I checked that my knife was loose in its sheath, motioned the Wrecking Crew to stick close behind, and climbed the stairs to the auditorium. The sun was up now, although it was hidden by the Capitol rise, and when I got out into the open air I could see clearly along the ranks of seats. No one. Nothing.
Shit.
Fair enough. There was no point in skulking around. I put my hands round my mouth and shouted: ‘Soranus!’
A flock of sparrows flew out of the cavea to one side of the stage far below me. Nothing else moved. Bugger; it had been a wasted journey.
Or had it?
I looked down at the stretch of paving that separated the stage proper from the lowest half-circle of seats. In front of the raised stage platform, at ground level, there was a line of statues. Propped against one of them was…
The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
‘Fuck!’
‘Trouble, boss?’ That was the head slave of the Wrecking Crew. He sounded pleased.
‘Down we go, lads,’ I said. ‘Keep your eyes skinned.’
Yeah, sure; it could’ve been one of the theatre skivvies sleeping on the job: he was too far away for me to see his face clearly. And pigs might fly.
I went down the gangway to the senatorial seats, lowered myself carefully over the barrier onto the orchestra floor, and crossed towards the stage platform. The Wrecking Crew followed.
Yeah, that was Soranus all right, and he was definitely an ex-blackmailer: his throat had been cut ear to ear. No blood, though, on the paving-stones at least, barring a couple of smears. This corpse had been dumped. Well, I couldn’t say it was altogether unexpected; the whole setup had stunk from the beginning, and a corpse at the end of it had been one of the possibilities.
It’s funny how your mind registers little things at a time like this. For me, then, it was the bare knees of the statue above him. Diana the Huntress, in her short dress and wreath, poised and about to throw her javelin. The statue looked quite new, the bronze hardly tarnished. Soranus’s head was propped against the goddess’s legs.
Then I noticed something odd. Yeah, well, you know what I mean.
The guy’s right arm was stretched out straight in front of him and to one side, the hand clenched into a fist and resting knuckles-down on the orchestra floor, like he was holding something out towards me. I reached down and prised the fingers apart: either he hadn’t begun to stiffen properly yet or he’d been killed quite a while ago, because they opened fairly easily.
Soranus was holding a silver piece.
I sat back on my heels to think. Bugger; what was going on here? It got weirder by the minute. If the body had been dumped, as it had, then why — ?
‘Sir! Sir!’
I looked round. An old guy — obviously a slave, from his tunic — was hobbling towards me along the line of the platform. I reached down and took the coin from Soranus’s hand, then stood up to wait for him.
‘You’re Valerius Corvinus, sir?’ he said.
‘Uh…yeah. Yeah, that’s me.’ Jupiter! Weird was right! ‘How the hell — ?’
‘I was told to wait for you, sir.’ The guy was white and shaking, and it wasn’t just old age, either. ‘Until you’d found the — ’ His eyes slid to what was left of Soranus, then back to my face. Whatever he saw there can’t exactly have been reassuring, because he took a step back. ‘Believe me, sir, I didn’t…I had nothing to do with…’
‘You want us to beat him up, boss?’ The head of the Wrecking Crew again. I had to hand it to these guys. They’d taken finding a dead man with his throat slit in their stride like it happened every day of the month. Not a grunt from any of them. Phlegmatic isn’t the word. Maybe ‘bovine’ covered it.
‘No. No, that’s okay,’ I said. Then, to the slave: ‘Tell me.’
‘They brought the body in a cart, sir, about an hour ago. I was…I sleep in one of the booths beside the entrance. They must’ve known that, sir, because they woke me up and told me to open the door.’ His teeth were chattering. The fact that the Wrecking Crew to a troll were standing close beside him fondling their sticks can’t’ve helped his confidence that he’d come out the other side of this intact much either.
‘You’re the caretaker?’
‘Yes, sir. Almost all my life, ever since the Divine Augustus rebuilt the theatre, sir.’ His hand pawed at my tunic. ‘Sir, I’ve told you the gods’ truth! Don’t let me be tortured! I didn’t kill him!’
‘Look, no one’s going to torture you, pal, okay?’ I said. ‘Right. So who were “they”?’
‘Two men, sir. Big-built, about your age, sir, or a bit older. One called the other Quintus. They said if I called the Watch before you came, or if I warned you, they’d come back and…Sir, I don’t know any more! Please!’
No, he probably didn’t, and he was obviously close to wetting himself as it was. No point in terrorising the guy further. Besides, I knew who the killers were: they hadn’t made any secret of it, quite the reverse. Which was weird in itself. ‘It’s okay, pal,’ I said. ‘You’re off the hook. Go and call the Watch now. Oh, and they’ll want to know the dead man’s name. Tell them Mucius Soranus. He lives — lived — over on the Cipian near Livia Porch.’
‘And…I know your name, sir, but you live..?’
‘On the Caelian, foot of Head of Africa. They can find me if they want to. I doubt they’ll bother, though.’ Not if the head of the Ninth Region Watch was anything like Titus bloody Mescinius, that was. Gods! What a mess!
Well, there wasn’t much more I could do here, was there?
Home.
Perilla was waiting. She ran across the atrium floor and hugged me tightly. She was white as an unused dishrag.
‘You’re all right?’ she said.
‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. No problems.’
‘What happened? Did you see Soranus?’
I unpeeled her. ‘Yes and no.’
‘Yes and no?’
I told her.
‘It was your stonemasons?’ she said when I’d finished. ‘You’re certain?’
‘Couldn’t be anyone else. The whole thing was a setup. Surprise surprise.’ I stretched out on the couch and poured a cup of Setinian from the jug Bathyllus had handed me at the door. ‘Never mind. At least I didn’t get killed or beaten up.’
‘Marcus, don’t joke! Please!’
‘Well, it was always a possibility. Still, that wasn’t the purpose of the exercise, was it?’
‘No.’ She gave a little shiver and sat down on the couch opposite, hands clenched. ‘So what was, do you think?’
‘Search me. Some sort of message, sure, that much is obvious. But what kind? A warning? “Lay off or you’ll be next”?’
‘Marcus!’
‘Yeah, well.’
The lady had got a bit of her colour back, although she still didn’t look exactly happy and her fingers were still wound together. ‘Your pseudo-stonemasons,’ she said. ‘What were their names again?’
‘Aponius and Pettius. At least, those were the names they gave me.’
‘Yes. They did save your life last time. That doesn’t fit with a warning, does it?’
‘Nothing about this case fucking fits!’
‘Gently, dear. There’s no point in getting angry.’ She took a deep breath and let it out. ‘Or upset.’ Her fingers untwined themselves. ‘Let’s be logical. If it wasn’t a warning, then what kind of message was it?’
‘Jupiter, Perilla, I already said, I don’t know! Anyway, what kind of sick brain sends messages using a corpse?’
‘It isn’t just that. The whole situation is…odd.’
‘You’re telling me.’ I took a swallow of wine. Nectar! All the way to Mars Field and back in a morning had left me with a throat dry as a leather strap.
Perilla was looking pensive and twisting at her hair. Good sign; a thinking Perilla I can cope with. The other kind makes me nervous.
‘To begin with, why Pompey’s theatre?’ she said. ‘Soranus was practically a neighbour of ours. They could have left his body anywhere. Why choose the other side of Rome, especially if the whole point was simply to have you find it?’