David Wishart - In at the Death

Aponius passed me first, eyes front scanning the pavement ahead. I stepped out and grabbed him.

‘Just a minute, pal,’ I said. ‘I’d like — ’

— which was as far as I got before Pettius’s shoulder slammed into my back, pitching me into one of the city’s ubiquitous bag-ladies coming the other way loaded down with half the vegetable market. She went down with a thump and a scream, scattering onions and turnips. Meanwhile, Aponius had twisted like an eel to one side and planted a fist in my ribs. It was like being slugged with a rock. I collapsed against the tenement wall gasping.

Aponius chuckled. ‘Sorry about that, Corvinus. No hard feelings, eh?’

And then he was gone. Both of them were gone, pushing their way through the gathering crowd and into the next alley.

Shit!

I started after them. A hand caught my ankle and I went arse-over-tip to the ground, landing on my sore arm. Pain lanced up.

‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing, sonny?’ the bag-lady snapped, letting the ankle go. ‘You think you own the fucking street?’

‘Uh…I’m sorry, grandma.’ I stood up, trying to hug my arm and my ribs at the same time. ‘Accident.’

‘Holy Mother, I’ll give you accident!’ She glared up at me like Allecto on a bad day. ‘That’s my Quintus’s dinner there, all over the fucking road!’

‘Ah…yeah. Yeah.’ I fumbled my belt-pouch open and took out a couple of silver pieces. ‘Look, buy him a chicken, okay?’

‘Chicken brings him out in a fucking rash!’

I pressed the money into her hand, shoved through a knot of supportive and very vociferous tunics and headed for the alleyway.

Too late. Miles too late.

Bugger.

Nothing else for it. I went home.

Perilla was in the atrium, having her hair done.

‘Oh, hello, dear,’ she said. ‘How did your talk with — ’ At which point she saw the state of my tunic. The streets of Rome might be okay to walk along, most of them, but rolling about in them is a bad, bad idea. ‘Marcus! Not again!’

I held up both hands. ‘Yeah, yeah, I know. But no damage this time, lady, it’s just dirt. I, uh, took a bit of a tumble.’

‘We’ll finish later, Chloe,’ she said to the maid. The girl nodded and scurried out, taking her curling-tongs with her and giving me a scared glance over her shoulder. New staff. She’d get used to it. ‘Marcus, you do not take a tumble in a litter! What happened, and where’s your mantle?’

‘That’s okay. I left it with the lardballs. They not back yet?’

‘No. Or not to my knowledge. And don’t change the subject.’

The buggers had probably stopped off at a wine-shop to refuel. I didn’t use them often, and they took every chance they could get to jump the wall. Well, I didn’t blame them. It was a nice day.

‘Look, I just banged into a bag-lady on Staurus Incline, all right?’ I said, and took a swig from the wine-cup Bathyllus had provided me with. ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going. It’s easy enough done.’

‘Marcus Valerius Corvinus!’

Ah, well, it was a fair cop. ‘Remember the two fake stonemasons?’ I said.

‘Yes, of course I do.’

I gave her the basic outline. When I’d finished, she said: ‘They were following you? Why? Who sent them?’

‘Jupiter, I don’t know! But I’d give it good odds, lady. And they’re not interested in conversation. Unfortunately, I had my chance and I blew it all over the shop. No bones broken, though. Seriously.’

She sniffed. ‘All right. What happened with Domitius Ahenobarbus?’

I told her the details. Such as they were. ‘He’s covering. The gods know for what, but he’s covering, and he’s scared.’

‘Ahenobarbus is scared? Be serious, Marcus! He’s one of the most powerful men in Rome!’

‘Even so.’ I took another sip of wine. ‘It’s a scam. It has to be. And in that case, of course he’s scared. Imperial or not, if he’s stepped out of line the Wart will nail his skin to the senate-house door if he has to get off his deathbed to do it. And if he doesn’t then Gaius’ll do it for him.’

She was quiet for a long time. Then she said: ‘Marcus, I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. It’s beginning to turn very nasty.’

I knew what she meant; to be honest, I didn’t like it either. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: you don’t mess with imperials, even when they’re second-rank ones, and if someone of the calibre of Domitius Ahenobarbus had something private cooking then lifting the lid of the pot and dipping your spoon in was a bad, bad idea. Still, the job had to be done, and I had enough problems without worrying about Perilla worrying, as it were. I put the wine-cup down, went over and kissed her.

‘Look, lady,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a charmed life, all right? And I’m on the right side of the fence. The guys who should be sweating blood — and I’ll bet they are — are the ones who had young Papinius thrown through a window. Who they are, and why they did it, I don’t know, but I have to find out, okay?’

She rested her forehead against my chest for a moment. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose you do,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, dear. I won’t mention it again.’ A pause; then, like she was asking a doctor for a verdict that she knew already: ‘Do you think there’s any possibility that Ahenobarbus could have been involved? Directly involved, I mean? In Papatius’s death?’

I went back to my couch, taking my time doing it. That was a question I’d been trying not to ask myself. Still, it had to be faced. ‘It’s possible,’ I said carefully. ‘In theory, anyway. Leaving out the whys and the wherefores.’

‘His own son?’

‘That wouldn’t count much with him, Perilla. He’s a callous bastard, Ahenobarbus, Papinius was nothing to him but a by-blow and I doubt if he’d think twice about having him killed. If it became necessary, if he had a good enough reason.’

‘And you think that he might have had?’

I took another gulp of the Setinian. ‘Maybe. You could argue for it, anyway. Certainly he got the kid his job on the commission; he did, not Allenius, although Ahenobarbus fixed things publicly so it’d appear otherwise. There must’ve been a reason for that besides paternal affection, which like I say just isn’t that bastard’s bag. Six gets you ten having Papinius to hand on the staff was an essential part of the scam.’

‘But, Marcus, you said it yourself. Papinius was nineteen years old, hardly more than a boy. What use could he be to someone like Ahenobarbus?’

‘I don’t know! Jupiter, lady, if I’d got that far I’d have the whole thing!’ I swallowed another mouthful of wine. ‘In any case, whatever it was it went wrong. Badly so, and my bet is that it was the kid’s fault. Maybe he got cold feet, maybe he blabbed to someone out of turn, maybe he just made a mistake. Whatever happened, he became the weak link. Which is where Mucius Soranus comes in.’

‘There is one major problem, of course,’ Perilla said.

‘Yeah? What’s that?’

‘Whatever Papinius was involved in would be illegal, wouldn’t it? Certainly dishonest.’

‘Naturally it would. That’s the whole point.’

‘But if Papinius knew that — well, surely you’ve been insisting all along that he was fundamentally an honest young man? I thought that was axiomatic.’

‘No problem there. In fact, things make more sense that way. Okay. Scenario. Imagine you’re the kid, right? You’ve just landed your first responsible public post and you’re on the ladder a good step higher than you’d expected to be. How do you feel?’

‘Very proud. Over the moon. And desperate to do well.’