Marilyn Todd - Second Act

‘Claudia,’ he said, warningly, and there was no trace on his face of the unimaginable relief that had swamped him when he heard about the hot-food vendor’s wife. ‘This is too dangerous a game to mess with. The man’s a monster and if you have even the tiniest suspicion, you have got to tell me. I’m serious, now who is it?’

‘I have absolutely no idea.’

‘It’s within my authority to have this house searched top to bottom,’ he said. ‘If I find one of your actors is injured-’

‘Very well, if you must know.’ She smiled, although the smile did not seem to reassure him. ‘I got to thinking last night that, well… Maybe a word, woman to woman, might coax one or two details out of the victims that they hadn’t liked to discuss in front of a man.’

Scepticism stretched the air. Silence stretched into infinity.

‘I don’t know what the hell you’re up to,’ he growled at last, spiking his hands through his hair. ‘But I don’t believe you’d cover up for this bastard, or that your talking to these girls can be worse than a pair of flatfoots trampling their fragile emotional progress.’ He reached for a quill and the inkwell.

Claudia’s eyes narrowed. ‘Last night you said you wouldn’tcouldn’t — put the victims through that torture again.’

‘Nor would I,’ Orbilio said tiredly. ‘You have to remember that I’m no longer in charge of this investigation.’

Both horns of Claudia’s dilemma prodded her at once. Bugger.

If she told Orbilio who she suspected was responsible, he would arrest him at once. That would be fine, provided, of course, she was right. But it was possible, more than possible in fact, that her suspicions were way off course-and there would be no way back for Marcus Cornelius after that.

Of course, a disgraced Security Policeman was a Security Policeman off Claudia’s back and, with Orbilio’s career in shreds, she would no longer be facing a lonely and penniless exile for fraud. But was she really prepared to jeopardize the career of a passionate investigator, who spat in the face of family convention to fight murderers, assassins and rapists? Especially when it had become a personal crusade between him and the monster terrorizing the streets? Being wrong twice would destroy him The horns started to hurt.

‘Dymas is adamant we interview the victims again,’ Marcus said, ‘and has it in his head to start with Deva, to ask her the questions we didn’t have a chance to put yesterday, and although I can see his logic, that girl’s sanity is already stretched to the wire.’

‘Then stop him,’ she said brusquely.

‘I can’t. The Head of the Security Police backs him all the way on this, but… ’

His voice trailed off into a tortured silence and, with his eyes glued to a point in the corner, he explained how Deva had tried to jump from the mezzanine. How he’d caught her, felt her bones quake uncontrollably in his arms, read the hopelessness in her eyes. He talked about what Deva had been like before the attack. Vivacious and vibrant, with her pretty pert bodices and Damascan fringed skirts.

‘A happy young woman with her whole life ahead of her, until that bastard destroyed her.’

Then, fixing his gaze on the doorjamb, he explained how the herbalist had been driven to the last resort of drugging her into oblivion with poppy juice, even though the risks of addiction were perilously high.

‘The herbalist seems a good man,’ Claudia said softly.

‘One of the best,’ Marcus replied, and, maybe because it was cold and he hadn’t slept last night, maybe he was in confessional mood, or perhaps it was simply because he was lonely, demoted and utterly demoralized, fearing the drops of the water clock were moving too fast and that soon, far too soon, there would be another victim to add to the list, he also told her the reason why he’d gone back to the little house by the river.

‘That was why my steward summoned me home,’ he explained. ‘Angelina had moved lock, stock and barrel into my house-’

But when he glanced up, it was to find Claudia and the three addresses had gone.

Which was a pity, Marcus felt, because he hadn’t got round to telling her that Captain Moschus had escaped from jail.

But then he had a feeling she already knew about that.

‘Who are you?’ A hatchet-faced woman with permanently pinched lips peered through a slot in the woodwork. ‘What d’you want?’

Claudia told her.

‘So?’ the dragon barked back. ‘What’s it to you?’

Claudia told her that, too.

‘Hmmm.’ Shrewd eyes bored into shrewd eyes. ‘Well, you’d best come on in, then. Before the neighbours start gawping.’

The woman, who introduced herself as the victim’s aunt, relieved her of her mantle in a pleasant hallway from which four equally pleasant rooms led off. Fragrant oils burned in a niche, and the hall was decked with holly and yew. A white cat snoozed on a tasselled cushion on a chair.

‘In there.’

The aunt beckoned her into a light, spacious living area with rich tapestries hanging on the walls and bearskin rugs on the floor. The seating was padded and comfortable, apple logs crackled and spat in the hearth, filling the air with their scent.

A year on and the poor girl was still jumpy, and was it any wonder, Claudia thought. Her bastard husband had thrown her out after the rape, proclaiming her an unfit mother for their children, an unfit wife as a result of her subsequent breakdown. Now she was reduced to living off a divorced aunt, and the only good thing to come out of that was at least the aunt was comfortably off. For a year, now, the girl had refused to set foot outdoors, the aunt said, could not be left alone, was terrified of strangers, especially men.

‘I’ve spent twelve months nursing her,’ she warned under her breath. ‘You be careful.’

It was like walking on butterflies’ wings. Round and round the questions went, gradually creeping closer to the target, every moment more painful than the last.

‘He pushed me in the middens,’ the girl said at last, and it might have been an automaton talking, a wooden dummy from whose mouth the ventriloquist projected his voice. “‘ Filth”, he said. “ All of you, nothing but filth,” and he put his foot on my neck and pushed me under, knowing I couldn’t breathe and I’d have to swallow the muck. “ Go back to the filth where you belong,” that’s what he said.’

And that was it. The ultimate violation. The one that preyed on the victims’ consciousness and remained there. That he had made them dirty. Dirt, from which there could never be any cleansing…

‘How could you identify him, if he was masked?’ Claudia asked gently.

The girl tensed, glanced at her aunt. ‘Same as I told the Tribunal. From the smell of aniseed, the way he held himself, his voice, the shape of his hands. Why?’ Her jaw tightened, her knuckles clenched white. ‘He is dead, isn’t he?’ She turned to her aunt, her face stark with horror. ‘You said he was executed. You swore-’

‘Yes, he’s dead,’ Claudia assured her, and caught an imperceptible nod of relief from the aunt. ‘I watched the execution myself. Lions. Very nasty.’

The girl relaxed, but only a fraction. ‘Then why all the questions?’

‘The Emperor,’ Claudia lied. ‘He was so concerned for the daughters of Rome, that he asked me to, uh-counsel the victims and help them talk it out of their systems.’

‘Did he send money?’ the aunt asked.

At home, the revisions to The Cuckold were going well. Which, roughly translated, meant that the group hadn’t actually killed each other-at least, not yet. But the amendments were testing the company’s cohesion to the limit. Adrenalin had finally ceased to pump. Last night’s dress rehearsal seemed aeons ago and now they were tired, scratchy, anxious and vulnerable. A perfect breeding ground for egos.