INCEPTIO (Roma Nova)

by Alison Morton

  I signed out, returned the car to the rental depot and fumed on the train back. Was Renschman dead? Yes or no? Simple question, I thought. Apparently not.

  Not unexpectedly, I was summoned to Lucius’s office next morning. He left me standing and took his time finishing whatever it was he was writing. His office was traditional: eagle and flags in the corner, unit photos, plain dark wood meeting table and chairs, placed with military precision. The winter light reflected off his display cabinet containing awards and plaques, and some childish pottery pieces and a tiny ivory finger ring.

  ‘Would you care to explain what exactly you were doing visiting the Truscium mine yesterday?’

  ‘I wanted to look around to see it on the ground. Sir.’

  ‘Don’t bullshit me!’ he growled. ‘You wanted some personal information about prisoners.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘One of your ex-friends in there?’

  I glared at him.

  ‘A friendly warning. Stick to your job. No more maverick trips. Understood?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Now get out, and go and do something useful.’

  Still smarting, I went for a session in the gym. I found Flav there and persuaded him to do a turn in the arena.

  ‘Not if you’re in a bad temper.’

  ‘I’m perfectly under control, thank you.’

  He was cautious as we circled and only made a few exploratory jabs for the first few minutes. Training with a sharp, double-edged, fifty-centimetre carbon steel blade tended to concentrate the mind as well as honing reaction skills. In a formal session, if you were cut, you were cut; then chewed out for being careless. At this precise moment, I needed to release and ground my tension. I was the trickier fighter, but Flavius more strategic. After fifteen minutes, I was lying on the ground with a nicked arm and calf. And still jumbled nerves.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Conrad touched my skin just below the adhesive strip on my arm. We had gone out to the Onyx, a discreet restaurant with a fabulous Greek menu.

  ‘Being careless.’

  ‘Hmm. Any special reason?’

  ‘I was embarrassed.’

  He smiled and looked down.

  ‘Okay, I was in a temper. I was trying to find out something really simple and getting frustrated for no good reason. Then Lucius clambered onto my case. So I made an idiot of myself practising against Flavius. Satisfied?’

  He took my hand and rubbed the skin on the back of my fingers gently. It soothed me. ‘Why do you want to know about the deaths during the breakout?’

  ‘Some unfinished business.’

  His fingers grasped my hand more firmly. ‘Which would be?’

  I looked over at the silk swathed between the onyx columns that gave the place its name and tried to pull my hand away. He didn’t move but my hand stayed trapped. I brought my gaze back.

  ‘I have to know whether I murdered Renschman.’

  LXXIV

  Conrad gave me a signed authorisation and a day’s special leave. The administrator’s assistant greeted me as smoothly as before and laid the files out on the table. I examined every detail of the records, flicking back and forth until I knew them by heart. Even the guard watching me study the pages looked bored. At the end of an hour, I had nothing. Conrad’s order entitled me to a visit. Followed closely by a guard as if I was an inmate myself, I scrutinised every male face. All I found was contempt on a few hard faces, fear on the rest. One man spat through the bars. Two block guards dragged him out and took him away, leaving me to the obscenities of the others. I insisted on visiting the sick bay: only one resident who was obviously not Renschman. But I knew he’d been sent here after the trial. And I knew it was him in my sight that day.

  In the end, I cheated. I asked Nonna to fix up a meeting with Aemilia Fulvia. Unfortunately, the only slot was during office hours at the Department of Justice late next afternoon. I gave my sidearm in at the vestibule and was escorted through to the elevator like I didn’t know where anything was. Strange being on the PGSF side of the antipathy barrier. I ignored the over-neutral glances as I rode in the car, and stepped out on the fifth floor. I couldn’t see light under Lurio’s door which was a relief. My escort left me with Fulvia’s assistant who buzzed me through.

  ‘Carina, come in. Lovely to see you.’ Fulvia had come out to greet me.

  We kissed cheeks and she waved me to a chair. I outlined my request, described my research so far and watched her face close up. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Unfortunately, records were lost during the re-securing of the facility,’ she said, her eyes challenging me.

  I couldn’t call the justice minister a liar, but the records I’d seen three days before were complete.

  ‘Please don’t think me difficult, but I think you’ll find there’s been a mistake. Maybe you haven’t been given the most recent update?’

  ‘I’ll certainly look into it. Thank you for alerting me to this. I’m only sorry I can’t help you.’

  Dismissed, I stood outside in the corridor, thinking through what had just happened. I’d been suckered. The hallway seemed narrower, confining, as I made my way back down.

  Conrad listened in silence to my report early next morning but, when I’d finished, he frowned. ‘Very well. We know Renschman was consigned to Truscium after his trial. I don’t doubt it was him you had in your sights the day of the mutiny. Not a face you’d forget, is it? It’s disturbing you found no trace of him when you visited. Worst of all is Fulvia’s stonewalling.’

  He tapped the flats of his hands together, saying nothing, his eyes unfocused as he gazed into the air. After a few minutes, his hand darted out to the desk commset and he punched some numbers.

  ‘Valeria? Conradus.’ Now he played with a piece of paper as he listened. He laughed that rich, infectious, unbelievably sexy laugh at whatever it was she said. ‘No, not for a while. Listen, I need your help. Could we meet for a drink, around six? Usual place?’ He listened some more. ‘Can’t wait. You too. Bye.’

  I waited, trying not to feel like an affronted librarian.

  He scribbled on the small square of paper. ‘Go and eat at this place at around five thirty, but take your time. You need to still be there when I meet Valeria. Wear something plain and neutral, and a commset, frequency eight.’ He smiled at me. ‘Don’t look so worried. We’ll find out.’

  Most of the rest of my day passed in admin tasks. Around five, I signed out and changed into downmarket casuals. I dressed my hair back, removing most of my make-up, and walked into the bar carrying a discount-store plastic bag. My reward was to be treated with indifference by the serving staff as I ordered my food. I shrugged off my pressed wool coat but kept the scarf around my neck. The little bar was unremarkable except for the sleek zinc counter. I didn’t know they existed outside French movies.

  Conrad came in just before six. I studied him to see how such a remarkable-looking guy had toned himself down to look like an ordinary working man dropping in for a quick beer before going home. It wasn’t the dull, worn clothes or scuffed sneakers: he’d rounded his shoulders and assumed a drawn, emotionless face. He crossed the room hesitantly, as if conscious of not being in the right place. He looked relieved to have reached his seat safely.

  Five minutes later, a bottle-dyed brunette in a short skirt and leather boots paused in the doorway, spotted him and gave a knowing smile. She breezed over to his table and tipped her chin up for his kiss. I had the full sound effect over my commset.

  ‘Hello, lover,’ she said.

  The mushrooms in my mouth tasted like rubber.

  ‘Good to see you,’ she added. ‘What do you want?’

  He told her not to be so cynical, smiled and asked the favour. From my vantage point, I saw her face lose some firmness. Her tongue skimmed her lower lip.

  ‘Juno, that’s some ask. I’ll go as far as I can, but no promises.’

  They talked on for a few minutes then she left. We made our separate ways back t
o Domus Mitelarum. In the atrium, we mulled over what we hadn’t learned.

  ‘I don’t want Valeria to endanger herself, but I’m concerned we can’t find a simple piece of information,’ he said. ‘It should be available to cleared personnel like her, so I’m optimistic she’ll deliver. She owes me.’

  I didn’t want to know what exactly she owed him.

  A horrible, impossible thought pushed itself out of my brain. ‘Has anybody ever escaped from Truscium?’

  ‘No. It’s the highest security there is. Nobody has ever got out. Not until they finish their term. That’s why Renschman was sent there. That’s why they ordered in special forces to contain that last incident.’ His eyes narrowed, but I was there ahead of him.

  ‘Hades,’ I said. ‘You know something? He’s escaped and they’re refusing to admit it.’

  LXXV

  I thought I’d shaken Renschman off when I left the EUS. I thought I’d seen the last of him when he was taken down after the trial, manacled, on his way to an escape-proof prison. I thought I’d killed him on a cold mountaintop. But he kept coming back, just like the Furies.

  Valeria had gotten nowhere. The case had been recalled and was sub judice with a minister’s investigation underway. She was a chief information analyst with access to almost every government document that existed; it should have been simple.

  So Conrad and I set off a day later from the PGSF headquarters in an official vehicle, with kit appropriate for an inspection tour of regional outposts. As they were strung out mainly near the borders, the trip was scheduled to take a week. Twelve minutes after the PGSF vehicle gate closed behind us, we promptly disappeared into Domus Mitelarum, swapped to the hire MPV I’d had delivered there and packed it with suitcases for hotel stays, backpacks, boots and camping equipment for off-piste activities, and, most important of all, scopes and hunting rifles. As well as taking my standard sidearm, I strapped on my carbon fibre knives. I asked Nonna to refuse all requests to track me, whoever wanted to know.

  ‘Darling, the Styx at the entrance to Hades would have to dry up first. I’m annoyed that Aemilia Fulvia fobbed you off.’ She looked at us in turn then gave us a brief nod. ‘Good hunting.’

  We made fast progress north, leaving open fields and pastures behind, and plunged into conifer woodland. As we pulled up that evening outside a folksy chalet hotel complete with carved balcony and checked drapes, something struck me.

  ‘You know, when I went to see Fulvia, there was no sign of Lurio. His in-tray on the PA’s desk was empty.’ I narrowed my eyes, reconstructing the scene in my mind’s eye. ‘No, it was turned over as if he was on leave.’

  ‘Why is that remarkable?’

  ‘He’s had his main vacation this year, three weeks’ walking and hunting in Italy.’

  ‘On assignment somewhere, perhaps?’

  ‘No, he’s desk-based, fixing political or strategic stuff for Aemilia that has to be done discreetly. I’ve never known him be away from the office like that.’

  ‘Are you suggesting he may be hunting something on two legs?’

  ‘Not necessarily, but Sentius in Organised Crime is supposedly on leave as well. He’s one of Lurio’s ball-carriers.’

  We were the only guests. We booked up for a week as Charles and Patricia Miller of Bridgeport, CT. ‘Please call us Chuck and Pat, Mrs Sertoria,’ I chirruped to the owner in my best American accent as I pretended to struggle with filling out the police registration card. ‘We’re here looking into Chuck’s ancestors and soak up some of the atmosphere of their home country – it’s so exciting.’

  I fed the same story to the curia clerk at Truscium that afternoon. It was thin, but it had to do. Conrad kept the clerk occupied in stilted Latin with a heavy American accent while I scanned the birth, marriage and death records. Flustered by his smile, she handed over the key to the whole record batch without filtering it first. Annoying how easily he’d manipulated her into it. He passed it to me almost casually without letting up the bantering, planted his elbows on the counter and continued flirting with her.

  Over at the computer booths, I scanned the entries and printed out birth and death certificates of some random family. I couldn’t believe it when I found a page marked ‘Confidential – no disclosure’ listing the death records from the prison. That had been missing from the records I’d been shown on my second visit to Truscium. I hovered over the printer and snatched the page out and stuffed it in between the other printouts.

  I returned to the desk where Conrad was laughing with the clerk, slipped the key across the counter and made a big fuss of counting out the correct amount of solidi and denarii for the paper I’d used. I gushed my gratitude and dragged Conrad out.

  ‘Let’s go get some coffee at that cute little bar over there, sugar,’ I drawled.

  ‘Sure, honey, great idea.’

  Back in the car, I showed him the printout.

  ‘So, no Renschman. Looks like you didn’t kill him after all.’

  I didn’t know whether to be relieved I hadn’t committed murder or miffed I had missed him.

  The next day, we drove to the foot of the gorge leading up to the mine and parked up under trees twenty metres from the end of a track. We loaded up camping equipment and enough rations and water for three days onto our backs, even though we intended to only stay out one night. Two and a half thousand metres up a central European mountain in mid-February was not an ideal camping trip.

  The mountains rose at acute angles from the narrow valley floor. After three hours, we stopped for a rest, some snack bars and water. It was a clear, sunny day with tiny puffball clouds in a luminous, deep-blue sky. Beautiful and treacherous. Within half an hour, it could be blizzarding. We bivouacked for the night among trees, two hundred metres below the alarmed and CCTV-monitored perimeter fence which ran fifty metres out from the edge of the mine complex. Mountain walkers were not encouraged.

  The only route Renschman could have taken was by following the river down – milky green and glacially cold, with frequent steep drops. It was a hazardous trek for us in the cold and snow, but we had solid boots, carbon fibre poles and warm breathable coats and pants. Renschman, clad only in a yellow prison uniform and light shoes, would have found it exhausting and dangerous. Maybe he hadn’t made it and his body was up there.

  The next morning, I crawled up nearer the fence and was about to turn back when I found a tear of yellow cloth flapping in the cold wind, trapped under a stone.

  ‘No working party ever comes outside the perimeter.’ I remembered their routines from the files I studied on my official visit. ‘It has to be him.’

  ‘Not exactly conclusive, but, no, there shouldn’t be anything like that here,’ Conrad said. We crouched under the trees, drinking lukewarm coffee heated from the chemical burn packs and trying not to shiver in the bitter wind.

  ‘Come on, we’ll retrace and see if we can find anything else. It’ll be a slow trek back.’ We packed up, roughed up the earth and strewed pine needles over where we’d been.

  I looked up at him, almost shyly. ‘Thanks for coming up here with me, for believing in me.’

  He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. ‘Silly. Of course I’d come with you. But it’s beyond personal now. Renschman’s a menace, a damned clever one. If he can get out of Truscium, he’s perfectly capable of starting all kinds of trouble. I want him dealt with permanently.’

  LXXVI

  That night, it was a relief to be back in the warm chalet under a feather comforter with Conrad, relaxed after a hot shower and warm cooked meal. I watched the man as he slept afterward, his muscled body covered in fine golden down, his skin warm on mine, one arm still looped around my waist. Despite our hunt, and the reason for it, I was content.

  ‘Mrs Miller, I presume?’

  I woke instantly, every nerve jangling. Conrad’s body beside me tensed.

  ‘Sheeyt! Who the hell is that?’ I cried out in a broad Connecticut accent into the pitch-dark. The bedroom l
ight snapped on and I found a gun barrel millimetres from my forehead.

  ‘Oh, very good.’

  Bloody Lurio. And Sentius, his semi-automatic trained on Conrad.

  ‘What in Hades are you doing here?’ I struggled up onto my elbows. He drew the weapon back. His knuckles were almost breaking through his skin.

  ‘I might ask you the same,’ he said.

  I scanned Lurio’s face, trying to figure out what was behind his intensity, when Conrad sprang out of the bed and slammed Sentius against the wood-panelled wall, neatly catching the pistol as it dropped from his hand. He lobbed it over to me, wrenched Sentius’s arm up and, gripping his neck with his other hand, frogmarched the cop to the doorway and flung him through it. He advanced on Lurio who had twisted around ready to face Conrad, arm outstretched, Glock in hand.

  ‘Try it,’ Lurio said.

  Conrad snorted.

  After staring at each other for a full ten seconds, Lurio lowered his weapon, the anger in his face receding.

  Conrad grabbed the door handle.

  ‘Out. Wait downstairs.’

  Lurio raised his chin, like he was going to say something, but turned and left without a word.

  I was already scrambling into some clothes. ‘I knew it, I knew it was wrong when I saw they were both gone.’ I was trembling with rage.

  Downstairs, Lurio stood by the hall stove, legs braced, arms folded, his face dull in the glow from the nightlight. The night porter was nowhere to be seen. I wouldn’t have put it past Lurio to have thrown him out. Sentius was reading a tourist leaflet, but jammed it back in the display as we came down the wood stairs.