David Wishart - Solid Citizens

‘No. No, he didn’t.’

‘Fact. A couple of months ago, it was, just after Vatinia died. You know who Vatinia was?’

‘Your brother’s wife. Sure.’

‘My brother’s, as you say, wife .’ He gave the half-grin, half-snarl and sank another mouthful of wine. ‘Yes. She was OK, Vatinia. A real lady, patient and tolerant as hell. She had to be, mind, the bugger didn’t deserve her. Well-off, too, in her own right. She’d money of her own, quite a bit of it, a lot more than he had, originally. When he married her, Quintus got by far the best of the deal, and not just financially. Anyway, the allowance came from her, or from the income from her own holdings. She was the one who insisted that he pay it. When she died, Quintus decided that wasn’t necessary any more, so when I went to see Novius as usual on the next kalends to pick up my month’s cash I got the straight finger. Still’ — after pouring me a token splash, he topped up his cup with the rest of the wine in the jug — ‘all’s well that ends well, isn’t it? Novius’ll just have to grit his teeth and cough up the whole boiling. I’m all right now.’

‘Yeah. You are.’ He was, at that — by his own estimate, about a million sesterces all right. I picked up the cup, drained it, and got to my feet. ‘Thanks for the chat. I’ll see you around.’

‘You leaving?’ he said. Surprised, evidently, but that was his business.

‘Yeah. No more questions. Interrogation done and dusted.’ There was the business of his hobnobbing with Roscius the night of the murder to go into, sure, but I wanted to think that one over before I faced him with it. Roscius, too, for that matter. Besides, I’d had about enough of Brother Lucius as I could stomach for one day. Personally, my sympathies were with the dead Caesius; brother or not, the guy was a useless git, and a prime sponger. The fact that he was obviously intelligent only made things worse. ‘Things to do, places to go.’

‘Yeah? Where would that be, then?’

I hadn’t really thought about it, but if I had I wouldn’t have told him. Out of there and away from Lucius bloody Caesius was enough for me, for the time being.

So where was I going? There was still a fair slice of the day left, but I’d no one else to see, not at present, anyway, barring the rival collector (Baebius, wasn’t it?) that the old guy in the antiques shop had said had gone home furious with Caesius for stealing a march on him over the purchase of a Greek figurine. I could easily go back to the shop and get his address, sure, but I reckoned that could wait; Baebius hadn’t exactly sounded the type likely to hang around the back of a brothel after sunset waiting to zero his co-auction-goer in a fit of pique. Mind you, it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility: some of these antiquities nuts were, well, nuts. Look at Priscus. No, Baebius would keep; I’d got enough to think about at present. Maybe I should just go back home, talk with Perilla and start putting things together.

Only there was one other place I could go to follow up an angle I knew about already. It probably wouldn’t take long, and since I was in Bovillae in any case with time on my hands I might as well do it now. When we’d been talking about the wool store fire in the wine shop the argumentative punter (what was his name? Battus, right?) had mentioned a night watchman who lived over by the meat market. Garganius. Sextus Garganius. I might as well look him up, see what I could get.

One good thing about a small town like Bovillae, as opposed to Rome, is that everywhere’s practically within spitting distance of the centre. The meat market was only a few hundred yards further along the Hinge from market square, in the direction of the Roman Gate. I cut back through the square and turned right.

This time of day, the market was crowded with the local wives and bought help shopping for the evening’s dinner. The guy running the third stall I asked at pointed me towards a side street closer to the gate, and an old biddy trudging along the pavement lugging a string-net bag full of assorted root vegetables and chitterlings narrowed the search to the last house along, next to an oil shop on the corner. I knocked on the door and it was opened by a youngish woman holding a baby on her hip.

‘Sextus Garganius live here?’ I said.

‘Yes.’ She hefted the baby. ‘Who wants him?’

‘He doesn’t know me,’ I said. ‘I just wanted a quick word, if that’s OK.’

She frowned, but opened the door wider and stepped aside. ‘You’d best come in, then,’ she said, then shouted, ‘Dad! Someone to see you!’ She turned back to me. ‘Go ahead. He’s in the kitchen, round to the right. Excuse me, I was just going to change Quintus here.’

Yeah, I could smell that that was pretty urgent. She took the kid off to some inner fastness to repair the spreading damage while I followed her directions.

Garganius was standing next to the kitchen brazier, stirring a pot of bean stew: a little old guy with grizzled hair and a wall eye. He looked round.

‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Who’re you?’

I gave him my name. ‘It’s about the fire a few months back. In the town’s wool store. I understand you were the night watchman.’

His single good eye looked me over suspiciously. ‘I was,’ he said. ‘So what?’

‘I was hoping you’d tell me what happened.’

‘What’s to tell? The place caught fire and burned down. That’s all there was to it, and you could’ve got that much from anyone.’

‘I was talking to a guy named Battus.’ No point in complicating the issue. ‘He said it wasn’t an accident.’

The suspicious look toned down a tad. ‘I know Battus, sure. He send you here?’

‘More or less. He told me where to find you, anyway. I’m looking into the death of Quintus Caesius. The censor-elect. Seemingly he was planning to open an investigation.’

That got me a grunt. ‘Maybe he was,’ Garganius said. ‘But that isn’t going to happen now, is it?’

I shrugged. ‘It might. It all depends.’

‘Depends on what?’

‘Maybe on what you tell me.’

He went back to stirring the pot. A minute passed in silence. Then without looking at me, he said, ‘You down here from Rome?’

‘Sure.’

‘Official?’

‘More or less, again. Where Caesius is concerned, certainly.’

‘Fine.’ He nodded, like he’d made a decision. ‘OK. They’re saying I knocked over a lamp when I was drunk. That’s a lie. I wasn’t, and I didn’t. Truth is, I’d nothing to do with starting the fire.’

‘Who did, then?’

‘Search me, pal. All I know is that I was in my cubby just inside the door as usual. Oh, I may’ve been dozing, sure — what do you expect at that time of night — but I was stone-cold sober. I woke up and found the place full of smoke, so I got the hell out and raised the alarm. For all the good it did. By that time the rafters’d caught and the roof was coming down.’

‘This wouldn’t be the burned-out warehouse just off the main drag the other side of the market square, would it? In the same street as the brothel?’

‘That’s right. It was lucky the place was free-standing, or the whole middle of town could’ve gone up. Specially at that time of year. Everything was dry as a bone.’

‘Could someone have got in? To start the fire, I mean?’

‘Sure. No problem, it would’ve been easy enough. I told you, I was inside, wasn’t I? You think I locked the door behind me? And after all, who’s going to steal a warehouse worth of fucking wool bales?’

‘Unless they’d been stolen already.’

He gave me a long, considering look, tasted the bean stew and put the spoon back in, all without a word.

‘Of course,’ I went on, ‘that would’ve been pretty difficult to cover for, during daylight hours, considering the number of bales that must’ve been involved.’ No response. ‘I mean, something on that scale would tend to get noticed, wouldn’t it, during the day? A night operation, now, small loads, a bit at a time spread over a month or two, single-cart stuff, early hours of the morning, well, that’d be different.’ Still silence. ‘Come on, pal! If that was how it was done then you must’ve known all about it from start to finish. And if so you’re up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Now, I don’t want to make trouble, especially for the little guy who probably had his arm twisted and only got a handful of silver pieces out of it. I’m not even a fucking Bovillan citizen, for the gods’ sake. Arson’s not my business; I couldn’t care less about a little thing like that. What is my business, however, is murder. All I want is to get the facts straight so I can get on with my job. Clear?’