The Lydian Baker (Marcus Corvinus Book 4)

by David Wishart

  'Mmm.' Perilla sipped her fruit juice.

  'In any case, what it doesn't explain is what went on at the beach house when Smaragdus had his accident. The guy knew he was in trouble, sure he did, or he wouldn't have been so desperate to get away. So what trouble was he in?'

  'You say he knew Melanthus by sight. Perhaps if he saw him coming and recognised him he put two and two together.'

  'That still doesn't make sense, Perilla. We keep coming back to the fact that Melanthus – or Eutyches, anyway – already had the statue. He was home and dry, Smaragdus was out in the cold and there was no reason for Melanthus to talk to him. Unless...' I stopped.

  'Marcus? What's wrong?'

  Oh, Jupiter! Jupiter Best and Greatest! There was only one unless that I could see, but that was a beaut. And it explained everything: why Smaragdus had left his digs before Argaius had died, how Harpalus had known the Baker was gone, and what had happened at the beach hut.

  'Marcus?' Perilla tugged at my sleeve.

  I glanced up at the sun. Hell. It was too late, now, for another trip to the Piraeus, and anyway if I stood Meton up again the guy would poison the soufflé. It would have to be tomorrow, early. 'Uh...sorry, lady. I was wool-gathering.'

  'Nonsense. You've thought of something, haven't you?'

  'Yeah.' I took a contented swallow of wine. 'I know now why Smaragdus was hiding out at the beach hut. And why Melanthus needed to talk to him.'

  16.

  I stopped off at the Piraeus Gate coach rank in case Dida had turned up, but there was still no sign of him. This looked bad. Sure, it might be coincidence, but I reckoned that with Melanthus and his coachman both going missing at the same time a bit of paranoia was justified. However, there was nothing else I could do but repeat the promise to make it worth the guy's while to contact me and then head on down the Hamaxitos to the Piraeus and Harpalus's bird shop.

  Behind the counter was a fat guy with dandruffy hair and a guano- specked tunic. Obviously the owner in person. So where was Harpalus? Forget simple paranoia. The way people were disappearing I must've had every god in the pantheon lined up against me.

  'Good morning, lord.' The fat guy smiled greasily. 'How can I help you?'

  'Harpalus around?' I said.

  The smile faded to nothing. 'He's out. Private business.'

  'Is that so?' I leaned on the counter between two disapproving cages of pigeons. Great. Even the stock was glaring at me. 'You happen to know where he's gone?'

  'You're the Roman, right? The one who bought the parrot?'

  'Nestor? Sure.'

  'How's he settling in?'

  The tone suggested that the guy knew all about Nestor's sunny disposition and couldn't have wished him a better home. Up yours, pal, I thought, and gave him my best smile.

  'Very well, as it happens,' I said. 'In fact, he's one of the family already. Marvellous with children, and my white-haired old grandmother simply dotes on him. They talk together for hours.'

  The guy gave me a stare like he wasn't sure whether I was serious or not. I smiled back and waited.

  'Harpalus is burning that fancy friend of his,' he said at last. 'Over at the graveyard outside the City Gate.'

  Yeah, I should've thought of the funeral. Harpalus would've collected Smaragdus yesterday evening and arranged the burning for today. Not that there was much left of Smaragdus to burn.

  'The little bugger left me a note. Pinned it to the door.' The owner was glaring at me like he thought it was my fault. 'You can tell him from me he needn't bother coming back.'

  'I'll do that, pal.' I paused. 'By the way, I can see now where the parrot gets his temperament from. And given the choice between the two of you I'd take him any time.'

  That got me a grunt. I waved and left.

  . . .

  Okay, so it was back the way I'd come, up the Hamaxitos: the tombs lined the main road to town, and I'd probably passed him without noticing. I got into the carriage and gave Lysias his new orders.

  A thread of smoke led me to the scrap of waste ground set well back from the road where the poorer Piraeans burned their dead. The funeral was over by the time I arrived. What there was of it. From the size of the ash- heap the pyre had been the cheapest going, and I'd have bet Harpalus was the only mourner. When I got out of the carriage he was washing the bones and stowing them in a plain clay urn. The undertaker and his men had already left.

  'Hey, Harpalus,' I said.

  He glanced up, then carried on with what he was doing.

  'Leave me alone,' he said.

  'I'm sorry.' I was. 'But we've got to talk.'

  'You may have to. I don't.' He put the lid on the urn with a bang.

  This was no time for indulging my finer feelings. 'Look, pal,' I said. 'It's either me or Eutyches's bunch. And that you wouldn't enjoy at all.'

  'Just forget it.' He left the wine jar where it was and picked up the urn. 'Let me go.'

  'Uh-uh.' I shook my head. 'You've got some explaining to do first. Like where you and Smaragdus stashed the Baker.'

  He stared. 'You're mad. Eutyches already has the statue.'

  'Oh, no he doesn't. He's still looking for it. Which is why Smaragdus died. And believe me, pal, you're next on his list.'

  He must've been expecting that because his eyes didn't flicker.

  'Look,’ he said, ‘I haven't the slightest idea where the Baker is. Now you can believe me or not, but just get the hell out of my life.'

  Yeah, well, it might be the truth at that; but if Harpalus genuinely didn't know then Smaragdus had. I'd bet my entire wine cellar to a pickled mushroom on that.

  'You won't have a life for me to get out of unless we talk now.' I pointed to the urn. 'That's all you'll get from Eutyches. And if you're on the level about not knowing then with nothing to trade it's a certainty.'

  'You think I care?' I'd shaken him, though. Maybe he was telling the truth.

  'Maybe so, maybe not. But you've got two options, and two only. One is to walk away from me in which case you're as dead as Smaragdus. The other is to go for a drive down to the harbour and let me arrange a passage for you on the first ship out to anywhere. Your choice. Only make it now.'

  When he still didn't speak I turned and walked off in the direction of the road. I'd gone about five steps before he said quietly: 'Very well, Corvinus. You win.'

  I waited for him to catch me up. When we got to the carriage I held the door open.

  'Right,' I said. 'We can have our talk on the way. Climb aboard.'

  'So. Smaragdus had got greedy and was pulling a fast one on his partner.' I stretched my legs out as we bumped along the Hamaxitos towards the town gate.

  Harpalus nodded wearily. He'd set the urn on the seat beside him and was cradling it in the crook of his arm. 'I told him it was a mistake, but he wouldn't listen. And while Argaius was conducting the negotiations he went to the cave and moved the treasure elsewhere.'

  'Just like that? He must've had help. He couldn't've managed the Baker on his own.'

  A shrug. 'I don't know anything about help. I wasn't involved.'

  'Come on, Harpalus!' I shifted irritably. 'You expect me to believe that?'

  'It's the truth, and like I said, you can accept it or not. The idea was his. He didn't want me to know, either where the original cave was or where he'd moved the statue to. He said the less I knew about it the safer it was for both of us.'

  'But when he moved the gold he was willing to trust a third party?' Gods, that made no sense at all! 'Who did he use?'

  'I don't know that either.' He glanced at my expression. 'I'm not lying. I was to be the go-between. With the customer.'

  'Eutyches?'

  'Whoever. I only knew his cut-off.'

  'A big guy?' I described Prince Charming. Harpalus nodded. 'You know his name?'

  'No. He never told me. And I only knew Eutyches's from Smaragdus. Just the name, no more. In case he got in touch.'

  Something was bugging me here; a question I should've
asked long ago but hadn't because others had crowded it out. Maybe now was the time. 'Smaragdus and his partner had two customers. Eutyches and my stepfather. We've always been up front, Eutyches hasn't. So why should Smaragdus go for Eutyches?'

  'You've said it yourself: you were up front. Eutyches didn't care who sold him the statue, or how things were arranged, so long as he got it. You might be different, you'd ask questions, and he couldn't take the risk.'

  Yeah. That fitted. And if Melanthus was Eutyches then it would be an added fillip to have put a Roman out of the running. 'So. After Smaragdus moved the treasure he hid out in his beach hut. Only at that point he wasn't hiding from Eutyches; he was hiding from Argaius.'

  'Yes. Until the new deal with Eutyches could be arranged and the money paid over. Then he and I would just disappear.' Harpalus's hand stroked the urn. 'Alexandria. Pergamum. Somewhere big. We'd have enough money to live like kings. Eutyches didn't know about the hut either, of course. Smaragdus wanted it that way, especially after Argaius died. Like I say, as far as Eutyches was concerned I was to be the know-nothing middleman who'd bring the two together when I was satisfied everything was okay.'

  'So if you usually dealt with Prince Charming why assume that I'd come in his place?'

  'Because I thought we'd gone beyond the cut-off stage. You could even be Eutyches in person, for all I knew.'

  'But Smaragdus...' I stopped. I'd been about to say that Smaragdus would know I wasn't Eutyches, but of course the two had never met. So until I'd mentioned my name, Smaragdus wouldn't've known who the hell I was, only that I'd made the approach through Harpalus. Which explained why he'd come out with a piece of two-by-four in his hand: I'd broken the rules; worse, it meant all his careful arrangements were screwed up from there on in. Only then, of course, he'd realised that he'd made a mistake and I didn't come from Eutyches at all.

  'Smaragdus what?' Harpalus said.

  'Forget it, it doesn't matter. So Eutyches didn't know the statue had been moved?'

  'No. There was no reason to tell him. And of course it was Argaius's bad luck that when Eutyches tried to cut corners he only knew the original location. I was sorry about that. So was Smaragdus. He never meant his partner to be hurt. Not physically, anyway.'

  Yeah. The sob stuff aside, bad luck was putting it mildly: when he found the cave empty Melanthus must've been fit to be tied, and it had sealed Argaius's death warrant. 'You took a hell of a risk carrying on with Eutyches, didn't you, pal?' I said. 'Especially after Argaius was murdered.'

  Harpalus shrugged. 'What could we do? I told you, people like us have to work things out as best we can. Life's a risk; you have to trust someone, even if you don't trust them. If you see what I mean.'

  You have to trust someone. Sure. Only the poor boobs had to choose Melanthus, and now one of them was a handful of ashes while the other was running for his life with nothing to show for it but the clothes he stood up in. Well, that was the way things worked, I supposed. I glanced out of the carriage window. We were almost at the square before the shrine of Zeus the Saviour. Not far now to Market Quay and the boats.

  'So to recap,' I said. 'Smaragdus was camped out at the beach hut waiting for Eutyches to make contact through you. At which point I turn up and Smaragdus puts on his innocent act by taking me to the original cave.' A thought tugged at me, and I frowned: there was something screwy here... Ah, leave it. 'Only I'd been followed by Prince Charming, or maybe you had earlier, and Eutyches knew where Smaragdus was holed up after all. All he had to do was have his strongarm boy sit tight until Smaragdus got back and then repeat the tactics he'd used with Argaius. Smaragdus was no fool. He started packing; not to go back to his old room like I'd thought, but to get the hell out to another bolthole. Because if I'd managed to find out where he was then Eutyches could as well.'

  Harpalus nodded. 'We had a fallback location, a cave on Acte. I'd wanted to use it all along, but Smaragdus said no. He said if he couldn't live like a proper human being at least he wasn't going to live like an animal. The beach hut was bad enough.'

  'Right. So knowing his hidey-hole wasn't so safe any more he'd be watching out this time. Or maybe Prince Charming didn't care how much noise he made and Smaragdus heard him coming. Anyway, he spotted him, guessed what he wanted and made a break for it in the only direction possible. The guy chased him, and the rest we know.'

  'Yes.' Harpalus was staring out the window at the bulk of the Shrine of Zeus. I could smell the stink now of the mud at the edge of the Grand Harbour, and see the tops of the masts. 'That was probably how it happened. It certainly makes sense. But we were so close. So close!'

  Even knowing what I knew, I could still feel sorry for him. Whatever you thought of Smaragdus, Harpalus was no criminal. And I even had some sympathy left over for Smaragdus.

  'One thing it doesn't explain,' I said. 'The Ethiopian.'

  Harpalus turned in surprise. 'Who?'

  I'd been half talking to myself. 'You wouldn't know him. A big black guy who's been tailing me.' I frowned. 'Unless of course Eutyches had two henchmen waiting. One stayed behind to deal with Smaragdus, the other followed Lysias and the carriage round to the Aphrodisian Gate hoping to pick up the trail from that end.' Yeah, it made sense. As far as Melanthus knew, Smaragdus could've taken me to the real cave (there was that itch again! Shit!) and so I'd know where the Baker was stashed. Only that didn't work: by Melanthus's reckoning if Smaragdus had shown me the Baker he wouldn't have left me, however much he trusted me; and by this time the statue might be packed up and on its way to Rome. That had nothing to do with the problem of the Ethiopian, mind, but still...

  Ah, all this thinking was giving me a headache. Besides, we were almost at the gate in the precinct wall round Market Quay. I put my head through the window and told Lysias to drive up to the harbourmaster's office.

  Harpalus was in luck: winds permitting, there was a boat sailing next day for Rhodes. I didn't have the full passage money on me, but I was able to put down a decent deposit with the captain and promise to send a slave round with the balance as soon as I got home; luckily a Roman purple- striper's word is money in the bank. Not that it cost much: guys like Harpalus don't travel in the deckhouse, and the captain needed a part-time skivvy.

  'You want me to take care of that for you?' I indicated the urn.

  'No.' Harpalus shook his head. 'He may as well be buried in Rhodes as anywhere else.'

  'Yeah. Well.' I held out my hand. 'Good luck, pal. I'm sorry things didn't work out.'

  'Not your fault. I'm only sorry Smaragdus didn't stick to the original arrangement with Argaius. Half would've been better than this.' He stroked the urn. 'And I don't believe in curses, Corvinus, but that statue's caused nothing but trouble and death since they found it. I wish it had stayed lost.'

  'Uh-huh.' I slipped him the last two tetradrachs in my purse. 'You'll need some food for the trip. Get what you need here. I wouldn't go home again if I were you.'

  'Why should I want to go home?'

  There was no answer to that. I left him on the quay and went back to where Lysias was waiting with the carriage.

  17.

  Perilla was out at a public lecture in one of the Porches: on what, I just didn't want to know. I went through to the study and took Harpalus's passage money out of the strongbox.

  Bathyllus had followed me in with the obligatory wine jug.

  'Hey, little guy, tell Alexis I want to see him right away, okay?' I said.

  'Yes, sir.' He poured and handed me the cup. 'With or without the parrot, sir?'

  'Without. This is business.' I let the wine trickle past my tonsils. Beautiful. 'Oh, incidentally, tell Meton we'll be eating later than usual, when the mistress gets back.' Best to get these things clear: since the omelette affair relations with Meton had been uncomfortable as a high priest in a strip club.

  'Very well, sir.' Bathyllus hesitated. 'About tonight's dinner. Meton has a suggestion.'

  'Yeah?' I was interested: touchy at times though
he might be, unlike Mother's cook Meton was a culinary artist, and so to be encouraged.

  'Yes, sir. He has a recipe for braised flamingo which he says he could adapt, if you so wish. He seemed quite keen to try it.'

  'Yum! Sounds great!' I paused. 'Hang on, sunshine. As you were. "Adapt"? Adapt to what?' Silence. The penny dropped. 'Look, just go away, Bathyllus. And make it clear to Meton that parrots are off the menu. Permanently. You get that?'

  'Yes, sir. Just passing the message on, sir. But the bird did bite him this morning.'

  'Is that right?' I grinned: maybe Nestor was showing signs of improvement after all. A certain selectivity, at least. 'Give the bastard my condolences.'

  'Certainly, sir. I'm sure he'll be very gratified.' Bathyllus sniffed and closed the door carefully behind him.

  Business. I bagged Harpalus's passage money and locked the safe. Well, at least by this time tomorrow he'd be on his way to Rhodes. I was glad of that: when I'd warned him he was in danger of ending up in an urn I hadn't been exaggerating, and I didn't want any more corpses on my conscience. Anyway, the guy deserved a break.

  Someone knocked on the door. Alexis. I gave him the money and his instructions.

  'So how's Nestor's training going?' I said.

  'Not bad, sir.'

  'That wasn't the impression I got, pal.'

  'He's a quick learner. It's just that he can be' - he hesitated - 'difficult.'

  I grinned. Difficult. Yeah, well, that was one word. 'I hear he bit Meton.'

  'Only slightly, sir. And it wasn't altogether Nestor's fault.'

  'That so?'

  'Meton was trying to force-feed him almond ginger stuffing, sir. The ginger was all right but Nestor's not very fond of almonds.'

  'I see.' Almond ginger stuffing, eh? There ain't nothing more single-minded than an experimental chef. Still, for Nestor it could've been worse: he was lucky Meton's a top-end man. 'Maybe you'd better keep the bird out of the kitchen from now on, okay?'