David Wishart - Last Rites

‘Sure. He has been for the past three years.’

I lay back, brain spinning. Shit! I’d got my link! The Board of Fifteen were responsible for watchdogging foreign cults in Rome. When Myrrhine had knifed the archigallus’s two acolytes a year back he’d naturally reported the incident – with, presumably, full details of name and description – to the Board of Fifteen officer who had Cybele as his particular patch. No prizes for guessing now which officer that had been, although I could check to make sure. And if Myrrhine was one of the temple’s foremost devotees, with two previous years of the job under his belt one got you ten that Nomentanus knew her already.

Sextius Nomentanus, eh? Jupiter! It couldn’t be a coincidence; no way, nohow, never. Between the loans business and the religious officer angle I’d got the bugger six ways from nothing!

‘Marcus, what is this?’ Secundus had set down his wine cup. ‘What did I say?’

‘Nothing you need to worry about, pal,’ I said. I’d known Secundus for a long time and, nice guy though he was, he wasn’t Rome’s brightest. How the Treasury was running these days Juno the Warner herself only knew, but then the man at the top was only a figurehead anyway: the permanent staff did the real work. ‘It has to do with the case I’m on at the moment.’

‘The dead Vestal?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.’

‘You don’t think Nomentanus killed her, do you?’ That was Gemella; quicker on the uptake than Gaius, but then that wouldn’t be difficult. Obviously the prospect of talking scandal had finally won over the truffles and she was looking at me with huge baby-brown eyes. ‘Oh, how dreadful!’

‘No, Gemella,’ I said carefully. ‘That was a runaway slave called Myrrhine. She shoved a knife through her throat yesterday in an Aventine tenement. I was there at the time, in fact, and my laundry maid’s still trying to get the bloodstains out of my third-best tunic.’

‘Really?’ Gemella blanched and patted her lips with her napkin. ‘Fascinating. Ah… if you’ll excuse me a moment.’ She got up quickly and made for the door, napkin pressed to her mouth, followed closely – after a sideways glare at me – by Perilla. The clepsydra basin would be nearest, but no doubt Perilla would handle things. I’d pay later, mind you, when the lady got me alone, but it’d be worth it all the same. Meanwhile I could do a little capitalising. I turned back to Secundus.

‘You wouldn’t know whether Nomentanus had a rich elderly aunt stashed away somewhere, would you, Gaius?’ I said. ‘A childless aunt. Or maybe an uncle.’

Furia Gemella’s sudden exit hadn’t fazed him; in fact, he was looking a lot more relaxed than he had done up to then. I didn’t blame him: it would’ve had the same effect on me if I’d been married to the lady. ‘Uh-uh,’ he said. ‘Not that I’m aware of, anyway. Why do you ask?’

‘Because the guy wasn’t putting it on. He had no reason to, for a start, not with me; quite the reverse, in fact. He just couldn’t help crowing, that’s all. And if he really was loaded and could laugh off the prospect of a six-figure fine, not to mention a little expense like re-celebrating the rites of the Good Goddess, then the money must’ve come from somewhere. More than that, it must’ve come sudden and there must’ve been a hell of a lot of it. The only legal way for that to happen is a legacy. Some well-heeled relative with no other family dropping off the perch.’

‘If Gaius Nomentanus had had a rich aunt, Marcus, then we’d all have heard of her long ago.’ Secundus grinned. ‘Believe me. He’s that kind of bastard.’

‘Yeah. I thought that might be the case.’ I hefted the wine jug and filled Secundus’s cup. ‘Drink up, pal. The night’s young and there’s plenty more.’

So; that was that; scratch legal. Still, we weren’t home and dry yet, not by a long chalk. Nomentanus might be our man, but the problem was if he hadn’t come by the money legally then where had he got it? Why he’d got it, sure, that was obvious: the guy had been paid for services rendered. Like recruiting Myrrhine, for example. Only that left the question of who had done the paying. And, again, why. Like I’d said to Secundus, we were talking a hell of a lot of gravy here: a million sesterces, which was what Secundus had implied that Nomentanus would owe the Treasury at minimum, was enough to qualify someone for the broad stripe. Parting with a sum like that would’ve made a serious dent in anyone’s bank balance, yet Nomentanus could shrug it off. So what he was getting – and consequently what his employer was paying – was obviously a lot more.

And the mirror-image of that was what the employer was getting was worth the fee. At least to him.

What the hell was going on?

Secundus and Gemella left early. Gemella made the excuse that their youngest kid had colic, but she’d been pretty tight-lipped the rest of the meal and Secundus looked sheepish, so I took that with a pinch of salt. We saw them to their carriage and went back to the dining-room to finish off the fruit and nuts.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you’re expecting a return invitation don’t hold your breath.’

‘Marcus, sometimes I despair of you.’ Perilla settled down on the couch beside me. ‘Your behaviour was dreadful, and quite deliberate.’

I grinned; she wasn’t angry, not really. I could tell by the lack of snap. ‘Come on, lady!’ I said. ‘That bit of vicarious seaminess made the woman’s evening. She’ll have great fun for the next month slagging me off to her pals at the honey-wine klatsch.’

‘That is beside the point.’

I filled my wine cup: Secundus had knocked as decent a hole in the Falernian as he dared with his wife’s beady eye on him, but there was still a lot left. More than there should’ve been. I felt sorry as hell for Gaius Secundus. ‘She make it to the plumbing, by the way?’

Perilla’s lip was trembling. ‘Just,’ she said.

‘That’s good.’

‘She also asked me how I could stay married to you.’

‘Yeah? And?’

‘I told her we all had our little crosses to bear. She seemed to like that.’

I laughed and kissed her. ‘You can take those earrings off now,’ I said.

She did. Things got interesting for a moment, then she drew back.

‘What was that business about Nomentanus?’ she said.

I gave her a blow-by-blow account of our barber’s-chair chat, plus what Secundus had told me while she’d been out watching Gemella lose her starters. ‘He’s our link. As a religious officer he’d know Myrrhine and the kind of woman she was through the temple. When the time came for Cornelia’s murder she’d be the perfect person to recruit.’

‘But if Myrrhine was on the run then how did he know where to find her?’

‘Yeah.’ I frowned. ‘That’s the bugger. We’ve got one end of the tie-in but not the other. Still, it must’ve happened somehow. And the loans bail-out is a clincher.’

Perilla bit thoughtfully into one of Meton’s cinnamon tartlets. There weren’t all that many of them left: righteous indignation hadn’t taken the edge off Furia Gemella’s appetite any. ‘A million sesterces is a great deal of money,’ she said. ‘Who could afford an amount like that?’

‘Any one of the real fat-cat families. The Crassi. The Luculli.’ I paused. ‘The Lepidi.’

She put the tartlet down and stared at me. ‘Oh, no! Not Aemilius Lepidus again! Marcus, I thought we’d been through that!’

‘He’s becoming a better bet by the minute, lady.’ I took a swallow of wine. ‘The guy is seriously loaded, which is the sine qua non here. Parting with a million would make him wince, sure, but it wouldn’t break him, not by a long way. And if you discount the probity factor, which could be pure whitewash and probably is where these senatorial bastards are concerned, he’s the only one who comes close to fitting the bill in other respects.’