David Wishart - No Cause for Concern

Jupiter! Artistic giant the guy might be, but as phrases go you didn’t get much more metaphorical. I estimated his height as four foot nothing in his sandals. Given that the sandals had extra-thick soles and he stood up straight enough.

‘Honoured to meet you, Valerius Corvinus,’ he said. From the tone he obviously thought it should be the other way round. My sympathies were with Bathyllus already.

‘Yeah,’ I said, teeth firmly gritted. We shook, while Perilla watched us anxiously.

‘Daistratus is just finishing the blocking-in,’ she said. ‘Then he’ll make a start on the painting itself.’

‘Fine, fine.’ I made the mistake of glancing at the thing, but managed to wrench my eyes away before my brain could kick into gear and start trying to interpret what they were seeing. ‘It’s certainly…different.’

The artistic giant puffed up like a partridge. ‘Of course it is different!’ he said. ‘It is unique!’

‘So what about the other six?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘This is, uh, Fantasy Architecturecrap Seven, yes?’

‘Scape. Architecture scape.’

‘Right. Sorry, pal, slip of the tongue. So what about versions one to six?’

‘They are different too. And equally unique.’

‘Completely different, or just slightly different? Because if they’re just slightly different then that only makes them slightly unique, right? Which is sort of a contradiction in terms. I mean, if the only difference in the name is the number tacked onto the end, then -’

‘Marcus,’ Perilla said, taking me by the arm, ‘perhaps we should leave Daistratus alone to work in peace, yes?’ She edged me towards the door.

‘It’s a reasonable point, lady. I mean, we are paying for the thing. Have paid, rather. If it’s supposed to be unique and half a dozen other lucky people have practically the same picture on their wall -’

‘Marcus! ’ she hissed. The edging got a lot more insistent. You could’ve used the glare I was getting from the Artist Known as Daistratus to weld metal.

‘Fair enough. See you later, friend,’ I said to him. ‘Keep up the good…ah…keep up the work, okay?’

We went back into the atrium, Perilla maintaining an arm-lock and a frigid silence throughout.

‘If that guy’s having it off with Rutilia Secunda then he’ll need a stepladder and a bit of help,’ I said. Rutilia was the poetry-klatsch pal who’d given Perilla the recommendation in the first place. She stood six feet one in her socks and was built like an all-in wrestler.

‘Don’t be crude,’ Perilla snapped.

‘Yeah, well.’ I lay down on the couch and set the wine cup on the table. There again, maybe I was doing the woman an injustice. I doubted that Daistratus would have much on his mind beyond his art. If you could call it that.

‘So. How was your morning?’ Spoken with careful deliberation; we’d obviously reached an obligatory change of subject here. Which was fine by me. I took another swallow of wine and told her.

‘You think this Paetinius has something to do with the boy’s disappearance?’

‘It’s possible. Everything’s possible. I hope not, though. The time to work along these lines is when we find the corpse.’ I made the sign against bad luck. ‘Sorry, lady. That slipped out.’

‘Will there be one? A corpse, I mean?’

‘Perilla, I don’t know. Honestly. Young Luscius has just disappeared, that’s all. We’ve no reason to think he’s dead, quite the reverse, because he walked out of the place of his own accord. It’s just a question of finding where he is, and that’s difficult enough.’

‘You’ve no leads? None?’

‘Not a sniff.’ I finished off the Setinian and set the cup down. ‘My best bet’s that he’ll get in touch with his girlfriend. Although where that leaves me vis-a-vis Eutacticus is another matter, because I doubt if sweet Sempronia’s likely to share the information with her daddy. Or her stepmother either, to tell the truth. She might not even tell me. I mean, why should she?’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Sit tight. Wait. Keep my fingers crossed. And if Eutacticus loses patience watch my back.’

‘That’s scarcely fair, dear. You’ve tried your best.’

‘That bastard doesn’t do fair. He’s known for it.’

‘Then have a word with one of the city judges and let Eutacticus know you’ve done it. He wouldn’t dare interfere with you then.’

I sighed. ‘Perilla, there’s a good chance that whoever I talked to got to be a judge in the first place because Eutacticus chipped in to fund his election campaign. Or maybe he just has the guy and his wife round to dinner regularly and pulls out all the stops, or gets them prime seats at the Games. That sort of thing. Nothing too obvious, but he’s a top-level professional crook, and he’s good at his job. He knows if you want a blind eye turned you have to pay for it, and he’s got enough to do that ten times over. So me, I wouldn’t place any bets.’

‘Hmm.’ Perilla frowned. ‘Well, as you say we’ll just have to await developments.’

We got them the next morning. In spades. Sempronia sent a skivvy round to say that the bodies had been found.

They were lying inside one of those artificial grottoes sacred to Pan and the Nymphs that you get in the bigger gardens, tucked away in a carefully-landscaped patch of wilderness and screened by ivy, ferns and general bosk. If there is such a word. This particular example was right against the rear boundary wall of the property, on the opposite side of the house from the main gate and backing directly onto a stretch of undeveloped hillside. Young Titus Luscius had been stabbed through the heart. The slave Lynchus had had his throat cut.

Shit.

The packs were stuffed into the back of the grotto. I pulled them out to where the light was better and undid the draw-strings. Not a lot there, even in the bigger one, which must’ve been Luscius’s: a cloak, a fresh tunic, a change of underwear, that was about what you got. No money: he would’ve been carrying a purse, sure, but that must’ve been on his belt, and whoever had killed him had probably taken it as a bonus. There was some blood on the rocky floor, but not all that much, certainly not enough to go with the slave’s slit throat; that must’ve been done outside.

Well, that was that. At least we knew where we were, now. If that was any consolation, which it wasn’t.

I came back out into the sunshine to where Sempronia was waiting, arms tightly hugging her chest, head turned away. A small group of slaves were standing in a huddle a few yards off, like a Greek chorus who’d discovered they were in the wrong play. Two of them were holding stretchers. I crouched down and inspected a stain on the grass to one side of the grotto entrance. Yeah, right: blood, although mostly washed away by the trickling stream of runoff water. That was where Lynchus must’ve been standing. There were splashes on the surrounding rocks, too, and at more or less head height on the outward-facing side of the entrance. Easy enough to spot, but only if you were looking for them.

Sempronia must’ve heard me. ‘Stasimus found them,’ she said, without turning round. ‘He’s one of the garden slaves. He had a…an assignation with one of the maids here, just before dawn.’

Her voice was colourless, but the tone was matter-of-fact and she was holding herself in well. She’d been doing it ever since I’d arrived at the house, and she’d insisted on taking me to the grotto herself. Like I said, Eutacticus’s daughter was no fluffy kitten. The best thing I could do was match her.

‘Was there any reason for Titus to come here?’ I said. ‘I mean, any special reason that you know of?’