Second Act

by Marilyn Todd

  No, no, he couldn’t allow himself to get off that lightly. True, that evidence alone might not have convinced him. The suspect, a loner, had protested his innocence and he had owed it to the man to check the facts, but then three of the victims identified him outright as their attacker. Surely all three couldn’t be wrong? Lying back on the cushions as his litter crawled its agonizing snail’s pace through the streets, sweat streamed down Orbilio’s face, and not from the pain which was wracking his side.

  Claudia had seen what he had not. What was in front of him all along. That’s why she went to visit the victims and had kept her suspicions about Dymas to herself. To brand a man a monster when he was merely odd would leave an irrevocable scar, while for Marcus to arrest his own colleague in a rush to stop further attacks and then be proved to have been wrong would have destroyed both Dymas and him. It was only once the pieces started to fall into place that he realized what tipped the balance of Claudia’s scales from supposition to proof. The victims’ statements.

  Funny, but he could quote them word for word every time and still the penny didn’t drop.

  ‘How could you identify the attacker,’ he had asked, ‘if he was masked?’ and each reply was the same.

  ‘By the smell of aniseed, by the way he held himself, by his voice and the shape of his hands.’

  That was the point. Each reply was the same. As though someone had coached them— And, goddammit, he hadn’t picked that up.

  ‘You can drop me here,’ he told the head bearer. The Greek’s small apartment was one block ahead, he could see a light burning in the window. Could almost picture Dymas hunched over the case notes. Insurance, my arse! He’d kept those files to pore over in his spare moments, relishing every living moment, gloating over his triumphs.

  Orbilio checked the dagger in his belt, the knife down the side of his boot.

  ‘This is for you,’ he promised the man whose throat had been torn out by the lions.

  *

  ‘Bloody fuck, mate, you gave me a start. Don’t you know what time it is?’

  Orbilio smiled. ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘Well…no. But it’s gone midnight, can’t it wait?’

  ‘Not really,’ Orbilio said mildly, pushing past.

  The apartment was small. Cramped, even, and not very clean. Food, probably stew in a past life, had congealed into black tar on top of a pile of unwashed wooden trenchers, shrivelled onions hung on a string on the wall, and a coating of dust took the shine off what little furniture there was. It occurred to him that, if he’d been lowborn and forced to live on Security Police pay, this is the sort of accommodation he could expect to live in.

  But if he’d been hoping for the stale smells to be eclipsed by aniseed, he was out of luck. Of course, that was never really on the cards. A man who covered his tracks with such care wouldn’t risk leaving the paraphernalia of his trade lying about. The aniseed, the files, the mask, these treasures would be kept in a separate place. A secret place. The Halcyon Rapist’s private den, where his trophies could be displayed to their full and glorious triumph. And where the stench of aniseed could be washed off, leaving no trace.

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying, you look like shit, mate.’

  Orbilio wondered where the hot-food vendor’s wife had wounded him. She didn’t know. Twisted his testicles, lunged with the knife and ran off before he could get his breath back. ‘You look pretty rough, too,’ he said happily.

  ‘Crumbs, what d’you expect? It’s two in the fucking morning and it’s been a tough few days. Drink?’

  ‘That’s promotion for you,’ Marcus breezed, seating himself in a high-backed wooden chair and waving away the proffered goblet. Ideally, he would have crossed his legs to emphasize the casual nature of his call, but the wound in his side wouldn’t permit it. In the end, he was just glad to sit down and felt a small trickle of something sticky run down the inside of his tunic.

  ‘So what happened?’ Dymas asked, indicating his colleague’s blackened and ragged appearance.

  Orbilio steepled his fingers. ‘We caught the rapist,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ Dymas’s eyes lifted at last. ‘Well, good on you, Marcus. Sure you won’t have that drink?’ He swallowed half a glass in one go, and Orbilio noted the effort the Greek had to use to keep the smirk from his face.

  ‘So was I right?’ Dymas refilled his goblet. ‘Was it some sick copycat bastard?’

  Orbilio ran his hand round the back of his neck. ‘No, Dymas. Just some sick bastard,’ he said, adding, ‘with a pathological hatred of women.’

  A hatred so bitter, so twisted, that he tormented his victims over and over by making them relive their ordeal in the name of interrogation. Some of the girls naturally recognized his voice—and how Dymas would have relished that moment. Watching the horror on their faces as they realized that the rapist was protected by the Security Police. There could be no justice for them, they would think. Who would believe their stories? His word against theirs? They’d be the accusations of a hysterical woman versus a trusted investigator. It was hopeless. Leaving Dymas to torment them to the brink of despair and treasure in his heart that exquisite moment when they howled, whimpered, quivered or tore at their own flesh with the injustice of it all. How sublime, knowing you had the ability to push someone over the edge into suicide. No wonder he’d been so keen to go back to Deva this morning. He hadn’t finished torturing her yet. Silently, Marcus thanked Jupiter for the brainwave which got her out of his clutches.

  ‘Imagine the control he exercised, Dymas. Limiting himself to just fourteen rapes at a run.’

  A number specifically chosen to breed panic yet insufficient to run too much risk of detection.

  ‘Over Saturnalia, too,’ Dymas said, covering the smirk he could no longer control with the back of his hand. ‘Halcyon Days, when people should be happy and without a care in the world.’

  ‘Ah, but he’s a spoiler, Dymas. He chose Saturnalia because it’s traditionally the happiest time of the year, and he isn’t happy, so he wants to ruin it for everyone else.’

  A man who submerges his victims in ordure is a man who wants to defile everything. The chair creaked when Marcus leaned back.

  ‘It’s the only way someone so small and insignificant can feel big.’

  The Greek’s hand clenched round the goblet so tight that it shattered.

  ‘Can’t agree with you there, mate,’ he said, wrapping a linen towel round his hand to staunch the blood. ‘Our boy’s instigated one of the biggest manhunts in the history of the Security Police, he’s outwitted us at every bleeding turn and put the fear of Jupiter into every woman in the city. That’s a clever man, Marcus. A very intelligent mind at work.’

  ‘You think?’ Orbilio pretended to consider. ‘I reckon that if you asked anyone in the Empire, rich or poor, freeborn or slave, what’s clever about destroying lives and creating a climate of fear, they’d laugh in your face.’

  Dymas’s expression darkened. Marcus pressed on.

  ‘Only little men think terror is clever. Big men, important men, the really intelligent ones, they have nothing to prove.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Dymas hissed. ‘But anyway, who cares? You got the bastard, you said.’

  Orbilio moved across to the window and peered between the gap in the shutters. ‘Only because he overreached himself,’ he said quietly. ‘He got greedy.’

  Limiting the rapes, organizing the attacks, entailed enormous self-control, but the pleasure came from the stalking beforehand and the tormenting after, whether or not the victims recognized their attacker. And for those who hadn’t recognized his voice, how simple to suggest, in a personal visit, that the Security Police had strong evidence linking a suspect, then stressing that it was only circumstantial. Yes, his clothes reeked of aniseed, yes, they found this mask under his bed—oh, Dymas. How easy it must have been when you held up the grinning face of their attacker. How susceptible they would be then to your co
aching. What did you plant in their impressionable minds? How much better it would be if witnesses were able to identify the evil bastard and put him where he belonged, perhaps? In hell. Orbilio could see how quickly the terrified girls would have learned their lines.

  ‘He got careless, you say?’ A gloating light danced in Dymas’s eyes as he saw history repeating itself. Better and better. Now this patrician, this tall, handsome, wealthy patrician who he so despised because of his caste, would send another man to the arena. And in so doing, would slit his own throat—

  Orbilio moved the candle and propped himself against the sill. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was the careless one. You see, Dymas, for the first time in my life, I took someone else’s word, without checking the facts for myself.’

  The pause was almost imaginary, but something in Dymas changed. Orbilio felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

  ‘Yeah, but that last guy confessed,’ the Greek said, although the bluster had adopted an edge of wariness now. ‘You weren’t to know he was the type who’d confess to anything, were you? I told you before, shit happens. Quit beating yourself up about this.’

  ‘Well, that was the thing, Dymas. I didn’t actually get a confession last time. No one actually reported the suspect confessing to the crimes, only that he signed a confession. There’s a difference.’

  Dymas’s tongue flickered nervously round his lips. ‘It’s not part of your remit to interrogate suspects once they’re under arrest.’

  ‘Nor is it yours.’ He stood up, flexed his shoulders. Felt a hundred years old. ‘It’s over, Dymas. The game’s up.’ There was no bluffing. The Greek had worked with Orbilio long enough to know when he was serious. He edged towards the bed. Marcus drew the knife from his boot.

  ‘This will be in your heart before you’re halfway.’

  ‘Kill me and you kill yourself,’ Dymas sneered. ‘They’ll say you did it because I was promoted over your head and you couldn’t take it, and who’s to say otherwise? You have no evidence, nothing to connect me with the rapes. Even with your poncy connections, who’ll believe you? The boss?’ He spat on the floor. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure that somewhere in this poky apartment there’ll be a key. A key to a room where files are spread out permanently, anchored by stones, and where a mask hangs on a wall. A room where a little man, an insignificant little worm of a man, a man who can’t get a woman in any normal way, pleasures himself as he relives his victims’ torment.’

  ‘Sex? You think this is about sex?’ Orbilio didn’t, but he said nothing. Dymas had unleashed the beast now. There was only one way this could end.

  ‘Sex is nothing, mate. A dirty, vile, nasty little act by a man who’s supposed to love you and care for you but sneaks into your bedroom when you’re seven years old and holds your head into the pillow until you can’t breathe then tells you he’ll throttle you if you tell anyone. No, it’s not about sex, mate. This is power.’

  Dymas seemed to grow before his eyes.

  ‘Until you experience it, you can’t imagine what it’s like,’ he said, clenching his fists. ‘You talk about exercising control when it comes to limiting the attacks, but fuck, that’s nothing compared to the control when you’ve got the little whores whimpering at your feet.’

  He laughed. It was the first time Marcus had heard him do so, and it wasn’t a sound he much cared for.

  ‘I never harmed one of the little slags, d’you know that? Didn’t need to, mind. Showed them the blade, and they were too fucking scared to fight back. Timid, snivelling, cringeing little mice, that’s all they are, and they got what was coming to them, the worthless trash.’

  ‘I didn’t realize any creature deserved to have their lives ruined, their families put on hold, their emotions suspended for ever.’

  ‘What life?’ Dymas scoffed. ‘You’ve seen them. Wandering around half-naked, even this time of the year. Harlots, that’s what they are. Oho, yes, don’t think I haven’t seen them, mate. Don’t think I haven’t watched the little whores and I tell you, that herbalist’s no better than a pimp, having Deva showing herself in all weathers. Well, I showed her, mate. I showed all of them. I bloody did, too.’

  ‘Bodices and short skirts are traditional Damascan attire. Deva didn’t invite sex, and she certainly didn’t invite rape.’

  ‘Yeah, but she won’t be waggling her arse at any more men for a while, will she? Filthy little prick-teaser.’ Dymas turned a sly eye on his colleague. ‘But I’m not finished yet. Not by a long chalk.’

  As he dived for the bed, he kicked out at the table. The candle fell and went out. Orbilio’s knife whizzed through the air. Thudded harmlessly into the door. Shit. Splinters of pain tore at his side, jarred by the table slamming into his thigh. It had ruined his aim. In the darkness, Dymas laughed. The sound reminded Marcus of a hyena closing on a kill. Silently, he drew his dagger.

  Listened.

  Heard nothing.

  Dymas was employed by the Security Police for his streetwise ways and his cunning, his brute strength and his resilience. Orbilio cursed the man who gave him the job. In the blackness, the only breathing he could hear was his own. Below, in the street, men wished each other goodwill. He remained motionless, straining for sounds. Dymas knew every square inch of this apartment. Orbilio’s sole advantage was that he had his back against the wall.

  The strike came out of nowhere. At the last moment, he saw the blade plunging through the dark. He ducked. Could not contain the grunt that escaped when the herbalist’s stitches snapped as he twisted. One all, he thought dully. Blood dribbled down the outside of his leg and pooled at his feet. He waited. Dymas would have expected him to move. For that reason he hadn’t. Seconds dripped by like lead. Then, Jupiter be praised, a lull in the traffic coincided with Dymas’s strike. Orbilio swung his dagger. Steel clashed against steel.

  ‘Sloppy, very sloppy.’ Dymas was laughing. ‘I can fucking smell you.’

  Vinegar and turpentine. Of course. The blades locked and Orbilio’s free hand balled into a fist, driving into Dymas’s side. The Greek jerked like a puppet. So then. That was where the food vendor’s wife had landed her blow. Without waiting to think what it would cost him, Orbilio thudded his boot into the wound. Dymas reeled backwards and Orbilio tumbled on top of him. Closing his forearm round the Greek’s throat, he forced Dymas’s head back, exposing the throat.

  ‘You haven’t the strength,’ Dymas hissed.

  It was true. But Orbilio had the strength to call out. Immediately, four legionaries burst into the room. The one at the back carried a torch.

  ‘Drop the knife, Dymas.’

  The Greek had no choice. Reluctantly, he released the dagger in his hand.

  Marcus turned his head to the soldiers, was conscious of blood pumping from the wound in his side and sweat pouring down his face to blind his eyes. ‘Did you get all that, sergeant?’ he rasped.

  ‘Every word, sir,’ the soldier said, grinning. ‘Although you took your bloody time calling us inside, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  When Orbilio released his grip on the rapist, his whole body began to shake like a poplar. ‘This was something I had to do myself.’

  As one of the soldiers stepped forward with chains, the hobnails on his boots slipped in the pool of Orbilio’s blood. It was all the time Dymas needed. He lunged for his dagger. Marcus used every last ounce of his strength to prevent him from falling on it.

  ‘No chance,’ he growled. His victims weren’t going to be cheated. ‘Last time I arranged for the rapist to be executed by lions. For you, Dymas, I’m working on something rather more protracted.’

  But for now it was Saturnalia Eve, and despite the hour he owed Claudia a visit. He needed to thank her for talking to the victims today, for helping him out, for taking such an interest in the case, to tell her she was right and—

  Who was he kidding?

  Hell, he just needed to see her.

  Thirty-Five

  Claudia ope
ned her eyes to blackness and the sound of a percussion orchestra on their first practice run. It took her a while to work out that the cymbals and drum rolls were inside her head, and that the blackness came from lying face down on a pile of thick fleeces. The fleeces had been washed, and they were soft and comforting, like floating on a cloud, and smelled slightly oily. She tried to sit up, and found that her furs had been stripped from her, her arms tied behind her back, her ankles bound and memories of being trapped down Pepper Alley flooded back. Looking round, shivering from the bitter night air, she realized she was in some sort of shed, possibly a warehouse, lit by a single oil lamp placed on the floor.

  ‘I’m so glad you are able to join us, Mistress Seferius.’ The voice was cultured and deep, imbued with natural authority. With his thumbs looped into his belt, he was tall, well built and, under other circumstances, Claudia would have described him as handsome with his thatch of blond hair and distinctive patrician attire. Beside her, white as a ghost, Erinna had hauled herself into a kneeling position on the fleece cloud.

  ‘My apologies for the rude form of transportation.’

  The kidnapper was leaning almost nonchalantly against a stack of soft, bulging sacks and, although Claudia could not make out the colour of his eyes, she recognized triumph dancing in them.

  ‘Unfortunately, I’m not sure a direct invitation would have been accepted, and—’ he indicated Claudia’s head ‘—I must apologize, too, for my boys’ manners. They can be a little over-enthusiastic at times.’

  The air was dry and dusty and she wanted to sneeze. Instead, she lifted her chin to face him.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What do you want with me?’

  But even as she asked the question, she knew it wasn’t for ransom.

  And in the end it wasn’t the kidnapper who answered.

  ‘His name,’ Erinna said quietly, ‘is Sextus Valerius Cotta and it’s not you he wants. Is it, Senator?’

  *

  Autumn. The air was sticky. Leaves hung limp on the trees surrounding Cotta’s estate in the Alban Hills. Amber. Scarlet. And rust. Over the horizon to the east, the sun was just starting to rise. Soft, golden and mellow. A few birds sang, magpies chattered and an old boar snuffled for acorns. Rabbits scampered over the clearings as the first slanting rays of liquid gold penetrated the patchwork canopy, and the air was ripe with the scent of beechnuts and sweet chanterelles. Crashing through the undergrowth, the Digger noticed none of the season’s sultry beauty. Fear gave wings to her heels. Any second now, the news would break. They would set the dogs on her. The human kind, as well as the estate hounds, and she remembered what happened last time she tried to break free.