David Wishart - Trade Secrets
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- Название:Trade Secrets
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- Издательство:Severn House Publishers
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- Год:2015
- ISBN:9781780107264
- Рейтинг книги:4 / 5. Голосов: 1
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‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know Doccius.’
‘He’s gone up in the world since, I’ve heard. Not that I’m surprised, the bastard. Anyway, that was him on the crane. He swore blind the cog had slipped its ratchet, but these things are checked regular, and if it had slipped then it’d been fixed to slip. The report went in to the dock authorities, sure, but whatever they may tell you all they care about is their harbour dues, and if one of their own men isn’t working the crane and being paid through the nose by the shipper for doing it, then if someone gets hurt or a load gets dropped and smashed then it’s just hard cheese. No, what happened to Manutius was no accident. You take my word for it.’
I said nothing.
‘So that was me. Last job I ever did for that bastard Correllius, good money or not, and if he didn’t like it he could lump it. I walked away from the quay and I didn’t look back. First thing I did was go round to Manutius’s house to break the news to his widow. Vinnia, her name was. You met her?’ I nodded. ‘I told her the whole story, just like I’ve told it to you. Like I say, Manutius was no saint, and he had his faults, but doing badly by his wife wasn’t one of them. He’d a bit put by, like I had, and I helped her get set up in a little wineshop by the Square and get the business running.’ He chuckled. ‘There wasn’t no more to it than that, mind. She was a fine-looking girl in sore need of another husband, but she was no older at the time than Cispilla, and besides my Sosta was still alive, and if I’d even looked at another woman she’d’ve had my head. Then a few months before she died this started to come on’ – he patted his legs – ‘and by the time I buried her I was past walking through the front door, let alone marrying again. There now. That’s all about it. Get what you came for?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, thanks. Uh … this Vinnia. There was no one else to look after her? Family, that sort of thing?’
‘No one local. She wasn’t from around here, originally; from somewhere in Gaul, I think. She’d a brother; has, if they’re both still alive. Gaius, his name was. Went for a soldier early on, must be a good twenty-odd years back, with one of the legions on the Rhine. Last I heard, which is a few years ago now, he was doing pretty well for himself. Made it up to optio and was set fair for his centurion’s stick. Manutius, now, his two brothers both died young. The parents were both dead, too, like Vinnia’s were, and she’d no other kin that I ever knew of.’
Hmm. I stood up. ‘Thanks, pal,’ I said. ‘You’ve been really helpful.’
‘How did he die? Correllius?’
‘Stabbed in the back, over in Rome.’
Cispius nodded slowly and with satisfaction. ‘Good. Good,’ he said. ‘Well, I thank you for coming. Corvinus, was it?’
‘Yeah. Marcus Corvinus.’
‘Corvinus, then. I’ll sleep better tonight for the visit, Corvinus. And Manutius would’ve been pleased, too. If I’d had the guts and the opportunity, I’d’ve knifed the murdering bastard myself. Doccius, too.’
I left.
It hadn’t been much of a day’s work – the sun was barely past the midday point – but I reckoned we’d done pretty well here. Seeing Doccius at Fundanius’s place more or less confirmed that we were on the right track about some sort of collusion between Fundanius and Mamilia, which meant that barring the details we could regard the Correllius side of things – or his stabbing, at least – as being pretty well sewn up. Of course, there might always be a more innocent explanation: I’d left Correllius’s house practically at the moment that Fundanius had arrived, and so whatever had passed between him and the lady I knew nothing at all about it. Perilla’s first point, that the guy had come round with the specific intention of burying the feud now that Correllius himself was out of things, could well be true; in which case, comings and goings between the two households might’ve eased off a tad.
There again, to quote Cispius, ‘and pigs can fly’.
If Mamilia hadn’t been putting on an act for my benefit, then I’d guess the meeting would’ve been pretty short and stormy, and ended with Fundanius being escorted from the premises with a flea in his ear: long-standing feuds don’t get buried that quickly, and if I was any judge of character, Mamilia would’ve been as easy to get round as an elephant in an alleyway. Added to the fact was that, if everything had been above board, when he caught sight of me Doccius wouldn’t have shot back in the door he was coming out of fast as a High Priest of Jupiter spotted sticking his nose out of the entrance to a brothel.
So scrub that idea.
Anyway, there wasn’t much point in faffing around town with no particular end in view as opposed to going back to talk things over with Perilla and relaxing before dinner with a cup of wine or three. We might, in fact, if the lady felt like it, do what I’d told Fundanius we’d do and take a walk further down the coast road to have a look at the villa for rent that he’d mentioned: ploy it might have been, but I hadn’t been totally unserious about looking around for a cheapish property in the area, and this Rusticellius place had sounded promising. Taking it would mean, for a start, that on the occasions when I did go through to Ostia I didn’t have to spend the night kipping out in Agron’s living room with the jolly prospect of being woken first thing by a gang of screaming kids.
So when I’d left the fuller’s shop I started off for the Laurentian Gate and home.
I’d just got through the city wall and was walking along the coast road when I realized I had company. Oh, there’d been other pedestrians and carts on the road, sure, although not as many as there would’ve been earlier: the coast road’s only used for local traffic, Ostia’s much more laid-back than Rome, most of the locals – the agricultural element, anyway – take their main meal in the middle of the day, and in the summer over the next couple of hours or so, when the sun’s at its hottest, they tend to get their heads down for a snooze. Still, despite the fact that the rest of the road as far as I could see was empty at present there were these two guys behind me, one a good bit in front of the other. The nearer of the two had on a cloak with the hood up; strange enough, on a warm day without a rain cloud in sight, but if he wanted to broil that was his own affair. Thing was, the first time I’d glanced back, he’d been keeping pace; the second time, he’d speeded up and the gap between us was closing.
Yeah, well; maybe I was just being over-suspicious here: the guy was probably just a local farmer late for dinner, with a wife who took that sort of thing seriously. I turned round and carried on walking …
I’d only got a few more yards when a sixth sense made me turn round again. Which was lucky, because another few steps and the bastard would’ve had me cold. As it was, I barely had the time to spot the knife he was carrying hidden under his cloak when he was on me. I grabbed at his wrist, but this time I’d misjudged things, and I felt the blade slice across the outside edge of my hand. My knee came up into his groin, but he stepped back in time, swore and lunged at me again …
Which was when somebody grabbed him from behind, pulling him off balance like he weighed nothing at all, then followed up with a swinging punch that would’ve felled a bull. The guy went down, catching the side of his head with a sickening crunch against a boulder by the side of the road, and lay still.
Shit.
‘You all right, Corvinus?’ the other guy, the one who’d punched him, said.
I knew him now: one of Agron’s lads, the biggest of the bunch.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘More or less.’ I looked at my hand. He’d cut me, sure, and there was a lot of blood, but the wound was shallow, no more than a long thin gash from knuckle to wrist. It could’ve been worse. Easily worse. ‘I’ll live. Thanks, pal.’
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