A Body in the Bathhouse Read online

  I found it hard to envisage him actually designing plans. When he did it was a sure bet he would be so busy thinking up expensive decor, he would forget to include stairs.

  The team he had assembled was dominated by the decorative trades. Cyprianus (the clerk of works) and Magnus (the surveyor) pointed out in undertones the chief mosaicist, the landscape gardener, the chief fresco painter, and the marble mason before they got to anyone as sensible as a drains engineer, carpenter, stonemason, labor supervisors, or admin clerks. There were three of the latter, for tracking the program, cost control, and special ordering. Labor was divided between local and overseas, each with a man in charge.

  An obvious tribal dignitary, very proud of his torque, had cleared himself a substantial area right at the front. I nudged Magnus, who muttered, “The client’s representative has graced us with his hairy presence!”

  Pomponius had decided to bar me. He spoke in a superior accent that increased my loathing. “This meeting is for team members only.”

  Dark heads, bald heads, and the one crown of flowing ginger locks on the client’s representative all turned my way. They all knew I was there and had been waiting to see how Pomponius reacted.

  I stood up. “I’m Didius Falco.” Pomponius gave no sign of recognition. I had been told by the imperial secretariat in Rome that the project manager would be warned I was coming. Of course, Pomponius might wish to keep my role a secret so I could observe his site incognito. That would be too helpful.

  I was sure he had been sent a briefing. I could already deduce his irritation with correspondence from Rome. He was in charge; he would give no time to orders from above. Bureaucracy cramped his creativity. He would have glanced a the relevant memo, could not face the tricky issues, so forgot he ever read it. (Yes, I had previous experience of architects.)

  He gave me two options: to be sidelined—or to fight back. I could live with an enemy. “I’ll take it that my letter of authority has been misfiled here. I hope that is not indicative of how this project is run. Pomponius, I won’t delay you—I’ll spell out the situation to you when you’re free.”

  Polite but terse, I strode to the front. Apparently leaving, I positioned myself in full view of everyone. Before Pomponius could stop me, I addressed them: “You will learn this soon enough. My brief is direct from the Emperor. The scheme is behind time and over cost. Vespasian wants lines of communication cleared and the whole situation rationalized.” That implied what I was here to do, without using dangerous phrases like allocate blame or weed out incompetence. “I am not setting up a war camp. We are all here to do the same job: get the Great King’s palace built. As soon as I’m established on-site you will know where my office is—” That made it clear Pomponius had to give me one. “The door will always be open to anyone with something helpful to say—use the opportunity.”

  Now they knew that I was here—and that I felt I had more authority than Pomponius. I left them all to mutter about it.

  Right from the start, I had detected a bad atmosphere. The conflict was brewing before I spoke; it had nothing to do with my presence.

  With all the prominent team members trapped at their meeting, I decided to inspect the corpse of the dead roofer, Valla. Wondering how to find it, I was able to appreciate the site at a quiet moment. A laborer humping a basket of spoil glanced at me with mild curiosity. I asked him to show me around. He seemed completely incurious about my motives, but quite happy to take time off from his duties.

  “Well, you can see we’ve got the old house there, on the shore side—”

  “You’re pulling it down?”

  He cackled. “There’s a big row about that. Owner likes it. If he gets to keep it, we’ll have to raise all the floor levels.”

  “He won’t be happy when you start infilling his audience suite and he has concrete up to the ankles!”

  “He’s more unhappy with losing the building.”

  “So who says he can’t keep it?”

  “The architect.”

  “Pomponius? Isn’t his brief to provide what the client wants?”

  “Reckon he thinks the client ought to want what he’s told.”

  Some laborers are well-built specimens, their muscles and stamina suited to heaving stone and concrete. This was one of the wiry, pasty, strangely feeble-looking types. Perhaps he was happy on ladders. Or perhaps he simply started in the trade because his brother knew a foreman and fixed him up with work cleaning old bricks. Like most building workers, he obviously suffered with his back.

  “Did I hear you lost someone in an accident?”

  “Oh, Gaudius.” I had meant Valla.

  “What happened to Gaudia?”

  “Swiped with a plank, knocked backwards in a hole. Trench wall collapsed and he was crushed before we could dig him out. He was still alive when we started clawing at the fill. Some of the boys must have trod on him as they tried to help.”

  I shook my head. “Horrible!”

  “Then Dubnus. Dubnus got stewed one night. He ended up knifed in a bar at the canabae.” Canabae were semiofficial bothies, outside military forts normally; I knew them from my army days. There the locals were allowed to set up businesses servicing off-duty needs. This meant the flesh trade, with other offerings that ranged from dangerous drink to hideous souvenirs. It led to disease, birth pangs, and illegal marriage—though rarely death.

  “Life out here is tough?”

  “Oh, it’s all right.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Pisae.”

  “Liguria?”

  “A long time ago. I never like to settle down.” That could mean he was fleeing a ten-year-old charge for stealing ducks—or that he really was a rootless bird who liked his boots on the move.

  “Does the management treat you well?”

  “We have nice clean barracks and decent tuck—it’s fine, if you can stand living on top of nine other fellows, some of them right farters and one who cries in his sleep.”

  “Will you stay in Britain when the job’s completed?”

  “Not me, Legate! I’m for Italy as quick as you like. … Still, I always say that. Then I hear about some other scheme. There’s always pals going, and the pay sounds rich. I get lured off again.” He seemed content with this.

  “Would you say,” I asked narrowly, “that this site is any more dangerous than others where you have worked?”

  “Well, you lose a few fellows, it’s natural.”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve heard that outside the army, more men are killed on building sites than in any other trade.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “So what are the casualty numbers like?”

  He shrugged, no statistician. I bet this easygoing lamb was just as dozy over his pay.

  No, I didn’t. I bet he knew what he was owed to the nearest quarter as.

  “Know anybody on this site called Gloccus or Cotta?”

  He said no.

  XII

  DIRECTED BY the laborer, I found the infirmary where the body of the roofer killed that morning was supposed to lie. This was a small but efficient medical station, set among some site huts on the far side, with a young orderly, Alexas, who tended day-to-day cuts and sprains—of which there were many. I guessed his job also included identifying malingerers. They would have those on a regular basis too.

  Without surprise, he showed me the dead roofer. Valla had been a typical site navvy, ruddy-skinned and slightly paunchy. He probably liked a drop to drink, probably too often. His hands were rough. He smelled very slightly of old sweat; though that might only be that he rarely washed his tunic. He would smell worse soon if nobody paid to cremate him; my recent memories of the corpse under Pa’s hypocaust were revived unpleasantly.

  Valla lay on a stretcher, untended by mourners, or flute players, yet respected. A coarse cloth was pulled back with a gentle hand, ready for my inspection. The orderly stayed with me, as if he took as much care of this dead man as any screaming
ditcher with a sickle through his leg. They had standards on this site apparently.

  “Will Valla be given a funeral?”

  “It is normal,” said Alexas. “We get deaths on any project, some perfectly natural. Hearts give out. Disease takes a toll. The workers will have a whip-round, probably, but on a long-distance job, arrangements are made by management.”

  “You then ship the ashes home to relatives?” He looked embarrassed. “Too much trouble,” I agreed calmly. “I bet half the crew here have never named a blood relation to be contacted.”

  “They are supposed to,” I was assured earnestly.

  “Of course.” I tapped his chest. “Have you put your wife or your mother on a scroll?”

  Alexas began to speak, then paused and grinned back at me. “Now you mention it …”

  “I know. We all think anything bad will happen to some other man. … This one was mistaken, though.”

  The body was cool. I was told nobody saw what happened. It looked as though he came off cleanly; there were certainly no signs that he scraped his hands trying to regain a grip. There were no real marks on him. The fatal injuries must be internal. If anybody shoved the poor fellow to make him lose his footing, then they had left no evidence.

  “Where did this fall happen?”

  “The old house.”

  “It’s under scaffold, I know. Isn’t there some dispute over the building’s future?”

  “I’m not the man to ask,” Alexas said. “If they are demolishing any part of it, Valla would have been salvaging tiles.”

  “Hmm. So what’s your theory?”

  “What do you mean?” asked the orderly in genuine puzzlement.

  “Is this death suspicious?”

  “Of course not.”

  An informer gets used to being assured that stabbing and strangling are “merely accidents.” I had come to expect lies whenever I asked questions—but maybe a world still existed where people suffered ordinary mishaps.

  “Did he let out a cry, do you know, Alexas?”

  “Would that be important?”

  “If he was pushed, he might have protested. If he jumped or fell, he might have been more likely to stay silent.”

  “Shall I try to find out for you?”

  “Not worth it, thanks.” It would be inconclusive anyway. “The palace project has hardly started—but this is not your first fatality.”

  “It won’t be the last either.”

  “Can I see any of the other bodies?”

  He stared. “Of course not. Long gone in funeral pyres.”

  Suspicious as ever, I was wondering about a cover-up. “Did you inspect the bodies, Alexas?”

  “I saw some. ‘Inspect’ is too strong a word. We had a man felled by one of those end finials off roofs—” Alexas went out to his wound-dressing area, rooted under a counter, and produced the guilty party: it was a deadweight lump in the shape of a four-sided arch—a miniature tetrapylon—with a ball on top. He dumped it in my arms and I staggered slightly.

  “Yes, that could dent your skull!” I shed it fast, onto the shelf. “You keeping it for something?”

  “Make a nice bird hut.” Alexas grinned. People on building sites are always snaffling materials for their own domestic purposes. I noticed one of the four legs was stained. “Sparrows won’t notice a bit of blood, Falco!”

  “Hmm … Any other mishaps?”

  “A slab of uncut marble flattened someone. The marble supervisor was furious that it got damaged; he said it was priceless.”

  “A heartless swine?”

  “He reacted without thinking, I suppose. Then another man got swiped with a spade in a fight last week.”

  “Unusual?”

  “Unfortunately not. Construction sites are always full of tools—and hotheaded men who can wield them skillfully.”

  “I came across a spade killing in Rome before I left,” I said, again thinking of Stephanus being swiped and stuffed under Pa’s new mosaic.

  “I’ve seen plenty,” scoffed Alexas. “Ax deaths. Crane decapitations. Drownings, crushings, leg and arm amputations—”

  “All these have happened on the palace scheme?” I was horrified.

  “No, Falco. Some have happened. Others may yet.”

  “A man was stabbed, I hear? Knife fight. Drink involved.”

  “So I believe. I heard it happened in the town. The body was not brought here.” He was patient, but he thought me a time-waster.

  “Alexas, don’t misread me. I’m not looking for trouble. I just heard that the death count was too high here and it might be significant.”

  “Significant of what? Slack management?”

  Well, that would do as an explanation until I found a more precise definition. If that was ever possible.

  I left him to stanch a workman’s blood-dripping finger. I noticed that he carried out the task with calmness—just as he faced everything, including me jumping about looking for scandals.

  Now that I had talked to him, I thought I understood him. He was a man in his middle twenties, with drab coloring and a dull personality, who had found a niche as a specialist. He was happy. He seemed to know that in rougher areas of life he would have ended up a nobody. Some lucky chance had brought him to work at the routine end of medicine. He dispensed herbal remedies, stanched blood on straightforward wounds. Decided when a surgeon ought to be sent for. Listened to depressives with a helpful manner. Perhaps once in his career he would encounter a real maniac who needed tying down in a hurry. Perhaps his ignorance killed off a few patients, but that’s true of more doctors than doctors will admit. On the whole, society was the better for his existence and that knowledge pleased him.

  I suppose it pleased me to think that Alexas would regard it as a matter of professional competence to report any irregularity. I would find no clues otherwise. I would have to rely on Alexas for information on the past “accidents.”

  But the situation was covered now: I was here. That should reassure anyone who had the misfortune to be done in in murky circumstances!

  When I left the medical post, somebody was hanging about outside in a way that made me look twice at him. I felt he was intending to quiz Alexas about me. When I stared straight at him, he changed his mind. “You’re Falco?”

  “Can I help you?”

  “Lupus.”

  Broad-browed and squat-bodied, with a tan that said he had lived out of doors in all weathers for maybe forty years, he seemed familiar. “And your position is?”

  “Labor supervisor.”

  “Right!” He had been at the project meeting; Cyprianus pointed him out to me. “Local or foreign workers?”

  Lupus looked surprised that I knew there were two. I just waited. He muttered, “I do the overseas.”

  There were benches outside the bandage house for queuing patients. I sat down and encouraged Lupus to do likewise. “And where are you from yourself?”

  “Arsinöe.” It sounded like a hole at the back of a gully in the desert.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Egypt!” he said proudly. Reading my mind, the loyal sand flea added, “Yes, yes; it’s the place they call Crocodilopolis.”

  I took out my note-tablet and a stylus. “I need to talk to you. Was Valla one of your men? Gaudius? Or the man who died in the knife fight at the canabae?”

  “Valla, Dubnus, and Eporix were mine.”

  “Eporix?”

  “A roof feature fell on him.” The heavy finial Alexas showed me.

  “And tell me about the knife victim? That was Dubnus, wasn’t it?”

  “Big Gaul. A complete ass. How he managed not to get himself slaughtered twenty years before this, I’ll never know.”

  Lupus spoke matter-of-factly. I could accept that half his workforce were madhats. Almost certainly they came from poor backgrounds. They led a grueling life with few rewards. “Give me the picture.” I left off the stylus to look informal.

  “What do you want?”

 
“Background. How things work. What are the good and bad aspects?

  Where does your labor hail from? Are they happy? How do you feel yourself?”

  “They come from Italy mostly. Along the way a few Gauls are recruited. Spaniards. Eporix was one of my Hispanians. The fine trades get workers from the east or central Europe; they pick up on the orders for materials in the marble yards or wherever, and follow the carts looking for high wages or adventure.”

  “Are the wages good?”

  Lupus guffawed. “This is an imperial project, Falco. The men just think they will get special rates.”

  “Do you have trouble attracting labor?”

  “It’s a prestigious contract.”

  “One that will embarrass people in high places if it goes wrong!” I grinned. After a moment, Lupus grinned back. Dry lips parted slowly and reluctantly; he was a cautious partaker of mirth. Or just cautious. He was at least talking to me, but I did not fool myself. I could not expect his trust.

  “Yes, it’s rather public.” Lupus grimaced. “Otherwise, it may be bloody big, but it’s just domestic, isn’t it?”

  “Major engineering is more complex?”

  “The governor’s palace in Londinium has more clout. I wouldn’t say no to a transfer there.”

  “Any snobbery because the client is a Briton?”

  “I don’t care who he is. And I don’t let the men complain.”

  Most of his front teeth were missing. I wondered how many barroom fights accounted for his losses. He was of burly build. He looked capable of handling himself, and of splitting up any troublemakers.

  “So you have a whole crowd of migrant workers—scores, or hundreds even?” I asked, recalling him to the subject. Lupus nodded, confirming the larger number. “What sort of life is there for the men? They get basic accommodations?”

  “Temporary hutments close to the site.”

  “No privacy, no room to breathe.”

  “Worse than house-slaves at some luxury villas—but better than slaves in the mines.” Lupus shrugged.