Second Act (13 page)

‘I presume, sister-in-law, that you do not propose to expose my Flavia to these excesses of licentiousness?’

‘Too late, her jaw’s already dropped to the floor,’ Claudia replied, although Flavia seemed more fascinated than shocked. ‘Anyway, Marcellus has been banging on for years about how women should receive the best education possible.’

‘Educations, madam, do not come higher than Caspar’s Spectaculars,’ the little man confirmed solemnly, but Julia did not hear.

The merest mention of her husband’s name had sent her retreating to her bedroom as she realized this was yet another problem to contend with. It was bound to give him ‘ideas’, this bevy of femaleness clad in fabric you could almost read through. What on earth was she going to do? Gaius’s couch, goddammit, was a double one. How could she possibly fend him off in that?

Caspar’s eyes twinkled wickedly. ‘Run along now, my volumptuous beauties, run along. We have a cabaret to execute at the Circus, remember?’

He gave them both a slap on their ample backsides, and, shrieking with laughter, the girls tumbled boisterously along the gallery and down the stairs. The boards were still reverberating thirty seconds after they’d left.

‘Madam.’ He gave Claudia a sweeping bow. ‘I do believe this is the happiliest household in which I have had the pleasure to perform.’

It wasn’t entirely clear whether he was referring to his theatrical productions or his performance in the bedroom, but it didn’t matter. Because Flavia had come to a decision in the meantime.

Like a child poring over a litter of puppies and not knowing which to choose, she had finally settled on the one she would adopt for her next crush. Claudia rather hoped it would have been Ion, with his broad back and shoulder-length hair and voice that boomed like a god. It wasn’t, of course.

Like everyone else, she picked Skyles.

Fourteen

The second Orbilio opened his eyes he realized he was in trouble. He knew instantly that he’d slept in, something he hadn’t done since his school days, but there was more.

For a moment, he wondered whether he might be dreaming. Same cramped bedsit with its scrubbed floors, polished chairs and window open regardless of the weather. Even, he was sure, the same baby bawling. He had to be dreaming. Reliving the nightmare, as trauma victims invariably do.

But Orbilio was no victim of suffering. True, he was under stress—enormous stress—over the halcyon rapes. But surely he would be reliving those moments, not this? Also. He scratched his head. Would he be able to dream of fresh blankets on the bed, green ones, even though they still smelled of violets? Would his imagination pile a plate of honey cakes on the stove? Would his imagination make it drizzle outside? Maybe, he thought sourly. But no way would imagination catch his skin with a fingernail when it made the pixie clamber on top of him!

‘You were fabulous last night,’ she whispered, rubbing herself against his naked skin. ‘After the fourth time, Marcus Cornelius, I thought you’d be too exhausted ever to rise to the occasion again. But—’ she giggled ‘—I see I’m mistaken.’

To his horror, Angelina was right. Mother of Tarquin, how
could
he? How could he have taken her to Milo’s tavern, fortified himself with a jug of wine before dumping her, then allowed himself to get so out of his skull that he ends up here.
Again.

‘That feels so-o-o good, darling.’

What the hell happened after him taking her to Milo’s and breaking off the relationship?

‘Oh, Marcus. Yes.’

Apart from the obvious, that is, and for a moment he experienced a brief surge of something that might have been pride. (Four times? Well, well, well!) But his performance wasn’t the issue here. It was the fact that he couldn’t
remember
it. In fact, he didn’t even remember leaving the tavern. Was he really so stressed about the Halcyon Rapist that it was unbalancing his mind? Or did the answer lie closer to home? In the jugs of wine he had taken to consuming, in an effort to blot out the man he had sent to the lions?

Orbilio licked his lips. They were dry, his tongue felt furred, and there was a sour taste in his mouth.
So that’s what a conscience tastes
like…

He made a vow. No more wine. Ever.

And all the while, those damn castanets behind his eyes—

‘Do you like that?’ Angelina moaned, wriggling on top of him.

Like it? It was driving him wild. ‘I have an appointment,’ he rasped.

‘Break it, darling.’

‘I can’t,’ he said, pushing her away, and he wasn’t referring to his fictitious appointment. ‘I’m sorry, Angelina, I just can’t.’

Kneeling on the bed, the pixie pouted. ‘You won’t stand me up again tonight, will you?’

Orbilio draped his toga roughly over his tunic and hauled on his boots. ‘No,’ he said solemnly. ‘You have my word, Angelina. I’ll call on you tonight, after work.’

This time, he would cut the thing dead once and for all.

*

Dymas was waiting for him in his own atrium, where Orbilio’s steward had provided hospitality in the form of warm tansy wine and dried figs. Rain dripped through the aperture in the roof into the atrium pool via a series of shiny copper waterspouts. Dymas counted the drips. He was not a young man—late thirties and his hair was thinning—and he wasn’t particularly big, but he was strong. Greek-born and a blacksmith by trade, he had retained both native cunning and strength. The instant Orbilio returned, he was off the couch and grabbing his cloak.

‘Bloody fuck, mate, where the hell have you been? All Hades has broken loose and we couldn’t find you any place.’

Marcus had only worked with Dymas twice before, the last occasion, of course, being on the rapes last year. He hadn’t enjoyed either mission, frankly, finding the Greek truculent and temperamental, prone to sulks interspersed with bouts of sullen, protracted silences. Small wonder Dymas tended to work alone. No one had ever seen him with a woman. But credit where it’s due, the man was thorough. Certainly, on the two cases in which he’d been seconded to Orbilio. And loners, in the Security Police, invariably achieved more than team players.

‘I had another case to attend to,’ he lied, swiping his wet hair out of his face.

‘Well, if you were hoping to freshen up, tough luck, mate. The boss wants to see us. Like an hour and a half ago.’

Marcus felt a punch to his stomach. ‘Another rape?’

‘Number three,’ Dymas confirmed. ‘And the boss is going ballistic.’

Stomach churning, Marcus stared at the bust of his father glowering censoriously down from his podium.
That’s another gel you’ve failed, m’boy. Another life you’ve ruined, because you cocked up.
The atrium swam. He was glad to close the door on it behind him.

‘Where did it happen?’ he asked thickly.

‘Near the river.’ Dymas kept his eyes to the ground to avoid stepping in the puddles. Not that he ever looked up when he walked. ‘Same modus operandi as before. Masked attacker drags his victim off the street, strips her clothes off with a knife, forces her to have oral sex with him, then beats her to a pulp, buggers her senseless and dumps her in the filth on the middens.’

He might just as well have been talking about the weather or describing a handcart.

In his office, the Head of the Security Police was hopping up and down. Enough that the rapes had started again. Enough that he was looking at full-scale panic in the city right over the holiday period, a time of peace and goodwill and festivals which would bring every young woman in Rome on to the streets to be exposed to the beast who’s still stalking them. But that he, a man of such standing, should be kept waiting for nearly two hours by some
patrician
underling…

‘Wait outside,’ he told Dymas.

Dymas scowled. ‘This is my case, too, boss.’

‘Are you fucking deaf, man?
Outside.
And you.’ His boss’s gaze ranged over the tunic Orbilio had been wearing yesterday, the stubble on his chin. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

Marcus tugged at his earlobe. ‘I don’t honestly know, sir.’

‘Well, there’s a young kid called Deva who does fucking know, and if you’d been there like you should, at the scene of the fucking crime, you’d have seen for yourself. Seventeen years old today, on her way to her mother’s, and now the poor cow can’t even speak. Just clutches some bit of red cloth to her breast, shouting, “My baby, my baby,” and that is not fucking good enough.’

‘No, sir, it isn’t— Did you say Deva? The Damascan girl from over the river?’

‘You know her?’

‘Not exactly, but—’ He began to pace the office. ‘I met her when I interviewed her husband last summer. He’s a herbalist, and I was picking his brains over that crackpot who tried to poison the Emperor by putting what turned out to be monkshood in the sweetmeats.’

Two civil servants and a slave died that day. A high price to pay for filching Imperial sweeties.

The Head of the Security Police pursed his thick lips and sat down behind his desk. The silence alone should have been enough to set alarm bells ringing, but Orbilio couldn’t rid himself of the haunting image of a young woman clutching her favoured red fringed shawl and mourning a baby that she might now never have.

‘You realize I have the Emperor’s people on my back, don’t you?’ his boss snarled. ‘You don’t need me to draw diagrams, Orbilio. Thanks to your fuck-up, they blame
me
for this unit turning into a laughing stock that can’t tell a copycat crime from its elbow. Well, sonny boy, let me tell you, I don’t propose to lose my job over your stupidity. I’ve worked too bloody hard to get my arse on this chair and if it’s going anywhere, my arse, it’s going bloody upwards, you hear?’

Orbilio stopped pacing. ‘Are you firing me?’

‘The hell I am!’ A fat fist pounded the desk. ‘If I were to sack you now, there’d still be another rape tomorrow and with the head of the original investigating team out of the loop, how does that make me look? Use your bloody noodle.’

‘You’ve lost me, sir. What are you saying?’

His boss sighed. ‘What I’m saying, Orbilio, is that I’m putting Dymas in charge of this investigation.’

‘You’re not serious?’

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you fancy the idea of reporting to a low-born dago blacksmith’s son?’

Sometimes his boss was truly beneath contempt. ‘You want results, the Emperor wants results and believe it or not, sir, I want results as well.’ Generations of breeding kept his voice level. ‘Give me another forty-eight hours.’

‘No.’

‘Twenty-four, then.’

‘What the fuck will that prove? You sent an innocent man to his death, for Croesussakes.’

‘Twenty-four hours should prove whether this is a copycat or otherwise.’

‘You’re pissing in the dark, Orbilio.’

Bloody right. ‘Let’s not lose sight of the fact that we got a confession,’ he said carefully. ‘We found the mask under the rapist’s bed—’

‘
Alleged
rapist’s bed.’

‘—his clothes stank of aniseed, plus some of the victims were also able to identify the man as their attacker.’

‘Exactly why I’m taking you off the case.’ His boss tapped the piles of scrolls on his desk with an irritated finger. ‘This bears all the hallmarks of the original rapes, and I ought to know, because while I was waiting for your high-and-mightyship to condescend to pay me a call this morning, I had plenty of time to read through the bloody files.’

Orbilio leafed through the scrolls. ‘Where did these come from?’

This was the Security Police, for heaven’s sake. Only current cases were ever retained, everything else was destroyed, Imperial policy. Too sensitive by far to keep on file. In the wrong hands, went the theory, stuff like this could destabilize the Empire.

His boss smiled the sort of smile that curdled fresh milk. ‘Your superior officer kept them.’

‘Dymas
?’

‘Obviously he had reservations at the time.’ He folded his hands on the table and stared at his patrician subordinate for at least two full minutes. ‘You said you knew the girl who was raped this morning.’

‘Deva? Sort of. Why?’

His boss reached across to a scroll tied in blue ribbon on the table behind him. ‘On the morning before the tribunes were sworn in, the first attack took place just behind the Temple of Lucina on the Esquiline Hill.’ He looked up. ‘That’s not far from where you live, is it?’

Marcus shrugged. ‘A hundred yards, I suppose.’ He wished he
kn
ew where this was leading.

‘And yesterday morning, a girl called Blandina was dragged off Armoury Row.’

Orbilio waited for some kind of explanation, but his boss merely re-rolled the parchment and replaced it on the table behind him. ‘So?’ he prompted.

His boss leaned back in his chair and considered the young man standing in front of him. Twenty-six years old, handsome as hell, muscles like armour, wanted for nothing his entire life. Hell, the family had even bought him a commission in the fucking army.

‘So, nothing,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But it’s interesting that she happened to be the daughter of the man who supplies you with your harnesses. Don’t you think?’