David Wishart - Solid Citizens

And he’d suddenly let go of me, turned, and was shambling off up the street, back the way I’d come. I watched him go. I was shaking like a leaf.

Gods, that had not been pleasant! Maybe I’d forget the tour of inspection and head straight for the wine shop. Sleuthing could wait; right now, what I could really do with was a cup of wine. In fact I could do with the whole jug.

I took a deep breath, pulled myself back together again, and carried on towards the main drag, turning right when I reached it in the direction of the market square. I’d got about halfway to the wine-shop street when I heard my name shouted. I turned; it was Aulus Mettius.

‘Yeah?’ I said when he’d caught me up. I wasn’t at my best, currently, and impromptu interviews with suspects I could do without. ‘What is it?’

‘I was hoping to bump into you,’ he said. ‘How’re things going?’

‘OK,’ I said cautiously.

‘Turned up any more dirt?’ I just looked at him. ‘I hear you’re interested in the wool store business. Our local arson scandal, although it’s best not to call it that too openly.’

‘Who told you that?’ I said sharply.

‘Word gets around. And it’d be natural enough. But if you are then I might have a tip for you.’

‘Is that so, now?’ I kept every smidgeon of encouragement out of my voice. Unsolicited information tends to make me suspicious at the best of times, and this Mother’s Little Helper pose from someone who was himself definitely in the frame was just a bit too much to be credible.

‘If I were you I’d have a talk with a man called Ulpius. Marcus Ulpius. He runs a small carter’s business near the circus, theatre side, and he owes me a favour. Just tell him I sent you. Or wait, that might not be enough.’ He took a copper coin from his belt pouch, then followed it up with his penknife, and scratched a letter ‘M’ on the face. ‘Show him this. That ought to do it.’

I pocketed the coin. ‘One question. What’s in it for you?’

‘Suspicious?’ He grinned. ‘Well, you needn’t be; I’m no murderer. There’s nothing in it for me, I promise you. Just personal satisfaction.’

‘In terms of what?’

‘I told you when we met at the funeral. I don’t like hypocrites, particularly when they paint themselves whiter than white and are crooked bastards underneath. The more paint gets scraped off, the better, and if I can lend a helping hand in that direction then I’m more than happy to do so. Talk to Ulpius. I’ll see you around.’

He turned to go.

‘Hang on, pal,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’

‘You happen to know a crazy guy, looks like something out of an Atellan farce, stinks like a dead cat in a heatwave?’

‘Dossenus. Sure.’ He frowned.

Dossenus. Well, I’d been spot-on with the Atellan farce bit: Dossenus is one of the stock figures in the plays, the hunchback. ‘That his name?’

‘Not his real one. But if he ever had another nobody uses it any more. I doubt if he even knows it himself. Sure, I know Dossenus, everyone does. He’s a local character, been around for years. A tramp, crazy, like you say. Sleeps rough, lives on garbage and whatever he can scrounge. You run into him?’

‘Yeah, a few minutes back. Or he ran into me, rather, at the old wool store.’

‘What did he want with you?’

‘To tell me he wasn’t the murderer I was looking for.’

Mettius laughed. ‘That’s Dossenus, all right,’ he said. ‘He gets these ideas into his head, largely because they haven’t got much competition. You don’t need to worry about him, Corvinus, he’s harmless for all his looks. Give you a start, did he?’

‘A bit of one, sure.’

‘Yes.’ He was examining me closely. ‘Yes, I can see that he did. Anyway, you get on over to Ulpius’s. You’ll find what he has to say interesting.’

And he was gone.

I carried on to the wine shop. This time of day, it was pretty busy with punters on their early lunch break, but I still wasn’t up to company and conversation. I took my second cup of wine — I’d sunk the first as soon as it was poured, and it hadn’t touched the sides — to an empty corner table and sat down.

Two more cups along the road, I was feeling more myself again. I set out in the direction of the circus.

It’s in the lower quadrant of the town, between the centre and the Arician Gate, with the theatre close beside it; not a bit of Bovillae I know very well. However, I found Ulpius’s yard easily enough — it was the only carter’s business in the area — and went in through the open gate. There was a big guy with his back to me, chewing on a hunk of bread and watching a couple of slaves grease the wheels of a cart. I went up to him.

‘You Marcus Ulpius?’ I said.

He turned round. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘Name’s Corvinus.’

That got me a suspicious look. ‘The Roman? Looking into the death of the censor?’

Like Mettius had said, word gets around. Evidently, it had even got this far. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s me.’

‘So what do you want here?’

Instead of answering, I took out the marked coin. ‘Aulus Mettius said to show you this.’

He took it, looked at it and slipped it into his belt-pouch. ‘And?’ he said.

‘Search me, pal. That’s all there is to it. Only the implication was you knew something about the burning down of the wool store six months ago.’

He looked wary. Then he nodded abruptly and tossed the rest of the bread away. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll go inside.’

I followed him into the big shed in the corner of the yard where the hay and straw for the horses were kept. He sat down on one of the bales, and I sat opposite.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Let’s get something clear before we start. This is a favour, right? I owe Mettius one, never mind for what, and for some reason he’s calling it in. The favour’s to him, and you’re not involved. No comeback, no follow-up, no extras. It ends here, and when you leave I don’t know you from fucking Romulus and I never saw you before in my life. Agreed?’

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘So. You have the ball. Ask away.’

‘You transported the missing wool for Marcus Manlius, right?’ I said.

He scowled, then grinned. ‘You’re not as green as you’re cabbage-looking, are you, Roman? Yeah, I did. And brought in the bales of rags that replaced it. Took me quite a while, I can tell you.’

‘You start the fire as well?’

‘Nah, wasn’t my job. And I was taking enough risks for what that bastard was paying me already. He got one of his own men to do that.’

‘So where did it go? The wool, I mean?’

‘To a wholesale merchant in Aricia, name of Gnaeus Pompeius.’ He sniggered. ‘Yeah, like the old general. No relation, though, and no “Magnus” tacked on the end. Would’ve been a joke if there had been, because he was a little runt of a guy I could’ve snapped in half with one hand. Big man locally, mind. He’d an empty warehouse on the edge of the town, and I just dropped the loads off there. What happened to it after that I don’t know, but no doubt Manlius and him were doing nicely out of the deal. Now. That’s all I can tell you.’

‘What’s Mettius got against Marcus Manlius? Specifically, I mean.’ Yeah, sure, he’d told me he was giving me Ulpius’s name out of pure altruism, but like I said I’ve never trusted suspect characters who provide unsolicited information gratis . The chances were that he had an axe to grind somewhere or other, and it’d be interesting to know what it was.

Ulpius shrugged. ‘You’d have to ask him that yourself, although I’d be surprised if you got a straight answer. Oh, sure, Manlius’s father was the aedile on the bench when he was relegated ten years back, and maybe that’s enough. It would be for me. But Mettius is a strange cove. Me, I’m in it for the money, pure and simple, I’m not ashamed to admit the fact. I’ve got a wife and kids to keep, and the carting business doesn’t bring in much. Mettius, well, he comes from a good family, so money’s not a problem and never has been. He’s crooked as they come and can lie to beat the band, sure, but if you ask me he does it out of pure devilment, just for the fun of it. He’s always been wild. And he can’t stand these pricks in the senate. Not that I blame him there. They’re all a pack of chancers.’ He stood up. ‘Right. That’s your lot. All there is, all you get. You tell Mettius when you see him the debt’s paid.’