David Wishart - Parthian Shot

‘A whole basket of fucking lampreys! No wonder he was — ’ I stopped.

‘Was what, dear? And don’t swear. Just because Meton does it doesn’t mean you have to.’

‘Upset. Only he wasn’t, was he? Not so’s you’d notice.’

‘No.’ She tugged at the lock. ‘That’s what I meant by strange. I would have thought that losing a basket of lampreys would have sent him running for the cooking wine. Not that I’m not grateful that it hasn’t, mind, but — ’ She went quiet for a moment. ‘Marcus, how often does something like this happen anyway? Especially on the Caelian? Someone just walking into a private kitchen on the off-chance of it being empty and stealing a basket of very valuable fish?’

‘You see a blue moon out there, lady?’

‘Exactly.’

Just at that point Bathyllus shimmered in with the recipes and, for some reason, a clean mantle over his arm. ‘Here you are, sir,’ he said. ‘And — ’

‘You know anything about this phantom lamprey-napper, Bathyllus?’ I said.

I’d caught him on the hop, which was the intention. A look that was indefinable passed over the little bald-head’s face before it changed to his usual bland major-domo expression.

‘No, sir,’ he said.

‘You sure? Spit on your granny and hope to die?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Yeah, well; thousands may have believed him, but I didn’t; the bastard was a pure, hundred-on-hundred prevaricator if I ever saw one. Which was odd, because Bathyllus and Meton were cat and dog, at each other’s throats for half the time and not on speaking terms for the other. Covering for our anarchic chef was something Bathyllus just did not do. Hell; what was going on here?

‘Look, pal,’ I said. ‘If you — ’

‘There’s a litter outside, sir, with the consular Lucius Vitellius in it. He wants you to join him immediately. I’ve brought you a clean mantle, in accordance with the consular’s instructions.’

I stared at him and swallowed. Oh, shit; Augustus House, here we come. Well, the Great Lamprey Mystery could wait for an hour or two while I got my balls very deservedly chewed off by Isidorus. Still, I wasn’t looking forward to this.

‘What’s it about, Marcus?’ Perilla said.

I shrugged while Bathyllus loaded me into the mantle. At least if I was pulled off the case Perilla would be happy. I wouldn’t be too upset myself, either: the diplomatic world and I could do without each other, and head-to-heads with bastards like Mithradates I didn’t need.

‘Search me,’ I said. I got up and planted a kiss between nose and chin. ‘I’ll see you later.’

Sure enough, the litter with its quota of official outwalkers was standing outside. I pulled back the curtain and squeezed into what little space Rome’s best and greatest had left me.

‘Hiya, Vitellius,’ I said. ‘Okay, let’s get this over with. If Isidorus wants to kick me off the team then — ’

‘Fuck that, Corvinus,’ Vitellius growled. ‘We aren’t going to see Isidorus, we’re going straight round to the delegation house. Some bugger’s murdered Zariadres.’

‘Zariadres?’ I said.

‘That’s right.’

Oh, hell; we’d got our body after all, only it wasn’t the one I expected. ‘What happened?’

There was a lurch as the litter-bearers took the strain and we were off. At a cracking pace, too: Vitellius had obviously given the lads their instructions beforehand, and they were practically sprinting.

‘His throat was cut in his sleep. And before you ask, that’s about all I bloody well know myself at present, all right?’ Vitellius sounded distinctly unchuffed. ‘I wouldn’t even know that if we hadn’t had a meeting scheduled for this morning to which the bugger naturally failed to turn up and after a great deal of humming and hawing the others vouchsafed that he was dead. It took some little time subsequently to screw the extra information out of them that he hadn’t exactly keeled over from an apoplexy.’ He snorted. ‘Fucking Parthians! Wouldn’t give you the time of day if they were standing next to a bloody sundial!’

‘They know we’re coming?’

‘Sure. This is Rome, not Parthia, Isidorus insisted on it in the Emperor’s name, you’re the expert here and Phraates has given his gracious but reluctant agreement to co-operate. Not that we’ll be too welcome, I can tell you that now. Especially since one of the other three has to be the killer.’

‘What?’

‘We’re not fools, boy. The delegation’s not official, so there’s no Praetorian standing outside the front door, but they’re important foreign nationals all the same. Isidorus had men in plain clothes watching the house front, back and sides last night, and no one went out or in. Zariadres was killed by one of his colleagues.’

I was still digesting that particular gobbet of information when we arrived. The slave who opened the door and ushered us into the lobby was a different one from the last time, big and thick-set with straight black hair, yellowish skin and slanted eyes.

‘Lucius Vitellius and Marcus Valerius Corvinus,’ Vitellius said to him. ‘Your masters are expecting us.’

The guy stared at us like he was two tiles short of a roof.

‘Don’t waste your breath. He’s Hyrcanian; he doesn’t speak Greek.’ That was Osroes, striding in from the atrium, aquiline nose well to the fore and looking annoyed as hell. He snapped something guttural at the slave, who cringed back bowing into his cubby. ‘Come in, if you must.’

Yeah, well, not exactly a smiling welcome with open arms, but then Osroes hadn’t struck me as the cheerful, backslapping type last time we’d met, either, and now he had even less cause to blow the squeaker. I could see this visit turning out to be a real bundle of laughs.

‘Just a moment, pal,’ I said. I ignored the resulting glares — Osroes’s and Vitellius’s — and examined the inside of the door. In addition to the normal lock there was a hefty pair of bolts, top and bottom. Fair enough. A lock can be picked from the outside, given favourable circumstances — and I was keeping an open mind on that one — but there ain’t no arguing with two three-foot lengths of iron. If, naturally, they’d been shot at the time. ‘Where’s the other slave?’ I said. ‘The one who was on the door last night?’

Osroes shot me a look the full length of his nose. ‘He’s dead,’ he said. ‘On my instructions.’

Oh, shit. I could see that even Vitellius was taken aback. ‘You like to tell me why?’ I said carefully.

I thought he wasn’t going to answer, and for an uneasy moment or so I wouldn’t’ve given long odds against him spitting in my eye. Finally, he said:

‘I found him asleep and the door ajar.’

‘Uh-huh,’ I said neutrally. ‘And what time would this be?’

That got me a look that would’ve been appropriate for a mentally-disadvantaged prawn. ‘This morning, of course. When we discovered that Zariadres was dead. Do you think under ordinary circumstances I’d have had a valuable slave killed just because he’d left a door open?’

Maybe it was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but me, in this bastard’s case, I wouldn’t give odds. I glanced at Vitellius, eyebrow raised. He didn’t say anything — obviously this was my show and as far as he was concerned I could damn well sink or swim — but he made a slight negative movement of his head. So. Vitellius hadn’t known about the open front door either. I wondered what else he didn’t know. I turned back to Osroes.

‘You don’t think that killing the man before anyone had a chance to talk to him was a little premature?’ I said.

Osroes smiled briefly. ‘Oh, I talked to him first, Corvinus. Very urgently. And I assure you if he’d known anything about anything he would have told me. Especially towards the end.’