David Wishart - In at the Death

‘I’ll be very surprised if she can’t. Plauta’s the biggest source of female gossip in Rome. She’s also — and I don’t often use the term, Marcus — a complete cat. Yes, I think she could help a great deal. If properly approached.’

‘Not directly?’

Perilla smiled. ‘Not directly. Leave it to me, dear. I’ll invite myself round tomorrow.’

‘Hey, that’s great!’ I refilled my cup and took a slug of the Setinian: the world was suddenly a brighter place. ‘See if you can find out — ’

‘Excuse me, sir.’

I turned round. Bathyllus had oozed in on my blind side.

‘Yes, little guy, what is it?’

‘A slave has just come with a message. From Mucius Soranus.’ That with a slight sniff: like I said, Bathyllus has standards. He’d probably had the poor bugger disinfected at the door.

I set down the wine-cup. ‘Is that so, now?’ I said carefully.

‘Yes, sir. The gentleman wants to meet you. Tomorrow morning at dawn. In Pompey’s theatre.’

‘He what?’ I goggled. Perilla was staring.

‘That’s what the man said. I did think myself it was a little odd, but — ’

‘Jupiter’s bloody immortal balls! At dawn ? He say what it was about?’

‘No, sir. I asked, of course, but he didn’t know. He’d only been told to take the verbal message.’

‘Don’t go, Marcus!’ Perilla said.

Yeah, that was my first reaction too. A dawn meeting at Pompey’s theatre just didn’t make sense. If everything was on the level then the bastard could’ve asked me round to his house at a civilised hour, although given how we’d parted on the last occasion I couldn’t think what the hell he’d have to say to me. Something stank like a week-old codfish.

‘The guy’s still here? The slave, I mean?’ I said.

‘No, sir. He delivered the message and left. I said you’d want to speak to him personally, but — ’

‘Okay. Okay, Bathyllus.’ I waved him away. ‘You did your best. Go and polish your spoons.’ He exited. ‘Gods!’ I reached for the wine-cup.

‘Marcus, you aren’t going to go, are you?’ Perilla said.

‘Sure I am. What choice do I have?’

‘For heaven’s sake!’

I was thinking. I’d go, sure — I had to, it might be important — but I wouldn’t go alone. No way would I go alone, not the way things were shaping. Forget Placida this time, she was too unreliable. Half a dozen of my biggest lads with weighted sticks were another matter; and Soranus’s message — if it was Soranus’s — hadn’t mentioned anything about a solo interview.

If the meeting was above-board, though — and I’d put that in the flying pigs category — then it was going to be interesting.

I was up in good time, two hours before dawn at least; to tell the truth, I hadn’t slept all that much. Perilla was awake and around too. She hadn’t slept much either.

‘Be careful,’ she said as she kissed me goodbye.

‘You’ve got it, lady.’ I checked the knife taped to my forearm — carrying a sword inside the city limits is strictly illegal, and I was in enough trouble already — and whistled up the Wrecking Crew. They were the biggest, meanest half dozen Bathyllus’s team of skivvies could provide, built like the doors on the State Treasury and more than twice as thick. Mind you, I wasn’t taking them for their powers of conversation. Apropos of which: ‘Okay, boys? All got your sticks?’

‘Yeah, boss.’ The leader grinned. He’d lost a few teeth here and there, but the effect was balanced by his broken nose and shaved head.

‘Fine. So let’s go walkies.’

Pompey’s theatre is the other side of the Capitol, in Mars Field near Tiberius Arch; in other words, a long hike from the Caelian. We weren’t bothering with torches: there was a full moon, no footpad in his right mind was going to cross six very hefty buggers just begging for the chance to try out their new toys, and in any case in the lead-up to dawn the streets were full of wheeled carts making their deliveries and plain-tunics en-route to work. We got some strange looks on the way over — you don’t see purple-stripers out and about much before the second hour — but again because of the Wrecking Crew most punters gave us the pavement to ourselves. The sky was just beginning to lighten when we reached the Temple of Hercules and the Muses just shy of the theatre complex.

The doors of the theatre were open. That was my first surprise. The second, when I went inside, was that there were no slaves about. That was weird. An open door in a public building first thing in the morning means the bought help are up and around polishing the floors or sweeping the steps and generally making sure that the place is respectable and heart-of-the-empire standard. Not a soul. Zero. Zilch.

I checked that my knife was loose in its sheath, motioned the Wrecking Crew to stick close behind, and climbed the stairs to the auditorium. The sun was up now, although it was hidden by the Capitol rise, and when I got out into the open air I could see clearly along the ranks of seats. No one. Nothing.

Shit.

Fair enough. There was no point in skulking around. I put my hands round my mouth and shouted: ‘Soranus!’

A flock of sparrows flew out of the cavea to one side of the stage far below me. Nothing else moved. Bugger; it had been a wasted journey.

Or had it?

I looked down at the stretch of paving that separated the stage proper from the lowest half-circle of seats. In front of the raised stage platform, at ground level, there was a line of statues. Propped against one of them was…

The hairs on the back of my neck rose.

‘Fuck!’

‘Trouble, boss?’ That was the head slave of the Wrecking Crew. He sounded pleased.

‘Down we go, lads,’ I said. ‘Keep your eyes skinned.’

Yeah, sure; it could’ve been one of the theatre skivvies sleeping on the job: he was too far away for me to see his face clearly. And pigs might fly.

I went down the gangway to the senatorial seats, lowered myself carefully over the barrier onto the orchestra floor, and crossed towards the stage platform. The Wrecking Crew followed.

Yeah, that was Soranus all right, and he was definitely an ex-blackmailer: his throat had been cut ear to ear. No blood, though, on the paving-stones at least, barring a couple of smears. This corpse had been dumped. Well, I couldn’t say it was altogether unexpected; the whole setup had stunk from the beginning, and a corpse at the end of it had been one of the possibilities.

It’s funny how your mind registers little things at a time like this. For me, then, it was the bare knees of the statue above him. Diana the Huntress, in her short dress and wreath, poised and about to throw her javelin. The statue looked quite new, the bronze hardly tarnished. Soranus’s head was propped against the goddess’s legs.

Then I noticed something odd. Yeah, well, you know what I mean.

The guy’s right arm was stretched out straight in front of him and to one side, the hand clenched into a fist and resting knuckles-down on the orchestra floor, like he was holding something out towards me. I reached down and prised the fingers apart: either he hadn’t begun to stiffen properly yet or he’d been killed quite a while ago, because they opened fairly easily.

Soranus was holding a silver piece.

I sat back on my heels to think. Bugger; what was going on here? It got weirder by the minute. If the body had been dumped, as it had, then why — ?

‘Sir! Sir!’

I looked round. An old guy — obviously a slave, from his tunic — was hobbling towards me along the line of the platform. I reached down and took the coin from Soranus’s hand, then stood up to wait for him.