Lindsey Davis - Ode to a Banker

'Oh not only epic. I'll try anything.'

'Promiscuous, eh?'

'To earn a living by writing you have to sell whatever you can.'

'What happened to write from your own experience?'

'Pure self-indulgence.'

'Well, I was told that the big historical pageant is your natural genre.'

'Too hackneyed. No untapped source material left,' he groaned. I had already observed this as a problem with Rutilius Gallicus and his heroic banalities. 'And, frankly,' confided Constrictus, 'throw up when I'm constantly trumpeting that our ancestors were perfect pigs in an immaculate sty. They were idle shits like us.' He looked earnest. I really want to produce love poetry.'

'Source of contention with Chrysippus?'

'Not really. He would have loved to discover the new Catullus. The problem is, Falco, finding a suitable woman to address. It's either a prostitute – and who wants to be afflicted with helpless infatuation for any of those these days? Prostitutes are not what they were. You'll never find a modern version of sweet Ipsiphyle.'

'The whores have deteriorated just like the heroes?' I sympathised. 'Sounds a good lament!'

'Or the alternative is to fall obsessively for a highly-placed, beautiful amoral bitch who attracts scandal and has dangerous, powerful relatives.'

'Clodia's long gone.' Catullus' famous high-born hag with the dead pet sparrow was another generation's scandal. 'For the best, some would say. With special thanks that Rome is free of her brother, that rich gangster thug. Are today's senatorial families too refined to produce such a bad girl?'

'Jupiter, yes!' the poet lamented. 'Even good-time girls are not what they were And if you do strike it lucky, the bloody women won't co-operate. I found a playmate, Melpomene by name, lovely creature; I could have devoted my all to her. We were magic in bed. Then, when I explained that she needed to dump me or it was no good for my work, she burst out wailing. What does she come out with – listen to this, Falco! She said she really loved me, and couldn't bear to lose me, and why was I being so cruel to her?'

I nodded, more or less with sympathy, though I assumed he was being humorous. 'Hard to work up a metaphorical sweat over honest loyalty.'

Constrictus exploded with actual disgust. 'Jove, imagine it: an eclogue to a nymph who wants you, an ode about sharing your life.'

For a moment, I found myself thinking about Helena. It took me far from this hard-edged, unhappy lyricist.

'You could turn it into satire,' I suggested, trying to cheer him up 'How's this for an epigram – Melpomene, astonishing joy of my heart, I want to say "Don't go", but if I do, you'll die from lack of nourishment and the landlord's heavies will carve me up in the gutter for my unpaid rent. Poetry relies on misery. Leave me, please, and be quick about it – or my work won't sell.'

He looked impressed. 'Was that extempore? You have a gift.'

'At this rate,' I said frankly, 'I'll be using my creative powers to invent a prosecution case. Would you mind giving me a motive so I can arrest you for battering your publisher? A full confession would be helpful, if you can run to it. I get a bonus fee for that.'

Constrictus became glum again. 'I did not do it. I wish I had thought of it. I freely admit that. Then I could have written a series of tragic dialogues, full of autobiographical sleaze – it always sells. Urban Georgics. Not a lament for those dispossessed of country land, but for those struggling against city indifference and brutality.'

He was off in the kind of speculative dream that could take all afternoon. When authors start imagining what they could have written, it is time to make a break for it.

'Look,' I said, knowing I had sounded too friendly earlier. 'I have to ask you the rubric. You came to see Chrysippus yesterday. I presume he was alive when you arrived here; can you assure me the same applied when you left?'

'If you regard being a parasitic bloodsucker as "life". If that is accepted terminology in your trade, Falco.'

I grinned. 'Informers are famous for loose definitions. Half my "clients" are walking ghosts. My "fees" tend to be insubstantial by most people's standards too. Cough up. Would a physician have diagnosed health in the man?'

'Unfortunately yes.'

'Thanks. From this I deduce you did not kill him. Mine, you see, is a simplistic art. Now! Personnel details at the scene, please: did you see anyone else here?'

'No.' He could be sensible. A pity. I really had liked him before that. If he had been a complete maniac, we might even have become friends.

'This is boring, Constrictus. So all you have to report is an amicable meeting, after which you quietly returned home?' He nodded. 'And you were subsequently shocked and amazed to learn what had transpired here?'

'Cheered,' he admitted breezily. 'Enormously encouraged to discover that someone had broken free of the chains and taken action. It was so unexpected. I saw it as revenge for all of us.'

'You are refreshingly honest,' I told him. 'So now be honest about the conditions in which you were a client of this patron, please.'

'Unendurable duress,' Constrictus boasted. 'Survival makes all of us heroes.'

'I am happy to hearyou can use your suffering as research material.'

'He paid us too little; he worked us too hard,' Constrictus went on. 'The work was demeaning – it involved flattering him. I had a rule: get his name into the first line with at least three commendatory adjectives, then hope he would not bother to read on. Want more? I despised my colleagues. I hated the scriptorium staff. I was sick of waiting year after year for my so-called patron to give me the proverbial Sabine farm where I could eat lettuce, screw the farmer's wife, and write.'

I looked him straight in the eye. 'And you drink.'

There was a short silence. He was not intending to answer.

'I always find,' I said, trying not to sound unpleasantly pious, 'the stuff that I have written with a beaker beside me reads like rubbish once I sober up.'

'There's a simple cure for that,' Constrictus replied hoarsely. 'Never sober up!'

I said nothing. At thirty-three, I had long ago learned not to remonstrate with men who like to have their elbows always leaning on a bar. This was a very angry poet. Perhaps they all were, but Constrictus showed it. He was the oldest I had met so far; that might have something to do with it. Did he feel time was running out on him? Was he desperate to put substance into an otherwise wasted life? But often drink is an acknowledgement that nothing will ever change. A man in that mood probably would not kill – though anybody can be pushed too far by unexpected extra indignities.

I changed the subject. 'You told me you despise your colleagues. Elaborate.'

'Upstarts and mediocrities.'

'Yes, this is all confidential.' I smiled retrospectively.

'Who cares? They all know what I think.'

'I must say, the ones I have met all have potential to be dropped as no-hopers.'

'There you're wrong, Falco. Being a no-hoper is the essential criterion for getting your work copied and sold.'

'You are very bitter. Maybe you should have been the satirist.'

'Maybe I should,' Constrictus agreed shortly. 'But in this scriptorium, that bilious prick Scrutator holds sway -' He broke off.

'Oh, do go on,' I encouraged him genially. 'It's your turn now. Each man I interview betrays the previous suspect. You get to spear the satirist. What's the dirt on Scrutator?'

Constrictus could not bear to waste a good suspenseful moment: 'He had a blazing row with our dear patron – surely the old bore mentioned that?'

'He was too busy confiding that Turius is not as insipid as he looks, but has insulted Chrysippus rather notably.'

'Turius had nothing to lose,' moaned Constrictus. 'He wasn't going anywhere in any case.'