Lindsey Davis - Graveyard of the Hesperides

“Were the alibis fake or believable?”

“Flavia Albia, I don’t have time for testing alibis. People give me one, I go with it … Believable, I thought. Those musclemen are just two nice boys who sell barley.”

“Not very nice boys-but around here, who is?” I told Macer how Morellus had tracked down identities for the five dead men. I made it sound matter-of-fact to avoid jealousy, but Macer accepted being upstaged. It must happen frequently. He had never heard of any Egyptians getting into trouble around the High Footpath; there were none in particular on his watch list now.

He was just going over to the bar to see Tiberius, who had asked him to report on illegal gambling. I went too.

“So this is your next fantasy motive for the murders!” he joked, although he did see that betting rackets could explain a lot. He gave Tiberius quite a reasonable overview.

Gambling for cash was illegal. Most law officers tolerated it on a small scale, so long as it led to no trouble. Most bar landlords were capable of handling any quarrels that sprang up over dice or the draftboard. The vigiles had other things to do. The big worry was organized, gangster-led syndicates. From time to time, the higher-ups ordered a crackdown. Occasionally that even worked-temporarily.

Tiberius told him I had learned that Old Thales made a huge profit from gambling. Macer was not surprised. Once Liberalis opened the bar again, he would keep an eye.

Mention of Liberalis prompted me to say he was one of my murder suspects. Since he had an appointment with Tiberius that morning, to sign up for his aqueduct access, Macer and I hung around until he came. Once the formalities were done, Tiberius took the water-board official off for a polite thank-you drink, while Macer and I kept Liberalis back for an interview. We steered him out to the street, where we all leaned on the counters that Appius and the marble crew had now repaired.

“This is how it is, sir.” Macer opened the preliminaries, making it an official vigiles matter, full of fake respect. “I am going back to my station house now, and if you take the hard option, you’ll be coming with me. You will be placed in my cell until you are driven mad by the bare walls and the horrible sounds of fellow suspects under torture. Then you will find you are ready to talk about the night six deaths occurred. Trust me, you really will. The soft option is you can stand here in the pleasant sunlight and tell me what you know. You are known to have been present,” Macer announced calmly. “We have a witness.”

He had made that up. Anyone familiar with interrogation would have asked him, “Who is it?” When the question failed to come, Macer discreetly winked at me. Liberalis was an amateur and Macer was on to a winner.

“Someone was waiting at the Romulus to see one of the waiting staff safely home,” I embroidered. I was thinking of Gavius and Rhodina, though of course she didn’t need an escort home; she was sleeping with Old Thales. “Liberalis, you were seen.”

“This is your last chance,” Macer solemnly promised. “So own up.”

“If not,” I pressed the unhappy witness, “your smart new bar will have to reopen without you.”

It was his dream. Rather than miss a single day in his beloved bar, Liberalis chose to weaken. “Other people did it. I had no part in what happened.”

“Come on.” I jumped on him at once. “We want the people who carried out the killings. Help yourself by helping us.” I had one final lure: “We know Rufia survived. She is here in Rome. She will be arrested, on suspicion of involvement in murder. Nobody else who knows the truth is left alive. From all I hear, she’s clever. So when we question her, she is bound to protect herself by claiming you did everything. Do you want that to happen?”

It worked.

“Yes, I was there,” Liberalis finally confessed. “But only afterward.” From a hardened criminal that would be a lie; from him, probably not.

Leaning on his bar counter, he stared at a pothole, transfixed by memories. Macer and I eased off the pressure. In his own time he spilled it all.

“I came back. I came back after normal closing, because I had an idea there was gambling that night. Thales used to hold events, by special invitation, after shutdown. It was the year the Amphitheater opened. We were profiting from the endless games. He would look through the next day’s program, then take bets. You couldn’t do it at the arena, not openly.”

“So you came for betting. What did you find?” I nudged when he fell silent.

“I shall never get over it. I was so frightened I wet myself. It was the most horrible, disgusting sight.”

“Tell us everything you saw.” I spoke quietly, but I was firm. Macer listened. A typical laid-back inquiry officer, at last he chose to show genuine skills-at this point, patience.

Liberalis forced himself to continue. “It was late. I was alone. My mother thought I had gone to bed; I crept out of the house without her knowing. Nobody was in the Vicus Longus, no one was in our street here. I walked straight indoors, all innocent. I thought there was a meet, as I told you. I could see lights beyond in the courtyard, which seemed usual. But the place was much too quiet. Nobody was serving drinks. I should have gone home again. But I didn’t, I stupidly kept going. I went through the passage and into the garden.”

“Who was there?”

“Only Thales. He was all on his own.” Liberalis paused. He looked traumatized. “Apart from the bodies. I had never seen anything like it. Dead people, lying in a row, all close together, under our pergola.”

“How had they been killed?” demanded Macer.

“Throats cut.”

“Lot of blood?”

“Enough to make me sick.”

“Five men and one woman,” I prompted. “She was Rhodina?”

Liberalis nodded. He licked his lips in that nervous way he had. Twined his silver points of hair between anxious fingers. “She had no…” He could not say it.

“No head.” I was clinical. “Was her head lying there?”

He forced himself to remember the scene. “No. No, there was no head there. Just the rest of her body. Revolting.” He looked as if he might vomit right now.

Somebody had taken her head away already? Strange. “You knew for sure who she was?”

“Rhodina. She was pregnant. Anyway, Thales said, ‘This is that poor cow Rhodina. She won’t bother me again.’ I knew she had been nagging him; she wanted a future. He didn’t like anyone to tie him down; he wanted to be rid of her.”

Macer leaned sideways, staring at Liberalis’ hairy calves below his tunic. The vigilis said, matter-of-fact about it: “Well look at that! I do believe the poor scared sod is so upset, he’s weed all over himself again!” Liberalis writhed. Macer encouraged him to keep talking: “Publius Julius Liberalis, you sorry man, did one of the dead fellows have his leg cut off?”

“No. Oh, don’t make me remember it!” He was going off into hysterics. Any moment we would lose him.

“Sure?”

“They were lying with their legs toward me. I would have seen!” So the decapitation and leg amputation were separate incidents.

I breathed in and let it out, a demonstration of staying steady. “Calm down. Unburden yourself and you may feel better. You have decided to cooperate, remember. So what happened next?”

“Thales had just finished stripping all the clothes off them. He stood up, looked around, and saw me. I couldn’t believe his attitude. He treated the scene as if it was nothing extraordinary. He seemed to think I should have been expecting it. He told me he was waiting for navvies who were coming to dig the graves. I could help if I wanted to. I refused. So he said, ‘Bugger off home to bed then.’ And I did.”