Ode To A Banker

by Lindsey Davis

  ‘What a shocking suggestion, Falco.’ True, though.

  The Seventh must have been bored with fishing floaters out, because before Petronius and I fetched up at the scene properly, they had already turned away. Fusculus started walking back towards us with a grin. I made no comment on these delicate issues.

  The body was lying on the bridge now. A group of vigiles clustered round it casually. One was still eating his breakfast - half a fatty-looking pie.

  ‘What have we got?’ asked Petronius. He glanced at the man who was eating - who, far from feeling the reproof, instead offered him a bite. Petro took the pie from him. I assumed it was confiscated; next minute he had sunk his choppers into it and was handing on the item to Fusculus, while brushing crumbs off his chin. As I was an informer, they made sure there was nothing left when it came to my turn - but they did apologise. Nice fellows.

  The vigiles discussed the event with Petro in their own terse code. ‘Suicide.’

  ‘A jumper?’

  ‘Hung himself.’

  ‘That straight?’

  ‘No, chief; he made it really obvious.’

  ‘Too obvious?’

  ‘He was dangling from a noose looped over a corbel. We’re just simple vigiles. Of course we rush to the obvious conclusion. That means self-hanging to us.’

  ‘Suicide note?’

  ‘No.’

  Petronius grunted. ‘I was told something about an identification clue?’

  ‘Correspondence in a bag fastened to his belt. Addressed to Avienus. That’s a name from the Chrysippus case.’

  ‘He’s a writer; he should have been able to do us a note then,’ Petro scoffed.

  I could do cemetery humour too: ‘Avienus was not good on deadlines.’

  ‘Well, he’s one less on our suspects list,’ Petro replied.

  ‘You think he killed himself out of guilt, after murdering Chrysippus?’ I wondered

  Then Fusculus laughed. The vigiles wanted to impart something more sensational. ‘No - there’s more to this! He’s the first suicide I ever saw who climbed under a bridge - when most desperate people jump off the top. Then he not only tied himself to the stonework in a very awkward position, but roped a massive bundle of roof tiles to himself. Now it could be in case his nerve failed and he suddenly wanted to climb back up -‘

  ‘Or not!’ muttered one of the others.

  The men stood aside. Petro and I approached the corpse. It was Avienus all right; I identified him formally. The skinny frame and beaky face were definitely his. He was dressed in black as previously, the cloth of his tunic rumpled in awkward folds.

  They had cut away the rope from around his throat as a courtesy, in case he gasped his way back to life. The vigiles normally did that with hanged bodies; I think it made them feel better. It would have been pointless in this case. Avienus had been dead for some hours when he was found by a cart-driver in the early hours.

  ‘However did the driver see him there?’

  ‘He had climbed off his cart to do a pee over the edge.’

  ‘Noticing a body must have quenched the flow! Did he see anyone else lurking about?’

  ‘No. We took a statement and let him go.’

  The noose was an old-looking piece of nautical goat’s hair twist, still tarry in places. It might have been found lying handy on a wharf. Suicides, in my experience, turn up at their chosen spot fully equipped.

  I had seen suicides by hanging before and the results here did to some extent look right. Apart, that is, from two large bundles of shaped sun-baked pantiles which were strapped to him. They had been parcelled together in the form of a double panther, which Fusculus said had been placed over his head with two ropes on his shoulders, and then other strands knotted each side at his waist. It would have taken some time to organise. Still, some suicides do spend hours formally preparing themselves.

  ‘Ever picked up one of those?’ asked Fusculus, indicating the tiles.

  ‘They weigh some,’ I agreed. One, falling from sufficient height, can kill a man. Plenty of spines have been ruined for ever by lifting ‘roofers’ hods.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘This is an odd one, right enough. If you don’t think about it too much, it looks as though he wanted to be certain he would drop properly - making sure the weight dragged him down when he jumped, so the rope would snap his neck.’

  Petronius tried waggling the historian’s head to test if his neck was broken, but rigor had set in. ‘Get Scythax to check that, will you?’ Scythax was the cohort doctor. He examined both wounded and dead, mending whichever he could. His nature was dour and to me he seemed fonder of the dead. ‘There are failed hangings sometimes; Avienus might have wanted to make sure, so he chose to take elaborate precautions.’

  ‘But,’ I said, leaning over the low wall to see the place of death, ‘he could not easily have climbed over this parapet with such a weight attached to him.’

  ‘Desperate men can amaze you. Would it be quite impossible?’ asked Petro.

  ‘Where we found him,’ Fusculus replied, ‘he needed to get out there first, cling on somehow, with no real foothold, yet have free hands to fasten his rope.’

  ‘Want to leg yourself over and demonstrate?’

  ‘No thanks! You can’t reach the fixing point properly before you have climbed the parapet. But once he climbed over, so weighted down, tying his noose on the corbel would never have been feasible.’

  ‘So he had help?’ suggested Petro.

  ‘Help - whether he wanted it or not,’ I agreed sombrely. Murdered then.

  I knelt down beside the body, and detected a faint mark on his forehead, possibly a bruise left by a knockout blow. ‘Put the word out that we have accepted this as suicide.’

  Everyone nodded.

  ‘What about that correspondence?’

  Fusculus handed me a document. It was a letter to Avienus from his mother, obviously an elderly and frail widow, fretting about what might happen to the property she lived in. She was afraid of losing her home. I had asked Lucrio what security Avienus had offered for his bank loan, but Lucrio had never reported back to me. This told me the answer.

  There was nothing else we could do. Petronius made arrangements to remove the corpse. Somebody would have to go and tell the old lady that she had even more worries now.

  ‘Why,’ I asked, still puzzled, ‘did they hang him? You could make sure of killing him just as convincingly by tying on the weights, then throwing him over and letting him sink to the bottom. That too could look like a very determined suicide.’

  ‘Somebody wanted to make sure the corpse was visible,’ decided Petro. ‘They wanted him found - quickly.’

  ‘And something worse.’ I was thinking it through. ‘They wanted the event talked about. What happened to him is a warning to others.’

  ‘A warning - from whom, Falco?’ I could see one possibility. It seemed to me, we might just have found another curious custom of the banking world - though whether this was the traditional punishment for defaulters, or a response to some more serious threat to solvency, I did not know.

  I went to see Lucrio.

  XXXVI

  THE JANUS Medius is an open-ended passageway at the end of the Porticus Aemilius. This was where Anacrites had told me he would meet up with the freedman if he needed to discuss business. It was just my luck that of the two of them the first person I recognised was not Lucrio but Anacrites himself.

  ‘Don’t you own an office to plot in?’ I demanded, as mildly as possible. ‘You seem to be everywhere I go these days.’

  ‘Falco!’ If he called me Marcus, I think I would have throttled him. Trust him to avoid retribution. It was one of his annoying characteristics. ‘I’m glad to see you.’

  ‘It’s not mutual.’

  ‘Listen.’ He was looking worried. Good. ‘There are bad rumours being whispered about the Aurelian Bank ‘

  ‘What rumours?’ I asked, intrigued against my will. ‘Has the Golde
n Horse got the staggers suddenly?’

  ‘Stirred up by your enquiries, I gather. You and Camillus have been questioning clients; people are losing confidence. Because of the work you and I did, you do have a reputation.’

  ‘The Census? Our fame as tax terriers was never that extensive!’

  Anacrites ignored my derision. ‘People think you have been brought in as a specialist because the death of Chrysippus must have been related to problems with his bank.’

  ‘Well, you can tell them I’m just sniffing for bloodstains!’ I snapped.

  All the same, I started looking around more keenly. The Janus Medius contained small groups of men who probably seemed more furtive than they were. Some had a foreign tinge. Most looked like gangs your mother would warn you not to play with. A couple were flanked by large ugly slaves, probably bodyguards. All could have found more congenial places to discuss the news - places where you could bathe, read, exercise, be massaged or eat fried pastries at the same time as you were gossiping. By gathering in this dead-end passage, they were consciously setting themselves aside in a private clique.

  I had the distinct impression many were watching us. I felt they knew why I was there.

  You can get like that on a case.

  ‘I just want to know what’s what,’ Anacrites badgered me. ‘I was looking for Lucrio, but he’s gone to ground. Even if I corner him, he’ll only pretend everything is fine - I have a large amount on deposit, Falco. Ought I to be moving it?’

  ‘I have no information that your bank is in any trouble, Anacrites.’

  ‘So you are telling me to shift my cash!’ Why did he bother asking me if he was not prepared to listen? The man had taken a huge bang on the head in the past, and in his concern for his money he was growing hysterical. Never having had much cash myself, financial panic failed to grip me.

  ‘Do what you think best, Anacrites.’

  He cast a last desperate glance around and rushed off, intent on hasty action of some kind. Everyone knew who Anacrites was. At this rate, his agitation would itself start a run on the Aurelian Bank. For a wild moment, I speculated that I, by simply asking a few crass questions, might yet start an Empire-wide financial crash.

  Anacrites had hardly vanished when I spotted the freedman, engaged in a hot discussion only a few yards away. He saw me, and managed to extract himself. The other party left, looking unhappy. I thought he threw back a glance at me, almost like a man seething at the source of his trouble. (I had seen enough of those to recognise the look and check that I had my dagger safely down my boot.) Lucrio recovered his composure immediately. Was that a result of regular practice?

  ‘Didius Falco.’ Unless my imagination was under too much strain, he was edging me gently to a spot where nobody could overhear us.

  ‘Lucrio. I am afraid I bring sad news. Tell me, does a loan-contract end when one of your debtors dies?’

  ‘No chance. We claim on the estate.’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘Which of our clients is dead?’ he asked making it seem like mere curiosity.

  ‘Poor Avienus, the historian.’

  ‘Zeus! He was only young. What happened to him?’ Wide-eyed and startled - apparently - the freedman stared at me.

  ‘Suicide.’

  ‘Ah!’ At once Lucrio stopped asking questions. I bet this was not the first harassed defaulter who had taken that desperate escape route.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ I said, two-faced as a businessman myself. (It was surely not coincidence that the bankers liked to congregate in a place named for Janus?) ‘Apparently, he had secured that loan of his on his old mother’s house. She will be distraught to lose both her son and her home - but I dare say it is out of the question for the bank to forget his debt?’

  Then Lucrio surprised me. ‘The contract was already torn up, Falco.’

  ‘Kind-heartedness? Is there profit in that attitude?’ I scoffed.

  ‘No - but Avienus had cleared the debt.’

  I was shocked. I could not believe it. I remembered what Lucrio had told me previously. If Avienus had paid up, he must have found the money through another loan. So when that fell due, his widowed mother would just be pursued by some new lender. ‘Do you know who remortgaged him?’

  ‘He maintained,’ Lucrio said thoughtfully, ‘that there was no covering loan. He just produced the cash. We don’t quibble over that! He must have had a windfall, mustn’t he?’

  ‘Did you,’ I asked, ‘have a succinct personal word with him, before he paid?’

  ‘Regularly.’ Lucrio knew I was suggesting he had used threats. ‘Very quiet and calm. Thoroughly professional. I hope, Falco, you are not slandering my business methods by implying harsh tactics?’

  ‘You don’t employ enforcers?’

  ‘Not allowed,’ he assured me smoothly. ‘Legally in Rome, to ask a third party to collect debts, counts as passing on the loan to them. We keep ours in the family. Besides, our preference is only to deal with those we know, and know we can trust to pay.’

  ‘Yet Avienus had great difficulty with his debt.’

  ‘A temporary embarrassment. He did pay. That proves my point. He was a highly-valued member of our circle,’ said the freedman unblushingly. ‘We are very sad to lose him from among our customers.’

  That settled it for me. I was now convinced this lying deviant sent Avienus to his death.

  I went and saw Nothokleptes. He was at his barber’s again. I was starting to think he slept there in the chair overnight. It would save paying rent. He would like that.

  The barber had two customers waiting, so in the traditional manner of his trade he was slowing down. Nothokleptes drew me aside and let another man take the chair.

  ‘Have you heard,’ I asked quietly, ‘that a client of the Aurelian Bank committed suicide rather strangely on the Probus Bridge?’

  ‘Word was going around the Forum first thing this morning.’ Nothokleptes smiled in a sad Egyptian way. ‘Suicide, was it? Very ancient traditions apply in Greek banking, Falco.’

  ‘Apparently! You warned me about Lucrio. I had the impression you regard him as dangerous - so would he ever use enforcers?’

  ‘Of course he does.’ For once Nothokleptes actually signalled his barber to back away and leave us to talk in private.

  ‘He pretended it’s virtually illegal.’

  ‘It virtually is.’ Nothokleptes was so calm about it, I wondered if he used enforcers himself. I did not ask.

  ‘Right! I meant, really violent ones.’

  ‘He would call them “firm”, Falco.’

  ‘So firm they would be prepared to make ghastly examples of defaulting clients?’

  ‘Oh, no banker ever hurts defaulting clients,’ Nothokleptes reproved me. ‘He wants them to come back and pay.’

  I persuaded him to talk to me more generally about how bankers - or at least Greek bankers - worked. Nothokleptes painted a picture of Athenian secrecy, often involving tax avoidance, the hidden economy, and the disguising of their real wealth by the elite. As he saw it - in his self-righteous Egyptian way - his rivals had notoriously tight-knit networking relationships with clients who were treated almost as family members. Much of what he knew had come to light as a result of court cases involving fraud - significant in itself.

  ‘Of course the biggest scandal ever was the Opisthodomos fire - the Treasurers of Athene had a clandestine arrangement where they illegally loaned sacred funds to bankers. They were planning to use the “borrowed” cash to make huge profits. They failed to realise the expected yield, could not replace the capital, and to hide the fraud, the Opisthodomos - where the money was supposed to be secured untouched - was burnt. The priests were jailed for that.’

  ‘And the bankers?’

  Nothokleptes shrugged and grinned.

  ‘But I suppose the bankers could not entirely be blamed, Nothokleptes. The priests chose to steal the funds and to use banking confidentiality to hide their own misappropriation of the
sacred treasure.’

  ‘Right, Falco. And the poor bankers were innocents, misled by their awe for their religious clients.’

  I laughed. ‘And has the Aurelian ever made mistakes?’

  ‘It would be slander to say so!’

  ‘Would you say then,’ I asked, ‘that the Aurelian is straight?’

  Nothokleptes hardly paused. ‘It once had a rough reputation - Lysa and Chrysippus started out here as ropy old loan sharks, in essence. There has been talk. Lucrio is generally considered hard but straight.’

  ‘How hard?’

  ‘Too hard. But if Lucrio is behind this death at the Probus Bridge, if he actually wants it made public that he has rough-handled a client, then he has stepped well outside normal practice. His reason must be special too.’ Nothokleptes was leading me somewhere.

  ‘What does that cryptic pronouncement mean?’

  ‘There is a curious whisper that the “suicide” had made threats against the bank.’

  ‘What threats?’

  That was all Nothokleptes would say. Possibly, it was all he knew. He could not say which enforcers the Aurelian Bank patronised - apparently there were debt-collecting specialists aplenty - but he thought he could find out for me. He promised to send word as soon as possible, then he scuttled back to the barber’s chair.

  I had a sour taste as I walked back across the Forum. I went to the baths, as I was in the area. At the gym, Glaucus commented that I was taking him through a training exercise as though I wanted to break somebody’s neck. He hoped it was not his. When I said no, it was a banker’s, he lowered his voice and asked me if I could confirm that one of the big deposit-takers was about to liquidate. Glaucus had heard from his customers that people in the know were withdrawing their deposits and burying their money in the corners of fields.

  I said that would help thieves, wouldn’t it? And did he know which fields?

  He had genuine anxiety. After I limped out, I decided on an early lunch, at home. I skirted the Palatine, keeping on the flat as much as possible; Glaucus knew how to punish me for cheek. I staggered round the end of the Circus, and then walked slowly up the slope of the Clivus Publicius.