‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I was looking for a man by the name of Cispius.’
‘The Dad?’ His eyes widened, and I saw them stray to the purple stripe on my tunic. ‘Yeah, he’s upstairs. What do you want with him?’
Hey! At least I’d got the right place. And, it seemed, old Cispius was still alive and breathing. If being upstairs from a fuller’s establishment wasn’t a mixed blessing where the latter was concerned.
‘Just a word or two,’ I said. ‘It’s about a pal of his who died about ten years back. A Gaius Manutius. I understand he kept up for a while with the widow.’
The man grinned. ‘“Kept up”, is it? Well, the Dad’s always been a bit of a dark horse, but I never heard of no widow, me. Not that sort, anyway. Still, you’re more than welcome to go up and talk to him, whatever it’s about. You’ll be doing him a favour, stuck in that room on his own all day with only the wife for company. Stairs just outside and to the left there. I’d take you up myself but the wife would have a fit unless I’d had a good wash first.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Thanks, pal. Your wife’s at home?’
‘Nah, she won’t be back for an hour or two yet. Out doing the shopping. But you’ll have no trouble finding him.’
I went outside again and up the stairs. There was a wooden door at the top. I knocked and went in.
The room above the shop was empty, but the lady of the house was obviously the house-proud type: swept and dusted to an inch of its life, and what little furniture there was had been carefully polished with wax. There was even a bowl of fresh flowers on the table. Not a single sniff of urine.
‘That you back already, Cispilla, girl?’
An old man’s voice, from the room adjoining. I went through.
It was a bedroom, smaller than the living room, mostly taken up with a big bed, carefully made with a chequered cover. Next to it was a single unmade truckle bed propped sideways against the wall, and a high-backed chair next to a window overlooking the main street, with the old man sitting in it. His legs were swathed in a rug.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘My name’s Corvinus. Marcus Corvinus. Your son-in-law said it’d be OK to come up.’
‘That’s as may be. What do you want?’
‘Just a chat, if it’s OK with you,’ I said equably. ‘You mind if I sit down?’
‘Suit yourself.’ His eyes, like his son-in-law’s, were on the purple stripe. ‘What’s your business here?’
I sat down on the edge of the bed next to him. ‘I was hoping you could help me out with something. It’s about a friend of yours. A colleague, really. Guy by the name of Gaius Manutius?’
The suspicion hadn’t left the old man’s voice. ‘I knew a Gaius Manutius, sure. But he’s long dead, ten years back.’
‘Yeah, I know. That’s the point. I was hoping you could tell me about how he died.’
‘Why do you want to know that?’
‘It’s … well, it’s a bit complicated. But it has to do with a man by the name of Marcus Correllius. You both used to work for him, I understand?’
‘Correllius, eh?’ The thin mouth twisted into a smile with no humour in it. ‘That bastard! What’s your connection with him?’
‘He’s dead as well. Murdered, in fact.’ Best to keep things simple. ‘I’m looking into the whys and wherefores.’
‘You were a friend of his?’
This, I suspected, would weigh. ‘Uh-uh.’ I shook my head decisively. ‘Definitely not. In fact, I never even met him. I told you: it’s complicated. But I need to find out more about him.’
‘He was a crook. I’ll tell you that straight. And if he’s dead – murdered – the bastard had it coming. You won’t find me shedding tears for Marcus Correllius.’
‘So if he was a crook, what sort of crook was he, exactly?’
‘Every kind. You name it, he was into it. So long as it turned a profit, that was fine with him.’
‘Can you give me some examples?’
Cispius frowned. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I used to work for him, right? Nothing fancy, just the heavy stuff. Loading, unloading, carts or ships mostly, sometimes on the regular quayside, sometimes up or down the coast at a time and place when there wasn’t no one around to notice. Doing what I was told and no more. I kept my eyes shut and my mouth closed, and I didn’t ask no questions. Never, ever. And if I did see something I shouldn’t’ve seen, or something happening that didn’t quite square with the law, then I put it out of my mind straight off. The pay was good, compared with what I’d’ve got breaking my back heaving wine jars and so on over at the docks, so I wasn’t complaining. I even put by enough to give Cispilla and her man a hand paying to set up the business. So no, purple-striper, I can’t give you no examples, because I was fucking careful not to think about what I was doing. Clear?’
‘Yeah, it’s clear. Clear and understood.’ I waited until the frown had left his face. ‘So. What about Gaius Manutius?’ I prompted gently.
Cispius grunted. ‘Manutius was different,’ he said. ‘He was a proper bad one, was Gaius Manutius. Cocky on top of it, thought he was smart, the sharpest knife in the box. Oh, don’t get me wrong; he was a good mate, best I ever had although he was young enough to be a son, and I’d’ve trusted him with my last copper coin. But he was too smart for his own good. That’s what did for him in the end, the poor bugger.’
‘Yeah? So what happened?’
Cispius frowned again. ‘If you want details, you’ll have to whistle for them,’ he said. ‘I told you: I didn’t ask, and if he’d offered to tell me, I’d’ve shut him up as soon as he started. All I know is he’d got hold somehow of some information he should never’ve had and tried to make something out of it on his own account. Next thing, we were down at the docks doing a bit of loading and the crane slips its load right above where he was standing. Smashed the poor bugger’s head to pulp like a ripe melon. And that was that.’
‘It could’ve been an accident.’
‘Sure it could. And pigs can fly.’
‘What makes you so sure it wasn’t?’
‘Look. We all worked as a team, right? Same lads, every time. Each of us had a job to do, and it was a man by the name of Geminus who worked the crane. Only that day Geminus had been transferred to another job at one of the other quays and there was someone else at the levers. Youngish guy, name of Doccius. You come across him in your travels?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know Doccius.’
‘He’s gone up in the world since, I’ve heard. Not that I’m surprised, the bastard. Anyway, that was him on the crane. He swore blind the cog had slipped its ratchet, but these things are checked regular, and if it had slipped then it’d been fixed to slip. The report went in to the dock authorities, sure, but whatever they may tell you all they care about is their harbour dues, and if one of their own men isn’t working the crane and being paid through the nose by the shipper for doing it, then if someone gets hurt or a load gets dropped and smashed then it’s just hard cheese. No, what happened to Manutius was no accident. You take my word for it.’
I said nothing.
‘So that was me. Last job I ever did for that bastard Correllius, good money or not, and if he didn’t like it he could lump it. I walked away from the quay and I didn’t look back. First thing I did was go round to Manutius’s house to break the news to his widow. Vinnia, her name was. You met her?’ I nodded. ‘I told her the whole story, just like I’ve told it to you. Like I say, Manutius was no saint, and he had his faults, but doing badly by his wife wasn’t one of them. He’d a bit put by, like I had, and I helped her get set up in a little wineshop by the Square and get the business running.’ He chuckled. ‘There wasn’t no more to it than that, mind. She was a fine-looking girl in sore need of another husband, but she was no older at the time than Cispilla, and besides my Sosta was still alive, and if I’d even looked at another woman she’d’ve had my head. Then a few months before she died this started to come on’ – he patted
his legs – ‘and by the time I buried her I was past walking through the front door, let alone marrying again. There now. That’s all about it. Get what you came for?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, thanks. Uh … this Vinnia. There was no one else to look after her? Family, that sort of thing?’
‘No one local. She wasn’t from around here, originally; from somewhere in Gaul, I think. She’d a brother; has, if they’re both still alive. Gaius, his name was. Went for a soldier early on, must be a good twenty-odd years back, with one of the legions on the Rhine. Last I heard, which is a few years ago now, he was doing pretty well for himself. Made it up to optio and was set fair for his centurion’s stick. Manutius, now, his two brothers both died young. The parents were both dead, too, like Vinnia’s were, and she’d no other kin that I ever knew of.’
Hmm. I stood up. ‘Thanks, pal,’ I said. ‘You’ve been really helpful.’
‘How did he die? Correllius?’
‘Stabbed in the back, over in Rome.’
Cispius nodded slowly and with satisfaction. ‘Good. Good,’ he said. ‘Well, I thank you for coming. Corvinus, was it?’
‘Yeah. Marcus Corvinus.’
‘Corvinus, then. I’ll sleep better tonight for the visit, Corvinus. And Manutius would’ve been pleased, too. If I’d had the guts and the opportunity, I’d’ve knifed the murdering bastard myself. Doccius, too.’
I left.
It hadn’t been much of a day’s work – the sun was barely past the midday point – but I reckoned we’d done pretty well here. Seeing Doccius at Fundanius’s place more or less confirmed that we were on the right track about some sort of collusion between Fundanius and Mamilia, which meant that barring the details we could regard the Correllius side of things – or his stabbing, at least – as being pretty well sewn up. Of course, there might always be a more innocent explanation: I’d left Correllius’s house practically at the moment that Fundanius had arrived, and so whatever had passed between him and the lady I knew nothing at all about it. Perilla’s first point, that the guy had come round with the specific intention of burying the feud now that Correllius himself was out of things, could well be true; in which case, comings and goings between the two households might’ve eased off a tad.
There again, to quote Cispius, ‘and pigs can fly’.
If Mamilia hadn’t been putting on an act for my benefit, then I’d guess the meeting would’ve been pretty short and stormy, and ended with Fundanius being escorted from the premises with a flea in his ear: long-standing feuds don’t get buried that quickly, and if I was any judge of character, Mamilia would’ve been as easy to get round as an elephant in an alleyway. Added to the fact was that, if everything had been above board, when he caught sight of me Doccius wouldn’t have shot back in the door he was coming out of fast as a High Priest of Jupiter spotted sticking his nose out of the entrance to a brothel.
So scrub that idea.
Anyway, there wasn’t much point in faffing around town with no particular end in view as opposed to going back to talk things over with Perilla and relaxing before dinner with a cup of wine or three. We might, in fact, if the lady felt like it, do what I’d told Fundanius we’d do and take a walk further down the coast road to have a look at the villa for rent that he’d mentioned: ploy it might have been, but I hadn’t been totally unserious about looking around for a cheapish property in the area, and this Rusticellius place had sounded promising. Taking it would mean, for a start, that on the occasions when I did go through to Ostia I didn’t have to spend the night kipping out in Agron’s living room with the jolly prospect of being woken first thing by a gang of screaming kids.
So when I’d left the fuller’s shop I started off for the Laurentian Gate and home.
I’d just got through the city wall and was walking along the coast road when I realized I had company. Oh, there’d been other pedestrians and carts on the road, sure, although not as many as there would’ve been earlier: the coast road’s only used for local traffic, Ostia’s much more laid-back than Rome, most of the locals – the agricultural element, anyway – take their main meal in the middle of the day, and in the summer over the next couple of hours or so, when the sun’s at its hottest, they tend to get their heads down for a snooze. Still, despite the fact that the rest of the road as far as I could see was empty at present there were these two guys behind me, one a good bit in front of the other. The nearer of the two had on a cloak with the hood up; strange enough, on a warm day without a rain cloud in sight, but if he wanted to broil that was his own affair. Thing was, the first time I’d glanced back, he’d been keeping pace; the second time, he’d speeded up and the gap between us was closing.
Yeah, well; maybe I was just being over-suspicious here: the guy was probably just a local farmer late for dinner, with a wife who took that sort of thing seriously. I turned round and carried on walking …
I’d only got a few more yards when a sixth sense made me turn round again. Which was lucky, because another few steps and the bastard would’ve had me cold. As it was, I barely had the time to spot the knife he was carrying hidden under his cloak when he was on me. I grabbed at his wrist, but this time I’d misjudged things, and I felt the blade slice across the outside edge of my hand. My knee came up into his groin, but he stepped back in time, swore and lunged at me again …
Which was when somebody grabbed him from behind, pulling him off balance like he weighed nothing at all, then followed up with a swinging punch that would’ve felled a bull. The guy went down, catching the side of his head with a sickening crunch against a boulder by the side of the road, and lay still.
Shit.
‘You all right, Corvinus?’ the other guy, the one who’d punched him, said.
I knew him now: one of Agron’s lads, the biggest of the bunch.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘More or less.’ I looked at my hand. He’d cut me, sure, and there was a lot of blood, but the wound was shallow, no more than a long thin gash from knuckle to wrist. It could’ve been worse. Easily worse. ‘I’ll live. Thanks, pal.’
He grinned. ‘Agron thought you’d need a babysitter after all,’ he said.
‘Just as well.’ I held the wound closed against my tunic. Bathyllus was going to have a fit: bloodstains were hell to get out, and the tunic was practically new. Not to mention Perilla, when she saw it. The lady gets quite upset when I’m beaten up or similar during a case. ‘My mistake.’
Maybe I hadn’t been as disingenuous with Fundanius as I thought I’d been. Unless, of course, he was one of Mamilia’s boys. I looked down at him.
The hood had slipped back early in the struggle. He wasn’t Fundanius’s, or Mamilia’s, as far as I knew, or not as such, anyway. He was Sextus Nigrinus. Had been, rather: from the looks of the damage to his head, and the way he was lying, he was definitely an ex.
Fuck.
The big guy didn’t look too concerned. He lifted what was left of Nigrinus, hefted him across his shoulder, carried him into the bushes at the side of the road, and dumped him.
‘You should be OK now,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll bring a cart along after dark and get rid of him properly.’
‘Right. Right.’ I was feeling just a tad light-headed. Well, this was Ostia. Maybe they did things a bit different here from in Rome.
‘Who was he? Do you know?’
‘Yeah. A guy by the name of Sextus Nigrinus. We’ve crossed paths before.’
He grunted. ‘Fine. I’ll be getting back. Have a nice day.’
And he started off up the road towards town.
Fair enough. There wasn’t any point in hanging around here with only an embarrassingly dead body in the bushes for company. I took a quick glance around to check that our little fracas hadn’t been observed – no one in the offing apart from a very phlegmatic goat who’d obviously decided to take a constitutional of its own and was watching me with its jaws going – and carried on towards the villa.
Perilla was sitting on the terrace w
ith a book unrolled in her lap. She looked up when I came over.
‘Marcus! You’re back very early,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I—’
‘What’ve you done to your hand?’
‘Ah. Right. Well, it was like this—’
She set the book down, stood up, took hold of my wrist, and turned the hand over. The cut had stopped bleeding, sure, but it was still pretty noticeable, and the part of the tunic I’d been holding it against wasn’t looking too healthy, either.
‘Oh, Marcus!’
‘Just a slight brush on the way back with Sextus Nigrinus, lady. Nothing to be concerned about.’
‘Damn that. What happened?’
I told her.
‘And Nigrinus?’
‘Uh … he didn’t make it. Agron’s pal left his body in the bushes. He said he’d clear up later.’
‘He said what? Marcus, a man has been killed. You have to report it.’
‘He started it. And the other guy just punched him. The rest was pure accident.’ The lady didn’t look convinced. ‘Come on, Perilla! It could’ve been me lying in those bushes.’
‘Yes, I know. Do you think that makes it any better?’
‘Yeah, I’d say so. From where I’m standing, anyhow.’
She turned aside, and sat down again.
‘One of these days, dear,’ she said quietly, ‘it will be you lying in the bushes. You understand that, don’t you?’ I didn’t answer. ‘Very well. There’s no point in talking to you, is there? I don’t think it needs stitching. Just go inside, get cleaned up, and have Bathyllus bathe it in vinegar and put a bandage on.’
I did. When I came back out again she was a bit more like herself. She hadn’t picked up the book, though.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Sextus Nigrinus.’
‘Yeah, well, he was persistent, anyway.’ I sat down and took a mouthful from the full wine-cup that Bathyllus had poured for me after doing his patch-up job. ‘And it’s a reminder. If I needed one, which I didn’t.’
‘A reminder of what?’
‘That the key to all this – to Tullius’s murder, at least – is Nigrinus’s brother’s ship. The Porpoise. Oh, it’s obvious there’s some sort of trading scam involved, no mystery there; the details don’t particularly matter, and I’m no expert where these things go, but it’s pretty clear that the Nigrini brothers were in it with Correllius: they provided the ship, he provided the merchandise, and whatever the set-up was or is it was important enough for Sextus to be seriously interested in taking out anyone who shows unwelcome curiosity.’
Trade Secrets Page 19
