by Marilyn Todd
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.’
C
laudia 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.
‘Do have another glass of wine—you have no idea how I’ve longed for an appreciative audience,’ Lais was saying.
Claudia glanced at the door, guarded by the massive Oriental in his leather vest and kilt, feet solidly apart, hands across his chest. She did not like the gleam in his eye.
‘Efficient, isn’t he?’ Lais gloated.
Efficient. The word sent shivers down Claudia’s skin. Like a well-greased machine, Pul arranges for families to be evicted, men beaten up, property destroyed, he calmly tells Kamar who should die. Did Pul, she wondered, experience no flutterings of remorse when he brought food to the woman scheduled to die in Lais’ place? Was there the slightest nip of conscience when he put his hands around her throat and squeezed? And what skipped through his mind when he crept up behind Cal and snapped his neck like a dry twig?
Cold-blooded, cold-hearted, but Claudia felt a faint glimpse of comprehension. All men have a living to earn, even Pul. But Lais? Claudia swallowed her revulsion along with the wine. ‘Why?’ she asked simply.
With a short laugh, the hard-eyed, ravaged harpy indicated the rows of chests, embellished by glorious lamplight. Gold plate, gem-studded salvers, goblets, vases, silver pitchers twinkled back.
‘Tuder was a banker, a successful one at that, but he also was a miser.’ She let out her deep, throaty chuckle. ‘And in that he was most successful, too. Which is why he purchased an island isolated from virtually every living soul and built himself this hidden chamber. Day after day he spent closeted in here, feasting his eyes on the proceeds of his business, running his fat hands over their contours, yet what of his wife of thirty-six years? What of the wife who had buried three sons all aged under five? The first I knew of our move to this hellhole was when the wagons arrived to transport us from Rome.’
For one brief second, Claudia was almost tempted to feel sorry for her.
‘Faced with a choice, twenty years of obscurity against the chance of fulfilling a vocation, what would you do?’
A ball of lead settled in Claudia’s stomach. ‘I’d get rid of my husband,’ she said quietly, ‘with the aid of a greedy physician.’
‘Exactly.’ When Lais clapped her hands, Claudia counted seven liver spots. ‘After that he kept on doing my bidding, for which he received ample rewards, with the choice of keeping quiet—or me screaming to the world that he murdered my dear, departed husband. And who would be believed in this scenario? A sexual pervert or the faithful wife?’
‘Pervert?’
‘You didn’t know about his predilection for boys? Oh, my, he likes them tender, does Kamar.”
Fire shot through Claudia’s veins. Janus, Croesus, she’d had him in her power, with ample hemlock in his dispensary. Instead, she didn’t just fall into his honeyed trap, she pinched her nose and jumped in. Small surprise he led her here. When she’d given the game away by saying it was Tarraco she was after, he’d simply handed her over to Lais.
Idly, she wondered what expression would be on his face when he was chained in the arena with a pack of snarling, starving dogs and a warm glow spread over her. Then Claudia recalled what Lais had said earlier and snapped out of her reverie.
‘What vocation?’ she asked. Pretending to smooth her skirt as she crossed her legs, she felt for the thin-bladed knife. Juno be praised, it was still there.
‘Have you ever been in the position where you know there is something missing in your life, but have never known what that gap might represent?’ Lais moved across the room, draped herself across a blue upholstered couch and began to toy with the arm carved in a lion’s head. ‘When I was younger, I suspected it was children, my lost boys, but then we arrived here—’ she waved her hand around to indicate not just the villa, but the island ‘—and I knew. Just—’ she snapped her fingers ‘—like that, I understood my destiny was to be Queen of the Lake.’
‘Ex-cuse me?’
Lais smiled a patronizing smile. ‘Let me simplify it for you. You see, for so long, Plasimene, like mys
elf, had been spiritually abandoned. Suddenly here was my chance to redress the balance. Using Tuder’s precious fortune, I was able to start building up my empire—indeed, Pul reports that in another three months, maybe four, the entire town and its environs will belong to me.’
‘Apart from Atlantis.’
Lais shrugged. ‘That shouldn’t take longer than another six or seven weeks to acquire once I have the rest, and I’m practically there. I can see from your face, you’re impressed?’
Your majesty! But maybe this was Claudia’s chance? ‘Who couldn’t be overwhelmed?’ she gushed. ‘And your…’ she forced herself to spit it out. ‘Your people?’
‘Will revere and respect me,’ Lais said, stretching out along the couch. ‘Until Atlantis is under my control, I shall naturally refrain from announcing myself, but you’ll find I shall rule my subjects fairly, I shall be just in quarrels, generous in famine, they will have no cause for complaint.’
Lucky them. ‘And what of the killings which take place under Kamar’s medicinal aegis? It’s tantamount to a murder factory up there.’
‘Don’t be so suburban,’ Lais snorted. ‘No one dies who doesn’t deserve it.’ Her face softened. ‘Look upon them as dead wood, and you’ll understand. In life these people serve no useful purpose, whereas in death, whether into money, business or marriage, so many others are made free. I am merely performing a service.’
Claudia thought of a woman she’d never even met. The woman who kept cats. Twelve of them, strangled before their mistress had her first luxurious massage in Atlantis…
She thought of a silversmith. The woman in the mudbath. The orphan killed in the hills.
She thought of Cal. Vibrant, laughing, walking the tightrope between danger and fun. She didn’t know which way he’d end up living his life…but the choice should have been his to make, not Lais’. Whoever possesses the gold rules. Not any more, they don’t. Not any more. People have families. They have feelings. You can’t prune them like old trees.
