Secrets of the Dead (29 page)

Inside, the room was vast and dark, though even the darkness couldn’t disguise how empty it was. The walls were painted a burgundy so deep it looked black, broken every so often by electric pieces of neon sculpted into aggressively abstract
shapes
. A DJ stood in a box in the centre of the room, turning out high-wattage music, but no one was dancing. The few customers had mostly retreated into the booths at the edge of the room. One of them, an old man sitting on his own, looked up as they entered, and beckoned.

‘Who is he again?’ Abby asked as they crossed the floor. She was trying to be discreet, though with the music so loud she had to shout to be heard.

‘Mr Giacomo. He’s what, in the old days, you used to call a fence.’

There was a lot of the old days about Mr Giacomo. He had spiky white hair buzzed flat across the top of his head, tapering to a widow’s peak like the bow of a boat. His face was tanned and lined, his eyebrows bushy and wild. He wore a brown tweed suit and no tie, his white shirt unbuttoned somewhere near the borders of decency. He stood as they approached and ushered them into the booth. He didn’t shake hands, but beckoned a waiter over and ordered two Sidecars.

‘You had a good journey?’ he enquired. His accent was unlocatable: it could have come from any one of the half-dozen countries bordering the Adriatic. He stared tactlessly at Abby’s face, and she felt herself blushing. Her ordeal in the forest had added several bruises and one long scratch to the marks that Dragovi
ć
had inflicted in Rome. She looked like a domestic violence poster.

‘We had some problems getting here.’

He nodded, as if it were the most natural thing. ‘It is your first time in Belgrade?’

His questions were aimed entirely at Abby.

‘I’ve been before.’

‘You have visited the castle? The ethnographical museum?’

‘Mr Giacomo does a lot of work in museums,’ Michael said. He was trying to make a joke, but Giacomo didn’t smile.

‘Mr Lascaris, you went to some trouble to arrange a meeting with me. I am a busy man, but I have obliged you – even though your profession and mine are often … antagonists.’

He spread his hands on the table and leaned forward. ‘What is it you want from me?’

Michael lit a cigarette and exhaled. The neon on the wall made the smoke glow red; the strobe lights from the dance floor flickered on the edge of the cloud like distant lightning.

‘I want to know what Dragovi
ć
is after.’

Giacomo’s eyes narrowed. ‘That is not a good name to say out loud – especially in this city.’ He tapped his ear. ‘Even if you cannot hear yourself, always somebody else can.’

‘Dragovi
ć
has been turning Europe upside down for the last two months.’ Michael made a point of repeating the name. The beat of the music accelerated, pounding like running footsteps. ‘He’s looking for something.’

‘A man like him is always chasing something. Guns, girls, drugs … Maybe even a customs inspector from the European Union.’ Giacomo took out his own cigarettes and tapped the pack on the table. ‘Maybe this is something you know more about than me?’

‘He’s after some historical artefact. Probably Roman. From the way he’s going about it, he probably knows what it is. I thought you might, too.’

Giacomo considered it. ‘The man you mentioned, he does not share his thoughts with me often.’

‘If he’s looking for a Roman artefact, surely you’d have heard about it.’

‘You think I am so notorious?’ He held up his drink, studying
his
reflection in the glass. ‘Perhaps I am. What makes you think this thing he is looking for is Roman?’

The ash on the end of Michael’s cigarette lengthened. ‘Everyone knows he’s crazy for the Romans.’

‘Really?’

The question hung in the air, mingling with the smoke and noise. Giacomo stared at Michael, who turned slightly to glance at Abby. He raised his eyebrows.
What do we tell him?

Giacomo stood. ‘Excuse me.’ He tapped his crotch. ‘An old man’s problems. Perhaps we continue this conversation in a moment.’

He slid out of the booth and edged around the dance floor to the toilets. With his brown suit and shuffling walk, he looked like a sad old man who’d got lost.

‘How did you find him?’ Abby asked.

Michael drained his drink. ‘I’ve got some contacts in the art world. Smuggling stolen artworks and antiquities is big business. Mr Giacomo is one of the best – or worst, depending on your point of view.’

‘And he won’t betray us to Dragovi
ć
?’ She craned around. Deliberately or not, Giacomo had manoeuvred them so they sat with their backs to the door. With the flashing disco lights and hammer-drill bass, it more or less amounted to sensory deprivation.

‘I’m not sure about anything.’ Michael waved to the waiter for another drink. ‘Rumour has it he competes with Dragovi
ć
’s organisation. For what that’s worth.’

Worth our lives?
Abby wondered.

Across the room she noticed a man in a leather jacket standing at the bar. He was young, hair gelled into spikes and a bad case of acne on his cheeks. He was nursing a beer, but had angled himself so that their table was in his eyeline. She nodded at him.

‘Do you think he’s one of Dragovi
ć
’s?’

‘Probably a friend of Giacomo’s.’ Michael shook it off. ‘How much do you think we should tell him?’

‘Does it matter?’ She couldn’t take her eyes off the man at the bar.

‘Dealing with someone like Giacomo is like playing poker. We don’t want to show our hand too soon.’

Abby had to laugh. ‘You don’t think he can tell we’re bluffing?’

Across the room, Giacomo emerged from the toilets. As he walked back past the bar, Abby thought she saw him swap a glance with the acne-faced man. He sat down and waited while the waiter delivered Michael’s drink. His own was still more than half-full.

‘So?’

Michael took a deep gulp of his drink. ‘There was a tomb – in Kosovo. I found it. There were some artefacts inside, and I sold them to Dragovi
ć
.’

‘You should have come to me. I would give you a better price.’

‘There was a poem in the tomb.’ Michael took the napkin from under his drink and wrote out the first line of the poem from memory. He slid it across the table. Giacomo raised his eyebrows.

‘I am not a poet. Not even a scholar.’

‘I thought you might recognise it.’

‘From your tomb?’

‘It’s a copy of a poem that’s already known. It comes from a grave plaque in the Roman Forum Museum.’

‘
Formerly
in the Roman Forum Museum,’ Giacomo corrected him. ‘It was stolen – quite recently. Though I believe it is still in Rome.’

His dark eyes flicked from Michael to Abby and back.
He knows Dragovi
ć
has it
, Abby thought.
And he knows about Dragovi
ć
’s little museum in Rome
.
How does he know that?

‘Dragovi
ć
stole the stone with the poem on it. He thinks it might point to something valuable.’

‘If he does, he has not asked my opinion.’

‘I’m asking you.’

Giacomo’s gaze sidled away over Michael’s shoulder, towards the door. Abby fought back the urge to look around.

‘What do you know about the poem?’ Giacomo asked.

To her surprise, Abby found herself answering. ‘It dates from around the fourth century – around the time of the Emperor Constantine.’

Giacomo sat back. ‘Constantine the Great. Did you know he was born in Serbia? I think here they specialise in megalomaniacs.’ He chuckled. ‘Where in Kosovo did you say was this tomb?’

‘In a forest,’ said Michael evenly.

‘When you looted it, did you leave anything behind? Anything a friend might go back and collect for you?’

‘There are frescoes on the wall. Intact, pretty good condition.’ Michael took the camera out of his bag and showed him on the screen. ‘If you can help us, I could probably give you a more precise location.’

Abby stared at Michael.
Is he really doing this?
She imagined Giacomo’s gangsters in the tomb, its walls shuddering as their drills prised out the fragile plaster.
It doesn’t belong to them
, she thought – as if she could hear the protest of a seventeen-centuries-dead skeleton who had once been a man called Gaius Valerius Maximus.

Giacomo took a pen out of his jacket and added something to the napkin where Michael had written the poem.

‘This is a hotel I know. Go there, make yourselves comfortable. I will ask some questions, talk to some people, and find you there when I have something to tell you.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Abby objected. ‘If we check into a hotel, they’ll ask for my passport. They’ll have to register us with the police.’

Giacomo studied her. A gold tooth glinted in his mouth.
I’ve shown him a weakness
, Abby thought.
He’s wondering how to exploit it
. He pulled out a silver mobile phone and made a brief call. Abby wondered how anyone heard anything above the music.

‘They will not ask for your passport.’

‘How long do we have to wait?’

‘When I have something. You know what Socrates said?’

‘ “I’m dying for a glass of hemlock”?’ Michael suggested. It was a bad joke, and Giacomo didn’t smile.

‘ “Knowledge lies within you.”’

He got up and left without paying. The acne-faced man at the bar nodded to him as he passed, but didn’t follow.

Michael spun his glass, making wet moons on the table. The permanent grin had faded. His face sagged; he looked old.

‘What have you got us into?’ Abby murmured. But if Michael had an answer, the music killed it.

Constantinople – May 337

AURELIUS SYMMACHUS LIES
slumped against the edge of the pool. His arms are flung out to balance him: his right hand’s dipped in the water. His face is purple; his tunic spattered red from the blood in the vomit he coughed down his front.

I share a look with Porfyrius. Neither of us thinks this was an accident.

First they get rid of you; then they send the assassins
.

A white marble bust lies at Symmachus’s feet. Porfyrius tries to pick it up, but it’s too heavy for him. He reads the name on the base and gives a grim laugh.

‘Cato the Younger. You know the story?’

‘I think so.’

‘He was a Stoic who chose suicide rather than exile.’ He aims a flat-footed kick at the stone head, pushing it over on the gravel. ‘Symmachus wasn’t any stronger than I am. He didn’t drag Cato here just for a piece of historical theatre.’

‘Someone wanted us to think that’s exactly what he did.’

‘They wanted us to think it was suicide.’

A gleam in the water catches my eye. I reach in and pull out a small silver cup. One of the fish is so close I feel its scales on my skin, but it still doesn’t move. None of them do.

All the fish are dead. They float belly-up on the surface, bobbing softly like feathers.

The water on my arm suddenly feels like a rash, prickling and burning my bare skin. It’s probably my imagination, but there are poisons I know which can kill on contact. I rub my arm dry with the hem of my cloak, so hard I almost break the skin.

Porfyrius watches me uncertainly.

‘The poison was in the cup. When Symmachus fell, he dropped it in the water. There was still enough in there to kill the fish. Probably aconite.’

‘Aurelius Symmachus deserved better than this.’ With a sudden burst of energy, Porfyrius seizes the bust, tugging and dragging on it until he’s manhandled it over the rim of the pool. It drops in with a splash: water slops over the edge. A few fish wash out onto the ground.

‘We should call the Watch.’

‘They’ll just say it was suicide.’

‘Better than accusing us of murder.’

The anger drains out of him. We’re both stuck in this web now. He goes back to the colonnade and sits on a step, hunched over. I walk around the pond, resisting the compulsion to keep scrubbing my hand.

‘Symmachus didn’t take his own life,’ I say. ‘Whoever killed him probably killed Alexander, too.’

‘Does that follow?’

‘Let’s agree Symmachus didn’t murder Alexander. Can we agree that whoever did kill the Bishop then wanted to frame Symmachus?’

‘We can agree they had a motive. But so did lots of other people. Even you. There are three questions here, and they don’t necessarily demand the same answer. Who killed Alexander? Who framed Symmachus? And now, who poisoned him?’

He’s starting to irritate me, quibbling with every word I say like a sophist in the forum. I’m not interested in his hair-splitting. ‘Who else has an interest in framing Symmachus other than the man who killed Alexander? With him gone, the last loose end is tied up.’

‘It was already tied up – he should have been on the boat by now. If they wanted to be sure, they could have done it at sea, or when he reached Greece. No one would have known. Or cared.’

‘You’re saying it was a coincidence?’

I pause, looking down at the slumped corpse on the gravel. Experience has taught me there are no coincidences in this city.

‘Whoever framed Symmachus, they didn’t choose him randomly. They wanted him out of the way. Exile wasn’t enough – they needed him dead.’

Porfyrius says nothing, reserving judgement.

‘You were his friend. Can you think of anything he knew, anyone he might have offended?’

‘A lot of Christians hated him.’

‘You think they waited thirty years for this?’ I shake my head. ‘This was urgent.’

I let the silence stretch. Even in his undoubted shock, there’s a reticence about him that makes me twitch.

‘We need to know who did this,’ I say. ‘No secrets.’

‘Do you think you’ll get justice?’

‘I’ll settle for avoiding a fate like Symmachus.’

Old habits are hard to shake. Even in this silent villa I’m talking as if someone’s watching. But it’s too late for caution.

A rage seizes hold of me. Suddenly, Porfyrius is a vessel for every lie and piece of treachery I’ve confronted in the past weeks. With a furious strength I thought I’d lost for ever, I grab Symmachus’s corpse under his armpits and drag him across the gravel. Porfyrius leaps up, horrified.