David Wishart - Bodies Politic

I stopped. Shit, no, that didn’t quite work. If my theory was right, then X only wanted one bird, Flaccus: it was Lepidus and Agrippina who wanted rid of Macro, and if X had no connection with them, then…

Bugger. Leave it.

So anyway. X is sitting pretty. The evidence for the conspiracy will take the form of an exchange of letters, all forged, between Macro and Flaccus, having the first two genuine ones as their starting point. Only they won’t be official, governor to imperial rep, but just Flaccus to Macro and vice versa, and they’ll be carried sub rosa to and fro by a fall guy, Cineas, who if and when the shit hits the fan will be expendable. X will handle the Roman end, producing the ‘Macro’ letters; Glabrio, who’s seen the governor’s signature often enough to be able to forge it, writes the ‘Flaccus’ ones. Obviously, they never reach their ostensible recipients: Glabrio collects the former and X the latter. The whole package ends up eventually back in Rome, in X’s hands. After Macro is chopped, X hands the package to Isidorus and sends him on his merry way to Flaccus with his blessing…

Shit, there was that glitch again, in a different form: if Gaius needed proof that Macro was conspiring against him, as he would, then it couldn’t’ve come from the letters because the emperor, ipso facto, could never have seen them. We were still missing something here. Never mind, carry on.

Glabrio’s safe enough. X – through Isidorus – would be careful to guard his part in things, and Cineas’s: all Flaccus would know was that the letters were all forged; there’d be no reason for him to suspect his weren’t done by the same guy who’d forged the Macro ones, his enemy in Rome, and Isidorus would be at pains to encourage the belief. On the other hand, if push came to shove, Glabrio the faithful aide would be there to say he’d known for a long time that the governor was receiving clandestine letters via Cineas but that loyalty to his superior had forbidden him to etc etc. By which time Flaccus would be so far up the creek Gaius wouldn’t believe him if he claimed the sun rose in the east.

It worked; it all worked. Sure it did. The only problem – and it wasn’t an impediment, just a missing piece of the puzzle – was the connection between X and the imperials. If there was one. That part I just couldn’t get my head around.

Well, enough for the day. We were getting there, certainly. I patted the noses of my fellow horse trough loungers and set off for home.

I needn’t’ve worried. The message that Glabrio would see me the next morning arrived not long after I did: the guy was running scared right enough. Not at the Palace, mind, but at his home, which made sense. He gave an address in Bruchium, the other side of the Canopic Way, behind the Gymnasium.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw the house. There were cypress branches hung over the front door and draped around the pillars either side. That could only mean one thing: a death.

Shit.

The slave who opened the door looked frightened; not just frightened, terrified. He let me in, promising to go and fetch the major-domo, and left me in the main sitting-room with the body.

They’d laid him out on a formal death-couch, coins on the eyes and an embroidered coverlet pulled up to his chin. I couldn’t see how he’d died but I twitched back the coverlet a little. Not a slit throat, anyway. There were the usual shears and basket for visiting mourners’ hair-clippings, but I didn’t use them. I wasn’t that much of a hypocrite.

The major-domo came through: an oldish guy in his late fifties. He looked terrified too. He glanced at my unshorn fringe, then at the shears and basket, but made no comment.

‘Valerius Corvinus, pal,’ I said. ‘I’d an important appointment with your late master this morning. Care to tell me what happened?’

‘He choked on a fishbone, sir.’ The guy’s voice trembled. ‘Last night, at dinner.’

Yeah. And I was Ptolemy fucking Sopater. ‘Is that so, now?’

‘There was nothing anyone could do. He was dead in minutes.’

‘Were you there at the time, friend?’

He hesitated. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘No, sir, barring some of the other slaves. The master was dining alone. We sent for a doctor – there’s one a couple of streets off – but by the time he arrived it was much too late.’

It would’ve been. Whoever had stiffed the poor bugger – and I’d bet the process hadn’t involved a badly-filleted Lake Mareotis pike, either – would’ve made sure of that. And made certain that none of the staff told tales into the bargain: the major-domo was twitching like he had the palsy.

‘I don’t exactly know how the local law stands on slaves covering up the circumstances of their master’s death, sunshine,’ I said carefully. I hated doing this, but it was the only way. ‘But if it’s the same as in Rome it means the strangler’s noose. For the whole household. Now. You want to reconsider that fishbone?’

He swallowed like he’d got one lodged in his throat himself. ‘No, sir. That was how it happened.’

Gods! If that threat didn’t scare him then whatever one had was a beaut. And I’d a fair idea who’d made it. Not that, under the circumstances, I could do much about it.

Which didn’t stop me trying, mind.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Have it your own way, pal. I’ll see myself out.’

I left.

I was as angry as I’d been the day before when I confronted Glabrio in his office. Angrier. The bastard hadn’t even bothered to make the death plausible. A fishbone, a fucking fishbone! Oh, sure, I knew what had happened, it was clear enough: after Glabrio had sent to me to arrange the meeting the fool had had second thoughts or a crisis of conscience and run for advice to his co-agent Isidorus, who had naturally plumped for the obvious solution. Exit Glabrio.

I didn’t know where to find Isidorus, but Flaccus would. And it was time to talk to the governor anyway. I’d start with the Palace.

What I couldn’t get over was the casual way the murdering bastard had gone about things. Yeah, he wouldn’t have had the time or the opportunity to arrange an accident that was half-way convincing, but even a fake suicide would’ve been more believable than this fucking fishbone nonsense. He was either mind-blowingly stupid with the imagination of a retarded gnat – and I knew he wasn’t the first – or he thought it didn’t matter one little bit whether I believed the story or not. And that was just plain insulting. Sure, it was worrying as well – it meant his hold over Flaccus was so strong he could laugh at the threat of an official investigation – but it made me furious all the same.

I got to the Palace, ignored the guy on the desk and went straight up the big staircase. Behind me it’d be an exaggeration to say that all hell broke loose, but we had the quiet equivalent all the same: two or three slaves no more than half a dozen yards behind me, plus the squaddies who’d been on guard outside the door half a dozen yards behind them. I kept on going, crossed the hallway at the top, and threw open the governor’s door…

Flaccus had a visitor already, and he turned when I came in: a plump-faced smiling Greek with a narrow beard and moustache and the eyes of a rabid dog. Isidorus. It had to be. Which was fine by me, absolutely fine. Perfect.

‘Valerius Corvinus!’ Flaccus snapped. ‘What’s the meaning of this?’

The slaves behind me – and the squaddies – had stopped in a bunch on the threshold. One of the squaddies pushed through and grabbed my arm. I shook him off.

‘That’s all right,’ Flaccus said to him. ‘Leave him. And go back downstairs, all of you. I’ll deal with this.’