‘You think so?’ Marcus frowned. ‘These are sophisticated killings, carefully planned and thought through, and I can see Shannu being bright enough and cunning enough to carry them out, but it’s the control aspect that doesn’t fit in.’
She pretended to be surprised. ‘Control?’
‘The binding of the ankles and the wrists,’ he explained. ‘Not easy with just one hand, and it suggests a need to dominate the victims, show who’s boss, and the longer it takes, the better. So then.’ Orbilio closed his eyes. ‘Suppose you tell me why you know it isn’t Sargon.’
The lids were shut, but you could still see the sparkle. He knew. Goddammit, he knew she didn’t think Sargon was the killer, he’d been stringing her along all the time! How the hell could he have guessed? Claudia’s fingernails drummed against the woodwork. Of course. If she’d suspected for a second that any of those men had been a butcher, she’d have contacted him straight away, instead of waiting for him to come to her. He knew she would not have risked another tattooed life.
‘I don’t
know
it isn’t Sargon,’ she said, with no attempt to disguise the petulance in her voice. ‘The wolf, the whistle—whit, whit, whit. He comes in on a market day, sneaks away from Dino and the Captain, and yes of course he has a secret. All men do.’
One lazy lid opened and slowly closed again.
‘Sargon,’ Claudia continued, ‘intends to wrest the reins from Arbil and operate from Rome, there are letters in his chest to that effect. Unfortunately, he intends to change his father’s moral strictures.’ She tossed across the two folded documents, the contract and the invoice, she’d purloined from Sargon’s satchel. ‘This is merely a sample.’
Orbilio’s breath came out in a hiss and he moved across to scrutinize the papers by the ever brightening sky. ‘The bastard plans to sell children into brothels! He’s drawn up a pricing structure, for gods’ sake.’
That’s the trouble with peace, thought Claudia, remembering all too clearly Sargon’s tariffs for brothels the length and breadth of the country. Peacetime brings boredom, boredom breeds hedonism and hedonism clearly pays handsome. Suddenly there was a nasty taste in her mouth.
‘I’ll bloody put paid to that,’ Orbilio was saying. ‘I’ll send soldiers right now to arrest him, and even then, we’d probably be doing him a favour. Janus knows what retribution Arbil would extract.’
I dread to think.
‘I just wish we had a motive for the slaughter,’ he said, tucking into his belt the evidence which would shortly sink Sargon. ‘Annia can’t recall any incident which might have triggered—where is she, by the way?’
‘Search me,’ Claudia shrugged.
‘Gladly,’ he grinned. ‘Can we start now?’
But all he got was a look that would have burnt holes in cobblestones.
He stared across the garden, where bees buzzed round the fan-trained peach and blizzards of apple blossom cascaded on to the path as a small boy climbed the branches. The first of the slaves were up, laying out breakfast, stoking the furnace, putting out crumbs for the birds. Had it not been for the dim light of the peristyle, the killer would have seen Severina had no tattoo and instead he’d have run Annia to ground. A sharp pain ran through Orbilio’s gut. Maybe the bastard already had…
‘Think carefully, Claudia. Think really carefully. Severina was killed here on purpose, a message to you—and they don’t come much clearer than that.’ She heard the rasp where he scratched at his stubble. ‘Is there no one else you can think of who has a connection with Arbil?’
A mental picture flashed across Claudia’s vision. One man talking earnestly with two others in a cool and shaded courtyard. A man who was surprised to see her there. A man who likes to control…
‘No,’ she said irritably. ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’
Around now, bakers would be cooling their first batches of the day, cats and dogs would stretch and scratch their fleas. Canopies would be unfolding under which tribunes would sit to hear petitions. Temple priests around the city would kindle up their sacred, aromatic fires.
Claudia feigned a yawn.
‘I’m sorry.’ Marcus jumped out of the chair and held
open the door of the office. ‘I ought not have kept you up all night.’
She fluttered a grateful feminine smile and shuffled wearily into her sandals. Once in the hall, however, those same shoes barely touched the floor as she dived into the bustling street.
Claudia did not believe those tales about werewolves who lusted after human blood.
But she believed in men who did.
XXX
‘I know he’s in there.’ Claudia pounded her fist against the heavy, holm-oak door. ‘Dammit, Tucca, open up!’ Heads poked out of windows, doves took flight, dogs barked. This was a respectable suburb on the Quirinal, the residents were unused to disturbances. A small child began to bawl. Claudia continued to batter.
Click, clunk, graunch. Finally, the door swung open a hand’s span.
‘Where is he?’ Claudia shoved her weight behind the timber and sent the mute reeling. ‘I know you’re here, Kaeso. Come on out!’
Tucca picked herself up and stumbled after the intruder, gargling and gesticulating with her raw, red hands that Kaeso didn’t live here, please go now. Undeterred, Claudia swept down the atrium, her magenta wrap flapping like batwings as she flung aside curtains, doors and shutters and peered into every dismal, empty room along the way. Nothing. She marched into the peristyle, still deep in shadow where the sun had not yet risen above the surrounding apartment blocks, and swore. The garden, if possible, looked gloomier than ever. No brindle dog to cheer it up, no puffs of white narcissus or scented squills, and the room of curios was strangely silent, too. The grate had been swept clean and only a lingering hint of woodsmoke suggested a fire had ever danced here. The collection of carved animals—rearing horses, diving dolphins, licking cats—seemed static somehow, lifeless, and the gap where the leaping billygoats had stood glared mournfully back at her.
The vitality of the room, she realized with an irregular thump of her heart, had been generated solely by Kaeso.
Tucca stood beside the polished cypress door, hands on solid hips as though to say I-told-you-so. Claudia’s eyes narrowed as she slowly retraced her steps to the atrium. The doors she’d flung open Tucca hadn’t bothered to close. Another smack in the face for her visitor. He was here, though. Goddammit, he was here…
Methodically she cast her eye over the atrium decor. Unimaginative was the word, that geometric mosaic, those boring blocks of colour on the walls, that mean little pool. Claudia looked up at the neutral stuccoed ceiling. Janus, the silence in this house was creepy! Then she remembered how Kaeso was predisposed towards tricks. Aha! With a judicious shove, two concealed doors in the far wall gave way, exposing a hidden room washed with blues, greens and silvers, sparkling with the reflections from a polished silver mirror. A shrine to an unfamiliar figure filled the far corner, although she recognized the Babylonian cherubs that were clinging to the ceiling.
‘Now tell me what were you doing at Arbil’s,’ she demanded.
And still there was nothing straightforward about Kaeso. The linen of his tunic was neither green nor blue, yet it could pass for either, and in the early morning light, his shaggy mane shone silver. Even in the privacy of his well concealed bedroom, it transpired, Kaeso resorted to camouflage.
He hadn’t so much as blinked. ‘Don’t you want to know about Magic?’ he asked, sweeping his arm to indicate the chair.
‘No.’ Claudia remained standing. ‘His tirade of filth has stopped.’ There had been nothing for two days. Perhaps she’d killed him, after all?
Kaeso straightened a marble bust which stood upon a podium by the wall. There was a Greekness about it, suggesting great antiquity.
‘I am here,’ she said, ‘to talk about Arbil, and why, when you were engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse involving Magic, and doubtless several other commissions besides, you felt obliged to look up a few old friends half a day’s ride out of town.’
‘And just what business might that be of yours?’ he asked, so quietly she had to strain to catch the words.
Well…
now you ask. None actually.
‘Furthermore, what gives you the right to barge into my house then root me out like a truffle?’ He padded across the room and his grey eyes bored into hers, but he couldn’t quite hold back the amusement which danced in them. ‘But most importantly, Claudia Seferius, how the bloody hell did you find out about this room?’
He’d been washing, she decided, when she’d burst into the house. There were splashes of water round the bowl and on the floor, and the towel was soaking wet.
‘Your conjuring tricks.’ Against her will, she smiled back. And that was why Kaeso was dangerous. ‘I spent a long time waiting in your atrium—’ (was it really only eight days ago?) and I had a feeling then I was being watched.’ In fact, I suspect the peephole is behind the statue you’ve just straightened. ‘Also, that story you spun about Tucca, something didn’t quite ring true. Is she your mother?’
‘Commendably close.’ He adjusted the buckle on his belt, reinforcing the notion of recent and hasty dressing. ‘She worked as a nursemaid for Arbil, we grew close and as you’ve already guessed, it’s me and not some fictitious daughter who looks after her. But,’ he gave a twisted grin, ‘the part about her husband is the truth. His bones do lie in the garden, and I should know, because I buried him myself.’
Between the bay tree and the yew, if I recall…Claudia turned to examine a painting on the wall. It was a rustic scene, shepherds on some hills, the sea calm and blue beyond, but nowhere that she recognized.
‘A girl was killed in my garden.’ Straight to the point, atta girl. ‘Her name was Annia, she was raised by Arbil, and she’s the latest in a number of similar attacks.’ Why mention that the killer mistook Severina for his intended victim?
Kaeso’s brow furrowed only slightly, but his answer was a long time coming. Finally he sat down on the bed and leaned his weight back upon one elbow. ‘The Market Day Murders. I see.’
She did not appear to have rattled him, but then a man who hides within his own house has long learned to curb emotions.
‘Arbil knows certain of his girls are being picked off one by one,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘Since tracking was what he trained me for, I volunteered to help.’
The bed he lay across was a combination of Roman
frame and Babylonian springing, though from the badly ruffled counterpane and sheets, it would appear Kaeso suffered badly from insomnia.
Or else had company.
‘Plausible,’ Claudia smiled. ‘I’d give you seven out of ten for quick thinking.’
Kaeso laughed, and the sound was by no means unpleasant. ‘Then before you pull my toenails out to get the truth, I’d better come clean about the urgency—and incidentally the secrecy—for that visit.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘The thing is, Claudia, Sargon feels his father’s mental frailties are sufficient to warrant not only a takeover, but a huge expansion in the industry.’
The word industry was not lost on her. ‘Has he divulged his new policies?’ she asked innocently. A trail of drips led from the washbasin to a wall covered by a large tapestry, where a puddle was starting to form round brown protruding toes.
‘Only that the financial rewards will be huge and my skills will be required on a permanent basis. With Arbil’s rapid deterioration in health, he intends to move quickly and asked me up there because he wanted to know whether I was in or not.’
‘And are you?’ Before nightfall, Sargon will be marched into Rome charged with peddling children for sex. Will you be in chains alongside him, Kaeso? Will you?
‘I haven’t decided,’ he shrugged.
Claudia walked over to the shrine. The figurine was cast in silver and appeared, from above, to be sexually ambivalent. She resisted the urge to lean down and determine its gender. The libation jug had dried out, only a red ring remained at the bottom, but the posy of flowers beside it was fresh. They were fragrant white lilies and she held one to her nose to inhale its heady perfume. Suddenly her magenta gown seemed garish in this room of seascape colours.
Without a word, Claudia tossed the lily in his lap and swept out of Kaeso’s bedroom.
At the far side of the atrium, she paused to glance over her shoulder. The green and yellow blocks of colour on the walls revealed no trace of the concealed doors that had closed seamlessly behind her. It was as though they’d never been. And for an instant, Claudia, too, was tempted to believe it was pure imagination, a figment of the light and lack of sleep.
The house did that to you.
It was intended to.
*
The figure that stepped out from behind the tapestry in Kaeso’s room was frowning. ‘What did that meddling bitch want?’
The man’s tracker eyes were still fixed on the pair of double doors. ‘She’s having trouble with a stalker. He attacked her, and she wants him dealt with.’
‘She didn’t look very scared when she came barging through your front door, pushing Tucca to the ground.’
‘I never said she was frightened,’ Kaeso pointed out. The other person sighed away their irritation, slowly inching up their tunic, first above one knee and then the thigh, then the other knee and thigh. Only when the body was fully revealed in its exquisite beauty, bathed in gold from pools of sunlight, did Kaeso wrench the whole of his gaze away from the doors. Sinuous arms coiled around his neck.
‘You do love me, don’t—?’ But the lips were silenced by the placing of two gentle fingers over them.