David Wishart - Foreign Bodies

Uh-huh. ‘He was married with two grown-up sons and a daughter, right?’

‘Yes. His widow’s Diligenta. The sons are both in their teens. Elder Titus, younger Publius. They’re still living at home, as is the daughter, although she’s off on a visit at present, I think. That’s Claudilla; she’s a year or so younger than Publius. Diligenta was the one who found the body.’

I took a sip of my wine: we had most of the meal to go, and with Perilla already crotchety I’d have to spin it out. It was good stuff, too, even watered to within an inch of its life.

‘This garden,’ I said. ‘You could get into it from outside?’

‘Oh, yes, easily. This isn’t Rome. We – or the locals, rather – don’t worry too much about security. There’s a wall, of course, with a gate at the bottom, but that was never locked.’

‘And no one saw anything suspicious?’

‘No. There is a gardener – only one, not a slave; you won’t find as many actual slaves as you’re used to here when you’re dealing with the locals, that’s another thing that’s different from Rome – but he was at lunch himself. He didn’t get back until late afternoon. By which time the body had been discovered.’

‘Did Cabirus have any enemies? Obvious ones, I mean?’

Nerva hesitated. ‘Not really. Like I said, he was well-respected. And well-liked. He was a wine-shipper in private life, but that’s not a particularly cut-throat business around here.’ He frowned. ‘No pun intended.’

I hadn’t missed the momentary hesitation. ‘People he didn’t quite get on with, then,’ I said.

‘Well’ – he glanced at the governor – ‘there was Julius Oppianus. But I’m sure he wouldn’t commit murder.’

‘Who’s Oppianus?’ I said.

‘One of the old aristocracy I mentioned,’ Gabinius said. ‘Family’s been around here for donkey’s years, since before Deucalion’s flood. He was in the running for Condate priest, as it happens, but Cabirus pipped him at the post and it obviously rankled. But Nerva’s right: Oppianus wouldn’t have done it. He’s not the type.’

Even so, I made a mental note of the name. ‘Anyone else?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Nerva said. ‘But then, I haven’t really looked into it. Certainly not conducted anything approaching an investigation. You’d have to ask Diligenta.’

Fair enough; and I’d rather start from scratch anyway. ‘What about the family?’ I said. ‘Anything there?’

‘Absolutely not. Cabirus and Diligenta were a very close couple, and the sons got on very well with their father, as far as I’m aware. They’re good lads.’

‘Titus is one of my best junior officers,’ Laco said. Oh, yeah: Laco being procurator, with all that entailed re having large amounts of tax-money in his charge, there’d be a force of militia assigned to him, particularly since the job would involve him and his reps travelling around the province much of the time. ‘He’s always been perfectly reliable.’

‘And Publius?’

‘He’s being trained up by his father to take over the business when Cabirus and his brother retire,’ Nerva said. ‘Was being, now, I suppose I should say.’

‘“Brother”?’

‘Oh, that’s Quintus. He’s the younger of the two. They ran the firm together. He’s not your man either, Corvinus; the two brothers got on very well, as far as I know, and Quintus is no killer.’

Maybe not, but I added him to my mental list all the same. ‘Anything else you can tell me?’ I said. ‘Where the house is, for a start.’

‘It’s not far from here, one of the properties on Ocean Road, just before the Gate. I can arrange for someone to take you, if you like.’

‘No, that’s OK, I’ll find it. I’ll go over there first thing tomorrow morning.’ I glanced at Gabinius. ‘If that’s all right with you, governor?’

‘My dear fellow, of course it’s all right! And you certainly don’t need my permission; in fact, as far as this business is concerned as the emperor’s personal representative you outrank me.’ He smiled. ‘Only as far as this business is concerned, naturally; I wouldn’t try interfering with the running of the province, if I were you. Don’t worry about authorization where anyone else is concerned, either. I know you have your letter from the emperor, but you won’t need it. Despite being the provincial capital, Lugdunum’s rather insular, more of a very large village, really, and you’ll find that anyone you talk to already knows perfectly well who you are and why you’re here. Now,’ – the slaves had come in with loaded trays – ‘that’s enough of the shop talk for the present, because you must both be starving.’

True, certainly in my case; and from the look of what was on the plates they didn’t do themselves at all badly out here in the sticks. I had plenty to think about, what’s more, and a few names and ideas to be going on with. Plus there was my second cup of wine to look forward to. Ah, the joys.

We’d have to see what tomorrow brought.

I set out for the Cabirus house after breakfast the next morning.

Getting myself orientated wasn’t too difficult. Lugdunum might be the provincial capital, singled out for special treatment by Rome’s imperial family, who’ve always been its particular patrons, but compared with Rome it’s no size at all. Technically, sure, it’s a city, but basically it’s only a large walled town, occupying the ground immediately to the west of where the Arar River joins the Rhone. Most of the centre – what you’d call the town proper, with all the government properties including the mint, the governor’s and procurator’s residences, the admin offices and the theatre – is fairly new and very Roman, built over the past fifty years or so and grouped around the usual arrangement of two main streets, the Hinge and Boundary Marker Street, where they meet just south of the Market Square. Because we’d come in the day before from the south, through the Narbonensian Gate, and travelled all the way up the Hinge to the Market Square at its end, we’d more or less gone its whole length. Oh, there were major bits we hadn’t seen yet, of course, particularly on the other side of the two rivers: Condate across the Arar to the north-east, the big religious complex in honour of the god Lug, with its pan-Gallic altar, and the main commercial sector, the Canabae – the name means ‘small huts’ – across the Rhone itself, but these could wait.

Outside the formal centre it isn’t all that built up either, quite the reverse, unlike Rome, which is bursting at the seams. The part of town I was walking through now, west of the Market Square in the direction of what Nerva had said was the Ocean Gate, was mainly residential, sure, but it wasn’t what I was used to back home at all. Most of the houses were villa, rather than town-house style, two-storey, max, often with wooden or even wattle-and-daub upper floors, and pretty much scattered, with a bit of ground between or even in front of them enclosed by a low wall or thorn-bush fencing, which as far as the less up-market ones were concerned was home to a cow or a few goats, with maybe a flock of chickens where the little buggers hadn’t got loose and were pecking around on the street itself. I remembered what the governor had said, about the locals being country-dwellers at heart, even the townies. That fitted: provincial capital and Gaul’s chief city or not, the place had a village feel to it that you just wouldn’t get in Italy, even in a town half the size. It was quiet, too. This time of day, when most of the work gets done, Rome would be heaving, whichever part you were in. Beyond the centre, I was practically on my own.

So. On the whole, by and large, pretty bucolic. Not that it was any the worse for that, mind: city boy to my bones or not, I was getting to quite like Lugdunum.