‘I’ll find him a foster home,’ she gulped. ‘A mum and dad to love him.’
‘You love him,’ Orbilio said softly. ‘Why not let him stay?’
‘No!’ The violence of her protest shook them both, but what could she say? That deep down she was scared of loving anyone, except Drusilla? Because cats love unconditionally, expect nothing in return? Because cats never let you down. Or break your heart? She marched down the atrium and out into the scented night air of the peristyle.
Following, Orbilio stared up at the constellations twinkling above them, inhaled the peach blossoms and the wallflowers, and said nothing.
‘Care to tell me?’ Claudia blew her nose, ‘what you did to get rid of the aunts?’
Whatever it was, it was damned effective. The only trace of their visit was a heap of dirty bedlinen when she got home, and Herkie still locked in the cellar. No doubt Cousin Fortunata would return to collect her little diddums, but something made the old bats leave in a hurry.
His sheepish grin was quickly suppressed. ‘Following on from the chalk and ash routine which made you look so poorly, it was but a step to mix flour with wine dregs and,’ he turned to look at a statue, ‘dab it on your servants’ faces.’
‘Larentia fell for it?’
‘Departed the contagion zone at a run.’
Claudia dabbed at her eyes. Oh, Larentia. You really are a silly cow!
The laughter was good. A release. But when it died, taut silence hung in the air.
The garden was rarely lit at night. That would disturb the ambience, and the songbirds in the aviary. There were only ever enough torches to enhance the whiteness of the artemesias, define the outline of the path, catch the ripples of the breeze upon the water in the fishpond. Suddenly the darkness intensified. Claudia became aware of the man standing beside her, of his sandalwood scent, the smoky look in his eyes. She could hear his breathing, saw the rise and fall of his chest in the moonlight, watched the muscles tense in his neck. Her mouth became dry.
He moved closer. ‘Can you really lick the tip of your nose with your tongue?’ he asked softly.
‘Only when I strop with a cuttlefish,’ she whispered back.
The rasp of cicadas was deafening. She smelled the wine on his breath as he stood over her. His eyes were dark, his lips half parted as his little finger reached out and hooked one of her curls. Claudia’s heart was pounding like a kettledrum, and a pain surged deep in her ribcage when he gently released the curl.
‘Marcus…’
He blinked, as though in pain. ‘Yes?’
She looked away. ‘Marcus, I—’ Say it, for heaven’s sake! Just say it! ‘I—I think someone’s left the gate open.’
Striding down the path, she wondered what was holding up her legs. Not her bones. They’d left home.
Marcus Cornelius screwed up his face and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. ‘Claudia—’
‘Bloody vagrants,’ she said, willing her limbs on. ‘If they don’t block up your doorway, they doss in your garden.’
Silly bitch! She slammed the gate shut. Did you think he intended to kiss you? Look at him, for gods’ sake. Leaning against the pillar, staring up at the stars, not a bloody care in the world…
‘Off, you.’ She addressed the beggar, slumped against the wall. ‘Come on, shift yourself!’ Suddenly her bodyweight trebled, she could not move a limb.
‘Marcus.’
The quiver in her voice alerted him. ‘What is it?’
He came running, but she held a hand up to stop him. This was no vagrant. Once this had been a female. Now she sat surrounded by a thick, dark smear of liquid. The liquid did not shine. Claudia clapped a hand over her mouth. The woman’s wrists and feet had been bound and her colourless mouth sagged open. She was naked.
Yet it was not the spectacle of death which made her falter. It was the carpet of long, blonde hair which lay across the lap. The way it shone in the moonlight was an obscenity.
His shoulders slumped. His tall, proud body stooped. ‘No,’ he cried, falling to his knees.
‘No-ooooo!’
No animal howling in pain produced such anguish.
Claudia leaned over and closed the wide blue, staring eyes. Even in death, the face was striking in its beauty.
‘Marcus.’
The pale, serrated flesh was still warm.
‘Marcus.’ She looked down into his darkened, haggard eyes. ‘This woman isn’t Annia.’
XXIX
He’d needed a drink. They both had. Perhaps she more than he.
Claudia gulped greedily at the heavy vintage wine. Finding the body had been shock enough, but when she’d watched Marcus sag like a waterlogged sponge, it felt like her insides had been plaited up like rope and then hauled on. Now, long after the blood had been mopped up and the servants’ fears assuaged, long after the rich, red wine had hit him, Orbilio’s hands and voice were still shaking.
‘I’ve screwed up, Claudia.’ He spiked his fingers through his hair as he paced the tiny office. ‘But for me, that girl would still be alive.’
Claudia drew her wrap tight around her shoulders. In their haste to load up the body, the undertakers had trampled half the planting, obliterating the gagging stench of blood. Mint and oregano wafted into her office on a cool night breeze.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ she protested. ‘We don’t even know who she is.’
‘Her name is Severina,’ he said wearily. ‘She was murdered, because the kille
r must have seen her with Zygia and mistaken her for Annia. They look very similar.’ He
paused in his pacing and looked straight at Claudia. ‘And, dammit, Claudia, I could have saved her.’
Go ahead, whip yourself. ‘How?’
‘A couple of hours ago. Maybe three. I was…passing.’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘I heard the whistle, and I ignored it.’
Claudia’s head jerked up. ‘Three short notes?’
‘You heard them, too?’
She shook her head. ‘I was at the theatre. The late show.’ So many spectaculars, they don’t all fit into daylight hours. ‘I know you questioned the household,’ she added. ‘Any luck?’
Dawn was starting to break, a faint opalescence over the Esquiline.
‘Some heard scuffling, others whistling, but their overriding feeling—’ Orbilio shot her a knowing look ‘—is that unusual happenings in this house are not exactly rare.’ She studied him. The bruises from the beating outside Weasel’s had turned to shades of green and yellow and with his pallor deathly white, he fair resembled a cadaver himself. Any other man would listen when told a hundred people whistle along that damned road every night, it’s a busy street she lived on, and brawls break out twice a week. But Orbilio was not Any Other Man. Claudia drew up her knees in a high-backed wooden chair and hugged them. Marcus would carry Severina on his conscience to his grave.
He had resumed pacing. ‘The choice of killing ground was quite deliberate,’ he said slowly. ‘Can you imagine the risk? Until today, this house was a warren of activity, yet you saw yourself the quiet spot he picked in the Argiletum.
No chance of disturbance. ‘These girls,’ he added quietly, ‘take a long, long time to die.’
Claudia heard pebbles rattling in a bucket and realized it was the chattering of her teeth. ‘So what are you saying? The killer has made the connection between Annia and my visit to Arbil?’
There was no need to look at him to know the answer. Somewhere a water clock dripped with infuriating regularity.
Marcus pulled up a chair and took her hands in his. ‘You’d better tell me everything that happened up there, Claudia—and I mean everything.’
Grim-faced he listened. By the end of her narrative, Claudia was sure she’d missed nothing out and she stretched awkwardly in her chair. The sky had passed the blush stage, the air was now alive with birdsong, and the scents of crushed mint and oregano grew stronger by the minute. There was nothing in the garden to suggest a young girl had existed, much less been butchered, and Claudia resolved to grow tall spikes of hollyhocks against that wall. Or maybe a hibiscus. Plus a statue of a nymph with flowing hair.
‘There has to be a connection,’ Marcus said. ‘There has to be. Except Arbil’s people wouldn’t cover up a heinous crime like that—’
‘Wrong.’ Claudia shook her head so firmly, a hairpin fell out. ‘They’re so fiercely loyal, closing ranks is second nature. Right from Day One they’re taught that, but for Arbil, they’d be dead.’
‘Does wonders for one’s self-esteem.’ Orbilio leaned down and picked up the hairpin. ‘Brainwashing on that
scale.’
‘You have to be there to understand.’ Claudia puffed out her cheeks. ‘The whole complex is so claustrophobic in its foreignness, that even when the children leave, it’s Rome which feels alien to them. Arbil’s slave farm represents security, and they look back on their childhood with fondness and affection. Is this getting us anywhere?’
Orbilio rolled the pin round and round between his fingers. ‘We’ve got five major suspects, suppose we run through the list, starting with Tryphon?’
‘I’m pretty sure that if the Captain wanted to kill someone, he’d stick them like a pig, not slice them slowly to ribbons.’ That man was a born soldier.
‘All right, then. Dino. He slopes off when he visits Rome, according to your gossip.’
Claudia smiled a slanting smile. ‘Dinocrates appears to live the high life, but peer closer, my friend, and you’ll see it’s the same few shirts he wears, the same old boots, and he never touches the women they go out with.’ She paused for impact. ‘He saves it all to support his wife and tiny son.’
‘So-o?’
‘The woman is a Persian—and you don’t need too powerful an imagination to picture Arbil’s vengeance, were he to discover the man he raised as a son has not only committed himself in marriage to one of Babylon’s sworn enemies, he’s fathered a child to boot. The Persians, remember, did a Trojan Horse on Babylon by sneaking up the Euphrates to capture the city and wounds like that never heal. Arbil’s barbaric bronze laws would have Dino flayed alive as a traitor.’
Marcus tossed the pin up in the air and caught it. ‘Any time you want a job in the Security Police, Mistress Seferius, I’ll resign to make way for you.’ He jabbed the pin into a cushion. ‘Arbil, then. What do you make of those trips to Rome, the blackouts?’
Claudia swivelled sideways in her chair and swung her knees over an armrest carved in the shape of a sphinx. ‘What trips to Rome?’ she said, folding her hands behind her head. ‘On whose word do these phantom journeys hinge? Who, exactly, verifies their authenticity? Arbil is many things. He’s shrewd and ruthless and obsessed with himself, he’s organized and religious and partial to date liqueur. Have you ever tasted date liqueur, by the way?’ Marcus shook his head, more in bewilderment than the negative.
‘Well, don’t. That’s my advice. It’s thick and strong and peels layers off your tongue, but boy, can you slip things in it without the imbiber being any the wiser.’
He stiffened and leaned forward. ‘Such as?’
‘Conjuring tricks rely on distracting the eye and creating illusions. One sees what one is led to see, believes what has been fed you. In Arbil’s case, it was the floppy, pouchy skin. Are you with me so far?’
‘Not even close. What you describe are classic products of a dissolute lifestyle, and that ties in with Arbil.’
‘On whose say-so?’ The truth had come to her when she awoke in Arbil’s guest room. ‘A few dirty pictures, a leggy young wife, a tipple of liquor of dates. Does that smack of degeneracy? Or a normal middle-aged man with a healthy sex drive and a regular bowel? Suppose, instead,’ she flashed a grin, ‘Arbil’s skin sags from an administered substance?’
Orbilio’s mouth moved up at one corner. ‘Such as?’
‘In the Indus Valley the oleander shrub is known
as “the horse killer” because it’s so potent. Did I ever mention Angel—’
‘—is Indian? Once or twice.’
‘Then we have our old friend, thorn apple,’ she smiled. No wonder the girl looked so shaken when Claudia burst into her bedroom and saw those white, trumpet-shaped flowers! ‘Depending on the strength, it can make a man excitable, act out of character—making amorous lunges at his house guest, for example. A stronger dosage, he’ll start having delusions, hallucinations—and I can only guess at the cocktail which brought on the blackouts. All it needs is a tinksy bit of help, and one can get away with…murder.’
Orbilio leaned back, crossed his legs and for the first time in hours, began to relax. ‘Naturally, you have no idea who Angel’s helpmate might be?’
‘Funny you should ask.’ Claudia kicked off her sandals. ‘There’s a young groom name of Lugal—he’s the one who’s supposed to drive his master to Rome, yet no one else has ever seen them leave, and you know, it’s a strange thing about Lugal. The lad never takes his eyes off the master’s pretty wife.’
Well, I’ve warned her. It’s up to Angel now, and if they have one ounce of common sense, those two, they’ll be half way to the Adriatic by now, and not stopping to look over their shoulder. When Claudia upended that jug of date liqueur over Arbil, she had unwittingly set his detox in motion. First he’ll attribute his clear thinking to having exorcised Lamashtu, the demon, but Arbil’s a clever man. It won’t be long before he sees his wife’s hand in his behavioural changes and blackouts—and when that happens, Lugal and Angel will be tied face to face and thrown in the river to drown. You don’t mess with us Babylonians.
‘That’s three of our five suspects demolished.’ Orbilio stroked his jaw. ‘What about Shannu?’
‘The obvious candidate,’ Claudia said. ‘Unfortunately he has a watertight alibi, that room is locked at all times, repeat all times, which is a pity, because Shannu has the perfect temperament for this crime.’