Ruth Downie - Caveat emptor

Ruso closed the shutters and checked the door again. Returning to stand over the bed, he said softly, “If you really want to help me, tell me what’s going on.”

“I can’t. Just go away.”

“Do you want me to go to the procurator and tell him you’re part of it? They’ll put you in chains and have you tortured.”

Nico snatched at the blanket and pulled it up over his chin. “They made me do it,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to.”

“Do what?”

His head jolted from side to side as if he was trying to burrow down backward into the pillow. “I can’t! I can’t tell you!” He seemed to be having trouble breathing.

The man was reaching a state of panic in which there would be no chance of getting any sense out of him. Ruso seated himself on the floor, leaning back against the bed so he could not see Nico’s face. “This is very difficult, isn’t it?” he observed to the flaking paint on the wall. “I need to know some things in order to protect my wife and find the money you’re supposed to be responsible for, but you don’t want to tell me them.”

“It isn’t that I don’t want to!” exclaimed Nico. “I can’t. You saw what happened to Asper and Bericus.”

“It’s all a bit of a mystery, really,” Ruso continued, as if he was thinking aloud. “And you know one of the things I can’t understand? It’s why an obviously decent man like yourself got involved in it. I mean, you don’t look the type.”

“I’m not! They made me.”

Ruso waited. He could hear the landlady moving about downstairs. He had hoped Nico would feel the need to fill the silence, but as the moments drifted by he began to wonder if the man had fallen asleep. Outside, a distant blast on a horn signaled midday. He was about to try again when he heard, “It was when I went to Londinium.”

Ruso held his breath.

“The Council sent me to hire the architect for the theater plans. I had quite a lot of money for the deposit.”

There was another long pause during which Ruso wondered if he was supposed to guess the rest.

“I couldn’t see him till the next morning,” Nico continued. “There was what seemed like a nice bar down the road from where I was staying, and there was this very friendly girl…”

Ruso had a feeling he knew what was coming.

“And when I woke up,” said Nico, leaving events with the girl to Ruso’s imagination, “she was gone and so was the money. The people at the bar said they’d never seen her before. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t come home and say I’d lost it. I’d have been shamed. So… somebody said he would help me.”

“Dias?”

“I didn’t say the name!”

“No,” agreed Ruso. “So Dias helped you-how?”

“He knew somebody who could lend me the money.”

“And in return?”

“I can’t talk about that. They’ll kill me!”

Ruso turned to crouch beside the bed. “We can protect you,” he promised, hoping it was true. “We’ll get you sent somewhere out of their reach.”

“I shouldn’t have told you anything.”

“You won’t be safe until these men are caught.”

“You don’t understand.”

Ruso’s patience snapped. Grabbing the scrawny throat, he hissed, “What I understand, Nico, is that my wife’s been dragged into an alleyway and threatened with heaven knows what if I don’t keep out of this investigation and she doesn’t keep her mouth shut. If I can carry on, so can you. What did they make you do?”

“Let me go!” Nico seemed to be shriveling in terror.

“It’s something to do with forging money, isn’t it?”

“Please!”

“It must be someone who knows about metalwork. Someone whose family used to make coins in the old days?”

“You can’t hurt me! You’re a doctor!”

“Someone with access to a forge. Are we talking about someone in town, or outside? Is it somebody on the Council?”

“Help!” Whatever else Nico would have said came out as a strangled gurgle.

Ruso looked down into the bulging eyes for a moment, then sighed and relaxed his grip.

Nico took a gulp of air, grabbed the blanket, and pulled it up over his head. From underneath came a muffled, “I can’t tell you anything. Please, go away!”

“Caratius’s grandfather worked in silver. Is it Caratius?”

“Go away!”

“Why did he invite Asper to visit him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did Caratius know about the plot to murder Asper and his brother?”

“I don’t know! I don’t think so. No.”

“Did you?”

“I had nothing to do with it! They just told me to take Asper into the strong room in the morning.”

“And do what?”

“Nothing! I’ve done nothing!” Nico was still hiding under the blankets. “I didn’t know they were going to kill anybody. I just did what I was told. Please, I beg you. Go away.”

“Where’s the money now?”

“I don’t know!”

“Where do the false coins go after they’ve been minted?”

There were footsteps on the stairs. Nico gave a muffled squeal. “They’re coming!”

Ruso, hand on the hilt of his knife, moved to shield the bed from whoever was opening the door.

“You! What are you doing here?”

Ruso let his hand fall to his side.

The doctor’s pot belly was still bulging under the same blood spatters as yesterday. “I gave specific orders that my patient was not to be disturbed. I can’t have this constant interference. If it goes on I shall complain to the Council. This man is seriously ill.”

“Seriously ill with what?” inquired Ruso, interested.

“None of your business,” replied the doctor, just as Ruso would have done.

“I only ask,” said Ruso, “because it looks like something a lot of men go down with in the army.”

“Yes. I hear you’ve been passing yourself off as a doctor.”

“I just thought you might be able to help,” he said to Nico, “but never mind. And don’t worry, I’m sure that medicine will have you back on your feet very soon.” He smiled. “And then we can talk again.”

After this thinly veiled threat, he paused for a word with the landlady, who was lurking in the hall and jabbing at invisible cobwebs with a feather duster. In response to his request, she assured him that no other visitors would be allowed upstairs no matter how they tried to get in. This was a properly run house and when she and her husband were asleep, the dog was loose downstairs.

Reassured that his witness was being safeguarded, he gathered up Dias and Gavo. “Well,” he said, as casually as he could manage, “That was a waste of time. Anybody mind if we go and hunt down some lunch?”

Was that suspicion on Dias’s face, or the reflection of his own tension? He was fairly confident that whatever the man might be thinking, he would not act on it in broad daylight-certainly not while the innocent Gavo was with them to witness it. All the same, he was relieved when they left the quiet street in which Nico lived for the bustle of the main thoroughfare, where to his guards’ evident amusement, he paused to buy a bunch of bluebells from a street vendor.

What we need, sir,” murmured Albanus, scooping crumbs off Julius Asper’s desk and into his cupped hand, “is a way to make this Nico more frightened of us than he is of Dias.”

“He thinks Dias is going to kill him,” said Ruso. “It’s hard to be more frightened than that.” He glanced at the bluebells, temporarily stationed in a cup of water, and wondered whether the women were back from the cemetery yet. Perhaps he should go and see.

“Has he got a family he cares about?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“That’s a shame.” Albanus walked across to the high window, stood on tiptoe to check that nobody was outside, and then tossed the crumbs away. “Perhaps we could threaten to kill him more slowly than Dias will.”