Scandal Takes a Holiday Page 20

  Calmer now, Helena became less unresponsive in my arms. So for a short time there were, after all, two lovers clinging together for comfort, in that wild place.

  XL

  We watched the recovery of the chariot, which was manhandled up to the road and then fixed to the vigiles’ cart. Its Hellenic ornament looked tawdry and cheap, now the paintwork was battered. Harness bells jingled forlornly. While its rescue was accomplished, the body of Theopompus was taken up too. Fusculus appeared, having found no sign of any other passengers.

  So we all trekked back to Ostia. I checked for news at the station house with Petro and Fusculus. In view of the kidnap connection, Rubella had assumed command. Petro looked annoyed, and became even more friendly to me behind Rubella’s back.

  “The girl is alive. The father came in,” announced Rubella. “She was returned to him late last night. He answered the door and she was pushed indoors, screaming, wrapped up tight in a cloak. Posidonius just grabbed her; he claims he never saw who brought her. She’s not telling him anything.”

  We listened. We were all tired, windblown, and depressed. Rubella had merely sat at the patrol house letting the evidence come to him. Now we were ready to let him take the initiative. “Somebody has to interview the daughter. Petronius Longus, can you get your wife here? The girl may be overawed; I think we should start with the kindly approach and a chaperone.”

  “Helena Justina knows Rhodope,” I suggested. “Helena is already here; she is waiting for me.” Petro shrugged; he was easy. Rubella went along with it.

  Fusculus sat outside the interview room with Posidonius. If there was anything more to extract from the father, Fusculus with his easygoing manner was likely to obtain it.

  Inside the room, we seated Rhodope on a chair. She looked boot-faced and uncooperative. Helena tried to reassure her, but the girl remained sullen. Either she had been frightened into silence or she now just hated everyone; she definitely did not intend to help us. Petronius, calm and understated, introduced himself and said he had to tell her we had found her lover dead. He first implied he thought it was a road accident, gently leading in to saying that Theopompus had been murdered. No reaction. Rubella pulled rank and tried the heavy stuff, but had no luck either. They told the girl she might be in danger herself; clearly she did not care.

  “I don’t know anything about it.” That was Rhodope’s constant refrain.

  Now Rubella decided to use the really heavy stuff. Gripping her by the arm, he marched the girl to a room where the troops had flung the bruised body of her lover. Curtly, he ordered her to look. To her credit, she managed not to scream or collapse, though she can never have seen a murdered corpse before. Tears she could not stifle ran down her cheeks, yet she braced herself as if defying us. She had lost everything. Nothing more could affect her. She stood stiffly, staring down at Theopompus, with her grand hopes all ruined. This was a very young girl, who had gone out of her depth through no real fault of her own; harassing her made the rest of us feel grimy.

  Her father appeared in the doorway. Shocked, Posidonius recoiled from the corpse and took his daughter in his arms. He sheltered her and perhaps she wept then; we could no longer see her face.

  Helena was furious with Rubella, and she told him what she thought. In the end the vigiles had to say that Rhodope could go.

  First, there was a brief coda. Helena looked after Rhodope while the father was reinterviewed by Rubella, asking questions about the vigilante group. Posidonius said his friends, including Geminus, were staying together down by the port. Rubella sent men to bring them in. I stuck around, in case I had to bail my father. It was more than he deserved from me; my mood darkened.

  Posidonius and his bereft child had gone. Helena came to see Rubella.

  “Tribune, I managed to make Rhodope say something, while you were speaking to her father.” If Rubella was riled, he forced himself to hide it. He needed the details. Helena reported coldly: “The couple were staying in a room near the Temple of Isis. Men came suddenly last night and told them they would have to part. Theopompus was hit, to keep him quiet, then he was dragged out of the house—he must have known what lay in store for him. Rhodope was simply bundled up and returned, unharmed, to her father.”

  “Well, that’s what we thought,” said Rubella, seeking to escape.

  Helena insisted on making him hear everything. “This is what you don’t know: Rhodope was insistent that Theopompus knew the men who took him.”

  “So they were not her father’s friends from Rome?”

  “You must decide that,” Helena replied quietly.

  Even though Rhodope’s statement put them in the clear, Rubella kept the Emporium cronies at the patrol house for a long time. They were brought in, grumbling and truculent. He himself grilled them individually. You could call it being thorough and unrushed—or wasting time.

  I was not allowed to attend any interviews, but I eavesdropped from outside. They all said the same. Men of my father’s age and temperament know how to fix an alibi.

  According to Pa, who was the last to be interrogated, it was all innocent: “We never tracked the bastard down, and that’s a fact.”

  “What would you have done to him, had you caught him?” Rubella asked sarcastically.

  “Explained that he should look elsewhere for love,” smirked Pa. “Posidonius was planning to give him a big payoff—though we all thought that was a big mistake.”

  “You should have known better. You could all have ended up battered to death at the saltpans!” Rubella stormed, at his most pompous.

  “Is that what happened to the lad?” Pa asked meekly. “Not nice!” Then I heard my father harden his tone. “We didn’t do it—and this is what proves it: we wouldn’t have left the body where a bunch of nosy passersby would find him straightaway!”

  That made some sense.

  Rubella kicked him out. As we trundled out of the patrol house, I heard Rubella commanding tetchily: “Round up the usual suspects!”

  “Sir, we only just got here on the Ides,” Fusculus protested. It was dusk now, and nobody who went to the saltpans had had lunch. “We’re new boys and don’t know who is who in Ostia—”

  “The Cilicians,” Rubella enlightened him. “You’ll find them all named on the ‘Cilician pirates’ watch list.”

  So there was a list. And Rubella had just confirmed that the vigiles saw Cilicians as still involved in piracy.

  XLI

  I would have liked to see the roundup, but I had the next best thing: Petronius would tell me later about it. I went to dinner at his house.

  By the time I arrived, having gathered up my family, Pa was there as well. He had decided to move in and lumber Maia and Petro with his presence. The other friends of Posidonius were going back to Rome, their task done—or at least, rendered unnecessary by Theopompus’ attackers.

  Maia looked momentarily flustered by the sudden influx. She was embarrassed because Privatus, who owned the house, was making one of his visits. She could hardly object if he wanted to inspect his new statue installation—the weeing Dionysus, now positioned on a new plinth in a garden pond—but although Privatus always assured them that they were welcome to treat the place as their own, and urged them to entertain as much as they liked, Maia shared my reluctance to be under too much obligation.

  “We could all go out to eat—”

  “No, we won’t,” decided Pa. “Let the builder give us a treat!” He had still not recovered from having a new bathhouse built. I was only surprised he did not immediately invite all of Posidonius’ other friends to call in for refreshments before they hit the road. He would have done it, if he had thought of it.

  Winking at Maia, I went to talk to the contractor myself, as a polite gesture. All I could think of was to mention that I had been impressed by the display put on by the booted ranks in the Forum yesterday.

  “Why thanks, Falco! Our lads always give a good show.” The man with the strands of hair raked over his bald patch p
ositively preened. I had found him adjusting the pressure in his wine god’s outlet pipe. He was wearing a particularly obnoxious tunic with a bad shine on the nap, and was obviously sneering at the less impressive display by the Rome vigiles; I was sorry I had volunteered to make friendly overtures. “How’s your search?” he inquired of me. “You were telling me last time about your missing scribe?”

  “Still missing.”

  “How does this look?” He was still fiddling with the fountain waterworks.

  “His kidneys are in fine fettle—but I’m inclined to say, the effect is a bit diuretic.”

  “Has something terrible happened to him?”

  “Your Dionysus?—Oh, my scribe. It seems likely.”

  “But you’re no closer to solving it?” Privatus seemed very keen to point that out.

  Gritting my teeth, I found myself retaliating. “By the way, is it some of your boot ranks who set up that phony vigiles patrol house by the Temple of Hercules?” Privatus looked startled. “Better tell them the game’s up,” I said gently. “Brunnus may have been relaxed about it, but Marcus Rubella is very hot on scams. It’s not just time for your boys to move on, Privatus—it’s time to close their bribery shop down.”

  “I don’t think I like what you’re saying, Falco.”

  “I don’t like it either,” I commiserated. “One thing I have found out about Diocles is that his aunt died in a house fire, needlessly. Apparently Diocles had gone for help to your fake group. All the local people know better of course, but he was from Rome. He must have really believed that if an alarm was raised, they would come running.”

  Privatus was listening now. He was like a wound-up automaton, moving slightly from one foot to the other, full of pent energy, ready to dart into action. But there was nothing he could do.

  I carried on with the torment. “Of course now I’ve recognized them as your boot-boys, it could raise the whole issue of the builders’ role in firefighting …” Privatus assumed the utterly reasonable gaze which contractors use to delude complaining clients. I expected him to talk about suppliers having let him down despite incredible efforts on his part. Or to blame the weather.

  “What evidence do you have that we let this man down, Falco?”

  “Enough,” I assured him. “It’s been a year now, hasn’t it? And as you see, the affair of the scribe’s aunt simply will not go away.” I slapped him on the shoulder. “Of course your guild is extremely powerful; I’m sure you can survive a negligence claim, should it happen. Though with Diocles missing, who is there to claim? But the Emperor may hear about what happened. He will be sent reports on how your guild operates … Did you know that the scribe’s aunt was an imperial freedwoman?” Vestina’s time at the Palace would have predated the current Flavian dynasty, but I failed to mention that. Privatus knew he must keep smiling. I had him on the run; I left him to squirm.

  “By the way, Privatus, I don’t like the look of that outflow. I think your wine god needs a good doctor to squeeze his prostate.”

  Privatus did not join us for dinner.

  Petronius came in after we had finished. While Maia produced a foodbowl she had kept for him, he told me that every Cilician with a name known to the vigiles was now residing in custody. It was quite a large number. Rubella was in his element processing them; Fusculus, still on duty, was deeply unhappy; soon, they would have to call in caterers to supply gruel for the prisoners, but there was little hope of Fusculus himself getting a meal tonight. Petro’s chubby deputy already had a rumbling stomach.

  “I can see the logistics are not easy.” I smiled. “I bet Rubella himself has a three-course snack with a red wine chaser hidden in his office … Did the Cilicians come quietly?”

  With a wry smile back, Petro nodded. “They are all farmers nowadays, Marcus, my boy. Farmers are model citizens. You should know that. You’re half rural.”

  “Nothing odd about me. All good Romans have country cousins—you included.”

  “None of us can match you for the weirdness of the cousins, though.”

  Petronius looked tired. He had had a long day, starting when he was called out to the saltpans. His skin looked stretched, his hair stuck up in untidy spikes, his eyes had a faraway stare. This did not seem the moment to confess that I had been taunting his landlord. He reached for wine, drinking fast, for numbness.

  “So who did you get?” I asked him. “Who are the stars on your Cilician watch list?”

  “Cratidas, Lygon, Damagoras—”

  “I thought the old fellow had no record?”

  “He does now. I put him on the list, after you discussed him.”

  “Oh it’s my fault! What about the negotiator, the so-called ‘Illyrian’?”

  “We still don’t know who he is. Rubella has to persuade a prisoner to tell him.”

  “No chance. It would amount to a confession.”

  “Quite.”

  Petronius was so weary, he just stared into space. Maia reached over and took his winecup from him gently, knowing that any moment he would nod off and drop it. He was almost asleep, or he would have stopped her taking the cup. Maia drained what was left. He shook his fist vaguely; my sister captured his hand and held it. The fond couple. So long as one or other of them was too exhausted to fight, they would survive together.

  I sat for a moment, thinking about the Illyrian. I did not rate that tale he told the kidnap victims, that he was an outsider, a neutral intermediary. He always handled the ransom money; he must have an umbilical cord straight to the gang. Maybe he was the ringleader.

  He would have heard by now that all of the others had been rounded up. I wondered how he would react. There was nothing he could do, except lie low in whatever lair he frequented. But he must be questioning whether the vigiles had serious evidence or had just made a hopeful pass. He would realize that he himself had never been identified or he would be in a cell now. In this situation, some villains would flee. I reckoned the Illyrian’s nerve would hold.

  “I keep wondering if it’s a pseudonym for Florius,” said Petro abruptly. He was so keen to capture this gangster of his, he saw Florius everywhere.

  “No, I reckon it’s my long-lost tricky brother Festus, returned from the dead.”

  “Festus!” Petro sat up in pretended horror. “Now you’re talking serious shit!”

  He slumped back, and we let him start nodding off again.

  Helena and I took our leave quietly. Helena, who was fond of Petronius, leaned over him and kissed his cheek; he smiled sleepily, acknowledging that he was too far gone to move.

  In the hallway, Maia was waiting with a bundle. “You left this!” she accused me, drawing in her crimson skirts in distaste. It was Diocles’ baggage. I had dumped the dirty laundry days beforehand, hoping that would be the last I saw of it. The house slaves had cleaned up the tunics, on the assumption that the garments belonged to their master; I peered at the results, but there was nothing I would be seen around town in. These looked like the clothes Diocles wore when he was disguising himself as some kind of laborer. There was a particularly vile slug-colored number. I told Maia she could give the lot to the slaves.

  Pa appeared. It was just like him to delay us at the wrong moment. “What did you think of old Fulvius?” he asked me.

  I yawned rudely. “I thought we went through that.”

  “What is he doing in Ostia?” Helena asked of Pa, as he held her cloak for her while she carried our sleeping daughter Favonia.

  “He came home. It’s allowed, even if you’re Fulvius.”

  “And was that story true about him going to Pessinus but catching the wrong boat?”

  “The way he tells it now, he was just shipwrecked on the way.”

  “So why ever was he going to Pessinus in the first place, Geminus? I looked it up—it’s right in the middle of Phrygia!”

  “Attis syndrome,” Pa replied, trying to be mysterious.

  Helena was unfazed. “You mean Fulvius was a follower of the cult of Cybele
?”

  “Well, Fulvius had a bit of a mixed-up personality …” In front of Helena, my father was now curiously shy. She glared until he told her what had always been rumored about my uncle. “Helena, this may shock you—we got used to it—but for a while, poor old Fulvius reckoned he wanted to be a woman.”

  “Being one of my uncles,” I said gently, “he had to go the whole crazy way.”

  Pa completed the story: “He left home to go and see the experts at the shrine of Cybele about removal of a certain body part …”

  “Castration?” demanded Helena clinically.

  Pa blinked. “I think he joined the navy instead.”

  “That’s hardly a solution to his problem!”

  “You don’t know sailors, sweetheart.”

  “No? What happened to the legend that sailors have wives in every port?”

  “They miss their wives when they are at sea.”

  Helena shook her head at Pa reprovingly. “So is Fulvius happy now?”

  “Happy?” Pa and I looked at each other. “Fulvius will never be happy,” I told Helena. “If he had succeeded in getting to Pessinus and cutting off his implement, for him it would only have been another problem.”

  “He would have spent the rest of his life regretting that he snipped his stick,” Pa agreed with me.

  Helena calmly wrapped the end of her cloak around the child in her arms and let the conversation drop.

  Helena and I set off back to our apartment. The outer wall of Privatus’ house still had my ropes and cleaning material beside it from when I was on watch. That would never have happened in Rome. I retrieved my bucket.

  At the old town gate, there were no lights in the upper room. I had forgotten to ask Petronius whether the woman who guarded the kidnap victims during their ordeal, Pullia, had been pulled in along with her lover Lygon. And if so, what had happened to the seven-year-old we met that day, the lad Zeno?

  We had arrived at the right moment to find out: Fusculus and a couple of his men clattered down to street level. They had taken in Pullia earlier, and had just finished searching the gatehouse.