David Wishart: White Murder

‘Sure. Nothing to keep us.’ Delicatus helped himself to a piece of cheese from the counter. ‘Knifed and robbed. No hassle. We’ll put in the usual report.’

My stomach went cold. ‘Hang on, sunshine,’ I said. ‘What’s this “robbed” business? The guy’s purse was still on his belt. I saw it myself.’

Delicatus stopped chewing. His eyes shifted onto me and stayed there. Then he said over his shoulder: ‘Hey, Sextus? Publius?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Either of you lads see a purse?’ The other two Watchmen shook their heads. His eyes hadn’t left my face. ‘There you are, sir,’ he said. ‘No purse. You must’ve been mistaken.’ His jaws started working again and he swallowed and turned back to Renatius. ‘We’ll do our best to find the killer, sure, but it happens all the time. Like I say, no hassle. Leave it with us.’ He nodded to the company and moved towards the door. ‘Enjoy your day.’

Holy Jupiter, I didn’t believe this! Sure, some of the guys in the Watch are hardly more than jailbait themselves, but they aren’t stupid; and filching a corpse’s purse, especially when they’re not first on the scene, comes within the definition of sheer bloody lunacy. Cashiering’s the best they can expect, with a ripped back courtesy of the public executioner thrown in for free, and the game just isn’t worth the candle.

‘Wait just a moment, pal,’ I said.

He stopped and turned slowly. ‘Yeah?’

I glanced at Renatius. ‘Renatius. You saw the purse, didn’t you?’

He hesitated, then shook his head. ‘No. Can’t say I did. Sorry, Corvinus.’

At least he had the grace to look sheepish when he said it. Sure, he could have been flanelling, but that wasn’t how Renatius worked: he was straight-down-the-line honest, he’d no axe to grind, and I could tell from the vibes that he didn’t like Delicatus at all. Besides, there was no reason why it shouldn’t be the simple truth; the dead man had been slumped over facing the wall, Renatius and the others had been standing behind me, and I hadn’t seen the purse myself until I knelt down to look for it. Still, I wasn’t giving this one up; no way, never. ‘Look, friend,’ I said to Delicatus, holding on to my temper. ‘Take it from me. The guy’s purse is there. Or it was.’

He gave a shrug that set my teeth on edge. ‘Then it’ll still be there now, sir,’ he said. ‘You want to check, maybe?’ He grinned. ‘Just to set your mind at rest and keep the record straight?’

I pushed past him and through the door. The two public slaves were waiting outside surrounded by the pack of respectful vultures. They’d set the stretcher with the body on the pavement and they watched impassively as I pulled the covering blanket away.

The guy’s belt was empty.

I went back in, my brain churning.

‘Happy now?’ Delicatus asked. One of his supporting cast sniggered, then turned the snigger into a cough.

I didn’t bother to answer. We all four knew it was gone, and we all knew where. It couldn’t’ve dropped off, because it was tied on; which only left one other explanation for its absence. If I’d had the nerve and the muscle to frisk these honest public servants I’d’ve found it inside one of the bastards’ tunics.

Angry as I was, I forced myself to think. What the hell was going on here? Watchmen just didn’t do things like that. If Lippillus had caught one of his lads looting a murder victim he’d’ve strung the bastard up by the balls until he dropped off. Literally. Whistled while he did it, too.

Unless they’d had definite instructions…

I remembered what Lucius had said about Commander Valgius’s reaction when he’d told him who the victim was, and the thing suddenly made sense. At least, some kind of sense.

‘Which faction do you support, sunshine?’ I said. ‘Not Green, by any chance?’

Delicatus’s face froze, while his two mates suddenly got interested in their feet. Bull’s-eye! ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ he said.

‘Just a question. And your boss wouldn’t happen to be a big Greens supporter too, would he?’

Silence; but something in the bastard’s eyes shifted.

‘Because I was thinking,’ I went on. ‘Pegasus drives for the Whites now, right? Drove. Whatever. One of the opposition teams.’ Jupiter, this was sick; but it shows you just how seriously some of these nuts take their racing. ‘He’d gone over to the other side. Under these circumstances someone who was a big Greens fan himself might not be too sorry to see his name taken off the race card. And in that case he mightn’t exactly be all that desperate to go into the whys and wherefores of the guy’s death, either.’ I paused. ‘Any of that strike a chord with you at all, pal?’

‘Listen to me…sir.’ Delicatus was staring at me like he’d cheerfully make two trips with the stretcher. ‘Because I’ll only say this once. The man was knifed for his purse. We’ll look into the matter but like I said it happens all the time. Commander Valgius’ll agree, I can tell you that now.’

‘I’m sure he will. All the same -’

‘What’s more, so would Sertorius Macro.’ He let the name hang. ‘If you wanted to take it that high.’

The room went very quiet, and beside me I heard Renatius draw in air between his teeth. Delicatus had just done the equivalent of throwing the title deeds to a Baian villa on top of a pot of pennies. I was being called, and everyone knew it, including me.

We weren’t dealing peanuts here. Macro was the Commander of Praetorians, and although he didn’t figure in the direct Watch line of command he was the emperor’s representative in Rome. For which read Prince Gaius’s, because that twisted amoral bastard held the real power these days. And Gaius was so fanatical about the Greens that when he was in Rome he held banquets at the stables and invited the horses.

Oh, shit.

‘Macro won’t back Valgius,’ I said. ‘Not in a million years, not over something as small as this. If your boss wants to bury the case out of spite he’s on his own.’

‘You want to bet on that?’ He wasn’t even pretending to be polite now.

I stared back, my fists bunched. No. That was the problem: I wouldn’t bet on it, and he knew I wouldn’t, not with the prospect of a straight slugging match with an imperial in view. However convinced I was. Our current Crown Prince – and so his rep – would be far more likely to buy the bastard who’d zeroed Pegasus a drink than peg him out for the crows.

One thing was sure, though. Delicatus may have won the battle but he hadn’t won the war. I didn’t give up that easy, especially not after a clumsy threat like that. If Watch Commander Valgius wanted a clear case of murder shoved down a hole and forgotten about then Macro or not he could go and whistle through his ears.

Not that I was stupid enough to say as much to Valgius’s grinning pet gorillas here. I left them to Renatius and went home.

There was no sign of Bathyllus in the entry lobby when I got back, which was strange because whatever time I rolled in our bald-headed hernia-suffering major-domo would be waiting for me with the obligatory jug and wine-cup. Sure, his prognosticative faculties went on the blink occasionally – even Bathyllus was human, if only just – but it didn’t happen often, and there was always a reason. Usually a nasty one, like the last time when the fuller’s pick-up man had fallen over a bucket outside the servants’ latrine and left his nice holystoned kitchen corridor awash with five gallons of mature cleaning fluid. I stripped off my mantle and yelled for him.

He came at a run, or what passes with Bathyllus for a run, did a quick double-take and slowed down.