Illegally Dead (17 page)

‘Later’d be better. I have to come over from Castrimoenium.’

‘Really?’ Definitely a flicker there. ‘Very well. Shall we make it the fifth hour, then?’

An hour before noon. ‘That’d be great,’ I said.

He made a note. ‘And you’re sure you wouldn’t like to give some sort of indication of what the matter’s about? In the most general terms? Just so that Publius Novius can be prepared for you.’

Uh-uh; now that I certainly didn’t want. ‘I’d rather not, friend. Like I say, it’s private and personal.’

‘Just as you like.’ He set the tablet aside. ‘I look forward to seeing you then, Valerius Corvinus.’

‘Fine.’

So. Just shy of noon, time for a bite of lunch and a cup of wine before I ran a last check on Alexis and headed back. There was a wineshop in the main square with a small terrace outside that looked inviting, but while I was in Bovillae I might as well mix business with pleasure and have them at Veturina’s family’s place. Next to the Appian Gate, Tuscius had said, so I must’ve passed it on the way in.

The mare looked quite happy where she was, by the horse-trough, it wasn’t all that far and I’d have to come back anyway. I set off towards the gate on foot.

22

It was an old-fashioned wineshop, the sort that Gaius Marius might’ve sneaked his first underage drink in: stone-flagged floor, counter that was solid enough to have formed part of the town’s defences, no tables, just stools at the bar, and a very respectable selection of very local wines on the rack. My kind of place, definitely: these days, with the influx into Latium of rich, holiday-home smoothies from the Big City, you’re getting an increasing number of chichi winebars à la Tuscan Street and points adjacent, with carefully co-ordinated or themed decor and third-rate wine masquerading under a first-rate name and priced accordingly.

Old-fashioned clientele, too. The only other guy in the place apart from me and the barman looked like he could’ve bought the young Marius his second cup.

‘Day, sir.’ The barman was a close ringer for Castor, but a much older version: twenty years older, at least. ‘What can I get you?’

‘A half jug of the Bovillan’d be fine, pal,’ I said. ‘You do food?’

‘Cold sausage, cheese and pickles. Nothing hot.’

‘That’ll do nicely.’ I reached into my belt-pouch and pulled out some coins while he hefted the flask and poured. Big lad, and he’d worn well, late fifties or not.

‘You from Rome?’ he said.

‘Yeah. ‘Fraid so.’

‘Holiday?’

‘Yeah. My wife’s got an aunt in Castrimoenium.’

‘Really?’ His back was to me, but I caught the tonic equivalent of the lowered eyebrows and the frown. The old guy at the other end of the bar lifted his head and stared at me. Yeah, right: I could see the family resemblance there, too.

‘I understand you’ve got relatives there yourself,’ I said. No harm in putting out feelers.

He turned round and set the filled half jug with a cup on the counter. ‘Who told you that?’ he said sharply.

‘No hassle, pal.’ I poured and sipped. It was good stuff, almost as good as Pontius’s, in its class, and that’s high praise. ‘I was just making conversation. Maybe I’ve got the wrong wineshop.’

‘No, you’re right enough, sir. You know Veturina and Castor?’

‘I’ve met them.’

‘Yeah, you would have.’ Then, when I raised an eyebrow: ‘Oh, no offence, sir, none in the world, that’s not the way I mean it. It’s just that purple stripe of yours...well, Veturina and Castor move in higher circles than we do. Right, Dad?’

The old man at the end of the bar nodded. ‘The girl made a good match, right enough,’ he said smugly. It was like hearing a whisper through gravel.

‘You don’t see much of them now, then,’ I said.

‘Nah. Nothing since Castor left a couple of years back and moved in with her.’ The barman sliced sausage and arranged it on a plate with pickles from the jar and a wedge of goat’s cheese. ‘Helping us to run this place wasn’t good enough for him. Wanted to be a fucking lawyer.’ He set two quarters of a loaf onto the plate. ‘Sorry, sir, there was no call for that.’

‘No problem.’ I pulled the plate towards me and tried the sausage. That was good as well, smoked pork with cumin and lovage. A real find, Veturinus’s. ‘I’m not too keen on lawyers myself.’

‘He was always ambitious, young Castor,’ the old man said. ‘Even when he was a boy. He knew what he wanted and he’d go right for it, whatever was in the way. Him and Veturina, they was a pair even though there was twenty years between them and they’d different mothers, always together when she came visiting. And close as –’

‘Dad! Gentleman doesn’t want to hear no ramblings, now.’ The barman wrapped up the rest of the sausage.

‘Oh, that’s okay,’ I said. ‘Brother and sister. What would you expect?’

That got me a sideways look, but the guy didn’t say anything more. I took a proper swallow of the wine.

‘She’ll be well set up now, though, won’t she?’ the father went on. ‘Rich widow with everyone chasing after her. You’ll know that the husband died, sir? Not long back?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, so I heard.’

‘They say he’d been ailing for a long time. A shame. He was a fine man in his day, Lucius Hostilius. Used to have a practice here in Bovillae, before he moved over to Castrimoenium. Lived just down the road, came in here a lot and sat just where you’re sitting, sir. This was where they met, because Veturina used to help out sometimes when we were busy after her mother died and before I married again.’

‘That so, now?’

The old man chuckled. ‘“I’ll have him, Dad, just you wait.”. That’s what she used to say to me, the minx, after he was gone of an evening. And why not? He was a bachelor, good-looking, rich enough but nothing special because he was only just starting out and only half a dozen years older than she was. And she was a cracker, my Veturina. All the lads were after her, not that they got any encouragement after she clapped eyes on him. Hostilius, too: proper taken, he was, hook, line and sinker. Have him she did, in the end, and good luck to her.’

‘So what’s your business in Bovillae, sir?’ Unasked, Veturinus Junior topped up my cup. Change of subject, obviously: I had the distinct impression that the big guy had had enough of gratuitous family revelations, but short of choking his blabbermouth old father off there hadn’t been a lot he could do.

‘Just a change of scenery, pal,’ I said easily: I wasn’t going to compromise my stranger-off-the-street pose unless it was really necessary, and if he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of his sister or brother for two years then it wasn’t likely I’d get anything useful. Half-brother, I corrected myself. Now that had been interesting. ‘Castrimoenium’s okay, but there isn’t enough concrete around up there for my liking.’

‘Not thinking of buying any property in the area, then?’

‘Uh-uh.’ I took a mouthful of wine and made inroads on the bread, cheese and pickles. ‘Too many Romans. Besides, like I said, I’ve got a rooted aversion to lawyers.’ I glanced sideways at the old man. ‘No disrespect to your late son-in-law intended. My experience’s mostly been with the big city variety, and your Bovillan guys are probably a different thing altogether.’

Veturinus Junior chuckled. ‘Don’t you believe it, sir! They’re the same all over.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Take our local man for example, Novius his name is, been in practice here for, oh, forty-odd years and more. Now he –’ The door opened and half a dozen workmen with seriously bloodstained tunics trooped in. ‘’Scuse me, sir, the hard drinkers from the slaughterhouse’ve arrived. Hullo, lads, that’s you for the morning, is it? The usual? Dad, give me a hand, will you?’

I went back to my sausage, cheese and pickles while the bar stools filled up around me with a gaggle of Bovillae’s thirstiest, smelliest and rowdiest and the two Veturini busied themselves with filling jugs, slicing bread and swapping insults. Well, I couldn’t fault the slaughterhouse lads’ timing. Perfect; bloody perfect. No pun intended.

Bugger!

There was no chance to resume the chat, either, because the door didn’t stop swinging for two minutes together until I’d cleaned my plate and emptied the half jug, and by that time the place was filled to the walls. I’d obviously hit the happy hour. Ah, well, it hadn’t been time wasted, far from it. And it was always good to find a decent wineshop, barring the rather malodorous clientele. Still, the afternoon was getting on, I had to walk back to the town square, and after I’d checked with Alexis I had a fair ride to Castrimoenium. I stopped at a pastry-seller’s on the way to buy him a peace offering - Alexis is no wine drinker, but he’ll kill for a nut-and-honey pastry sprinkled with poppy seeds - and carried on to the public records office.

He was waiting for me outside, and totally transformed from the snarling grouch I’d got earlier. The guy might still look like he’d been dragged through an unused hypocaust backwards, but he was grinning all over his face and brandishing a set of cobwebby tablets like they were the missing Sibylline Books.

‘I’ve found it, sir!’ he said. ‘Just ten minutes since! At least I think I have. Twentieth of May, Tiberius Three, consulship of Statilius Taurus and Scribonius Libo. That’s almost exactly, uh’ - he did a quick calculation - ‘twenty-one years ago.’

‘Brilliant!’

‘I can’t give you any details - I only looked at the beginning, for the names of the accused and the lawyers, and the end for the verdict and sentence - but they seem to fit. You want them now?’

‘Yeah. Yes, please.’

‘Accused were two brothers, Brabbius Lupus and Brabbius Senecio. Some sort of burglary and murder. The defence was Lucius Hostilius and Quintus Acceius, and –’

‘Hang on, pal,’ I said. ‘The defence?’

‘Yes, sir, that’s right. Still, I thought you might want it in any case. It’s all I’ve come up with.’

‘Fine, fine. No problem, Alexis. Who were the prosecutors?’

‘Just one, sir. Publius Novius.’

‘Shit!’ It had to be this one, it just had to be, whatever the explanation! ‘Sorry, pal. Don’t mind me, carry on.’

‘There’s just that, sir, and the verdict. The men were found guilty. Lupus was executed and Senecio was sent to the galleys for twenty years.’

Bull’s-eye! ‘Alexis, you are a fucking genius! Have a pastry.’ I handed it over, and he gave me the tablets. ‘Can I hang on to these?’

‘For the time being, sir. Latro - that’s the clerk - says there’s no problem. Just be sure to bring them back when you’ve finished.’

‘Great. How’s your time in Bovillae been, incidentally? Apart from the spiders?’

‘Not bad. I’ve been staying just round the corner, in the household of Agilleius Mundus.’ Yeah, I remembered Mundus: Libanius’s opposite number in Bovillae. ‘Only they put me in with the coachman, and he snores. I’ll be glad to get back.’ He hesitated. ‘Oh, by the way. I had a long chat with Latro yesterday when the...when I felt I needed a break. We got quite friendly.’

‘Yeah?’

‘It’s just that...well, I admit I deliberately steered the conversation round to Quintus Acceius, sir. Latro’s been working here long enough to remember Acceius before he moved to Castrimoenium, and although he didn’t say so in so many words I got the feeling that the gentleman wasn’t quite as...punctilious then as he is today. Or seems to be.’

‘That so, now?’ Of course, Bucca had said the same thing; but Bucca had an axe to grind, and besides he was just passing on what could’ve been a snide bit of backstabbing from Acceius’s professional rival. Latro, being a disinterested party, was another matter altogether. ‘Interesting.’

‘Yes, sir, I thought so. Worth going more deeply into, certainly.’ He finished his pastry and licked his fingers. ‘Now, if there’s nothing else you want me to do here I’ll get over to Mundus’s and pick up my bag and the mule.’

‘What?’ I’d been wool-gathering. ‘Oh. I’m sorry, Alexis. Right, thanks, pal, you’ve been a great help. I’ll stay on for a bit, read over this trial record and take it straight back to your friend Latro.’ I put my hand in my belt-pouch and found a gold piece. ‘There’s no hurry for you. Buy yourself a new tunic, have a bath, see the town and pig out on pastries. Or whatever.’

He grinned. ‘Yes, sir. Thank you. I’ll do that.’

I gave him a farewell wave and moved off in the direction of the wineshop I’d spotted earlier. A smart cookie, Alexis, very smart: not many garden-slaves know the word “punctilious” to start with, a hell of a lot fewer would go to the bother of finding out that a man their master was interested in didn’t use to be it, and only one in a thousand of them would add that “or seems to be”.

So when he practised in Bovillae Acceius wasn’t as punctilious as he was today, right? Or seemed to be, rather.

Hmm.

The wineshop wasn’t busy, despite its prime location, and when I’d tasted the wine I could see why. Still, all I really wanted was somewhere quiet to sit down for half an hour and see what we’d got here. I carried my cup outside onto the terrace, settled down at a corner table, opened the tablets and began to read.

It was fairly sordid, run-of-the-mill stuff: the two brothers, Lupus and Senecio, described as ‘dyers from Bovillae’, had broken into and started robbing a silversmith’s shop near the precinct of Mercury. Unfortunately for them, the owner - a guy called Titus Vectillius - who lived at the back of the premises heard them furkling about and came through with the poker. There was a scuffle, Vectillius was knifed and the two of them fled, straight into the arms of a group of zealous but inebriated citizens further up the street who pinned them down and fetched the Night Watch. Lupus and Senecio claimed that they’d just been passing when the real villains burst out of the shop doorway and legged it in the other direction; that Lupus had found the silver bracelet he was clutching lying on the ground outside, and had had every intention of handing it over to the proper authorities in the morning; and that the knife Lupus was carrying in his other hand was used exclusively for the slicing of sausage and other edibles.

I had to hand it to the defence, Hostilius and Acceius, who’d evidently done their best to cast doubts on the reliability of a pack of witnesses who were pissed as newts and hadn’t actually seen the two guys coming out of the shop. However, the facts that Lupus had a record of violence and petty thievery a yard long already and that he and his brother had been barrelling up the street like a pair of Phaedippideses after Marathon were pretty well clinchers. The jury found them both guilty as charged. Lupus, as the probable ringleader, got the strangler’s noose and Senecio a twenty-year stretch in the galleys. End of trial, end of record.