Lindsey Davis - Ode to a Banker

'What's your name?'

'Avienus.'

'I am Falco. Investigating yesterday's death.' I took out a note-tablet and let him see me start a fresh waxed board in a capable manner. 'Were you the first visitor yesterday as well?'

'As far as I know.'

We discussed times briefly, and I reckoned Avienus had turned up shortly after my spat about publication terms. He was almost certainly the first to appear after Chrysippus came into the house from the scriptorium, so if the others confirmed they saw their patron alive later, it cleared him. I lost interests but I was stuck with him in the absence of anyone else.

'What do you write, Avienus?'

'I am a historian.'

'Oho – murky doings in the past.' I was being deliberately crass.

'I confine my interests to modern times,' he said.

'New emperor, new version of events?' I suggested.

'A new perspective,' he forced himself to agree. 'Vespasian is writing his own memoirs, it is said -'

'Isn't there a rumour he brought home some tame hack from Judaea who will do the official Flavian whitewash?'

This time Avienus pulled up at my brisk interruption. He had not expected the investigating officer to crash in on his subject. 'Some limpet called Josephus has attached himself to Vespasian as the approved biographer,' he said. 'He has rather cornered the market.'

'Rebel leader.' I was brisk. 'Picked up as a prisoner. Should have been executed on the spot, or brought to Rome in shackles for the Triumph. Made a flattering prophecy or two, based on the bloody obvious, then turned traitor to his own side with commendable quick thinking.' I tried not to make this sound too insulting to professional historians in general. I like to maintain a polite veneer, at least while the suspect looks innocent. 'My brother served in Judaea,' I told Avienus amicably, to explain my knowledge. 'I heard that this flattering Judaean has been living in Vespasian's old private house.'

'That should encourage an unbiased viewpoint!' His mouth screwed up, below a hooked nose down which he could have looked quite snootily, had he possessed sufficient character. Instead, his vindictiveness was the fussy, ineffectual kind.

I smiled. 'Vespasian will charge the going rent. So – what's your own angle on our life and times?'

'I like to be impartial.'

'Oh – no viewpoint?'

Avienus looked hurt. 'I catalogue events. I do not expect renown myself – but I shall be used as a source by future authors. That will satisfy me.' He would be dead. He would know nothing about it. He was either an idiot or a hypocrite.

'Anything published? I was told you are "respected" in your field.'

'People have been kind.' The modesty was as false as a whore's golden heart. 'What are you working on at the moment for Chrysippus?' I pressed him.

'A review of fiduciary transactions since the Augustan period.' It sounded dry. That was being generous.

'Surely that has a limited appeal to a normal readership?'

'It is a small field,' Avienus boasted proudly.

'Thus allowing you to be its pre-eminent historian?' He glowed. 'Whether or not the general reader gives a quadrans about your subject?'

'I like to think my researches have relevance.' Nothing would put him off. I stopped wasting effort on insults.

'Was Chrysippus paying you?'

'On delivery.'

'When will that be?'

'When I finish.'

I had detected tetchiness. 'Was late delivery why he called you in yesterday?'

'We did discuss programming, yes.'

'A friendly chat?'

'Businesslike.' He was not stupid.

'Reach a decision?'

'A new date.' It sounded good.

'One you were happy with? Or one that suited him?'

'Oh, he makes all the running!'

'Well, he did,' I reminded the grumbling historian quietly. 'Until somebody battered him senseless and glued him to the tesserae of his elegant mosaic with lashings of spilt cedar oil.'

Avienus had had an unmoved expression until then; it barely changed. 'I am held up by one of my blocks,' he said, ignoring the salacious detail and returning doggedly to the point. Was that his style? The public would spurn it. Anyway, I had no truck with 'blocks'. A professional author should always be able to unearth material, then develop it usefully.

'Did you attack Chrysippus?' I sprang on him.

'No, I did not.'

'Did you have any reason to kill him?' This time he merely shook his head. 'Would any of his other authors have had such a reason?'

'Not that I could say, Falco.' Ambiguous. Are historians linguistically meticulous? Did Avienus mean he knew no reason – or he knew a reason but would not reveal it? I decided against pursuing this; he was too aware of the questioning process. Nothing would come from badgering.

'Did you see any of your colleagues while you were here?'

'No.'

I consulted my list. 'Turius, Pacuvius, Constrictus and Urbanus all visited, I have been told. Do you know them all?' He inclined his head. 'You meet them at literary functions, I presume?' Another twist of the head. He seemed too bored now, or too offended by the simplicity of the questions, to bring himself to reply aloud.

'Right. So you were first here and Chrysippus was definitely alive when you left?'

'Yes.'

I paused for a moment, as if considering, then said, 'That's it then.'

'And you will be in contact if you need anything else.' That was my line. Apart from alienating the officer investigating him for murder, he had just lost a potential buyer. I liked history – but I would never now allow myself to read his work.

I hung around quite some time longer. I was expecting five men – most of whom had apparently decided to ignore me. Since a no-show would imply guilt, this was intriguing. But I bet that when I did confront the others, they would try the old 'never got your message' trick. Maybe a heavy-handed visit from the vigiles was needed to change their minds. Turius turned up just as I had decided to go home for lunch. He must be the infuriating one of the set.

He looked mid-twenties. An untrustworthy 'respectable' visage, with a nasty little buttoned mouth. His dress code was the opposite of the Avienus black. His tunic was vermilion, and his shoes were punched and laced. Even his skin had a bright, slightly hennaed colouring. His hair, under a shimmering oil slick, was extremely dark. The ghastly tunic was bloused over his belt in a way I loathed. While nothing about Avienus had made me consider geography, I decided at once that Turius had provincial origins. Writers tend to home in on Rome from Spain, Gaul, and other parts of Italy. I could not be bothered to ask where he came from, but found him too loud, too cocky, and probably effeminate. Hard to be sure, as I had no personal reason to enquire.

'I was starting to think nobody wanted to talk to me. Avienus is the only other person who has bothered to respond.'

'So he said.'

'You two been conspiring?' I took out the notepad, keeping my gaze fixed on him while I set it in front of me and produced a stylus. I smiled, but with unfriendly eyes.

'I happened to meet him -' He was flustered. Perhaps he had never been interrogated before. Or perhaps it meant something.

'Where was that?'

'Just the popina at the end of the street. What's wrong with that?'

'I didn't query it.' But I was querying whether the writers had met to make sure their stories matched. A man can buy himself a snack. Well,' I said, looking as if I disapproved, 'there are new laws against hot food stalls, but I suppose a cold bite taken at midday cannot do much harm.' Helena or Petronius would have doubled up laughing at my sanctimonious attitude. 'So! You are Turius.' Said with the right tone of distasteful surprise, that always suggests you know something.