David Wishart - White Murder

Sopilys shot me a look. ‘Why should I?’

‘It’s a fair question,’ I said equably. ‘Considering the guy transferred to the Whites less than two months later.’

‘Look, by that time I’m here in Ostia unloading barges, right? I don’t have the contacts no more, and after the way I was treated I don’t have the fucking interest, either. I’ll tell you one thing, though: it wasn’t for the reason you’re thinking.’

‘Is that so, now?’ I leaned back. ‘And just what would I be thinking?’

‘That Natalis sussed the bastard himself and threw him out.’

Ostian stevedore or not Sopilys was no bonehead. There was a brain behind these shifty eyes. ‘Okay. You care to tell me why that’s definitely not an option?’

‘First off, the only meet between the Augustales and the time he left was the Plebbies, and Pegasus won his race hands down. Drove like a dream with no wobblers, right?’ I nodded. ‘Second, more important, the guy wasn’t sacked, he transferred. Sitting back and letting him do that wouldn’t’ve been Natalis’s style, especially since the two of them rubbed each other’s bristles up the wrong way. If he’d caught Pegasus throwing a race – especially if it looked like it was no one-off – he’d’ve pegged the bastard out for the vultures before you can spit.’

Fair point; and Natalis had more or less told me the same thing, on general principles, when we’d talked. Which raised a very interesting question in itself…

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘One last thing. This Eutacticus guy. Where would I find him, now?’

Sopilys grinned. ‘Oh, you don’t want to do that. You really don’t.’

‘Five silver pieces, remember? I could make it eight.’

The grin faded. Sopilys licked his lips nervously and his eyes flicked to mine and away. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’m serious here. Telling you what happened’s one thing, especially if it pisses on that bastard Pegasus’s bones, but he’s dead and the scam’s dead. No use stirring it. And Eutacticus is bad news, believe me. The worst.’

‘Ten. I’ll find him whether you tell me or not. Only if you don’t when I do see him I’ll make sure he knows your name. Understand?’

No grin now, not a vestige; the guy was sweating. ‘Castor! You wouldn’t -’

‘Just give me an address, pal, then I’ll pay you what I owe you and get out of your life.’

‘You tell Eutacticus I blew the whistle and I’m dead. I’m not kidding here.’

He wasn’t, either: the guy was scared shitless. ‘Peach’ was right. ‘I won’t tell,’ I said. ‘You’ve got my word for that. But I need the address.’

It was a close thing. For a while I didn’t think he was going to bite, but ten silver pieces is a lot of gravy to a bargeman. Sopilys’s eyes shifted again and he lowered his voice. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We have a deal. He has a big place on the Pincian. Near the south-east corner of the Pompeian Gardens. But look, Corvinus -’

‘Great. Thanks, friend.’ I took a half gold piece out of my purse and handed it to him. ‘Oh. And if you happen to think of anything else in future that might be of interest you let me know, okay?’ I gave him Agron’s address.

‘Fuck that. There isn’t any more. Or if there is I can’t help you with it.’ He slipped the coin into his pouch. If he was grateful for the bonus it didn’t show. ‘And if you’re planning to mix with Eutacticus, friend, then you don’t have no future.’

Well, we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Thanks again.. I’ll see you around.’

The lack of a reply was eloquent enough; and I could feel his eyes on my back all the way to the dock gates.

I picked up with Agron and we went home for Cass’s pigeon pie and another jug; the kids’ party had broken up by then, thank the gods, and the flat was pretty peaceful apart from the big guy’s own brood plus two or three leftovers who were playing Romans and Carthaginians round the table. I packed it in before they got round to refighting Zama, collected my horse from where Agron had parked it and started back for the big city.

Not a wasted day, by any means. Sopilys had confirmed one theory – that Pegasus had been involved in a scam before he left the Greens -- and given me a couple of unexpected leads. This Eutacticus guy was a mixed blessing. Sure, if I wanted to fill in the background to the scam – which I’d have to do before I ruled it out as a contributing factor to Pegasus’s murder – then I’d have to talk to him; only from the colour Sopilys had turned when the bugger’s name came up that wasn’t something I was looking forward to, not without a half dozen beefy lads with clubs at my back as an insurance policy. Like I say, these cartel bastards live on the edge, they’ve got more clout, practically speaking, than a decade’s-worth of ex-consuls, and they play hard. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t last five minutes.

The other lead was less straightforward. I’d taken Sopilys’s point about Pegasus having walked as an argument against Natalis having rumbled him, sure I had. There were things, though, that didn’t quite fit. Natalis was no fool: he’d been a driver himself, he was a Green to the bone and I’d bet he knew his faction better than a father knows his kids. So if the lads who’d been with Pegasus that night at the Black Cat had believed Sopilys’s version of the doping story enough to stand back and let the ex-groom thump him then Natalis couldn’t’ve been totally blind to the possibility that his ace driver might be a rotten apple. Added to which, Sopilys had told me himself that he’d been lucky, the day he was sacked, to leave the premises without a few bones broken. If Natalis was the sort of guy to take an attempted poisoning personally – which again according to Sopilys he was – then that just shouldn’t’ve happened. Only if you were working on the theory that the Greens boss had pulled Pegasus’s plug a month and a half later then it must’ve happened not just once but twice.

Put all that together and something smelled. I didn’t know yet what it was, but I’d find out. One thing I’d bet on, though: Natalis knew more than he was saying. And taking that with what Cammius had told me about the Green attempts on their crack horse Polydoxus that was interesting as hell.

The next day was the twenty-ninth – the day my musician pal Silvius had told me had been the date for the fourth monthly glee club meeting before it had been scrapped – and I was up bright and early for my stake-out of the Whites’ stable. Sure, I could’ve got Uranius into a corner and tried twisting his arm over where he’d been going over the last six months when his mates thought he was singing bass on the Aventine, but from my brief conversation with him I doubted if that’d get me anywhere. Guys like Sopilys could be bought and the Laomedons of this world might bluster but they’d crack under pressure. Uranius was something else, the stubborn, silent type. One got you ten that he’d simply clam up, and short of accusing him directly of shoving the knife into Pegasus, which I didn’t want to do because I didn’t think he’d done it, I hadn’t all that much comeback.

Which left the sneaky approach. I might be unlucky, of course – I didn’t know that he was working to a fixed programme, and even so he might be innocent as a newborn babe – but the chances were that if I let him loose and watched where he went then I’d have the answers I needed.

If Uranius was running true to form he wouldn’t be setting out much before noon, but I couldn’t risk missing him so I got myself over to Mars Field with plenty of time to spare. My main problem was cover. Mars Field is what it says, a lot of empty space, and even on the edges buildings aren’t too plentiful. Apart from the stables themselves, the stretch of road that overlooked the Whites’ gate was a virtual blank. The best I could do was an old rain cistern set a dozen yards back from the kerb and fifty yards shy of the gate on the other side that’d probably been used for watering stock when this part of the city had been virgin farmland. Not perfect by any means, but it screened me from the Whites’ guard and from any passing pedestrians. The sight of a purple-striper skulking in the bushes might prompt a few awkward questions, and you could only get away with leaning nonchalantly against a tree-trunk and whistling for so long before someone got suspicious.