The Silver Pigs (7 page)

XVIII

Darkness, flares, the patrol waiting for the magistrate. They coped with strangled prostitutes and fishwives battered with staves, but this touched the senate no worse to solve, but menacing paperwork.

Petronius groaned in despair. "We wasted hours searching. Squeezed the throats of a trail of pimps who had watched her. Found the lane, battered five different watchmen before we identified the place. Too late. Nothing I could do. Just nothing I could do... This damned city!"

He loved Rome.

They laid her down in the yard.

It is usually easy to maintain some detachment at this point. I rarely know the victim; I don't meet the victim until after the crime. That order of events is what I recommend.

I covered my face.

I was aware of Petronius Longus dragging back his men. We had been colleagues for a long time. We fought life from the same side. He granted me as much leeway as he could.

I stood, a yard from her. Petronius came to my shoulder. He muttered. Crouching, his big hand softly closed her eyes. He stood by me again. We were both looking down at her. He was looking at Sosia to avoid looking at me. I was looking at Sosia because there was nothing else on this earth that I ever wanted to look at again.

Her sweet face was still bright with the flimflammery a young woman of her station paints on. Beneath, her skin tones were stone-white as alabaster. It was her; yet it would never be her. There was no light and no laughter, only a motionless, eggshell-white case. It was a corpse, yet I could not deal with it as a corpse.

"She cannot have realized," Petro murmured. He cleared his throat. "That was all. No nasty work."

Rape. He meant rape, torture, indignity, indecency.

She was dead and this poor fool was trying to tell me she had not been terrorized! I wanted to rage at him that nothing else mattered. He was trying to tell me it was quick. I could see that! One short, hard, violent upward blow had killed Sosia Camillina before she guessed what the man would do. There was very little blood; she had died of shock.

"Was she dead when you arrived?" I asked "Did she say anything?"

Routine questions, Marcus. Cling to your routine.

Pointless even to ask. Petronius shrugged helplessly, then moved away.

So I stood there, and was as nearly alone with Sosia as I would ever be again. I wanted to hold her in my arms, but there were too many people. After a while I just dropped down on my heels and stayed with her while Petro kept his squad dies at rest. I could not speak to her, not even in my head. I no longer really looked at her, lest the sluggish wake of her spilt blood should defeat me.

I sat there, living through what must have happened. It was the nearest I could come to helping her. It was the only way I could comfort her for dying so alone.

I know who it was. He must realize that. One day, however carefully he protects himself, the man will answer to me.

She found him there, writing (that was evident). Writing what? Not a tally of the silver bars, for she was wrong, there were no bars, though we turned the deserted warehouse over for days. But he was writing, because lampblack from the wet ink stained her white dress around the wound. Perhaps she knew him. When she found him, he realized she needed to be silenced, so he stood up and rapidly stabbed her, a rising blow through the heart, once, with his pen.

Petronius was right. Sosia Camillina could not have expected that.

I rose. I managed neither to stumble nor break down.

"Her father..."

"I'll tell them," stated Petronius drably. A task he so hated. "Go home. I'll tell the family. Marcus, just go home!"

I decided after all to let him tell them.

I could feel his eyes watching me as I walked away. He wanted to help. He knew there was nothing anyone could do.

XIX

I went to the funeral. In my line of work, this is traditional. Petronius came with me.

According to custom, they conducted the ceremony out of doors. They came in procession from her father's house, bringing Sosia Camillina in an open bier with garlands in her hair. The cremation took place outside the city near the family mausoleum on the Appian Way. They dispensed with professional mourners. Young men who were friends of the family carried her funeral bed.

There was a blustery wind. They brought her through Rome in daylight, with flute music and lamentation, disrupting the city streets. At the pyre, built of untrimmed wood like an altar and with dark leaves woven round the sides, one of the young bearers stumbled. I stepped forward to help, without looking. The bier was so light it nearly flew from our hands as we swung it up.

Her father's oration was short, almost perfunctory. That seemed right. So too had been her life. What Publius Camillus said that day was simple, and simply the truth.

"This was my only daughter, Sosia Camillina. She was fair, reverent and dutiful, snatched from the world before she could know the love of a husband or child. Receive her young soul gently, O ye gods..." He seized one of the torches and, with formally averted gaze, he lit the pyre.

"Sosia Camillina, Hail and Farewell!"

Surrounded by flowers, small trinkets, sweet oils, she left us. People wept. I was one of them. Scented flames crackled up. I glimpsed her once through the smoke. She was gone.

Petronius and I had endured the respectful ritual scores of times. We never liked it. I raged under my breath, as we stood to one side. "This is obscene. Remind me again what in Hades I'm doing here!"

He answered in his low voice, lecturing me to steady me, "Official sympathy- Plus a forlorn hope that the maniac we are looking for may turn up too. Fascinated by his crime, flaunting his mad mask at the mausoleum..."

Keeping on my funeral face, I scoffed, "Exposing himself to curious scrutiny in the one place where he knows uncomfortable law agents are standing about, just longing for a chance to gallop after any uninvited guest who has a funny look about the eyes"

Petro dropped a hand on my arm. Then again, you know, we may spot a mood in the family that doesn't fit."

"We can rule out the family," I declared.

Petronius raised an eyebrow. He had left this delicate issue to the praetor let a magistrate of their own rank plant his nice clean shoe in the manure. I think he assumed I was too brokenhearted to consider it. But I had.

"Women not strong enough, children not tall enough. Decimus Verus has fifty members of the government whose word I don't rate a bean and the old slave from the Black Sea who cleans his boots who is good enough for me to swear he was at the senate, while Publius Meto was discussing merchant ships with his brother's daughter's divorced husband which incidentally, Petro, has ruled out the ex-husband too, before we even bothered to rule him in." I had checked. I knew the whereabouts of relations the senator and his brother had forgotten they ever owned.

The only thing I had not done was to meet Helena Justina's ex-husband. Never even troubled to ask his name. I excused him for two reasons. The useful Black Sea boot-slave had told me where he was. And anyway, Helena's husband had got himself divorced. I had seen enough of other people's marriages to believe that the parties concerned were usually best off when they put an end to their formal union. If Helena's husband agreed with me, he was obviously a reasonable sort of man.

Do not imagine my stalwart old tent mate stayed idle. Petronius had planted himself on the local praetor's staff. He made himself indispensable to the aedile on the case (happily not Pertinax here: we were in Sector Eight, the Roman Forum District now). Petro himself led a search through every store and hovel in Nap Eane. It turned out the warehouse where Sosia was found belonged to an ancient ex-consul called Caprenius Marcellus, who was dying of some slow malady on a country estate fifty miles south of Rome. The praetor would have accepted that dying was an alibi, but Petronius still travelled the distance and back to make sure. It could not be Caprenius Marcellus. He was in too much pain even to see Petro standing beside his bed.

The warehouse was empty when we found it, but we were certain it had been used. There were recent waggon ruts in the yard. Anyone who knew the owner was ill could have secretly moved in. Yet apparently they moved out afterwards.

There were no incidents at the funeral. We recognized no villains. Petronius and I were the people who felt out of place.

By now the close family were waiting to gather the ashes; it was time for other mourners to depart. Before we left, I forced myself to approach Sosia Camillina's bereaved papa.

"Publius Camillus Meto."

It was the first time I had seen him since that day with Pertinax. He was a man you forget: the smooth oval face that carried so little expression, the remote gaze with a hint of justified contempt. This was almost the only occasion, too, when I saw him with his brother. Publius seemed older with that bald head, but today it was covered while he officiated here and, as he turned to avoid me, I noticed a handsome, decisive cast to his profile which my man Decimus lacked. When he moved off he left a faint haze of myrrh, and he wore a gold intaglio ring with a substantial emerald, slight touches of bachelor vanity which I had missed before. Noticing these things, which were so unimportant, added to my awkwardness.

"Sir, I expect this is the last thing you want to hear from me I could see from his expression that I was right' Sir, I promise you as I promise her -I will find out who killed your child. Whatever it costs and however long it takes."

He stared at me as though he had forgotten how to speak. Julia Justa, his brother's wife, briefly touched my arm. She flashed an irritated glance at me, but I stood my ground. Publius was a man whose grief caught him smiling gently, but the gentleness only hid a hardness I had never seen before.

"You have done quite enough for my daughter!" he exclaimed. Take yourself off! Leave us all alone!" His clipped voice rose nearly to a shout.

It jarred. Well, the star of the morning had dimmed for us both and here was I, battering him. He knew no one else to blame; the man blamed me.

Yet that was not the reason. It jarred because Publius Camillus Meto looked like someone whom grief steers into rigid self66 control; like a man who would break, but not yet; break, but not in public; not today, not here. He had previously been so persuasive this loss had shaken him.

I mourned his vibrant child as honestly as he. For her sake I ached for him. For her sake I addressed him with an open heart.

"Sir, we share"

"We share nothing, Falco!" He strode away.

I watched the senator's pale wife, who had taken it on herself to guide her husband's brother through this appalling day, lead him towards the pyre. Servants were scooping up the smaller children. Family slaves huddled together. Important men, about to leave, clasped the senator's hand and followed his brother with sombre eyes.

I knew I could make contact with the senator. With his younger brother Publius I was grasping air, but Decimus and I could always talk. I waited.

The two brothers had shared Sosia's life; they were sharing her departure. Decimus was presiding now. Publius would only stare at those threads of bone on the pyre. While Sosia's father stood apart, alone, it was her uncle who prepared to pour the wine to douse the embers. On this cue, mourners were moving off. Decimus paused in his task, waiting for privacy.

In the manner of a man at a funeral going through the polite motions of permitting strangers to present condolences, Decimus walked over to Petronius Longus decent officialdom. Three paces from us, the senator spoke in a heavy voice. His weariness clove to mine.

"Watch captain, thank you for coming. Didius Falco! Tell me if you are willing to go on with the case?" No fuss. No reference to me severing our contract. No escape.

I answered with real bitterness.

"I'll go on! The magistrate's team have run into the ground. There was nothing in the warehouses. Nobody saw the man, nothing to identify his pen. But the silver pigs will lead us to him in the end."

"What will you do?" the senator asked, frowning.

I sensed Petronius shift his weight. We had not discussed it. Until that moment I had been unsure. She was gone now. My mind cleared. There was an obvious course. And there was nothing for me in Rome. No place, no pleasure, no peace.

"Sir, Rome's too big. But our thread starts in one small community in a province under strict army control. Hiding knots out there must be much more difficult. We have been fools. I should have gone before."

Petro, who had hated the place so dismally, could no longer keep quiet. "Oh Marcus! Dear gods"

"Britain," I confirmed.

Britain in winter. It was already October; I would be lucky to get there before the sea passages closed. Britain in winter. I had been there, so I knew how bad it was. The fine mist that tangles sticky as fish glue in your hair; the cold that leaps straight into your shoulders and knees; the sea fogs and hill blizzards; the dreadful dark months when dawn and evening seem hardly separate.

It did not matter. None of that mattered to me. The more uncivilized the better. Nothing mattered any more.

PART II

BRITAIN

Winter, AD 70-71

XX

If you ever want to go there, I advise you not to bother.

If you simply cannot avoid it, you will find the province of Britain out beyond civilization in the realms of the North Wind. If your maps king has grown ragged at the edges you will have lost it, in which case so much the better is all I can say. Getting away from Britain must be the reason why old Boreas keeps blowing his fat cheeks out, tearing off south.

My cover ran that Camillus Verus had despatched me to bring home his daughter Helena Justina from the visit to her aunt. Actually he appeared to be more fond of his youngest sister, the British aunt. When we spoke, he had murmured, "Falco, escort my daughter if she agrees, but I leave you to decide the details with Helena herself."

From the way he said it, I deduced the young woman had a mind of her own. He sounded so uncertain I asked him bluntly, "Will she disregard your advice? Is your daughter a difficult customer?"

"She has had an unhappy marriage!" her father exclaimed defensively.

"I'm sorry to hear it, sir." I was too wrapped up in my own grief for Sosia to want to involve myself in other people's problems, but perhaps personal misery made me more compassionate.

"The divorce was for the best," he said briefly, making it plain that his noble daughter's private life was not for discussion with the likes of me.

I had made a mistake; he was fond of Helena, but looked honestly afraid of her though even in those days, before I achieved it myself, I thought fathering a girl might make any man crack. From the moment the leering midwives place that crinkled red scrap between your hands and demand that you pronounce a name for it, a lifetime of panic drops on you like a blight...

I had coped with headstrong females before. I assumed that a few firm words from me would bring this Helena under control.

I went to Britain overland. Although I hated myself, I could never send anyone the whole distance by sea, between the Pillars of Hercules and out into the wild Atlantic round Lusitania and Tarraconensian Spain. Crossing direct from Gaul is bad enough.

Everything had been done to smooth my outward journey: abundant cash and a special pass. I threw away the money on cloak pins and nutmeg custard. The pass carried a signature so like the Emperor's it caused sleepy dogs in border posts to sit up publicly and beg. My main worry was losing my apartment, but it turned out that during this high-flown mission I could charge a retainer. The senator's smart Greek accountant would organize things with Smaractus - a confrontation I was sorry to miss.

My mother sniffily informed me that if she had known I was going back, she would have kept the tray I brought her as a present from Britain the first time I was there. This item had been carved of a soapy grey shale from the mid-south coast. Apparently the stuff needs constant oiling. I never knew that, so I never told her and the object had disintegrated. Ma thought I ought to find the peddler and demand my money back.

Petronius lent me a pair of socks from his old British gear. He never throws anything away. I had chucked mine down a well in Gaul. If I had known about this unhappy trip, I might have jumped down after them.

On the way there was a lot of time for thought.

But thinking took me no further. Plenty of people could want to depose Vespasian. Changing Emperors had been fashionable for the past two years. After Nero's numbing concerts finally lost their appeal for the tone-deaf toffs in the orchestra stalls, he stabbed himself and we suffered a free-for-all. First Galba, a doddering old autocrat from Spain. Next Otho, who had been Nero's ponce and so judged himself Nero's legitimate heir. After him, Vitellius, a bullying glutton who drank himself into and out of the job with a certain ironclad style, and then had a recipe for mushy peas named after him in return.

All that in twelve months. It was getting to seem that anyone with half an education and a winning smile could persuade the Empire that purple was just his colour. Then, with Rome vandalized and battered, up cropped this canny old general

Vespasian, who possessed one great advantage in that no one knew much about him for better or worse, and a priceless confederate in his son Titus, who gripped the chance of political glory like a terrier shaking a rat... My man Decimus Camillas Verus believed anyone opposing Vespasian must wait until Titus came home from Judaea. Vespasian himself had been quelling a Jewish rebellion when he scrambled into power. He returned to Rome as Emperor, leaving Titus to complete that popular job with his usual panache. Edging out Vespasian would merely allow his brilliant elder son to inherit the Empire early. His younger son Domitian was a lightweight, but Vespasian and Titus must be swept off their perch together or any conspiracy against them was destined to fail. This meant I had just as long to solve the mystery as it took Titus to capture Jerusalem though from what Festus had told me before he threw away his life at Bethel, Titus would rattle through Jerusalem in two shakes of a centaur's tail. (Titus had commanded the Fifteenth Legion, in which my brother served.)

So there we were. Anyone with the rank and the clout who fancied his own chance as Emperor could be trying to batter the new dynasty out of its olive tree. There were six hundred men in the senate. It could be any one of them.

I did not believe it was Camillus Verus. Was that because I knew him? As my client, the poor duffer seemed more human than the rest (though I had been caught like that before). Even if he was sound, that left five hundred and ninety nine.

It was someone who knew Britain. Or knew someone else who did. A quarter of a century had passed since Rome invaded the province (and incidentally first made Vespasian's name). Since then countless brave souls had tramped north for their tour of duty, many of them men with shiny reputations who might be feeling ambitious now. Titus himself had been typical. I remembered him there, the young military tribune who commanded the reinforcements brought over from the Rhine to reconstruct the province after the Revolt. Britain provided a social fitness test. No one liked the place, but no good Roman family nowadays was without a son or a nephew who had done his chilly stint in the bogs at the back of the world. I could be looking for any one of them.

It could be someone who had served in northern Gaul.

It could be someone in the British Channel fleet.

It could be anybody who owned any kind of ship. One of the merchants who ferried British grain to the military bases on the

Rhine. An importer of hides or hunting dogs into Italy. An exporter of pottery and wine. Or, knowing merchants, a whole sticky consortium.

It could be the British provincial governor.

It could be his wife.

It could be the man I was travelling to meet, Gaius Flavius Hilaris, my senator's brother-in-law, who was the procurator in charge of finance now after choosing to live in Britain for the past twenty years a choice that was so eccentric it implied Hilaris must be running away from something (unless he was completely off his head...).

By the time I reached the Britannic Ocean, I had thought through so many wild schemes I felt dizzy. I stood on the cliffs at the far rim of Gaul, watching the white horses scud over that churning water and felt worse. I set the problem to one side while I concentrated on trying not to be seasick as the boat I was taking attempted to put out across the Strait. Don't know why I bothered trying, I always am.

It took us five tries to clear the harbour at Gesoriacum, and by the time we made open water I only wanted to turn back.