David Wishart - Food for the Fishes

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘No doubt of it. Believe me.’

‘Oh, my!’

‘So did Nerva actually borrow the money from you?’

‘Oh, yes. The contract was signed and I handed over the draft on the spot. Mind you, when he gave me his receipt he did say’ — Frontinus faltered — ‘he said — oh, my goodness! — that he hoped to repay the principal in full very shortly. That he had…prospects in view.’ Another anxious blink. ‘Both of them? The father and the brother, both murdered?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Sweet holy gods! I’d got him! ‘When was this, by the way? When he signed the contract?’

The guy swallowed. ‘Ah…six days ago,’ he said.

The day of the murder.

Bull’s-eye!

I left Frontinus having a fit of the horrors in Cleisthenes’s chair and went back outside. It fitted; Jupiter, did it fit! With Frontinus’s draft in his mantle-fold Nerva legally had the cash he needed to fund his half of the barge scheme, sure, but there were strings attached. Pretty considerable strings. Moneylenders like Frontinus weren’t in the business for their health, and interest rates were crippling, especially if the loan was a big one, and it had been: Frontinus’s mention of the fact that Nerva’s own total assets were just enough to cover it proved that. The interest rate couldn’t be less than ten or eleven percent, which meant that the monthly repayments wouldn’t be peanuts, and I knew that Nerva had a serious ongoing cash-flow problem already. So if the length of the loan was tied in with his inheritance the cost of waiting until his father dropped off the tree naturally, or until the grain barge started turning enough of a profit to pay back both interest and principal, if it ever did, would’ve made a serious hole in his bank balance. Possibly even a fatal one. And he’d be involved in a hell of a lot more ongoing expense before that happened.

On the other hand, with both his father and brother out of the way he could use company money to pay off the balance straight off. No need even to wait until his actual inheritance came through. And he would’ve saved what would amount over time — if he could put off bankruptcy, that is — to a small fortune in the process. For a guy like Nerva I’d say that the combination of factors was a pretty fair incentive to murder. Good enough for me, anyway.

I picked up the mare from where I’d left her fraternising with a couple of carters’ mules at the horse-trough, mounted up and set off for the four mile ride back towards Baiae.

Short as the interview with Frontinus had been, it’d been a good morning’s work. We’d nailed the bastard, no question: borrowing money on his future prospects was the clincher. And the fact that he’d signed the contract the day of the murder and told Frontinus that he hoped to pay off the principal almost before the ink was dry put the lid on things.

Okay; so how had it worked on the ground? What was the order of events here?

First of all, Nerva approaches Frontinus. He isn’t thinking yet of murdering his father — at least, pace Florus, not seriously — but he needs a lot of money that he doesn’t have, quickly. On Florus’s cousin’s recommendation he goes to Frontinus. Frontinus suggests the inheritance option, and Nerva jumps at it because it gets him off the hook. Only in the short term, though: once he has the cash in his pocket he knows he’s home and dry as far as the barge deal is concerned, sure, but he still has the interest to worry about, and in his current financial position finding that on a regular basis is going to be no joke. So he decides — this was where Frontinus’s info re the early repayment prospects came in — to sound out his father again and put the scheme to him as a proper business proposition meriting company funding; maybe, this time, dangling the bait of a preferential deal. Only in the event it’s no go: Murena — this is the afternoon of the murder — tells him to forget it; he’s up to his neck in expense already with the Juventius estate, planning on more, and he can’t afford to fund his son’s pie-in-the-sky projects. There’s a quarrel, and Nerva stalks out, stymied.

Right. So far, so good. On his way home, he does a bit of thinking. He’s got no love for his father — neither of Murena’s sons do — so that’s no barrier. Murena isn’t going to budge now, that’s certain, and without him Nerva is screwed, or as near to it as makes no difference. On the other hand, if his father were out of the picture he’d have control of the company purse-strings. Except for his brother Titus, of course, but maybe he can get round Titus. Or something. Okay; so say Pappa Murena meets with an unfortunate accident. He’s subject to fainting fits, and it’s his habit to visit the fish tanks of an evening after dinner. Say he has one of his turns, falls into a tank and drowns…

Nerva goes back to the farm, waits for his father and kills him, tipping his corpse into the eel-tank. Job done, inheritance and so loan secured.

Then, four days later, when things have died down a little and suspicions are elsewhere — he’s still pressed for time, remember — he sends his brother a message: he’s got something to say to him; would Chlorus come round at once? He’s decided that he won’t bother trying to persuade him; or maybe — which seemed more likely, from what the guy had said when I talked to him myself in the wineshop — he’s tried already and Chlorus won’t play ball. Worse, he knows the approach has been made, and he may have guessed why, plus gleaned the implications. So Chlorus has to go too, and quickly. Message sent, Nerva lures his brother down an alleyway and slits his throat…

Yeah; it would work. Sure it would. The theory fitted like a glove — motive, means, opportunity, the lot. According to Florus, who was too frightened and too stupid to lie, Nerva had no alibi for either of the two evenings in question, he’d motive in spades, and in either case means weren’t a problem. Aulus Nerva was the man, and thanks to Philippus I’d got him.

All I had to do now was prove it. That was the tricky part.

When I got back to the villa, Mother and Priscus were just getting into the carriage. She stopped when she saw me.

‘Hello, Marcus. Did you have a nice ride into Puteoli?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, it was okay.’ Mother has never really got to grips with the idea that horses and me don’t go naturally together, and riding isn’t something I do because I enjoy it. I dismounted and handed the mare over to one of the stable skivvies. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘Neapolis, dear. Not my favourite town, but Titus has a friend there with a unique collection of Samnite arms and armour. There’s a cuirass he wants to look at. At least’ — she fixed Priscus with a beady stare — ‘that’s what he says he wants to do, and it had better be.’

‘Mmmaaa!’

‘I shall be keeping a very close eye on Titus. When I’ve dropped him off at his friend’s I intend to do a little shopping. The shops in Neapolis are excellent, and I have the fifteen gold pieces which you and Perilla so kindly recovered to spend.’ She sniffed. ‘Perilla told me all about that at breakfast, by the way. Well done, dear. Perhaps you have your good points after all, although they are rather unconventional.’

‘Ah…right. Right. Thanks, Mother.’

‘They really are a dreadful pair, that Florus and Nerva. Quite beyond the pale. Perilla says that you think Nerva murdered his father and brother for control of the business.’

‘Yeah. At least, that’s how it’s beginning to look.’

‘I’m not in the least surprised. I’ve never trusted those flashy types, and Licinius Nerva is altogether too louche to be anything but a bad hat. What do you intend doing about him?’