'No, I won't! It's too bad, Falco. Some of us really try to do a decent job, but we're thwarted at every turn!' 'You're jumping to conclusions, friend. The wrong ones, I think.'
'How can that be?'
'Two reasons, Placidus. First, I never saw any of the letters, so this is just hearsay. And second, while the report from Cornelius was in the custody of Camillus Aelianus, maybe he let it be tampered with.'
'Tampered with? You mean, forgery?'
'I realise such words are odious to a conscientious man.' 'And Aelianus, you say?'
'Don't be misled by his sweet smile.'
'He's just a lad.'
'He's twenty-four. A careless age.'
'I heard he was some relative of yours?'
'He'll be my first child's uncle in a matter of weeks. That does not mean I shall trust him to rock the cradle unsupervised. He may have been a friend of the upright Cornelius, but he was also thick with the young Annaei - a disreputable crowd. Until they quarrelled over a situation on their fathers' estates, he rode with Quinctius Quadratus too. You know this group?'
'Young fellows, some away from home, loose in a provincial capital and looking for a riot. Too much drinking; a lot of athletics and hunting. They're just wanting thrills - particularly if they think their elders won't approve. Quadratus had them dabbling with the cult of Cybele -'
'That's an Eastern religion!'
'Brought here by the Carthaginians. There is a temple in Corduba. At one stage they were all going there, then Annaeus Maximus stopped his sons, the proconsul made some sour remarks to Cornelius, and it tailed off.'
'I expect they had second thoughts,' I said gravely, 'when they heard about the castration rites!'
Placidus laughed.
'Tell me more about Quadratus - he was out here last year?'
'His father sent him, allegedly to supervise their estate.'
'Including the eviction of tenants whose faces didn't fit!'
At my sharp retort, Placidus looked purse-lipped. 'There was some trouble, I gather.' He was being cautious. I signalled that I had heard the full story. He then said, with a bluntness that seemed uncharacteristic, 'Quinctius Quad- rams is the worst kind, Falco. We've had them all. We've had them rude and over-confident. We've had debauched young tyrants who live in the brothels. We've had fools who can't count, or spell, or compose a sentence in any language, let alone in correspondence-Greek. But when we heard that Quadratus had been wished on us as quaestor, those of us in the know nearly packed up and left.'
'What makes him so bad?'
'You can't pin him down. He looks as if he knows what he is doing. He has success written all over him, so it's pointless to complain. He is the sort the world loves - until he comes unstuck.'
'Which he may never do!'
'You understand the problem.'
'I've worked with a few golden boys.'
'High-flyers. Most have broken wings.'
'I like your style, Placidus. It's good to find a man who doesn't mind sticking his head over the rampart when everyone else is cowering. Or should I say, everyone except the proconsul? Despite everything, Quadratus is on hunting leave, you know.'
'I didn't! Well, that's one bright spot. His father's influence made the appointment look staged: the proconsul hates anything that looks off-colour.'
'Quadratus may have a black smudge against his name,' I hinted, remembering what the proconsul's clerks had told me about the dead soldiers in Dalmatia. 'Then a query about the family's role from Anacrites does not exactly help him maintain a glowing aura - somebody worked a flanker to be proud of,' I commented.
Placidus beamed. 'Terrible, isn't it?'
'Tragic! But you're stuck with him unless he or his father, or both if possible, can be discredited. That's my job. I'm part-way there. I can finger them as ringleaders when the cartel was being mooted last month in Rome - though I can't put up witnesses. Of course they were both on the spot. Even young Quadratus had finished his agricultural clearances and gone home again to triumph in the Senate elections and the jobs lottery.'
'Yes. He must have known Cornelius wanted to give up his post; he and his father somehow manoeuvred the quaestorship into their own hands. From here, it looks difficult to see why Rome fell for it.'
'The greybeards in the Curia would approve. The family had interests here. The Emperor may have assumed the proconsul would be delighted by his catch.'
'The proconsul soon told him otherwise. He was livid!' Placidus muttered. 'I heard about it from Cornelius.'
It sounded as though this proconsul liked breaking rules: he could spot a wrong move coming - and he was not afraid to dodge it. Not afraid of telling Vespasian he was annoyed, either. He was exceptional among men of his rank. No doubt he would live down to my expectations eventually, but at the moment it looked as though he was doing his job.
I returned to the main problem: 'I'll be fair to Aelianus. Assume he meant no harm. He arrived in Rome with the report for Anacrites, all full of the importance of his mission. He was bursting with it, and could simply have boasted to the wrong friend in Rome. He may not have realised the Quinctii were involved.'
Did Cornelius tell him what the sealed letter said?' Placidus scowled.
'Apparently Cornelius used some discretion. Of course that only excited the lad's curiosity; Aelianus confessed to me he read the report.'
Placidus was raging again: 'Oh, I despair of these young men!'
I smiled, though it took an effort. Pedants irritate me. 'At risk of sounding like a ghastly old republican grandfather, discipline and ethics are not requirements for the cursus honorem nowadays ... With or without the connivance of Aelianus, someone altered the report. Even with that done, they knew Anacrites would be taking it further. They decided to stop him. The results were disastrous. Somebody killed the agent who was on surveillance when the oil producers came to Rome - and they made a brutal attack on Anacrites too.'
'Dear gods! Is Anacrites dead?'
'I don't know. But it was a serious misjudgement. It drew attention to the plot, rather than burying it. The investigation wasn't stopped, and won't be now.'
'If they had kept their heads,' Placidus philosophised, 'nobody could have proved anything. Inertia would set in. Cornelius has left; Quadratus is installed. He can't be left on hunting leave for ever. The financial affairs of this province are under his sole control. For myself, I expect every hour to be recalled to Rome, due to some quiet manipulation by the tireless Quinctius Attractus. Even if I stay on, anything I say can easily be dismissed as the ravings of an obsessive clerk with cracked ideas about fraud.'
'You know how the system operates,' I complimented him.
'I should do. It stinks - but gods alive, it rarely involves the murder of state servants!'
'No. That was arranged by somebody who doesn't know.' Somebody inexperienced. Someone who lacked the patience and confidence to wait and let the inertia Placidus mentioned creep insidiously through the state machine.
Placidus was frowning. 'Why are you so vague about the report, Falco? There ought to be copies of everything filed by the quaestor's clerk.'
'He tried to find it for me. Gone missing.'
'Why did you think that was?'
'Stolen to hide the evidence? Quinctius Quadratus is the obvious suspect. I'm only surprised he knew his way around the office.'
'I bet he doesn't,' Placidus retorted sourly. 'But he will one day. Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe the documents have been removed by someone else to stop him seeing them!'
'Who do you suggest?'
'The proconsul.'
If that was true, the bastard could have told me he had done it.
Placidus took a deep breath. When governors of provinces have to start prowling offices, censoring records in order to deceive their own deputies, order has broken down. Governors of provinces are not suppcsed to know how the filing system works (though of course they have all held lowly posts in their youth). Allowing them to fiddle with scrolls opened up fri
ghtening avenues. This was all filthier and more complex than Placidus had thought. 'So what now, Falco?'
'A tricky piece of reconnaissance.'
I explained about finding the dancer. The procurator did not know her, or was not aware of it if he did. He expressed a theory that men may watch, but do not learn the names of girls who entertain. Obviously his past life had been more mnocent than mine.
'And where does she fit in, Falco?'
'I found evidence that she and her African musicians carried out the attacks in Rome on Anacrites and his man.' 'What did she have against them?'
'Nothing personal, probably. I imagine that somebody paid her. If I find her I'll try to make her tell me who it was. And if his name happens to be one of those we have been discussing, you and the proconsul will be happy men.'
I told him the address the two shipping tycoons had given me. Placidus said he believed it was a dangerous area of town - though inspired by the excitement of our conversation, he decided he would come along with me.
I let him. I believed he was straight, but I do have my standards; he was still a man who held a salaried government post. If I got into trouble with Selia and needed a decoy, I would cheerfully throw him to her as bait.
XLVII
Every town and city has its unhappy quarter. Hispalis might be a thriving hub of commerce, a producer of sculptors and poets, and a regional capital, but it too had potholed lanes where thin, dark-eyed women dragged screaming toddlers to market while very few men were in evidence. I could guess that the missing masculine element were all loafers or thieves, or had died of a wasting disease. Maybe I was prejudiced. Maybe I was just nervous. And maybe I was right to be.
Where the girl lived proved hard to find. There was no point asking directions. Even if anyone knew her, they would conceal it from us. We were too smart and too well- spoken - at least I was. Placidus looked pretty down-at- heel.
'This is a bad place, Falco!'
'Surprise me. At least with two of us, we can watch our backs in two directions.'
'Are we watching for anything in particular?' 'Everything.'
It was now late afternoon. The people of Hispalis were taking a lengthy siesta, much needed in the terrific heat of midsummer. The narrow lanes were quiet. We walked in the shade and trod softly.
Eventually we identified a lodging house, slightly larger and less grim than its surroundings, which appeared to match the directions Cyzacus and Norbanus had given me. A fat, unhelpful woman on a wonky stool peeling a cabbage into a chipped bowl agreed grumpily that Selia lived there. We were allowed up to knock on her door. She was out.
We went down and sat in what passed for a foodshop opposite. There appeared to be little to eat or drink, but a waiter was gambling furiously with a friend. He managed to break off long enough to ask us to wait until they finished the next round, after which he scribbled hasty sums on a piece of board, collected the dice again ready, then dashed together two beakers of something lukewarm and cut us two chunks from a loaf, before he and his pal reabsorbed themselves in their game.
Placidus carefully wiped the rim of his cup with the hem of his sleeve. I had learned to toss down a draught without touching the container. There would not be much point in hygienic precautions if the liquor itself was contaminated.
'This is a fine way to do work, Falco!' my companion sighed, settling in.
'If you want it, the job's yours.'
'I don't know if I'm qualified.'
'Can you sit in a bar doing nothing half the day, while you wait for a girl who wants to beat your brains out?'
'I can sit and wait - but I don't know what I'm supposed to do once she arrives.'
'Keep well out of the way,' I advised.
I was beginning to regret bringing him. The neighbourhood was too dangerous. We were getting into serious trouble, and Placidus did not deserve it. Neither did I perhaps, but at least I had some idea what to expect and it was my job.
These tiny streets with cramped dwellings had neither piped water nor sewerage. Ill-defined gutters in the stony tracks between hovels served to take away waste. In bad weather they must be atrocious; even in sunlight they stank. Depression was all around. A pitifully thin goat was tethered to a stick in the foodshop yard. Flies zoomed at us in angry circles. Somewhere a baby cried mournfully.
'You're not by any chance armed, Placidus?'
'You're joking; I'm a procurator, Falco! - Are you?'
'I brought a sword to Hispalis; I didn't expect to get this close to the girl, so I left it at the mansio.'
We were badly positioned. We had come to the only place where we could stop and wait, but the alley outside was so narrow and winding we could see little of it. The few people who passed all stared at us hard. We sat tight, trying not to look as if our chins were barbered, and trying not to speak when anyone could overhear our Roman accents.
There were several battered lock-ups facing the path. One contained a man whittling at crude pieces of furniture; the rest were closed up, their doors leaning at odd angles. They looked deserted, but could just as well be in fitful use; any artisans who worked in this area were sad men with no hope.
After a while the waiter's friend left and two giggling girls arrived. They sat on a bench and did not order anything, but ogled the waiter who now had time to enjoy the attention. He had extremely long eyelashes; Helena would have said it was from batting them at women. After a short time the girls suddenly scuttled off, then a wide- bodied, bandy-legged man who could have been their father turned up and looked the waiter over. He left too, with nothing said. The waiter cleaned his fingernails with the knife he had used to cut our pieces of bread.
A redhead was walking past outside; she gave the waiter a faint smile. I have a strong aversion to redheads, but this one was worth looking at. We were seated below her line of sight, so we could peruse the goods unobtrusively. She was a girl who made the best of herself: a well-filled soft green tunic above thongy shoes, earrings of cascading crescents, a chalk-white face highlighted with purplish colouring, eyes lengthened and widened with charcoal, and elaborate plaits of copper-coloured hair. Her eyes were particularly fine. She walked with a confident swagger, kicking the hem of her skirt so her jingling anklets showed. She looked as though for the right reward she might show off the ankles they decorated, plus the knees and all the rest.
She also looked unlike anyone I had ever seen - though her best feature was that set of rolling brown eyes which did seem familiar. I never forget a shape either, however differently it may be trussed and decorated when I see it a second time. When the girl vanished somewhere opposite I found myself quietly finishing my drink. I said unexcitedly to Placidus, 'I'm going across to check on Selia again. You stay here and keep my seat warm.'
Then I hooked my thumbs casually in my belt and strolled over to the lodging house.
XLVIII
The fat woman had gone. Nobody was about.
The building occupied a long, narrow plot running away from the street. It was arranged on two floors either side of an open-roofed passageway, then widening into a small terminal courtyard with a well in it. This was sufficiently confined to keep out the sun at hot times of year. At intervals pots were hung on the walls, but the plants in them had died from neglect.
The girl lived on the upper level over the yard, where there was a rickety wooden balcony which I reached by an uneven flight of steps at the far end. Outside her door was a pulley arrangement to facilitate drawing up water. There were wet dripmarks on the balcony rail. A shutter now stood open, one which I remembered had been firmly closed before.
I walked around the balcony the long way, that is on the opposite side from Selia's room. I trod easily, trying not to let the planking creak. When I came back to the part above the entrance passageway a bridge crossed the gap; I guessed nobody used it much for the whole thing sagged worryingly beneath my weight. I moved on gently to her room. She had killed, or tried to kill, two men, so she had thrown away her
right to modesty: I went straight in and didn't knock.
The red wig lay on a table. The green tunic hung on a hook. The dancer was naked apart from a loincloth. As she turned to stare at me angrily, she made an appealing sight.
She had one foot on a stool and was anointing her body with what I took to be olive oil. When I stepped through the doorway she deliberately carried on doing it. The body that received the attention was well worth pampering. The spectacle nearly made me forget what I was there for.
'Well, don't be formal! Treat my place as your own!' She threw back her head. Her neck was long. Her own hair, which was an ordinary brown, had been pinned in a flat coil, close against her head. Her body was hard to ignore.
A Dying Light in Corduba Page 28
