Lindsey Davis - Ode to a Banker

'No one person has ever made all the decisions. Chrysippus and I – and Lucrio too – were a joint board of management.'

'Oh, Chrysippus did come into it?'

She looked surprised. 'It was his business.'

'But you were the force running it – as you still are. And now it's in the joint hands of you and Lucrio – but I am told you are about to remarry!'

'Yes, I shall probably do that,' Lysa responded, unmoved by my fierce approach. 'Who told you?'

'Lucrio.'

I wondered if she was annoyed with the freedman, but apparently not. 'Did he name the man I am marrying?'

'Unfortunately he forgot to mention that.' He had told me coyly that I should ask her to provide the details. 'So, who is this lucky bridegroom, Lysa? Someone you have known for a long while?'

'You could say so.'

'A lover?'

'Certainly not!' That made her furious. Informers are used to it. Whatever she claimed, I would look into whether she had had an existing affair with the new husband.

'Own up. Don't you realise this places you at the top of my suspects list?'

'Why should it?'

'You and your paramour had a prize incentive to kill Chrysippus – so you could acquire the bank.'

The woman laughed gently. 'No need, Falco. I was always going to inherit the bank anyway.'

'Your new boyfriend may have wanted more direct ownership – and he may have been impatient, too.'

'You do not know what you are talking about.'

'Tell me then.'

Lysa spoke frostily. 'It has been the custom for centuries when Greek banks are inherited, to leave them jointly to the owner's widow and his trusted agent.' That was what Lucrio had told me. He had held back delicately, however, on the next peculiar Athenian joke: 'To protect the business, it is also the custom that the two heirs will subsequently join forces.' Then Lysa said, as if it were nothing extraordinary, 'I shall be marrying Lucrio.'

I gulped. Then, though it appeared not to be a love match, I wished the future bride every happiness. The couple's shared wealth presumably rendered formal best wishes for their future superfluous.

This was the dangerous stage, where the case could die on us. The problem with this one was not the usual lack of facts, but almost too many to co-ordinate.

The work had not ended, by any means. But there were no material clues, despite numerous loose threads. I prepared an interim report for Petro, summing up the dead ends: * The scriptorium manager, the scribes, and the household slaves are all ruled out either by proven absence, confirmed sightings off the scene, or lack of bloodstains at the initial interrogation. * We have yet to find the murderer's bloodstained clothes. * The wife, ex-wife and son, and the bank's agent have all produced acceptable alibis; some of their stories are dubitable, but their movements are in theory accounted for at the time of death. * The people who gained financially were on good terms with the victim, in funds beforehand, and in line to inherit anyway.

The authors have motives: * Avienus, the historian, has a huge debt. * Turius, the idealist, has offended and insulted the victim. * Scrutator, the satirist, has rebelled at being loaned out like a slave. * Constrictus, the would-be love poet, is a drunk and in line to be dropped. *Urbanus, the dramatist, is flying the coop and is angry about rumours belittling him.

There is, unfortunately, no hard evidence to link any of them to the crime.*

'Any big holes?' Petro asked.

'Pisarchus, the shipper with the lost vessels and cargoes, quarrelled with the victim on the day he died. We have not yet managed to interview him; he is out of town.'

'At sea?'

'Inland; berthed at Praeneste. He has a villa there; that's where Scrutator was supposed to be sent to pluck a soothing lyre – perhaps to compensate for the shipper's financial grief.'

'Out of our jurisdiction,' groaned Petro, the vigiles only operated within Rome. Then he added slyly, 'But I may find I have a man travelling that way eventually. Or we'll nab him for questioning next time he comes to the city to beg for a new loan… Think he will?'

'They always do. He'll find new security somehow; how often does a long-haul ocean-trader cease trading?'

'Anything else I should know?'

'The big puzzle one of the dead man's visitors. We were told Urbanus went there that day, but he denies it. I think I believe him. He had definitely been invited and the porter apparently counted him off, so was it somebody else? The regime is so vague and disorganised nobody knows for sure. If there was an extra caller, we don't know who.'

'Rats. Only Chrysippus could tell us, and he's in his funeral urn. That all?'

'I still think we ought to investigate customers from the bank.'

'And?'

'I don't trust the son.'

'You don't trust anyone!'

'True. What strikes you then, Petro?'

'I reckon the bank is at the heart of it.' He would. He was a cautious investor, suspicious of men who handled other people's savings 'I'm going to call back Lucrio and lean on him. I'll say we don't ask for confidential information, but he must give us some names and addresses so we can interview clients ourselves. We can compare the list he gives us with the names we grabbed that night when we had access to his records. If he tries to hide a client from us, we know where to jump.'

'Lot of effort,' I commented.

My dear friend Lucius Petronius grinned wickedly. 'Just your sort of job!'

That was where I called in my junior, even though Petronius had refused to pay fees for him.

Aulus Camillus Aelianus, Helena's brother, was kicking his heels without a real career, so he had decided he wanted to play at being an investigator. Nobody thought he would stick with it, but I needed to be polite to Helena's family so I was lumbered with him until he opted out. He had no skills, but as a senator's son he did command a certain presence – enough to impress mercantile types, if I was lucky.

'What do I have to do? Lurk in alleys and spy on them?' He was keen – too keen. He had turned up in a spanking ochre tunic that would stand out a mile in the kind of alleys I normally used for surveillance. He was full of the boyish eagerness that only lasts about half a day.

'Knock on doors, my son. Learn to keep knocking for a week while bored slaves insist that your quarry is out. When you do meet the witnesses face to face, mention that we are too honourable to extract private information from their banker – but that we are conducting a murder enquiry, so they had better co-operate. Enquire gently about their deposits – they won't mind; they'll enjoy boasting of their silver reserves. When they are softened up, sternly ask what loans they have.'

'Anyone with a loan is a bad character?'

'If that were true the whole of Rome would be villains, especially your illustrious papa, who has his whole life in hock.'

'He can't help that! The moment a Roman has any status, he is compelled to spend.' I was glad to hear Aelianus defend Camillus Senior, who had already wasted hope and cash on him. At least the son sounded grateful.

'The same goes for these people, unless we learn of any debts that are -'

'Enormous?' Aulus demanded eagerly.

'No, no; their debts can be any size – just so long as they believe they can pay them back. What I'm searching for is somebody who felt under pressure.'

'Are you coming with me on this?' A faint hint of anxiety had finally struck him.

'No.' I gazed at him with what I hoped was an inscrutable expression. 'We are a two-man operation. We have to keep one man in reserve so he can go round later and apologise if you offend someone.'

'You love a joke, Falco.'

'Who was joking?' Camillus Aelianus was a twenty-five-year-old patrician who had never had to negotiate a delicate social situation in his life.