Jail Bait (15 page)

For safety, pedestrian travellers either postponed their trips or journeyed in groups. Empty houses were looted, horses stolen; women feared for their lives. At nightfall, shutters were bolted, doors locked and then barred—for who was left to patrol the streets and keep them safe?

Gradually a million people became trapped in their homes, scared to go out for fear of bandits. Maggots infested the foodstuffs. Rats multiplied too fast to keep count.

The death toll was rising.

And not all the symptoms tallied with plague.

*

‘
Ouch!
’

Marcus Cornelius flinched when the wooden bear bounced off the crown of his head, although it was with no mean deftness that he caught the second carving before further damage was inflicted. Gingerly his fingers explored the tender swelling and, despite the pain, he grinned. Since his conversation with Dorcan, he’d been wandering aimlessly with just his thoughts and suspicions for company, yet of the fifty or so bedchambers in Atlantis, he was not so disorientated that he couldn’t work out whose open window ejected such a treasure trove of goodies.

‘We’re making progress, then?’ he called up. ‘When you shower me with gifts.’

‘Orbilio?’ A head thrust itself through the gap, and he couldn’t fail to notice that several elegant curls had slipped their leash. Or that they rested on perfect, naked shoulders. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, prowling underneath my bedroom window, you filthy pervert, you?’

‘Flattery, as well as gifts. Now I know you love me.’

‘I’d love a suppurating sore more than I’d love you.’

Oh yes, he sighed. He was definitely making progress. ‘Claudia,’ he said,
‘we do need to talk.’

‘Talk?’ A finely tooled sandal came winging through the air. Green. ‘You call yourself a criminal investigator and all you want to do is talk? I don’t suppose it occurred to you to consider earning your crust for a change?’

‘My business with you is official,’ he answered mildly, lobbing back the shoe.

There was a long silence, which he savoured.

Followed by a longer silence, which he did not.

Finally, when he craned his neck upwards again, he saw that the shutters had been snapped shut and to salvage the remains of his dignity, Orbilio stuffed his thumbs in his belt and sauntered on down the path praying that his tiddly-om-pom whistle was as jaunty as he hoped. Round the promontory his footsteps took him, beneath the domed loggia and past a thicket of alders. He glanced up at the sun porch and thought he caught a movement halfway up the cliff face. Surely not…? But there it was again. A shadow on—or rather inside—the rock. Frowning, he stared at the impenetrable grey wall, at the straggly shrubs which clung to the rock, at the strange shadows they threw. Then a sapphire-blue dragonfly whizzed, breaking the spell, and Marcus continued his stroll.

At the foot of the zigzag steps which led up to the walnut grove surrounding Carya’s shrine, a man with shoulder-length hair and a sharp taste in dress was being approached by a small boy with a package under his arm. Marcus melted into the shadow of the cliff. The boy, nut-brown and naked, proceeded to hand over the parcel. The Spaniard unwrapped the sacking and Orbilio watched a thousand ribbons scatter over the path. Tarraco fired off a succession of questions, the boy pointed up to Atlantis and, in his private hiding place, Orbilio grinned to himself. The shreds were the unmistakable hue of summer harebells…

A flash of bronze caught the sun as it spun through the air before being clasped in the fist of the boy, who scampered away, testing the coin in his teeth as Tarraco glowered at the heap of blue cotton. Then, with fists clenched and a face like thunder, the Spaniard ran up the steps. Orbilio waited until he’d disappeared into the walnut grove before retracing his route round the promontory, and this time there were no strange shadows flitting in a descending line down the rock face and his whistle was slick and robust. He paused to watch an osprey cruise the shimmering waters and a trickle of sweat wriggled down his backbone to join a party of its cousins. His meeting with Dorcan this evening should eliminate one or two—

‘Tuder,’ a voice said and, startled, Orbilio peered round a protruding tongue of rock to where Claudia Seferius was perched on a tree stump, her knees drawn up to her chin.

‘Chewed a what?’ he said. ‘Oh, by the way.’ He tossed across the wooden carvings. ‘You dropped these.’

‘Correction.’ Claudia weighed the figures in each hand. ‘I rather think I threw them. Like this.’ At the second plop, a screeching moorhen shot out of the reed-bed, its wings beating the surface of the water.

‘That’s not nice,’ Marcus said, settling his back against the rock face as the ripples in the lake began to settle. ‘You’ll give the tadpoles headaches. Why do you want to talk about Tuder? He’s dead.’

‘Exactly. And how did he die?’

‘I’m afraid you have me there.’

‘You, Orbilio, are not that lucky.’ Claudia stood up and shook the splinters from her skirt. ‘However, I think that, as a detective, you could start to earn the exorbitant salary they pay you—’

‘Actually, it’s a pittance—’

‘—and set the tiny bean inside your thick skull to finding out what happened to our wealthy banker.’

Swallowing a laugh, Orbilio noted with a tinge of disappointment that, whilst the curls ran free, those perfect shoulders had disappeared beneath a blaze of jade-coloured cotton, and jade, he decided, suited her better than that wishy-washy blue. ‘I’m sure you have a theory or two as to his demise, though?’

Beside him in the shade, Claudia snorted disdainfully. ‘How typical of the army to stick to single figures. Any number of things could have happened to poor old Tuder with what was going on out there. Maybe he burst in on Lais and her tacky love-slave and, mortified by her betrayal, plunged a knife deep into his broken heart, or—’

‘A progressive illness snuffed out the last, faint flame of life?’

‘Or,’ she glared, ‘he took a gallop round his island, discovering too late the strap on his saddle had been cut, or—’

‘Suffered a massive stroke?’

‘Or,’ she spat through clenched teeth, ‘he takes a deep draught of Falernian wine, only to find it was poisoned. Or—’

‘He died of the pox after a lifetime of debauchery and couldn’t give a toss whether his middle-aged wife remained chaste or slept with an entire legion every night. Claudia, he’s dead,’ Marcus pointed out, ‘and it’s unlikely the truth will ever come to light, because there are only two people who could tell us. One is Tarraco, and I don’t see him soiling his pretty nest somehow, and the second person is his dear, sweet wife.’

Orbilio paused to buff his bronze buckle.

‘And Lais,’ he said quietly, ‘surprise, surprise, has disappeared.’

XVI

Dead to the world, drunks sprawled under horse troughs as a thief relieved them of their bootlaces and sparrows squabbled over piecrusts. The Forum was deserted in the throbbing midday heat and amid the smashed pots and mussel shells, dogs snarled over meat bones and the glassy-eyed mother swaying with a baby on her shoulder to music inside her head did not see six well-built men slip down the side street, wielding clubs and staves and axes.

The leader, a hard-faced thug with one empty eye socket, paused to check his bearings before signalling the group to turn right at the basilica. The street began to narrow. They passed gaily painted apartment blocks, smart but not posh, so these would be for the scribes and the clerks and their families. The tenements became smaller, packed closer together, homes for freed slaves or tradesmen on the first rung of the ladder, then the buildings ran out altogether and soon the men were trudging down a stony path towards the lake.

The grass was dry and crisp and yellow, lined with firethorns and fig trees. They passed a small but unattended olive grove, an umbrella pine with newly shorn sheep and their lambs nestling down in its shadow. One bleated softly, but the men paid no heed. At a signal from One Eye, they checked their weapons, then nodded brusquely to one another before approaching the wooden shack which stood on its own. Blue smoke coiled from the roof, and a buzzard mewed in the distance as the thugs circled the building.

‘Right,’ growled the leader, grasping his club in his hand as he kicked open the door.

A woman screamed, a man jumped up from his pallet. ‘You!’ One Eye snarled, pointing to the woman as he raised his weapon high above his head. ‘Shut it!’

The woman, seeing the vicious nails which protruded from the head of the club, merely screamed louder.

‘I mean it, you bitch!’ He grabbed her by the scruff of her tunic and stuck his dead eye into hers. ‘One more squeak and Loverboy ends up like me.’

The woman, swelling with her second child, gulped back her hysteria and forced her head to nod up and down. So far, her man had not moved.

‘You were warned,’ One Eye growled, ‘what would happen if you didn’t pay.’

‘I have paid,’ the young man retorted. His face was white, but his voice was steady and clear. ‘On the Ides of every month, I’ve handed over forty bronze pieces and I’ve never been late.’

‘The price went up, remember? To fifty sesterces.’

‘By the gods, man, I can’t afford that! We barely scrape by as it is.’

‘So you’re refusing?’ A sly smile twitched at the thug’s mouth.

The young man spread his hands in helplessness. ‘We can’t afford more than forty,’ he protested. ‘I cure fish for a living, you can see how it is—’

From a cradle in the corner, a baby began to bawl, setting off a dog out the back.

‘Shut that brat up,’ the thug shouted to its mother.

The woman stumbled over to the cot, but the child was not comforted and as it cried harder, so the dog’s barking increased.

‘Silence that fucking mutt!’ One Eye yelled through the open doorway. For maybe twenty seconds the dog snarled and thrashed on its chain, then, with a pitiful whimper, fell quiet. The woman collapsed, sobbing convulsively into her infant bundle and muffling the sound of its screams. The leader of the gang glanced up the path to check no one had been alerted to the racket, then turned back to the man.

‘You had fair warning,’ he said.

‘For gods’ sakes,’ there was a rising note of panic in the youth’s voice, ‘we’re barely surviving as it is.’ He wiped his hand with his face. ‘It started off at ten a month, then twenty, thirty, forty—where will it end? I’m only a smoker of fish, have some pity!’

‘I’m not paid for pity,’ and for a moment the woman thought she detected a note of sympathy in the thug’s voice, but she was mistaken, because she knew without looking again into that single, cold eye that he had been born without warmth or compassion. And when he said, ‘Right, boys, you know what to do,’ she hugged her daughter tight to her chest and buried her face in the silky, soft hair, crooning to the child to block out the splintering and crashing around her.

The smoke-house door was the first casualty. Then rack upon rack of hanging fish were hurled on to the grass to be pulped with staves as the bullies kicked over fires, drenched the wood piles with water and trashed the living quarters, even grinding the baby’s clay rattle under a heel, and she heard her man spit ‘Bastard!’ at the leader of the gang.

‘Well,’ One Eye brushed his hands together and wiped them down his tunic, ‘we all have some trade we’re good at.’ He laughed. ‘And I’m damned good at being a bastard, right, lads?’

The others guffawed at the joke, then One Eye pulled at his ear lobe.

‘You’re still in arrears,’ he said, shrewdly surveying the mess, ‘by fifty sesterces, don’t forget.’

‘You’ve destroyed my stock, my equipment, my shed,’ the fish smoker whispered. ‘You’ve left me with nothing, not even our baby’s birthday dinner.’

The woman looked round, to see jars of beans smashed and trampled, oil jars kicked over, even the bread that she’d baked bore a footprint. Her daughter was one year old today and even her honey cake had been scoffed by the thugs. Then without warning her own face was pinched in the thug’s hand and she screamed.

‘Pretty piece,’ he leered. ‘Can’t be more than seventeen. I’m sure you’ll find ways of settling the debt.’

‘Leave her alone,’ her man yelled. ‘Take your filthy hands off her, you hear!’

‘Me?’ sneered One Eye, brushing him off. ‘I’ve no use for a pregnant sow, but I tell you, boy, there’s men who likes ’em like that.’

‘You dirty bastard—’

‘Now, now,’ the thug laughed, crunching over the debris and deaf to the young woman’s whimpers, ‘I’m merely opening your mind as to different ways of raising the cash you owe. Don’t be too hasty to dismiss the idea.’

And with that, he and his gang strode back up the path towards Spesium as silently as they came. The young man staggered outside to inspect the damage.

The smoke house had gaping holes in the wall. They could be patched.

The doors were smashed, their hinges thrown in the lake. New could be bought.

The dog had been clubbed, but it was a mastiff with a head like a stone. It would recover.

Slowly, he nodded to himself. He’d worked hard to establish a reputation for plump, juicy smokies and for that reason he hadn’t minded handing over a small part of his income to nameless individuals for what was known as ‘protection’. In time he hoped to sell to Atlantis, so he didn’t complain, even when the price for protection crept up. So what, if it meant postponing building a proper house for a while? Life was sweet. He wore no man’s shackles, ran his own business, had the love of a good woman, one child and a second on the way, this time maybe a son? It would happen, he felt, in good time, the house and cart and the smallholding.