David Wishart - Foreign Bodies

Sarky as hell; thank the gods I was out of it before the sarcasm really started to bite. I grinned and left.

OK. So. The Anda angle. For what it was worth.

The tavern in question, over by the city’s east gate, was easy to find. Like Balbinus had said, it was the only one on offer, a two-storey wooden building with a thatched roof and stables to the side from which came a strong smell of horse manure. There were a couple of locals sitting on the bench beside the door, drinking what was probably beer from leather mugs. They stopped chatting when they saw me coming and favoured me with a couple of silent stares that didn’t look remotely this side of friendly. I remembered what Balbinus had told me about toleration for Romans only being skin deep around these parts; evidently where Gaulish taverns – as opposed to wineshops – went the depth of skin concerned wasn’t all that much. I gave them a cheerful nod, got a grunt from one of them in reply, and pushed open the door.

We’d definitely gone downmarket here with a vengeance. There was a counter, sure, like you’d find in any ordinary decent-sized wineshop, but there the similarities ended. Instead of the flasks of wine in their rests behind the bar there were two or three hefty wooden barrels with spigots, and a shelf of the leather mugs. The floor was beaten earth covered with rushes, not fresh ones at that, and what punters there were at this early hour were standing around with mugs of their own. The chatter gradually died away to nothing as they turned to face me. In the corner to my right, a dog scratched for fleas.

Chichi Eighth District wine bar in Rome it most definitely wasn’t.

I walked over to the bar where the landlord – presumably – was rinsing used beer mugs in a basin. The water in it didn’t look all that fresh, either.

‘Morning,’ I said. ‘You serve wine at all?’

He set the mug he was holding down, reached under the counter, brought up a jug and poured in some of the contents, all without a word. I tried a sip. One was enough; wine it may have been, technically, but if so it was pushing the definition to its limits. Ah, well; Perilla would be pleased I wasn’t using the investigation as an excuse to soak up some extra booze on this occasion.

‘The name’s Valerius Corvinus,’ I said. ‘I’m looking into the deaths of a guy called Drutus and his servant Anda. I understand they were staying here. Or at least Anda was.’

‘True enough.’ The man reached for another dirty mug, plunged it into the basin, and set it down on the counter. ‘So?’

‘So I was hoping you might be able to help with some information.’ Silence. ‘Come on, friend! They were Gauls! And I was told they were pretty popular locally. Where I come from, that’d mean something.’

‘Last time I looked, this wasn’t Rome.’

‘Yeah. So I’d noticed. Me, I wouldn’t be too proud of the difference.’ My four-day tour of the wineshops re the Cabiri family mystery all over again. Ah, the hell with it; at least I’d tried, and it’d been a long shot to begin with. I took two or three coppers from my belt-pouch, tossed them on the counter, and turned to go. ‘Thanks a lot. Enjoy your day.’

I’d got halfway to the door when he said:

‘Wait a minute.’

I turned round. He’d set the last of the mugs on the counter and was drying his hands with a cloth.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know?’

Hey! ‘Anything and everything. I’m getting pretty desperate here.’

He grunted; it could even have been a chuckle. ‘You could’ve fooled me. We’ve never had a Roman in this place before, not one who ordered a drink, anyway, and I’ll bet it’ll be long enough until we see another one. That right, lads?’

There was a murmur of agreement and a few muttered comments that I suspect I was lucky not to catch, accompanied by sniggers. Even so, I could feel the mood in the room ease, and the background noise started up again. I walked back to the counter.

‘Now,’ the landlord said. ‘What sort of information?’

‘I told you. I don’t know; anything that might be relevant. All I know is that they ate here – both of them – early that evening and then went out. They didn’t say where they were going, or why?’

‘Nah. Drutus – well, he had a fancy woman, with a stall in the market, so I had a fair notion where he was bound. I hardly ever saw the man all the time he’d been coming here, and that was fifteen years, at least, ’cept when he dropped by to pay for stabling his horses and for Anda’s shake-down in the hay loft.’

‘So the fact that they had a meal together was unusual?’

‘First time I remember it happening, ever, at least since he found himself a lady friend about ten years back. Oh, Anda on his own, sure, he was practically one of the family. He always ate upstairs with the wife and me when I shut up shop at sundown.’

‘Not this time, though.’

‘Nah.’

‘Whose idea was it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, somebody must’ve told you about the changed arrangements. Was it Drutus or Anda?’

‘Oh. Right. It was Anda. Came in here mid-afternoon, in a proper taking. Said he needed a favour; that he and Drutus were going out that night on business, they needed to talk something over in private beforehand, and could they have the use of the room upstairs while they did it.’

‘Hang on, pal,’ I said. ‘Anda told you they were going out on business somewhere after dark?’

‘Yeah. That’s right.’

‘That’s not what you told the authorities.’

‘No.’ His eyes challenged me. ‘Can’t say that it is.’

Fair enough, and I could sympathize in retrospect; like I’d said to Perilla, honest merchants and their servants didn’t do business in the small hours, and he’d just told me that Anda was practically family. You didn’t peach on family, whatever the reason.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘He say where, or why? Or business with who?’

‘No, that was all. Luckily the wife had arranged to go and see a friend that afternoon, so she’d cooked the dinner in advance; it was just beans and vegetables, served cold, and a loaf of bread, so it was easy to stretch it four ways instead of two. I was busy here myself until sundown, naturally, so letting them use the room and giving them something to eat while they talked was no skin off my nose. Drutus paid me well for it, too, cash up front.’

I felt a slight prickle of excitement: maybe we were getting somewhere after all, although I couldn’t in all honesty see that being very far. Still, it looked as if the servant was the one who’d made the running here, not his master, and that was unusual in itself where a business deal was concerned. The big question was, what did the running involve? Presumably, setting the fatal meeting up without having either the time or the opportunity to contact Drutus. And it had been important, that was sure, vitally important: our tavern-keeper friend here had said Anda had been ‘in a proper taking’ when he’d asked for the favour. Excited? Worried? Frightened? It could be any of them, but if so the implications were different …

Shit! I was close to something, I could feel it!

‘So what happened then?’ I said.

‘Nothing. They came as arranged and went straight upstairs. I brought the food up a few minutes later when I had the chance and left them to it. They were gone by sunset, and that was the last I saw of them.’ He was frowning. ‘Look. Anda was a good man, a good friend, and good company; well-travelled, been all over before he settled down with Drutus these twenty years back, so he’d got a lot of stories to tell. I’ll miss him, me and the wife both. You get the bastard who killed him, right?’