David Wishart - White Murder

‘You mind if I sort of look around, pal?’ I said. ‘Any time I’ve been here I’ve been sitting up on the bleachers. I’d be interested to know what the place is like from the sand end.’

He gave a pointed look at my purse. I sighed, took out a half silver piece and handed it over. Sightseeing ain’t cheap in Rome.

‘Look all you want, sir,’ he said. ‘Your friends won’t be finished for half an hour yet.’

‘Fine, fine.’ Sure, I could’ve sat it out in a wine-shop – there’re quite a few along the outside walls, in amongst the souvenir-sellers, the hot food outlets and the cheap-and-cheerful brothels – but like the latter concessions most’re only open when there are games on, and I couldn’t be certain that Cammius and his son would come and find me. Besides, like I’d said, seeing the place from the sharp end would be a new experience. I carried on through the tunnel and out into the sunlight.

The Circus on a non-race day looks even bigger than it does full, which seems crazy but that’s the way things are. Eerily quiet, too, although that’s a lot more understandable: the absence of a hundred and fifty thousand yelling punters leaves a bit of a gap. The holding-boxes – what they call the Prisons – were shut up, but I walked along the white lane-lines the way the cars would go, towards the break line and the nearer turning posts at the end of the Spine. Seen from this angle it was impressive as hell. The Wart hadn’t made too many additions, but there again he hadn’t needed to because old Augustus and his pal Agrippa had spent a small fortune on the place when it burned down in the big Circus Valley fire sixty-odd years back. Later on, too: the huge obelisk in the middle of the Spine that he’d filched from Egypt might be nothing but a glorified sundial, but it must’ve cost a bomb to transport and erect. It just showed how much importance the demagogic old bugger placed on impressing the betting public.

I carried on up the Spine. Every so often, between the statues and the towers and the altars, there were basins. Those, plus the ten-foot ditch that ran the length of the seating tiers, would provide the water for the sprinklers to throw over the horses. I wondered where the sprinkler that Pegasus had killed had been stationed. Probably much further up, and on the other side.

I had to admit I was fascinated. Me, I’m no sightseer, but in all the times I’d watched races and wild-beast shows in the Circus since I was a kid I hadn’t ever really looked at the place, and it was like knowing it inside out but seeing it for the first time, both at once; like the statue on a column that I remember goggling at across the width of the track when I was about five years old, that was the spitting image of my Capuan nurse. I’d half-believed for years that it was actually her, and mentally I still called it Lusca. Now it turned out – from the inscription on the base – that it was of some goddess I’d never heard of called Pollentia. You live and learn. Mind you, they say natives know their own city least, and I suppose that’s true. Certainly I wished I’d brought Perilla. The lady would’ve loved it.

I did the whole circuit, past the shrines of Murcia and Consus and the far posts with their Horse-scarer altar, then back the far side, past the fancy marble Couch of the Gods that Augustus had built next the finishing line so the statues brought in from their various temples to watch the games could see the winner gallop by them towards the steward with the palm and the purse. It took me the half hour, easy, and at the end of it I could’ve murdered a cup of wine. Still, I was glad I’d done it. For a start, I understood better where these racing guys were coming from. Sitting in the bleachers, you only see a small part, and you ignore that because you’re watching the cars; down on the sand, with no audience or cars to distract you, and taking it slow, you got a different view. The Circus wasn’t just a racetrack, it was a whole separate world, lovingly put together and cared for. I could understand, looking at it from this angle, how obsession could creep in.

I was just turning in by the Pavilion and the Eggs when Cammius and a younger guy came out of the tunnel. Perfect timing. I gave them a wave and walked over.

‘So, Corvinus.’ That was Cammius. ‘How are things going?’

‘Well enough.’ A lie: at this stage of the investigation I felt like I was swimming through glue, but I wasn’t going to admit that to Cammius.

‘Good.’ The Whites’ boss nodded towards the second man. ‘This here’s my son Cario.’

I’d’ve guessed even if I hadn’t known. The other guy was a perfect younger version of his father: a chunky Spaniard with bristly hair that was black for Cammius’s grey. Unlike Cammius, though, he was barbered within an inch of his life in the latest style, and his mantle was sharp Market Square best. He held out his hand, and I noticed the carefully-manicured nails.

‘Valerius Corvinus.’

No Spanish vowels. He could’ve given the Master of Blues Acceptus a run for his nasals. I knew the type: second-generation successful provincial, blade-about-town. Not an unpleasant youngster, though, from first impressions. We shook.

‘I don’t know about you, Corvinus,’ Cammius said, ‘but we’ve had a busy morning. There’s a good wine-shop round the corner, if you’re interested.’

I grinned. ‘Very. Lead me to it.’

‘This your first time in the Circus?’ Cammius said as we walked back through the tunnel. ‘The sand bit, I mean?’

‘Yeah. There’s a lot more to it than I’d thought.’

‘You should see it on a race day. Up in the stands, that’s exciting enough, but down here’ – he paused – ‘there’s a magic you wouldn’t believe. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.’

‘Me neither,’ Cario said.

I looked at him. The resemblance went a lot deeper than appearances: thirty years on, I could see, he’d be just like his father. They’d both been bitten by the racing bug, if ‘bitten’ was the word. It probably wasn’t: a bite’s superficial, and well-groomed society playboy or not the guy had racing oozing out of his pores.

‘The wine-shop’s run by an old friend of mine,’ Cammius was saying. ‘He captain-ownered a pair of ships out of Tarraco, only he didn’t have my luck.’

We rounded the Circus’s Aventine corner. The wine-shop was one of the shallow booths built into the superstructure, but it’d sprawled outwards towards the road in the form of benches and tables with orange trees planted in sawn-off Gallic barrels filled with earth. While Cammius went inside to talk with his mate and order the wine, I sat down with Cario at one of the tables.

‘So you’re looking into Pegasus’s death,’ he said.

‘Yeah. That’s right.’ I was watching him closely. ‘You didn’t get on, I understand.’

‘No. He was a bastard.’

‘So everyone tells me.’

Cario grunted. ‘He was a good driver, mind. The best. I’d’ve forgiven him a lot for that.’

‘Like specifically what, for example?’

‘He thought he was the gods’ gift to the team.’ His lips twisted. ‘Or rather, he knew he was the gods’ gift to the team, which made it worse. Also -’ He stopped.

I waited. Then, when nothing else came, I said: ‘Also?’

‘Nothing. Or nothing important. Forget it, Corvinus, the guy’s dead and burned. Good riddance.’

‘You’re not interested in who killed him, then?’

‘No. My father cares, but personally I don’t. I’ve had this argument with him myself – with my father, I mean. Pegasus may’ve been the saviour of the Whites, but we’re better off without him.’

‘In what way?’

He shrugged and didn’t answer. Well, I couldn’t force the issue. I changed tack. ‘Your new lead driver. Old lead, whatever. Uranius.’