David Wishart - Food for the Fishes

Not Penelope, then. The obvious candidate for Tattius — by extension, anyway — was Nerva. After all, I’d practically made him for the first two killings, and the third fitted the pattern.

So first the how. That was simple: I only had his door-slave’s word for it (or rather he only had Nerva’s) that the guy had gone to Bauli at all. He could easily have sloped up to Tattius’s villa, waited for him to take his usual constitutional in the grounds — there was no reason to assume he couldn’t have known about that — stepped out of cover and stabbed him. Then ridden on to Bauli — it wasn’t far, only two or three miles, and he was on the right side of town — to establish some sort of alibi.

The why was more tricky.

Me, I’d like to have known who suggested that appointment. The situation wasn’t like it’d been with Chlorus: a note sent to get the guy out of the house, going in a particular direction at a particular time when he could be waylaid and murdered. Tattius’s appointment had been for noon, and he’d been killed at home long before he was due to set out.

So my guess was that it wasn’t Nerva who’d suggested the meeting but Tattius.

That would make sense. With Murena dead, Tattius has lost the goose that lays the golden eggs. Sure, as a partner he’d still get his fair cut of the profits, but Nerva wasn’t his father. Whether Tattius was actually blackmailing Murena or, more likely, that the old guy just felt he owed in the good Roman tradition wasn’t relevant: the upshot — until latterly, anyway — was that Tattius was raking money in over the odds; certainly more than he was putting back. He wouldn’t get away with that with Nerva. To begin with, he didn’t have anything on the guy…

I stopped, my scalp prickling

Or there again maybe he did. Which was what killed him. Or helped to kill him.

Put that one on hold for a moment, stick with the main theory. I took a long swallow of wine to lubricate the brain cells.

Okay. Tattius didn’t have anything on Nerva that he could use as a lever. Worse, Nerva wasn’t the generous type, and he couldn’t afford to be, not with his up-and-coming expenses re the grain barge, so what money there was lying around was carefully earmarked. The last thing Nerva’s going to do under the circumstances is hand out cash he badly needs himself as capital investment to a neverwozzer who hasn’t done a hand’s turn for the company since he became a partner. If Tattius tries to put the bite on this time he’s going to get the dull thud. Consequently, he’s further up shit creek than ever, there ain’t a paddle in sight, and he knows it.

Yeah. So maybe he does have something on Nerva. Or thinks he can con him into thinking he does, which would be shyster Tattius all over. The meeting with his banker in Neapolis, I’d bet, wasn’t coincidence. Or not pure coincidence, anyway: he’d’ve wanted to make sure just exactly what his current financial position was before he talked to Nerva, but he’d arrange the appointment for as soon after that as possible. So he drops some heavy hints before he goes that Nerva had better see him, for his own good, as soon as he gets back, and be prepared to fork out a realistic amount of the readies when he’s asked for them. Or else. Which in the event was a very silly thing to do with a guy like Nerva, because -

I stopped again, this time like I’d run into a brick wall.Gods!

She’d known! Penelope had known!

That comment she’d made, under her breath, when she’d pulled the sheet up on her husband’s corpse. She’d called Tattius a silly, silly man. Sure he had been: he’d tried to blackmail Nerva, and it’d got him an urn.

Only if Penelope knew that much, then what else did she know that she wasn’t telling? And why wasn’t she telling it? There was no love lost between her and her brother, not her and any of the family, including her husband. Why should she protect Nerva? Fear? Yeah, well, that’d be reasonable, even sensible, especially if she knew more than she was saying; but from my assessment of the lady she wasn’t afraid of very much. She’d publicly accused her father of murder when she was hardly any more than a kid, after all. And I’d bet even then she was aware of the possible consequences.

I took another swallow of wine, emptying the cup, and poured myself a refill.

No, not fear. Not Penelope. Maybe just a simple sense of decency.

That, when you got right down to it, was the central thing about Penelope: the lady was decent, in the best sense of the word: a real straight-down-the-line, old-fashioned, stiff-backed Roman matron. Even though she hated her husband and knew why she’d been married to him she’d kept to the conventions — publicly, at least — for almost thirty years. Even at the end she could say, almost in the same breath, ‘I hated him’ and ‘Rest his bones’. So what could a lady like that have told me? That her husband was a blackmailer and her brother a murderer? Uh-uh; she wouldn’t do it, not for their sakes but for her own. If I wanted to find those things out, I could find them out for myself.

That didn’t excuse Aulus Nerva, though. No way. It was time me and Nerva had a serious chat. ‘Late afternoon’, his door-slave had told me. Well, it was late afternoon now, and if he wasn’t back from Bauli yet I’d camp on the bastard’s doorstep until he was.

There was another cupful in the jug. I finished that, took the jug and cup back to Zethus at the bar, said goodbye and left.

He’d arrived, just, and — so the major-domo said — was changing into a lounging-tunic upstairs. If I’d like to wait in the atrium he’d be right down. He brought me a cup of the second-grade Falernian and I passed the time looking at the wall-paintings.

Like I said, they were heavy on the nymphs-and-seductive-gods theme, with lots of boobs and bare thighs on view: Daphne and Apollo, Leda and Zeus, one biggie with a general free-for-all between nymphs and satyrs. Strong stuff for a public atrium, although maybe less so in Baiae. The quality of the painting, though, was like his choice of wine: flashy and second-rate.

He came down about twenty minutes later.

‘Ah, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘Admiring the artwork? I had it done last year. Quite a promising young painter, I thought.’

‘Yeah.’ I turned away. The major-domo followed him in with the wine-jug, poured and handed him a cup, topped mine up and exited.

‘I hear you — or rather your wife — took a packet off Sextus Florus yesterday evening at Philippus’s. Congratulations.’

‘Thanks. You’ve talked to him? Florus, I mean?’

‘No. I ran into a mutual friend in Bauli who saw the game.’ So he wouldn’t know yet that Philippus was after him with a rusty hatchet. A pleasure yet to come. Well, maybe that was the least of the bastard’s troubles, and I wasn’t surprised that Florus wasn’t exactly busting a gut to make contact, either. Knowing you’ve peached on a multiple killer is a pretty compelling reason for keeping your head down

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It was a good match. I’m sorry you missed it.’ I was; seeing Florus getting his come-uppance had been good, but Nerva would’ve been better.

He was watching me, frowning. ‘I understand you made a rather curious side bet. Towards the end.’

‘That’s right.’ I took my wine over to one of the couches — red plush upholstery and too much gilding — and lay down. ‘That’s why I’m here. Plus the fact, of course, that Decimus Tattius was knifed early this morning.’

‘So my major-domo told me. Dreadful business.’ He settled down on the couch opposite. ‘I was away too early to get Penelope’s message, naturally. The news came as quite a shock.’

Again. Yeah; they’d had quite a few quite a shocks in the last few days, that family, and I didn’t believe in the shock element for any of them. ‘You don’t seem too upset about it. If you don’t mind me saying so.’