David Wishart: Trade Secrets

‘Corvinus, this is insane!’ Annius snapped. ‘I’ve never even heard of this Porpoise of yours, nor of a Titus Nigrinus!’ He stood up. ‘Now I have business to attend to. If you won’t leave peaceably, I’ll call my chief clerk and have you-’

The bigger of the two squaddies moved forward and pushed him back onto his stool. I didn’t move. Annius sat glaring.

‘Not what the clerk in the Ostia shipping office told me, pal,’ I said. I took the flimsy from my belt and showed him it. ‘ Porpoise , ninety tons, registered in Ostia. Master, Titus Nigrinus, current owner, as of a month ago, Gaius Annius. You want to read it for yourself?’

He was quiet for a long time. Then he said: ‘All right. I owned the Porpoise . I bought it from Titus Nigrinus and kept him on as captain. So what? I’m in the import-export business. Ship-owning is a natural offshoot of that. And if the ship went down then surely that’s my affair, and my loss.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘So. You like to explain why the cargo she was carrying at the time was eight hundred amphoras of water?’

‘Again, that is sheer nonsense! The Porpoise was loaded with wine and oil.’

‘Which you were transporting for a customer in Ostia by the name of Marcus Correllius, right?’

‘Possibly.’ There was a bead of sweat on his forehead. ‘You can’t expect me to remember the exact details of every order. If you’ll let me ask my clerk-’ He half-rose. The squaddie standing beside the desk cleared his throat and shifted his weight.

‘Sit down,’ I said.

He subsided, one eye on the squaddie. He was looking distinctly grey now.

‘OK, next part,’ I said. ‘You heard of a guy called Siddius? Used to work a crane at the Ostia docks?’

‘A crane operator? Of course not! Why should I?’ A muscle in his face twitched.

‘The name isn’t important. But he was loading some of your wacky amphoras when the load slipped and they got broken. Oh, Captain Nigrinus paid him on the spot to keep his mouth shut, so that was all right. The problem was, though, there was someone else on the quay who just happened to be your brother-in-law. And he’d seen the whole thing as well.’

This time Annius said nothing. He just glared at me.

‘Tullius is no fool, and like you when he gets the chance he isn’t averse to a bit of sharp practice where it turns a neat profit. He sees the water where there should be a mess of wine or oil, and like Siddius he puts two and two together. But he’s a lot cleverer than Siddius, and a lot more greedy. So instead of taking things up with the captain he checks the ship’s details at the harbour office, like I did later, and he gets your name and your office address.’ I paused. ‘How am I doing, pal?’

Annius said nothing.

‘Round he comes and you have a little chat. He wants money, of course, a lot of money, which you tell him you haven’t got. Or not at present, anyway. However, the Ides’re coming up, and the Ides are a holiday. The office is closed, there’s no one around. If he drops by then, you tell him, you’ll have the money ready and you can conduct your business with no one to disturb you. And in the interim you send word to your partners in Ostia, the other two in the scam who are doing the dirty on Correllius; Publius Fundanius, his long-term business rival, who was responsible for storing and selling on the contents of the genuine amphoras, and Publius Doccius, his deputy, who organized the switch and generally facilitated matters. Doccius – I’m guessing here, but it seems likely, because I don’t think you’ve got the guts for murder on your own – comes through to Rome lickety-split to give you some not-so-moral support.’

I was glad I’d thought to bring the squaddies with me; the look I was getting from Annius suggested that, if he hadn’t actually done the killing himself first time round, he’d happily do it now.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Tullius turns up for the pay-off and you – or Doccius – slip a knife into him. Then it’s just a case of getting rid of the body. Easy-peasy; one heave, and the problem’s solved.’ I stood up, walked to the window, and looked out and down at the patch of flattened grass two floors beneath. ‘As far as the Watch was concerned – as far as I was concerned, for that matter – he was killed down there in the shrine, although I did half-wonder even at the time why anybody planning to commit a murder would take the risk of being seen going into and coming out of a shrine that no one visits. Plus why once they’d done the job they didn’t bother to hide the corpse properly when there was plenty of cover available. Oh, sure, it was a holiday so your office itself would be closed and the alleyway deserted, but there might still’ve been people passing on the main drag who might have seen and remembered.’ I turned back round and gave him my best smile. ‘Only in the event it turned out that there was no risk involved at all. Murdering a guy in the privacy of an empty office block, then pushing him through a window overlooking a patch of ground no one’s ever in was a different thing altogether, and completely safe. Like I say, the only question is whether you or Doccius were the actual perp. Not that it matters much because in either case you, pal, are up the creek without a paddle.’

‘It was Doccius,’ Annius said quietly.

Glory and trumpets! ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘I’m happy to go with that. For the present.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Tullius was a complete bastard,’ he said. ‘A womanizer, a sponger, and a blackmailer. He’s no great loss, and he deserved all he got. The world’s a better place without him.’

‘Maybe so. But then that wasn’t your reason for killing him, was it?’ I paused. ‘Did your sister know?’

He shrugged. ‘She may have suspected. She certainly knew where this office was. But she never asked me directly, and I didn’t tell her.’

Yeah, I could appreciate that; they were well-matched, him and Annia, both cold fish, which was probably why they were so close. Maybe Tullius’s partner, Poetelius, had had a lucky escape in the matrimonial stakes, if he had escaped. And Annius was right about one thing: Gaius Tullius was no great loss to humanity.

Still, that wasn’t my concern. I turned to the squaddies.

‘You can take things from here, lads?’ I said.

‘Uh-huh,’ the guy beside the desk said. ‘No problem.’

That was that, then. I left them to it.

Not that I was feeling smug; the case was finished, sure, and I’d got our killer, but it’d left a bad taste in my mouth. Why’re these things never straight black and white, with the villain being really, really evil and the victim just that, an innocent shoved into an urn before his time? Despite what I’d said to him, despite the kind of guy he was, I had a lot of sympathy for Quintus Annius, and most of the people I’d been involved with would’ve agreed. Now all I wanted was a half-jug of wine and Perilla’s reassurance, when she got back, that I’d only been doing my job.

I went home.

My neighbour Titus Petillius was just coming out of his front door. When he saw me, he froze.

The dead-cat incident. Oh, shit; I’d forgotten all about that. This I could do without.

I kept my eyes fixed on our door and made for the steps.

‘Just one minute, Corvinus, if you please,’ he said.

Hell. I stopped and turned round.

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I’m in a bit of a hurry at present. Maybe later?’ Like after the Winter Festival. Preferably next year’s.

‘I won’t keep you long.’ Petillius came towards me and stood eyeball to eyeball. Or rather in his case eyeball to Adam’s apple. ‘And this won’t wait.’