Lindsey Davis - See Delphi And Die

I was wearing a loose brown tunic, good Italian boots, a belt with a Celtic buckle, a slightly fancy dagger in a Spanish leather scabbard. These were surface adornments; I came with more subtle trappings. skills which no slippery businessman should take for granted. I looked my age, thirty-five that year, and as tough as I would ever be. I had been around; I hoped it showed. I sported an Aventine haircut and an Aventine stare. I was ready for anything and would take no nonsense.

'So you are the special investigator!' Phineus said, keeping it light, keeping it well-mannered. 'You are very welcome. I cannot tell you how glad I shall be when you solve what has happened and free us from its shadow.'

He had to be a conniving rogue, yet he lied to me with sonorous, deep-voiced sincerity.

'I heard you had gone to Cythera.'

'Oh – some other man took that group!' Phineus spoke dismissively; I could not decide whether he was looking down on the man, the group, or both. Maybe the other escort had pinched the Cythera commission from under Phineus' nose – and with it, the tips.

We were walking. The bar had been too intimate; neither of us wanted this conversation to be overheard by its nosy keeper and residents. Corinth had plenty of squares and colonnades to stroll in. We made our way to the main forum. It was so grandiose I for one felt anonymous there. But those multiple shops, arranged in neat sets of six or so, bunched along every facade of the frieze-bedecked piazza, could be full of ears. Corinth must have its version of Roman informers – if nothing else there would be street spies put in place to report to the governor on the activities of cults like the Christians.

'I need you to give me some background,' I said.

'Background on my clients?' Phineus enquired meekly.

'On your operation first, please. How long have you been running these escorted trips?'

'Since Nero's Grand Tour. That was the first big year for visitors; I could see things could only get better.'

So he had been on the road with tourists for the past ten years. I put him at close to forty. 'What did you do before that, Phineus?'

'This and that. I come from the south.'

'Of Greece?'

'Of Italy!'

'I've been there.' I had been to Croton, home of the original wrestling champion Milo. I found the south hostile to Romans, its towns full of staring eyes and resentful faces. Helena's first husband came from Tarentum and he was bad news. My tone automatically went sour. 'What part?'

'Brundisium.' A port. Always liable to produce men with low morals. A major embarking point for Greece, however, so a good home for a man who had ended up arranging travel.

I gave up on his past. 'Who decided to set up an overseas consultancy? Is the business yours, or do I need to know about higher management?'

'It's mine.' He sounded proud. Judging by the current tour, customer satisfaction was not his goal. That saved him feeling depressed when he reviewed his lack of praise from clients; it was enough for him to count up his bank balance.

'You call it Seven Sights. So I guess you go to all of them?' I tried showing off. 'The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – you go to Babylon?' Phineus laughed contemptuously. 'So you offer to go, and hope nobody asks for it… the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Pharos and Library at Alexandria, the Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza.'

'I try to avoid Halicarnassus too,' Phineus told me, confidentially. 'That's halfway to Hades.' When it came to remote exploration, he liked a soft life, it seemed.

'Still, you've had clients scribbling Tiberius was here on some of the best cultural hotspots.'

'And they do it! Latninus saw this monument and was amazed… Septimus had a good shit at this inn, and enjoyed the barmaid. All right for them, Falco, but I have to return to those places. Last thing I want is furious temple priests who know that my previous customers defaced five-hundred-year-old pillars. Come to that, last thing I want is bitter barmaids who remember my old customers as lousy tippers!'

'You hand out hints on etiquette, surely? 'Be discreet; pay what the bill demands; don't brag about the Circus Maximus or the new Flavian amphitheatre…'

''Pee when you can; don't steal votive offerings; souvenir-sellers want you to barter; money-changers don't. Never forget, Athens was a world-wide power when Romulus was sucking milk from the wolfie. – Oh yes. Doesn't stop the bastards standing before the monument at Thermopylae, when their hearts ought to be broken, and sneering, 'But Leonidas and the Spartans lost. '

'Doesn't stop them continuously moaning?' I threw in.

Phineus favoured me with a caustic glance. 'Now what have you heard, Falco?'

'No Games at Olympia?'

He sucked air through the hole between his front teeth. 'They have no idea!' he shook his head mournfully. 'Great gods, Falco! Don't these fools know about the old story? – one man used to threaten his slaves that if they misbehaved, their punishment was to be sent to the Olympic Games.'

'That bad?'

'Worse! Oh I have taken tours there during the contests. Then you get some moaning! It's a nightmare. Even if they think they know how it will be, they reel when they come up against the actual experience. They can't move, they don't see anything, they get bitten by flies and are laid low, they sweat like pigs in the heat, they collapse from dehydration, they are robbed by incense-sellers and street entertainers and prostitutes.' All this was now familiar. I was unimpressed by the blather. Phineus glanced at me to see how I was taking it, then carried on insistently. 'They are packed so tight, people faint away. Once I get the men into the stadium we are stuck there until closing time. The Games are violent events, long days of being squashed together under a baking sun, tumult all around.'

'And you cannot take women?'

'I wouldn't take women even if I could!'

We had stopped in front of the southern stoa, a long colonnade cut from the rock on two levels. Above us reared the Temple of Apollo, hundreds of years old, on its spectacular bluff. It had a long and serenely confident array of the wide, slightly squat Greek columns with which I had become familiar at Olympia; to me, not so refined as our taller Roman temple pillars. Helena always said Apollo was handsome enough, but she wouldn't invite him home to dinner. He would be bound to bring his lyre with him and would want to start a music contest. Like Nero, Apollo was known to sulk and turn nasty if he was not allowed to win.

'So, Phineus,' I said quietly. 'Does your prohibition against women date from the year you took Marcella Naevia and her missing niece?'

Phineus breathed out, puffing his cheeks. 'That again!'

''Again, nothing. It never went away.'

'Look, Falco. I do not know what happened to that girl. I really do not know.' The way he said it almost implied there were other things he claimed not to know, where some different measure of truth applied. I wondered what they were.

'And Valeria Ventidia, the bludgeoned bride?'

'How could I know anything about her either?'

He and I cooled off below a statue of a prowling lion, taking shelter from the sun's glare in the shade of its enormous plinth. A tattered stall was selling drinks. Without comment on Phineus' last remark, I bought two cups of honeyed wine. Well, it passed for wine. We stood to sip them, so we could return the beakers afterwards.

'I was with the men,' Phineus reminded me. 'I had taken the men to a mock-feast of victory. When the bride died,' he insisted.

I sampled my drink again, longing for more familiar street fare. 'And when the girl went up the Hill of Cronus, where were you then, Phineus?'