David Wishart - White Murder

‘Right. Thanks pal.’ I strolled towards the guy. ‘Hey, Sopilys?’

He looked up, and I saw his eyes take in the broad stripe on my mantle. The jaws stopped working and he grinned.

‘Marcus Valerius Corvinus, right?’ he said.

‘Yeah.’ I held out my hand and we shook. ‘So. My lad Alexis tell you what this is about?’

‘Sure. That bugger Pegasus. Your slave says someone put a knife into him.’

‘Right.’

He lowered the bread and spat neatly over the side of the wharf into the scummy water. ‘Couldn’t’ve happened to a nicer person. I hope the bastard’s frying in hell.’

Well, at least opinions were pretty consistent on that subject, anyway. I wondered if Pegasus had had a sweet grey-haired old mother, and if so whether her view would be any different. Possibly not. ‘I understand you had a fist-fight with him before he left the Greens,’ I said. ‘Care to tell me what it was about?’

‘I might.’ He looked pointedly at the fold in my mantle where I kept my purse and took another bite out of the bread hunk.

I sighed: Alexis’s delighted had obviously been a relative term. ‘No problem, pal. A silver piece?’

He chewed and swallowed. ‘Make it five.’ I’d been leaning against the hides next to him. Now I straightened. Sopilys never moved. ‘Information doesn’t come cheap.’

‘That depends on the information,’ I said. ‘Two.’

‘Five. Last offer. Pay up or ship out.’

I shrugged. ‘Okay. Five it is. If the information’s worth it.’

‘Pegasus was on the game.’ His teeth tore at the bread.

‘Uh-huh. What sort of game would that be?’

He laughed, spraying me with wet crumbs. ‘There’s only one game in the racing business. He was selling races.’

Yeah, well, I’d expected as much; still, it was good to have it confirmed. ‘Who to?’

‘You ever hear of a man called Eutacticus?’

Shit; not another name! ‘Uh-uh. Who’s Eutacticus?’

‘Runs a betting cartel and takes a cut from most of the free-lance touts. The smart ones, that is. Those that aren’t smart end up cut different.’

I nodded. Right. I might not know Eutacticus, but I knew the system. Technically, betting – any kind of betting, barring private wagers – is illegal in the city outside the Winter Festival: a hangover from the good old strait-laced Republican days when a man stuck to his plough and left fast women, fancy food and the like to degenerates like the Greeks. Witness the guy in the market with the thimbles. In practice, just like they do with tax collecting and public sector building, the state licenses a small number of cartels to run a book at the racetrack in exchange for a flat fee paid to the Treasury. The guys heading the cartels may not appear in the social calendar, but with a hundred and fifty thousand punters packing the Circus on race days and just begging to throw their money away most of them could buy out King Croesus without straining their bank balances, and as far as street clout’s concerned they have it in spades. They also tend to have all the moral sensibilities of Suburan alley-cats.

On the other hand, they’re just the cream. Below them there’s room and to spare for private enterprise to take an interest, and since stamping on unlicensed touts just isn’t a practical option for the authorities some of the bigger and less scrupulous cartel bosses run their own policing system; for which read ‘protection racket’. No one loses, everyone wins, and if there are corpses tucked away behind the concession stands then the city judge turns a blind eye because they’re just a necessary part of the system.

The whole business is rotten, sure, but it does the job. Not that that made the buggers at the top any nicer people. I’d bet this Eutacticus was a real peach.

‘So how did the scam work?’ I asked.

‘The usual. Eutacticus tips Pegasus the wink when he’s to lose. Not every race, that wouldn’t be in anyone’s interest because it’d push the betting down and Pegasus’d get the reputation of being a second-rater. The losing’s easy. Getting away with it without being spotted by your faction boss, that’s the tricky thing. Pegasus was good at that.’

‘Until he was spotted.’

Sopilys reached down, picked up a small flask of wine and took a pull at it. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You want to tell the story yourself?’ he said finally. ‘Or do you want to hear what really happened? It’s your money. You choose.’

Touchy as well as venal. Still, he had a point. ‘Yeah, okay,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’

‘No, he wasn’t spotted. I told you, the guy was good – he’d have to be, with Natalis’s eye on him – and he didn’t take risks. Eutacticus is no fool either. They only worked the scam three, maybe four times a season. Eutacticus’d wait until the odds rose and the heavy money was laid on, then he’d give the bastard the nod and that would be it. He’d clean up and Pegasus would find a nice little nest-egg in a drop somewhere.’

‘So what went wrong?’

Sopilys grinned. ‘I went wrong. I was the guy’s groom. One day I caught him cutting a trace.’

‘And you told Natalis?’

‘There’s no profit in splitting to the boss, Corvinus, and that bugger’s near enough to skin a flint. Pegasus and me, we…came to an arrangement.’

I was beginning to see daylight here. ‘You soaked him in exchange for keeping your mouth shut.’

‘Not soaked. I wasn’t greedy. With what he was getting he could afford it.’ He took another swig from the wine flask. ‘I kept to my side of the deal for two months. Then two days before the Augustales the bastard suddenly shafted me.’

‘And how did he do that?’

‘You ever hear of something called cassia senna?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a plant, comes from Africa. Inland Africa, not the province. Dry leaves and pods, with the leaves being the real buggers. They stink to high heaven, but you soak them in water, pour the water over a handful of raisins and leave them to steep. Feed the raisins to a horse and the result’s like a bad colic. Only thing is, after it’s eaten them the horse pisses orange.’

‘You’ve lost me, pal. What good would that do Pegasus?’

‘I told you. He was smart. A colic, sure, any horse can get that naturally, but the orange piss is a give-away that the brute’s been doped. The stable vet spotted it straight off. He goes running to Natalis, who blows his wig and orders a search of the stable lads’ belongings, because stable staff are the first and obvious suspects, right? And guess where they find a dinky little bag with a couple of fucking cassia senna leaves inside?’

‘You’re saying Pegasus set you up?’

‘Sweet as a nut. Natalis pulls me into the office by the balls and an hour later I’m out on the street and lucky still to be walking. Fifteen fucking years I worked for the Greens and it was all gone. One afternoon, that’s all it took.’

‘You didn’t tell him about Pegasus? Natalis, I mean.’

‘Sure I told him. The bugger might’ve reckoned on me clamming up, but I’d nothing to lose. I gave Natalis the whole boiling, A to Z.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. He didn’t believe me because like I said, Pegasus’d been careful to keep his nose clean.’ Sopilys shook the wine flask, put it to his mouth and drained it, then tossed it over the side of the wharf. ‘Bastard! The lads did, though, by hell they did! When I got the bugger outside the Cat the next night and beat the shit out of him they stood back and let me do it.’

Well, that cleared up that little problem. It showed that Sopilys was probably telling the truth, too: although I’d bet Pegasus hadn’t been any more popular with his Green teammates than he was with the Whites, he was still the lead driver, and it takes a lot of animosity for that to get ignored. ‘You happen to have any idea why Pegasus left?’