'The project team plotters have decided who eliminated Pomponius,' I said. 'They've settled on the smart arse from Stabiae. A stippling brush with some incriminating initials has been dumped on the body-just where I was bound to find it and shriek Ooh, look at this! So tell me, smart arse did you kill him?'
'No I bloody well did not.' The artist stopped painting and turned around to face me. I was screwing a girl from a bar in Noviomagus – she wasn't as good as I hoped she would be, but at least I can tell Justinus that I got there first!'
I gave him a long cold stare. 'The only good thing about that story is that you were screwing the floosie, not my brother-in-law.'
'Plus another good thing.' He scowled, as unabashed as he had always been. 'You know the story's true, Falco.'
I knew him, so I did believe it. He was my nephew Larius.
XL
I tossed him the brush from the bath house. He caught it one handed, the other hand still holding the finer one he had been working with, plus his thumb palette. 'That's your pig's bristle?'
'LL. That's me. Larius Lollius.'
'Thank Juno you were not born under a laurel tree,' I scoffed. 'A third L would have been obscene.'
'Two names are sufficient for me and Mark Antony.'
'Listen, bigshot, when you've finished aligning yourself with the famous, you are to get yourself to Novio and ensure that your luscious Virginia is not bribed to forget your romantic alibi.'
Larius looked coy. 'She'll remember. I said she was a disappointment. I didn't mention my own performance.'
I reined in my reaction and merely answered quietly, 'Ask somebody sophisticated to explain about two-way pleasure. Incidentally, how is dear Ollia?' Ollia was his wife.
'Fine when we parted company,' Larius said tersely.
'You parted? Is this a permanent phase? Had the union of you two fresh hopefuls produced offspring?'
'Not as far as I know.'
'Still, I hate to see young love waning.'
'Skip the family talk,' he chided me. He did not ask after Helena, though they had met. While he and Ollia had been assuring the world they shared eternal devotion, the world had prophesied that the teenagers were doomed then also decreed that I was a philandering louse, destined to abandon my woman. Assuming I could manage it before Helena ditched me first… Larius cut through my wandering thoughts. 'We need to know why people want to frame me for Pomponius.'
'They are not framing you,' I told him. 'They are implicating me.'
He brightened up. 'How's that?'
'I bring my nephew on site and he kills the top man? That's bound to diminish my status as the Emperor's troubleshooter!'
'Status bollocks!' Since I last saw him when he was fourteen Larius had coarsened up. 'I'm not connected with your work. Blandus brought me here. I've come to do miniatures – and I do not want to be dragged into any of your slimy political stews.'
'You are already neck deep in fish-pickle sauce. Have you told people you are my nephew?'
'Why not?'
'You should have told me first!'
'You were never there to tell.'
'All right. Larius, how did anyone else acquire this paintbrush?'
'From the hut while I was out, I suppose. I leave everything here.'
'Any chance Pomponius himself might have borrowed it?'
'What, to tickle his balls at the baths?' mocked Larius. 'Or cleaning his ears out. I hear it's a new fashion among the arty fraternity – better than a plebeian scoop.'
'Answer the question.'
'As for pinching a brush, I don't suppose that snooty beggar ever knew where our site huts were.'
'What happened when you wanted to show him a proposed design?'
'We carried sketches to the great man's audience chamber and waited in a queue for two hours.'
'You did not like Pomponius?'
'Architects? I never do,' scoffed Larius offhandedly. 'Loathing self important people is a churlish habit I picked up from you.'
'And why are you so ripe for incrimination, happy nephew? Whom have you upset?'
'What, me?'
'Is Camillus Justinus the only man you've beaten up recently?'
'Oh yes.'
'Have you slept with anybody other than Virginia?'
'Certainly not!' He was a real rogue. A total hypocrite.
'Has Virginia another lover?'
'Famous for it, I should say.'
'So is she attached to anyone who bears grudges?'
'She's a girl who gets herself attached. No one regular, if that's any help.'
'And what about you, Larius? Everyone knows you? Everyone knows what you're like nowadays?'
'What do you mean – what I'm like?'
'Start with layabout,' I suggested cruelly. 'Try a wine-swigging, fornicating, quarrelsome byword for trouble.'
'You're thinking of my uncle,' said Larius, as ever surprising me with sudden caustic repartee.
'True.'
'I get around,' confessed the lad. I remembered him as a shy, poetry-loving dreamer, the single-minded romantic who had once spurned my dirty profession in favour of high ideals and art. Now he had learned to hold his own in rough company – and to despise me.
'You'd better come along to my quarters,' I said quietly. 'On reflection, I'm taking you into custody until this is sorted out. Let's get this clear – I have young children and polite nursing mothers in my party, not to mention the noble Aelianus withering away from his doggie bite, so we'll have no drinking and no riots.'
'I see you've gone staid,' sneered Larius.
'Another thing,' I ordered him. 'Keep your damn hands off my children's nurse!'
'Who's that?' he asked, full of rosebud ignorance. He knew who I meant. He did not fool me. He was born on the Aventine, into the feckless Didii.
To be honest, his attitude gave me a nostalgic pang.
XLI
I was worse than staid. I was suffering like any householder whose domestic life had filled up with crying infants, sex-crazed nephews, disobedient freed women, unfinished business tasks and jealous rivals who wanted him dismissed or dead. I was like the harassed foolish father in a Greek play. This was no milieu for a city informer. Next thing I would find myself buying pornographic oil lamps to leer at in the office and giving myself flatulence as I worried about inheritance tax.
Helena shot me an odd look when I deposited Larius in her care. He seemed startled to see her. He had once adored her. This was awkward for the new man who trifled with women for a bet then breezed off, callous and untouched.
Helena greeted him with an affectionate kiss on the cheek, a refined gesture that upset his equilibrium further. 'Oh this is splendid! Come and meet your little cousins, Larius…'
Horrified, Larius shot me a baleful glance. I returned an annoying grin, then left to investigate who really killed Pomponius.
Magnus was still supervising his assistants near the old palace. They had extended the lines for foundations where the two huge new wings would meet the existing buildings. When the dug trenches currently petered out, strings on pegs now showed the planned links. Magnus himself was scribbling down calculations for the levels, his instrument satchel lying open on the ground.
'This yours?' I asked casually, holding something out to him as if I had found it lying around on site. Absorbed in his work, he was fooled by my indifferent tone.
'I've been searching for that!' His eyes came up from the long string that I was proffering and I saw him freeze.
I had deliberately asked the question so his student helpers would hear. Having witnesses put pressure on. 'That's a five-four-three,' one of them informed me helpfully. Magnus said nothing. 'It's used to form a hypotenuse triangle when we set out a right angle.'
'That right? Geometry is an amazing science! And I thought this was just any old length of twine. May I have a private word, Magnus? And bring your instruments, please.'
Magnus came to my office without a quibble. He realised hi
s setting-out string was what had strangled Pomponius. Now I had to decide, did he know that before I produced it or did he simply work out why the knotted twine was in my possession today?
We walked the short distance to my office. Gaius the clerk prepared to leave, but I signalled him to remain as a witness. He sank back on his seat, undecided whether this was to be a routine interview or something more serious.
'You've declared your movements last night, Magnus.' For a second the surveyor looked at Gaius. There was no doubt about it. The glance, involuntary and cut short, was enough to make me wonder if my clerk was his pretty boy. Did everyone on this site have unmanly Greek tastes? 'One of my team is working on the witness statements, so I've not seen them yet. Remind me, please.'
'What team, Falco?'
'Never mind what bloody team!' I snarled. 'Answer the question, Magnus.'
'I was in my quarters.'
'Anyone vouch for that?'
'Afraid not.'
'Always the clever witness answer,' I told him. 'Avoids what sounds like easy collusion, after the event. Genuinely innocent men quite often lack alibis – that's because they had no idea they needed to fix one.' It would not clear Magnus but it would actually not condemn him either.
I took the satchel from him and flapped it open on a table. In silence we both studied the neatly ranged equipment, all secured under stitched leather loops. Spare pegs and a small mallet. A pocket sundial. Rulers, including a fine, well-worn folding one marked with both Roman and Greek measurements. Stylus and wax tablets. And a hinged metal pair of mapping compasses.
'Used these today?'
'No.'
I carefully released the compasses from their restraining strip of leather, using only my fingertips. I teased them open. Barely visible along one pointed prong was a faint brown stain. But under the leather band into which the instrument had been pushed more staining was obvious.
'Blood,' I decided. It certainly was not cartography ink.
Magnus was watching me. He was intelligent, forthright and highly respected on this site. He also hated Pomponius, and had probably clashed with him as many times as anyone except Cyprianus – who seemed a close ally to Magnus. I thought two people had combined to murder the project manager. Those two, perhaps.
I spoke quietly. We were both subdued. 'You've worked it out, Magnus. Your five-four-three was unravelled from around the dead architect's neck. That and your set of compasses are the murder weapons. If Pomponius had been impaled on the bath-house floor with your rowd, you couldn't be in more trouble.'
Magnus said nothing.
'Did you kill him, Magnus?'
'No!'
'Short and sharp.'
'I did not kill him.'
'You're too shrewd?'
'There were other ways to get rid of him from the project. You were here to do that, Falco.'
'But I'm working with the system, Magnus. How long would it have taken me? Incompetence is a persistent weed.'
Magnus sat quietly. He had chosen an X-shaped stool, one that must once have folded, though I knew it had seized up. Grey-haired and controlled, he had a still core that would not be easily broken into. His grim expression and tone of voice almost suggested it was him testing me, not the other way round.
I put my palms on the edge of the table and pushed back, as if distancing myself from the whole situation. 'You don't say much, for a prime suspect.'
'You do enough talking!'
'I shall act too, Magnus, if I have to. You always knew that.'
'I thought you capable,' Magnus agreed. 'You had assessed the situation. You would have tackled Pomponius and not necessarily by removing him. You have the ear of high authority, Falco; you even summon up a kind of tact sometimes. You could have imposed workable controls, when you were ready.'
I gazed at him. This speech of his was a compliment, yet sounded like a condemnation.
'Well, that's what I thought until this morning, when you came up with the damned idea of bringing Marcellinus back on site Magnus added. He now spoke with pent-up fury.
'He's the King's darling,' I replied curtly. Magnus had just told me why the project plotters were against me. They had loathed Pomponius, sure enough – but they did not want him replaced by another disaster. A worse one, maybe. 'This morning we had Verovolcus listening in, Magnus. The King, his master, is the client. But don't suppose the client will be allowed to impose a no-hoper on this scheme. If I have to thwart him, believe me, I'll do it, but I'll do it with sensitivity if possible. If you don't know my views on Marcellinus, Magnus, that's because you never asked.'
We glared at one another in silence.
'So if I believed you could handle Pomponius,' Magnus muttered at last, 'why would I take the personal risk of killing him?'
I let the Marcellinus issue go, though clearly it needed sorting, and fast.
The surveyor was right. I could just about believe a scenario where he came upon Pomponius at the wrong moment and then snapped suddenly but premeditated killing, when there were other solutions, contradicted this man's natural restraint. Still, self-control would not impress a court as evidence, whereas the murder weapons – his possessions – could.
'Risk is not your style,' I agreed. 'You're too fastidious. But you don't tolerate bungling either. You are vocal and you're active. You are a suspect for this murder precisely because you don't stand back.'
'What does that mean?'
'You have strict standards, Magnus. That could make you lose your temper. Yesterday we had all endured a long, irritating day. Suppose you went to bathe, very late, to relax and forget the Mandumerus fiasco. Just when you were calming down, you came to the last hot caldarium. That fool Pomponius was there. You flared up. Pomponius ended up dead on the floor.'
'I do not take my five-four-three string inside the baths, Falco.'
'Somebody did,' I answered him.
'I use a strigil, not a damn set of compasses.'
'What's your tool for excavating eyeballs?'
Magnus breathed hard and did not reply.
'Did you see Cyprianus yesterday evening?' I demanded.
'No.' Magnus looked at me sharply. 'Does he say I did?'
I gave no answer. 'There were some half-baked workmen at the baths this morning. Are you part of that?'
'No. I gave Togidubnus an estimate, way back. Anything after that is his affair.'
'Is much work needed?'
'Needed – none at all,' Magnus opined acidly. 'Possible as much as a rich client, urged on by a shameless contractor, wants to waste his money on.'
'So you say you are not connected with the wastrels on site today?'
'No.'
'Let's get to the main point. Did you go to the bath house last night, Magnus?'
Magnus held back his answer. I waited stubbornly. He continued to maintain his silence, trying to force me to break in, to take back the initiative. He was desperate to know whether I had any firm information.
After an age, he decided what to say. 'I did not go to the baths.'
Overcome by the tension, the clerk, Gaius, let out a gasp. Magnus kept his eyes on me.
'You're lying, Magnus.' My arm gave a wild sweep. I dashed the satchel of instruments right off the table. I then yelled out at full pitch, 'Oh shit in Hades, Magnus! Just tell me the truth, will you?'
'Steady, Falco!' Gaius squeaked in great alarm. He spoke for the first time since we came in. His eyes flickered, blinking too rapidly.
I really let my temper rip. 'He was at the baths!' I roared at the clerk. 'I have a witness who says so, Gaius!' I would not look at Magnus. 'If you want to know why I'm raving about it, I thought he was a man of superior quality. I thought I could trust him – I did not want the killer to be him!'
Magnus gave me a long hard stare. Then he simply stood up and said he was going back to work. I let him go. I could not arrest him but I did not apologise for implying he was the murderer.
XLII
As soon a
s the surveyor left, I dropped the charade. I sat quiet. Too quiet, anyone who knew me would have said. The clerk had worked with me, though not long enough or closely enough. Even so, apprehension pinned him to his stool.
'That tooth of yours still playing up, Falco?' he asked in a nervous voice. It could be a joke, real sympathy, or a frightened mixture of both.
Too busy to deal with it, I had forgotten my aching tooth until that moment. Informers don't collapse at mere agonising pain. We are always too busy, too desperate to finish the case.
'Where were you last night, Gaius?' It sounded like a neutral question.
'What?'
'Place yourself for me.' He had attended my project meeting this morning. He had filed a witness statement but I had had no time yet to look at it.
'I… went into Novio.'
I scrutinised the bastard with a thin half smile.
'You went into Novio?' Repeating it, I sounded like a careworn lawyer dragging out his weakest rhetorical manoeuvre. I was hoping that the witness would cave in out of sheer anxiety. In life they never do.
'Novio, Falco.'
'What was that for?'
'A night out. Just a night in town.' I still gazed at him. 'Stupenda was dancing,' Gaius maintained. A nice touch. Detail always makes a falsehood sound more reliable.
'Any good?'
'She was brilliant.'
I stood up. 'Get on with your work.'
'Is something wrong, Falco?'
'Nothing that I don't expect every day.' I let him see my lip curl.
I had liked Gaius. He had made a good show of harbouring the right attitude. But it had been an act. 'In my job,' I elaborated grimly, 'I run into lies, fraud, conspiracy and filth. I expect it, Gaius. I encounter mad people who kill their mothers for asking them to wipe their feet on the doormat. I deal with lowlife muggers who steal half a denarius from blind army veterans in order to buy a drink from a thirteen-year old barmaid whom they subsequently rape…'
The clerk was now looking as puzzled as he was petrified.
'Get on with your work,' I repeated. 'Let me know when you decide to revise your story. In the meantime, don't distress yourself about my feelings. Your contribution to this enquiry, Gaius, is just a routine pile of mule shit, though I can say that being betrayed by my own office backer-up hits a new low for me.'
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