, got up and lifted the now-squalling kid away to sit on her lap. Better her than me: young Decimus had a great future as a blacksmith. Lautia nodded her thanks.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You want to tell me the whole story? From the beginning?’

‘Not much to tell.’ She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘It must’ve been about half way through the afternoon. I was changing Decimus’s nappy and I’d opened the door because he’d got the runs and — ’

‘Yeah, yeah, okay.’ Gods! Some details I didn’t want to know! ‘Got you. And you saw..?’

‘No. I didn’t actually see anything because I was busy with Decimus. But I heard someone unlock the flat door opposite, go in and close it behind them.’

‘Hang on, sister.’ I held up a hand. ‘You sure about this? Especially the unlocking?’

‘Course I am. There’s a sort of “clunk” when the key turns. My lock’s the same.’

‘One person or more?’

‘I can’t tell you that. I just heard the sound of the lock and the footsteps.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

‘That’s it. At least, that was all until about ten minutes later when the young gentleman arrived. Your Papinius.’

‘You saw Papinius?’

‘Oh, yes. I’d put Decimus down for his nap and I went to close the door again. He was just putting the key in opposite.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘“Don’t worry. I’m just inspecting the property”. Something like that, anyway.’

‘Uh huh. How did he look? Normal? Nervous? Guilty, even?’

‘He was a bit flustered. Like I’d caught him doing something wrong. If he’d been an ordinary working man I’d’ve thought he was up to no good, but being a purple-striper and nicely-spoken and all…well, that’s a different thing, isn’t it?’

‘You’re sure he had a key?’

‘Certain. Like I said, he was fitting it in the lock when I came out.’

‘Did he use it? I mean, was the door locked again after the first time?’

‘I don’t know about that. Decimus started crying again so I went straight back inside and left him to it. Then, it must’ve been oh, about five minutes later I heard people shouting in the street. I looked out of the window and saw…’ She stopped. ‘Well, you know the rest, sir. I knew it was him. I could…I could see the purple stripe.’

‘You didn’t go down yourself?’

‘No. I’d Decimus to think of.’

‘Did you hear anything else? Afterwards? From the flat opposite?’

She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, hardly loud enough for me to hear: ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

Shit. ‘Come on, sister. Tell me. No comeback, I swear it.’