Lindsey Davis - A dying light in Corduba

Licinius Rufius strode out through the fug of dust, washing his hands in a silver bowl held by a slave who had to scamper after him. He was but not overweight, with a heavy face and a shock of crinkled hair that shot off to one side. Of an older generation than Annaeus Maximus, he remained firm on his feet and dynamic. He greeted me with a knuckle-crushing handshake, then took one of the chairs, flattening its cushion and causing the delicate legs to bow. He helped himself to black olives from a fancies dish, but I noticed he did not take wine. Perhaps he felt more cautious than his wife about my motives. Claudia Adorata herself smiled, as if she felt reassured now he was in charge, then she slipped away.

I too picked up some of the olives. (They were superb quality, almost as lush as the finest from Greece.) Eating allowed us both a short pause to do some sizing up. Licinius would have been viewing a thoughtful character in a plain green tunic and a graded Roman haircut, clearly displaying the traditional virtues of honesty, uprightness, and personal modesty. I saw an elderly man with an inscrutable expression, whom I decided I would not trust one jot.

From the beginning I felt that, unlike his wife, Licinius Rufius knew exactly why I had come to Baetica. He let me pass some idle remarks about the mad scale of his home improvements, but soon the conversation shifted to agricultural matters, which would lead to the real subject of my interview. We never mentioned the magic word 'cartel', though it was always our point of reference. I began frankly: 'I could say I'm checking over the family estate for Decimus Camillus – but actually my trip out here has an official purpose -'

'There was a rumour of an inspector from Rome,' Rufius answered readily. Oh yes. Well, why pretend? News that Anacrites had planned to send an agent, and that I for one was actually here, would have been leaked from the proconsul's office – and possibly confirmed to all his Baetican friends by the proconsul himself.

'I am hoping to talk to you about oil production, sir.'

'Obviously Baetica is the place for that!' Licinius made it sound as though I was just on a mild fact-finding survey, instead of investigating a vicious conspiracy where agents had had their heads smashed m. I could feel the old man taking over. He was used to sounding off with his opinions. Thinking they know it all is a habit of rich men who build up large outfits of any kind.

'I've been discussing some figures with Marius Optatus at the Camillus estate,' I interrupted as quickly as I could. 'He reckons there may be as many as five million olive trees and a thousand oil presses in the River Baetis hinterland. An owner of standing like yourself could possess maybe three thousand acts. quadrati – say eight or ten centuries of land?'

He nodded but made no comment, which almost certainly meant he owned more. That was a massive area. There used to be an old system of measurement which we all learned at school, where two acts equalled a 'yoke', and two yokes were a 'hereditary area' – that's the amount of land that was supposed to suffice for one person in the frugal republican days. By that reckoning the average oil magnate in Baetica could support seven hundred and fifty people – except that the old method of measurement would have been when farming merely consisted of barley, beans and cabbages for domestic consumption, not a luxury export crop like olive oil.

'What's an average yield per century?'

Licinius Rufius was offhand. 'Depending on the soil, and the weather that year, between five and six hundred amphorae.' So the typical plot we had been talking about would produce between four and five thousand amphorae per year. That would buy a whole forest of Corinthian columns, plus a fine public forum for their owner to endow.

'And how is my young friend Optatus?' Rufius smoothly changed the subject.

'Bearing up. He told me a little about his misfortunes.'

'I was delighted when he took his new tenancy,' the old man said in a tone of voice I found irritating, as if Marius Optatus were his pet marmoset. From what I had seen of Optatus, he would not accept being patronised.

'The way he lost the old one sounds hard. Do you think he had bad luck, or was he sabotaged?'

'Oh, it must have been an accident,' Licinius Rufius exclaimed – as if he knew damn well it had not been. He was not going to support accusations against a fellow landowner. Quarrelling with colleagues is a bad business move. Encouraging victims never brings in cash.

Licinius had sounded fairly sympathetic, but I remembered Optatus' bitterness when he told me the locals had refused to become involved in his quarrel with his ex- landlord. I took a chance. 'I gather Quinctius Attractus conducts business in a pretty ruthless manner?'

'He likes to be firm. I cannot argue with that.'

'It's a long way from the benevolent paternal style that we Romans like to consider traditional. What's your opinion of him personally, sir?'

'I hardly know the man.'

'I don't expect you to criticise a fellow producer. But I would suppose someone as shrewd as you would have firmed up some conclusions after being the man's guest in Rome and staying at his house!' Licinius was still refusing to be drawn so I added coldly, 'Do you mind if I ask who paid your fare?' He pursed his lips. He was a tough old bastard. 'Many people in Baetica have been invited to Rome by Attractus, Falco. It's a courtesy he extends regularly.'

'And does he regularly invite his guests to help him corner the oil market and drive up prices?'

'That is a serious accusation.'

Rufius was sounding as prim as Annaeus when I interviewed him. Unlike Annaeus he did not have the excuse of guests to drag him away so I was able to press him harder: 'I make no accusations. I'm speculating – from my own, maybe rather cynical standpoint.'

'Do you have no faith in human ethics, Didius Falco?' For once, the old man seemed genuinely interested in my reply. He was now staring at me so closely he might have been a sculptor trying to decide if my left ear was a fraction higher than my right.

'Oh, all business has to be based on trust. All contracts depend on good faith.'

'That is correct,' he declared autocratically.

I grinned. 'Licinius Rufius, I believe all men in business want to be richer than their colleagues. All would happily cheat a foreigner. All would like the running of their own sphere of commerce to be sewn up as tight as a handball, with no uncontrollable forces.'

'There will always be risk!' he protested, perhaps rather drily.

The weather,' I conceded. The health of the businessman, the loyalty of his workers. War. Volcanoes. Litigation. And unforeseen policies imposed by the government.'

'I was thinking more of the fickleness of consumers' taste,' he smiled.

I shook my head, tutting gently. 'I forgot that one! I don't know why you stay in the business.'

'Community spirit,' he laughed.

Talking to Licinius Rufius resembled the overblown jollity of a military dining club the night the pay-chest came – when everyone knew the sesterces were safely in camp, but the distribution would happen tomorrow so nobody was drunk yet. Maybe we two soon would be, for Rufius seemed to feel he had led me astray from my purpose so successfully he could now afford to clap his hands for a slave to pour him wine. I was offered more, but declined, making it plain I was only waiting for the nervous waiter to remove himself before I continued the interview. Rufius drank slowly, surveying me over the rim of his cup with a confidence that was meant to beat me down.

I dropped my voice abruptly. 'So I met you in Rome, sir. We both dined on the Palatine. I then called on you at the Quinctius house, but you had gone. Tell me, why did you leave our splendid city so suddenly?'