David Wishart - Foreign Bodies

‘Look, Marcus, just leave it, will you? There’s no use fretting. If you’re stuck for the present then you’re stuck, and that’s all there is to it. Something may turn up, you never know.’

‘Yeah, right. Fair enough. Of course it will. Along with the pink giraffe and the herd of flying pigs.’ I took a hefty swallow of wine. ‘Oh, by the way, I bumped into Optima’s husband in the market square earlier. Or rather, he bumped into me and introduced himself. Not a bad old guy, but he’s a bit of a Priscus.’

‘A bit of a what?’

‘A Priscus. Only in his case it’s antique Gallic silverware. He wants us to go round for dinner some evening and have a look at his collection. Optima will arrange things with you, seemingly.’

‘Oh, that’s fine. We’re meeting up again tomorrow. I can talk to her then.’

‘Another shrine, is it? You’re-’ Bathyllus oozed in with the tray, but also with his ‘I have news to impart’ expression. ‘Hi, sunshine. That dinner, is it?’

‘Actually no, sir, not yet. You have a visitor. Saenius Balbinus.’

I looked behind him. Balbinus was coming through from the lobby. If anything, the guy looked even more worried than he had before

‘I’m sorry to barge in like this, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘Lady Rufia. But I thought you’d better know right away. There’s been another murder.’

I stared at him.

Shit.

The victim, it transpired, was another merchant, by the name of Trebonius Tarbeisus.

‘Sit down and tell us what happened, pal,’ I said. ‘Bathyllus, a cup of wine, please, a large one. Make it neat, OK? And hurry, I think the man needs it.’

‘Damn right I do.’ Balbinus sat.

‘Just take your time and start at the beginning.’

‘Very well.’ He took a deep breath. ‘He was found stabbed a couple of hours ago, in the commercial quarter – that’s the south-west part of town. The body was hidden in a disused warehouse, under a pile of old sacking. It could’ve been there for days, and it was a pure fluke that anyone stumbled on it at all.’

‘And no one missed him?’

‘Not that I know of. Certainly there’d been no report. Mind you, from the little information I’ve managed to glean so far he was in town on his own. Not even a slave or a servant.’

‘No reason for the death, presumably? I mean, he wasn’t another of Verica’s agents, was he?’

‘Not that I’m aware of, which isn’t saying much. He could have been, but if so then Hister didn’t mention him. He could even have been our friend X.’

‘Yeah?’ I looked at him sharply. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Absolutely nothing. Look, Corvinus, I just don’t know what’s going on any more, right? I’m completely out of my depth here.’

Bathyllus came in with the wine. Balbinus downed it in a oner.

‘So what information do you have on him?’ I said.

‘He was a merchant, like I say, from Caesarodunum – that’s a town in the west part of the Lugdunensian province – dealing in high-quality jewellery. As far as I can tell, this was his first visit to Augusta; certainly I’d never seen him here before, and neither had any of the few regular merchants I managed to talk to.’

‘But did they know who he was? From this time round, I mean?’

‘Two or three of them, yes. He was boarding at the inn just opposite the baths; that’s your accommodation of choice for the mercantile contingent, and even the ones who aren’t staying there use it as a place to network. He was a pretty sociable chap, seemingly, good company and not averse to pulling his weight where buying drinks was concerned.’

‘Even so, no one noticed he’d gone missing?’

‘Merchants follow their own schedules, Corvinus; they’re here today, gone tomorrow, most of them, sometimes without warning. He’d paid in advance up to yesterday for the room – the landlord’s been caught too many times by fly-by-nights to leave settling the bill until the last minute – and any meals and drinks were strictly cash up front. Oh, sure, the landlord knew he hadn’t been around for a few days, but that does happen on occasion.’ He glanced sideways at Perilla. ‘You can guess the circumstances for yourself. His belongings were still in the room, including his samples, and more to the point his mule was in the stables, so the innkeeper wasn’t too concerned.’

‘A few days, you say. How many would that be, exactly?’

‘Four or five. Maybe six. The landlord wasn’t absolutely sure.’

Jupiter! Score one for the guy’s powers of observation! Still, he’d know his money was safe, so if it turned out that Tarbeisus had been spending a bit of quality time tomcatting he wouldn’t be complaining. ‘So,’ I said, ‘that would take us back to shortly after the other murders, Drutus’s and Anda’s, yes?’

‘I suppose it would. You think there’s a connection?’

‘It seems a fair assumption, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. But like I said I can’t see what that might be.’

Right; me neither, especially if this Tarbeisus was clean as far as background went. But that was for Balbinus to check on, as far as he could. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll need names.’

‘Names?’

‘Anyone he’d been in contact with before he disappeared and might be able to shed some light. His drinking cronies, for preference.’

‘I hadn’t got that far. The best you can do on that score is to go round to the inn yourself around the middle of the afternoon. That’s when most of the traders – locals and out-of-towners – get together to make deals among themselves and catch up on the latest news. Like I said, the place is near the western gate, opposite the baths.’

‘Fine. I’ll do that tomorrow.’

Well, it might be bad luck for the newly deceased, but at least it meant we might possibly be off and rolling again. There’s a lot to be said during a case for a fresh murder.

The inn, when I got there just after the ninth hour the following afternoon, was pretty crowded; the downstairs part of it, anyway, where Augusta’s trading fraternity obviously did a large slice of their all-merchants-together dickering and insider-info swapping. Drinking, too: when I pushed open the door it narrowly missed a waiter with a loaded tray of beer mugs and wine-cups, and the place was going like a Circus wineshop on a race day. I pushed my way through the crowd to the bar counter and waited to be served.

‘Yes, sir, what’ll it be?’ the barman said eventually.

‘Surprise me, friend. A cup of anything you’d recommend that’s good.’

‘We’ve a nice Nemausan, just in. It’s just as good as most of the top names, and half the price. That do you?’

‘Sure.’ I took some coins out of my pouch and laid them down while he unlimbered the appropriate flask and poured.

‘You’re the gentleman from Lugdunum, right?’ he said as he set the cup down in front of me. ‘Looking into the Drutus affair?’

‘That’s me. More or less.’

‘Terrible thing, that.’ He took a few of the coins. ‘It came as a real shock, I can tell you; murder’s not a thing that ever happens in Augusta. Then of course there’s this other one now. It makes you think what the world is coming to, doesn’t it?’

‘It does indeed.’ I took a sip of the wine. Not bad; not bad at all.

‘Three killings inside of a few days, all merchants from outside town. It couldn’t be worse for business, that. I mean, who’s going to want to do their trading in Augusta, or spend more time here than they need to, if they think there’s a chance that some crazy bastard is likely to up and stiff them?’

‘Ah … are you the owner of this place, by any chance?’ I said.