Jail Bait (33 page)

Nothing.

Her heart was pounding faster than a threshing machine. She could delay. Go back and wait for Supersnoop to return. Jokes about Phoebe aside, she presumed he was out, rounding up loyal troops with which to confront Cyrus, but suppose, when they returned, Tarraco wasn’t here? He’d slip through their fingers once and for all. She pressed her ear harder, and heard only silence between the relentless rumbles of thunder.

Claudia’s forehead collapsed on to the wall as the weight of Spesium descended on her shoulders. This whole sordid mess was down to her—any future killings, any future beatings, any future misery, they were down to her.
She
had set him free.
She
must redress the balance.

From the kitchens a ripple of laughter broke out, and behind her, in the bedroom, the floater on the water clock pinged the hour.

Her mouth was dry as she lifted the latch. Thank heavens she’d had the good sense to bring her small, thin-bladed knife—

A faint chink of yellow appeared as she pulled the door towards her, but it was only a minuscule crack. Another tapestry hung on the inside. Damn! Claudia forced herself to stand still and absorb as much data as she could. Information was ammunition, she had to cling to that. Her palms were sweating. She reassured them with the touch of cold steel.
You have to get this right. There will be no second chance.
A musky scent (ajuga?) filtered through the cloth, and a few seconds later, she was rewarded with the haunting strum of a lyre. Juno be praised, Tarraco was trapped in his den.

There was no time for sentiment. No time to recall aching melodies that conjured up sun-drenched Iberian hills and unrequited love, No time to consider scarlet fillets tying back his hair. With a toss of her head, Claudia jerked open the screen.

‘Freedom,’ she declared, sweeping into the windowless chamber, ‘invariably comes with a price round its neck. Don’t you agree?’

The lyre stopped in mid-pluck, at the same time the colour drained from Claudia’s face.

‘I most certainly do.’ The mastermind behind the reign of murder and extortion turned in the chair and lowered the instrument to the floor.

Claudia’s eyes darted round the room as her brain made rapid calculations. Those two doors facing the courtyard were obviously false fronts. This was the only one entrance. Therefore the only exit… Run! But her feet had welded to the floor. Behind her, a huge shadow loomed up. The smell of leather was strong in her nostrils.

The lyre player smiled a smile which did not extend to the eyes and slowly rose from the chair.

You silly cow! To come here alone, how could you be so utterly stupid?

The occupant of the hidden room took a step forward.

Claudia took a step back.

And collided with a mountain with a walrus moustache.

With panic rising in her throat, Claudia knew her thin-bladed knife would be useless against the awesome force that was Pul. A hand clamped round her throat and propelled her forward into the room.

‘My mistake. I-I was looking for…’

‘I know what you were looking for.’ The laugh of the Oriental’s paymaster was deep and throaty. ‘Bring her closer, Pul.’

Kicking, squirming, grappling was useless against the massive henchman, and Claudia found herself dragged across the floor like flotsam on a rip tide. Yet even through her terror, she was absorbing the opulence of the furnishings. The imaginative frescoes. The brilliance of the golden lampstands which lit this hidden chamber. A cry caught in her throat. The chamber where the campaign of terror was mapped out. Where orders were given for lives to be bought and sold, for human misery to be traded for treasure—and what treasure! Against every wall stood chests of maplewood, chests of cedar, chests inlaid with mother-of-pearl, each lid flung wide to reveal heaps of gold and silver plate, ivories, crystals and jewels. This, then, was what profit looked like from a trade in human souls…

‘Closer.’

Like a knitted doll, Claudia was hurled across the floor, where lampglow cast a long, slim shadow across the fine mosaic. From her sprawling position, Claudia’s eyes ranged upwards from the hem of the pleated linen tunic, whose gold thread rippled like a mountain stream. They paused at the emerald-studded pin clipped to the shoulder, then moved on to the chin jutting out defiantly.

Of course, it was not the chin she had expected to challenge in its lair.

She had expected a chin with a hint or two of stubble, a jawline firm and muscled. Instead the chin required no razor, and the jawline, as she remembered only too well, was truly a borderline case.

Upwards her gaze continued to amble. To the snub nose. To the eyes, glittering and hard, and skin plastered with too much cosmetics…

‘Now then,’ Lais said, sinking regally into her high-backed chair, ‘what put you on to me?’

XXXV

Like a meteor crashing to earth, a thousand fragments exploded in Claudia’s mind. So much for her and Orbilio’s arithmetic! By a process of elimination, they had arrived at a figure of one—when in fact, there had been two contenders in the frame. Tarraco, of course—and Lais. But then again, who could have imagined she’d fake her own murder? Hell, even Tarraco had been fooled when the body was dragged out of the lake.

So close, and yet so wide of the bull’s-eye. True, they’d pinpointed the nerve centre as being here, on Tuder’s island, and their conclusions that only riches on the banker’s scale could finance such bold ventures and buy silence were correct. But never in a million years could either of them have envisaged old Stonyface as the mastermind.

But with hindsight, it made sense.

‘Don’t be shy,’ Lais sneered, pouring herself a glass of wine. ‘I’ve known all along you were a spy. Who are you working for? My late husband’s brother? Or that brittle bitch of his sister?’ In the harsh artificial light, the roots of her hair showed grey and the moleskin patches merely highlighted the multitude of blemishes on her ageing skin.

Claudia made to stand up, but a huge hand sent her crashing back down and a boot on her back kept her there. There was a look on Lais’ face which suggested this wasn’t her first experience of violence. Or that she did not enjoy what she watched. Claudia licked away the dribble of blood which trickled from the side of her mouth and tried to ignore the swelling coming up on her cheek.

‘I’m in Atlantis on holiday—’ she began, before Pul’s boot slammed her forehead against the tessellated floor.

‘Nice try,’ Lais said, sipping at her wine. Claudia could smell the strength of the vintage even through the taste of her own blood. ‘But Pul watched you when you arrived, observed you taking note of your surroundings like a true professional, even to weighing
him
up. Oh, don’t be fooled. His expression is impassive enough, but he doesn’t miss much, do you, Pul?’

Claudia could not see, of course, but she knew that the walrus moustache had lifted in a grin. With his foot on her neck, she was powerless to move. There was no way she could reach for the blade.

‘He watched you make a beeline for Cal,’ Lais was saying, ‘and I overheard you myself from the loggia, pumping him for information while he bragged about how much he knew. Why, you practically signed his death warrant yourself.’

Don’t you dare pin this on me, you bitch! ‘Taking a risk, weren’t you, Lais?’ This was not the time to let them see she was scared. ‘Out and about in broad daylight, when you were supposed to be dead?’

Hooded eyes glinted in unashamed triumph, rings glistening off every finger joint, and despite the jab of revulsion at her crimes, a part of Claudia could still acknowledge the woman’s cunning and admire her daring.

‘Who’s to see me? The slaves in Atlantis? Those overworked, obsequious morons don’t differentiate between one paying guest and another, and as for Pylades, please don’t insult my intelligence. I conduct my business only when it’s essential and only when everyone’s asleep, either at night or during siesta or even, like today, during mealtimes, if needs must.’ Her tongue flickered in and out like a snake’s. ‘Not that I need explain this to you. Since you’ve been tracking me, you must be familiar with my movements.’

Pul’s boot was heavy on Claudia’s neck, pushing her chin hard on the floor. ‘Now why should I be interested in you, Lais, my peach?’

‘Oh, cut the crap,’ Lais snapped. ‘You’ve been hanging round me like a bad smell ever since you arrived, or are you going to pretend it was coincidence that night I met Kamar in the hall?’

Claudia felt the room spin. How could she explain that it suited her own purposes to be out and about during those same antisocial hours? Her only chance for survival lay with pretending she was employed by Tuder’s relatives…

Croesus, she needed to buy time. Somehow she had to win Lais’ confidence.

‘Whose was the body they fished out of the water?’ she asked. No wonder the victim’s face was mashed to a pulp, it was to render the poor cow unrecognizable, and now it made sense, Pul playing the model citizen role by ‘helping’ to retrieve the corpse. It would have been him who choreographed the event.

Lais waved an airy hand. ‘Who knows? Who cares? Right height, right size, right bone structure—dressed in my clothes with a few of my jewels, let the fish take care of the rest.’

Claudia suppressed a shudder of revulsion at this callous, premeditated crime. ‘How long had you been planning your own murder?’

‘A couple of months,’ Lais shrugged, ‘maybe three had passed, since I set Pul to search for a suitable double.’

Claudia goggled. ‘You held her prisoner all that time?’ Did she know? Did the poor bitch have any idea what they planned?

‘We could hardly have the body decomposing, now could we? The timing was crucial. A public occasion, a crowd—and my little bit of Spanish rough fell right into the trap. But then I knew he would.’ Lais slipped out of her chair and lifted Claudia’s chin with her exquisitely crafted sandal. ‘Tarraco is so predictable, don’t you agree?’

Meaning that under attack, he would throw back his head rather than cringe. Would defy, rather than defend. ‘I don’t know him as intimately as you,’ Claudia purred back.

‘The bastard gave you my harebell gown for nothing? He’s slipping.’ When Lais laughed, deep furrows appeared in her cheeks. ‘You don’t know what you missed. In that department he is truly exceptional. However, one expects loyalty from one’s subordinates.’

She clicked her fingers and Pul released his boot. Claudia wondered whether she might be reduced to looking right for eternity.

‘Also—’ incredibly, Lais appeared to be offering her a glass of wine. Girl to girl, and all that. ‘—my husband,’ she sneered over the word, ‘had ideas way above his station.’ She indicated Claudia take a seat. ‘You know, that little toe-rag began to imagine he
owned
me. Me! Can you believe it? After all I’d done for him, too.’

As though her face was not bleeding, grazed and swollen, Claudia accepted the chair. ‘Such as?’

‘Disposing of that awful Virginia, for a start.’ Lais rolled her ridiculously painted eyes. ‘Dreadful woman. Brayed like a donkey, stank of cheap scent, Virginia had absolutely no conversation whatsoever. Tarraco was far better off with me.’

‘You drowned her in the lake?’

‘So gullible, that woman. And you’d think Tarraco would have shown a pinch of gratitude. Hell, were it not for my intervention, Virginia would have willed everything to some silly daughter in Gaul instead of him.’

Except, mused Claudia, at that stage Tarraco believed he had been doing Lais a favour. There was a subtle irony in the two of them playing off against each other.

‘Unfortunately,’ Stonypuss said, ‘despite the clothes I bought him, the trinkets I lavished on him, indeed the decent manners that I taught him, that little dago bastard had the temerity to shag some kitchen slut from Atlantis and expect to get away with it.’ She flashed her flint-hard eyes at Claudia. ‘No one crosses me.
No
one
.’

As though in a theatre, the play ran before Claudia’s eyes. The staged argument. A weeping prisoner secretly throttled and beaten. Innuendoes whispered concerning Lais’ disappearance. The athletics display. The body, weighted underwater in the oyster beds for the requisite length of time, now cut loose to be ‘discovered’. Cyrus enters the stage. So, too, Tarraco, strutting, arrogant, haughty, defiant. A dramatic arrest. Execution follows…

Revenge was clearly a dish Lais served icy cold.

‘After a couple of months,’ Claudia supposed aloud, ‘no doubt the grieving widow would make her reappearance, admitting the row, to storming off, saying—what? you’d sought solace with a friend in Ancona?—and my, my, how horrified you’d be to hear of your poor husband’s fate.’

‘Another superlative performance,’ Lais agreed. ‘Without a single flaw.’

Except that Tarraco didn’t care you’d done a bunk.

‘Except that Tarraco is free.’ Unwise, Claudia felt, to declare her role in that particular interlude.

‘Pity,’ Lais said sadly. ‘I’d set my heart on seeing him pay, but I know that boy. He’ll be in Cadiz by now, out of my grasp.’

For once, Lais, I am in total agreement with you. He’ll bluff, he’ll bluster, yet deep down Tarraco is insecure. Cyrus had played on that aspect beside the running track, when Lais’ double was fished out of the water, and Claudia had added to it, when she provided him with the means to escape. A bittersweet chord tugged inside her. At least she was right on one count. Tarraco was not capable of killing Lais in a murderous frenzy.