Terror of Constantinople (40 page)

    ‘The Permanent Legate was rather small,’ I said. ‘We’ll need to get those robes altered in a hurry if I’m to attend evening service at the Great Church.’

41

‘But it’s blasphemy!’ Martin whispered in Celtic over his fourth cup of wine. Back in the Legation, he’d at last fallen apart.

    ‘Be that as it may,’ I said, jug in hand, ‘it is the Will of Caesar.’

    I refilled his cup and slopped more wine into my own.

    ‘There are things even he can’t do,’ Martin snapped. ‘At least it was your duty to refuse.’

    ‘Refuse Phocas?’ I laughed gently. ‘I don’t fancy another trip to the Circus. And, don’t forget – you’re my secretary. You’d be in the next pot.’

    ‘Men have accepted martyrdom rather than participate in lesser blasphemies,’ he replied primly. ‘Whatever can be done to us on earth is nothing compared with the fires of Hell!’

    ‘Oh, shut up, Martin,’ I explained. Go and see if those bloody tailors have arrived yet. I need something good for the funeral service. All else aside, I’ve been granted senatorial status. I
must
have something with a splash of purple.

    ‘And do get me that stupid little official, Demetrius. I want to know what’s become of the Legatorial seals.

    ‘No, Martin, I don’t have any other plan,’ I said between gritted teeth, cutting off his renewed protests. ‘You may have noticed that every time I do something in this city, everything else gets worse. When and how we can leave is beyond me. Just be grateful we’re still alive, and let’s see what turns up. Now, go and find me Demetrius.’

    Alone, I refilled my cup and drank deep. I crunched up another of the dried berries I’d earlier begged from Theophanes. I needed a clear head for when Priscus finally put in an appearance. At the same time, I was feeling decidedly less ebullient than I’d appeared to Martin.

    Seven days earlier, I’d been placidly wiping my bum in the University Library. Now I was barely one down from Pope Boniface himself, and was lined up for a course of private meetings with a man you’d not have wanted in your nightmares, let alone in the same room.

    Did I mean, by that, Phocas or his equally dreadful son-in-law? It was a hard one to answer.

    An afternoon of quiet reflection was essential for trying to take all this in. I needed to establish in my head what had been a dream and what was real. Then there was the murder investigation that didn’t seem to admit of any answer but was under some obligation to provide one.

    Facts are everything. But a fact isn’t a fact until it’s been verified, and I had almost nothing that could be classified as such. Late in the night, Agathius breaks into my room to kill me. Or was it to kill me? He’d been as much confused as angered by our fight. Whatever the case, I kill him. While we’re out dumping the body, the Permanent Legate appears to have been murdered, and in a locked room with no other known access.

    By treating these events as related, was I confusing two separate chains of causation? Possibly, but hardly very likely. That would require two separate killers, both deciding to act on the same night, and both gaining access to a normally secure Legation.

    It would have been useful to suppose that Agathius murdered the Permanent Legate and then came for me. I’d been told he was working for Heraclius. That gave him some motive for wanting to kill Silas: whatever the deal was that Theophanes wouldn’t tell me about, it might not be effective with His Excellency out of the way.

    And since at least one of the Heraclius people had wanted me dead outside the city walls, there was a credible motive for killing me as well.

    The problem here was that the timings seemed all wrong. Agathius must have been dead by the time of the Permanent Legate’s murder. There seemed little room for doubt on that point. Forget Demetrius. This much had already been confirmed by the other officials and slaves in the Legation.

    Perhaps there had been two killers with one mission? But that brought me back to the question of how murder could be committed in a sealed room.

    No – I needed facts. Without those, speculation was worthless and even a barrier to the truth.

    I’d slipped into the Permanent Legate’s office on getting back from the Imperial Palace. While Martin was trying to compose himself, I’d gone through all the drawers and cupboards in the room. I’d also got the main filing room opened and had given myself a brief tour of the Permanent Legate’s files. There were gaps all over the filing racks that I’d need Martin to help explain.

    I needed facts. I needed facts and more facts. My experience of investigations so far had given me some grasp of basic principles. You dig and dig without preconceptions, and see what turns up. Until then, you avoid hypotheses. When you are able to form one, you test it against whatever new facts emerge.

    That approach had always worked for me in the past. If this case looked insoluble, it was only because I hadn’t got far enough with gathering the relevant facts.

A hangover adding to his other exertions, Authari had himself been wilting when, after the filing tour, I’d dropped in on the Permanent Legate’s room for another look at the body. But I’d told him to stay put. Now I was in charge of the investigation, it was necessary to keep my own watch on things. If this meant Authari had to fight sleep in the presence of a butchered corpse, that was tough on him. But I needed Martin for other things, and there was no one else I could implicitly trust.

    The body had looked horrid. Even half a day hadn’t been kind to the thing. The face was now as ghastly as an ancient theatrical mask I’d found on sale in a relic shop in Rome. The body had stiffened further, its right arm raised in a sort of greeting. Black patches were spreading over the legs.

    I’d ordered a medical inspection. I doubted if this would reveal more than I’d been able to gather from my own inspection, but it was worth doing just in case. Doctors are occasionally good for something.

    In any event, time was against us. Alypius had turned up when I was with Authari, carrying orders from Theophanes for the body to be removed for a service that night in the Great Church.

    This was, you’ll agree, an irregular proceeding. A funeral on the same day as a death – and coinciding with Sunday evening service? You’d not have got away with half of it in Rome.

    But Constantinople wasn’t Rome. The Church here did as it was told.

    I put my cup down, and settled back for a nap. In spite of the berries, I was out in perhaps five beats of the heart. It was like snuffing a lamp last thing at night.

Without knocking, Martin rattled the door open. I jerked myself awake. It was early afternoon so far as I could tell from the now overcast sky outside the window. Those cuts on my back were now hurting so much, even Antony might have sympathised.

    ‘His Most Serene and Imperial Excellency, the Caesar Priscus, begs the honour of an audience,’ he called in a voice that might have been satirical had he possessed any sense of humour.

    As he finished, Priscus walked in past him. Dressed now in black, he made every show of beginning a prostration.

    ‘I don’t think, My Lord Priscus,’ I said, standing and patting my clothes into a semblance of order, ‘we need bother with such formalities in private.’

    ‘But, Your Most Sacred Excellency,’ he crooned, rising from his knees, ‘I’ve always wanted to meet the Pope. And you are now, in the legal sense, his very projection from Rome.’

    With a flash of his riddled teeth that I took as an attempt at charm, he sat in Martin’s place and reached for the wine.

    ‘So, my brave and golden – and now Most Holy – Alaric,’ he said with a flourish of cup and jug, ‘it seems my wish is to be granted. Did I hear a child crying as I came in?’ he asked with a change of subject.

    ‘I have no doubt’, said I, ‘you’ve heard many children cry on your entry.’

    Perhaps it didn’t do to treat the man with the contempt he deserved. But unless he happened to be standing over you in one of his dungeons, it was a hard reaction to avoid. And I was for the moment at least his equal in status.

    Priscus looked into the various compartments of his pouch. He took out a spoonful of green powder and dropped it into his cup.

    ‘This has a far more soothing effect than wine,’ he assured me as I waved him away from my cup.

    There was a long moment of silence.

    ‘Now,’ he said finally with a drugged brightness, ‘I’ve had the main facts from my Divine and Ever-Sagacious Father-in-Law. It all sounds utterly intriguing.

    ‘I know it’s Sunday, but would you mind awfully if I had the whole household taken in for questioning? I promise not to have any of them on the rack until tomorrow morning.’

    ‘My Lord Priscus,’ I said, looking coldly at him, ‘I am in charge of this investigation. It will proceed by my rules, not those of the Black Agents. There will be no use of torture until we have a definite suspect.’

    Priscus smiled and poured himself more wine. ‘Oh, come now, Alaric – none of this softie philosophising,’ he said with a dismissive wave at my bookshelves. ‘If you’d been in charge of things, Justinus would still be running about to spread his poison. The surest road to truth runs through the rack.’

    I thought of a jeering question about how many other people he’d arrested in place of Justinus, before tracking the man down to a public table in one of the city’s most expensive restaurants.

    But it didn’t do to push things too far. I went back to the business in hand.

    ‘We proceed by my rules,’ I said, ‘or you can explain yourself to His Majesty when I back out of the investigation. What you do with the criminal when I’ve produced him is for you to decide. Investigation is my business.’

    As I rose to my feet, a sound of distant cheering drifted through the window.

    ‘What’s that?’ I asked with involuntary interest.

    ‘That’, said Priscus, ‘will be my Divine and Ever-Victorious Father-in-Law declaring an amnesty for all offences but treason. He really needs the crowd on his side, now that Heraclius is moving over in person to handle the siege.’

    Fat lot of difference that would make, I grunted to myself. During my entire stay in the City, I’d not seen a single offence – from murder all the way down to cutting purses – that hadn’t been twisted into some variety of treason.

    Still, Phocas seemed to have pleased the crowd again.

    I frowned and returned to the original subject. ‘I think, My Lord, you can be spared for the important work of defending the City. I am myself under some pressure of time – I must ready myself for the funeral service in the Great Church. The investigation will move faster if I am able by myself to interview the key witnesses between now and this evening.’

    ‘Then, my darling Alaric, we shall begin tomorrow morning.’

    No, I thought to myself. Not only did I want to interview every actual and potential witness without Priscus beside me to put them off. I also needed to do it now. The longer matters were left unresolved, the more people would start forgetting important facts. Continual repetition to others would blur and distort recollections that even now were still reliable.

    Before I could think of some emollient lie to send Priscus on his way, the door opened again. It was Martin.

    ‘Aelric,’ he said, ignoring Priscus and the need to use my public name, ‘you’d better come quickly.’

    His voice shook. I saw tears glistening on his deathly pale face.

    ‘It’s Authari,’ he said.

42

In his last convulsion, Authari had pitched forward out of his seat. When I arrived in the Permanent Legate’s bedroom, he lay face down in the pool of now congealed blood.

    Martin had found him after he’d finished gathering all the papers he could lay hands on into one of our document crates, ready for inspection in my own office. He’d gone into the room to see if Authari wanted something to eat.

    At first he’d supposed that Authari had got himself some wine and drunk himself into a heap. Now, weeping softly, he stood back while Priscus and I inspected the body.

    ‘My darling boy,’ Priscus drawled, ‘would it alter me in your estimation if I observed that this doesn’t look at all like the Permanent Legate?’