David Wishart: White Murder

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘No problem, sunshine,’ I said, and handled him the mantle. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Pardon, sir?’

Oops; this could be bad: Bathyllus can be deaf sometimes, but his deafness is selective and that’s the time to worry. However, on this occasion it seemed that the question had simply gone past him. He looked – ‘distracted’ was the word, and Bathyllus never gets distracted. ‘I only asked if everything was okay, little guy. No fire in the hypocaust, no skivvies running amuck with carving knives?’

‘Certainly not, sir. Everything is fine.’

‘You sickening for something, then?’

‘No, sir!’ He folded the mantle. ‘Did you have a pleasant afternoon?’

‘Don’t ask, pal. Just don’t ask. The poets gone?’

‘Yes, sir. An hour ago. Dinner will be served shortly. Meton has been getting a little anxious.’

Uh-oh; that was a fresh worry. I recognised an expurgated version when I heard one. Our touchy-as-hell chef was obviously nursing a delicate sauce and I’d been within a cat’s whisker of becoming persona non grata; which where Meton’s concerned is not something you want to be unless you happen to like fish paste with your dessert. ‘Fine, fine. The mistress around?’

‘In the atrium, sir. I’ll bring you your wine straight away.’

‘You do that, Bathyllus.’ I went through. Perilla was sitting by the pool with a tablet and stylus. Maybe it was something about my face, but she took one look and set them down beside her chair.

‘Marcus?’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

I gave her the usual welcome-home kiss, stretched out on the couch, and told her about the body in the alley.

‘Oh, Marcus! Not again!’

Jupiter! From the lady’s tone you’d think I’d iced the guy myself! ‘Look, it’s not my fault, okay?’ I said. ‘I was minding my own business. He just went out for a piss and never came back.’

She sniffed and retrieved the wax tablet. ‘Corvinus, I trust you to spend a quiet hour or two in a wineshop while I have an all-too-rare cultural afternoon and you go and trip over a corpse. That is not minding your own business.’

‘I didn’t trip over it. I just tagged along with the crowd.’

‘Do you expect me to believe that? Honestly!’

I had my mouth open to answer, but at that moment Bathyllus oozed in and plonked down the tray with its jug and brimming wine-cup. ‘Your wine, sir,’ he said. I took a swig of the Setinian. After Renatius’s Spoletian it was like having your tonsils massaged with velvet. ‘Also, dinner is served. Red mullet stewed with aniseed and a bean-and-chicken quiche with cumin.’

I sighed; when the little guy said ‘shortly’ he meant ‘shortly’; I’d been lucky right enough. Still, I was grateful for the interruption; the climate in the atrium had turned distinctly cool.

We trooped next door with no let-up in the frost.

‘So how was your day?’ I asked finally, while the minions wheeled in the boiled eggs and raw vegetables.

‘Don’t change the subject,’ Perilla said. Snapped.

Uh-oh. I shelled an egg and dipped it in fish sauce. Finally Perilla put down her celery stick.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Who was he, and what exactly happened?’

‘Fifty-two.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I was counting, lady. You made fifty-two before you cracked. That’s a record.’

‘Corvinus, I will kill you.’

I grinned and chewed: nothing annoys Perilla more than knowing she’s been sussed. ‘Yeah. Right. The guy’s name was Pegasus. He -’

Her eyes widened. ‘ The Pegasus? The charioteer?’

‘Uh-huh.’ I gave her the rest, including the details of my little brush with Delicatus and his cronies; at which point the lady’s mouth set in a line you could’ve used to slice marble.

‘Marcus, I really don’t think you should get involved in this,’ she said. ‘It’s Watch business.’

‘I told you. The Watch aren’t interested. Or at least that bastard Valgius isn’t.’

‘Turn it over to Decimus Lippillus, then.’

But I’d thought about that on the way back. ‘I can’t do that. First because Lippillus is Public Pond and it would offend the guy’s professional ethics to poach, second because I don’t like the smell of the case already and that smart midget’d likely end up with his backside in a sling.’

‘My point exactly.’ Perilla shelled an egg of her own. ‘Marcus, dear, listen to me. You cannot afford to tangle with Sertorius Macro. Let alone Prince Gaius.’

Oops; mistake. I backtracked. ‘Macro isn’t involved. That was just Delicatus shooting his mouth off. And the Prince is on Capri whooping it up with the Wart.’

‘Do you have your fingers crossed or am I just imagining it?’

I uncrossed them. ‘Look, Perilla, forget conspiracy theories, okay? Pegasus had jumped the fence. One gets you ten all we’ve got here’s a simple case of racegoer’s fever. The new season’s coming up and Valgius and his ultra-Green gorillas were just too happy to hear that the guy had hung up his tunic to make any waves. End of story, right?’

‘So why do you have to interfere?’

Jupiter’s balls! ‘Because it was murder; not just a killing, but murder. If I don’t interfere then no one else will. Also I don’t like having my arm twisted. And cut the hypocritical crap. You’re just as curious as I am.’

‘Hmm.’ She dipped the egg in sauce. I’d got her; sure I had. ‘All right. So what’s the theory so far? I assume you have one.’

I shrugged. ‘The gods know. I’d say the murderer had arranged to meet the guy at Renatius’s, only instead of turning up he’d squirrelled himself away in the empty house across the street, watched for Pegasus to come out again then followed and stabbed him. That’s as far as I go.’

‘Pegasus was waiting for someone?’

‘Sure. Or that was the impression I got. He was keeping an eye on the door, anyway.’

‘How?’

‘How do you mean, “How”?’

‘Did he look relaxed or anxious?’

‘Oh. Yeah. Right.’ Good question, and one I hadn’t thought of. Relaxed would mean he was easy in his mind about whoever he was meeting, anxious the opposite. I cast my mind back. ‘Relaxed. Not obviously anxious, anyway.’

‘Very well. Now why? I mean, why kill him in the first place?’

I took a swig of Setinian. ‘Could be several reasons. Professional or personal. Like I said, the guy had shifted teams recently, Green to White. That wouldn’t be popular in certain quarters.’

Perilla’s hand paused over a stuffed olive. ‘Green to White? Isn’t that unusual?’

‘Yeah. That’s what I thought. It happens, sure, but -’

‘But not with drivers of that calibre.’

‘Right. It’s somewhere to start, anyway.’ I frowned. ‘Hey, lady. I didn’t know you were a racing buff.’

‘I’m not an absolute idiot, either.’

Ouch. ‘Uh…yeah. Yeah. Right.’ I crunched on a carrot stick.

‘He can’t be all that old, and he’s been doing very well lately. Or am I wrong?’

‘He’s been doing okay.’ Like I said before, I’m no racing nut and I couldn’t’ve gone into details, but you can’t have your chin scraped in a Market Square barber’s without the guy with the razor giving you his unsolicited views ad nauseam on how the factions are shaping. Most of the time I just close my ears and nod when nodding doesn’t risk a slit windpipe, but I distinctly remembered that the guy had had more than his fair share of wins in the last two sets of games.

‘So why did he change, then?’ Perilla said.

I sipped the wine. Yeah; that was something I’d wondered about myself when young Lucius had mentioned it, only now having an answer was more important. Or it might be. Green to Blue or vice-versa, sure, like I said, no problem; but there are only two reasons, normally, for a lead driver with the top teams to move down a level. One is simply age, when his reactions slow and – skilled driver or not – he loses his edge over the up-and-coming youngsters; the other, which has the same effect, is that his nerve goes because of a bad spill or something similar. Even so, the guy tends to stick with the original team, if only out of pride, or – sometimes – he moves across to an equivalent level in the second-string Colour: Blue to White or Green to Red. I could be wrong on either, of course – reading some kind of illness for age in the first – but I didn’t think so, not with the recent wins the guy had notched up.