‘For heaven’s sake,’ he wailed. ‘You’re not suggesting…? Not seriously…? Oh, come on!’
Claudia paused by his instrument rack and selected a bronze probe, fine and flexible. ‘This should flex nicely up your left nostril,’ she said cheerfully.
‘All right, all right.’ There was a rising note of panic in his voice. ‘From time to time, I may have…eased…a patient out of their distress. I believe I do recollect the silversmith, now you come to mention it-’
‘And the woman who kept cats?’
‘She was ill,’ Kamar bleated, ‘very ill.’ He flinched back from the bronze probe, jarring the leg of a table and sending clouds of white powder into the air. ‘I was only easing her passage-’
Pastilles from a limewood box cascaded on to the floor. ‘The same way you helped Cal?’
The Etruscan’s tongue darted round his lips. ‘I didn’t kill Calvus!’ His voice was shrill in protest and Claudia knew she had him on the run. In fact, one quick flex of the bronze probe was sufficient. ‘All right, all right-I admit, I knew the body had been placed to make it look like an accident, but…’ His eyelids were beating faster than a bumblebee’s wings. ‘I–I-don’t know why I covered it up. I just panicked. Then when everything went quiet…’ His voice trailed off and he offered up a look of utter helplessness.
Claudia waited. And the silence was more effective than either the probe or the cane.
Kamar groaned. ‘Look. Now and again, Pul tips me the wink about clients with terminal illnesses and for their sakes well, yes, I do occasionally help them out of their suffering.’
‘For which the relatives are no doubt very grateful.’
His voice turned to a whine. ‘Why shouldn’t they show their gratitude in tangible form? I’m only doing my duty…’
Goodness gracious, he genuinely expected her to swallow that, too? Heavens, if this man was any dimmer, he’d need watering three times a week.
‘Wh-what are you doing?’
‘Trussing you up like a peahen for the table.’
When Claudia tied his ankles to the table leg with a sturdy linen bandage, his circulatory system was the last thing on her mind. She didn’t even hear him wince. Behind her, his balsam resin spluttered in the brazier and on the shelf above his balances an array of tins and flasks and copper vessels glinted in the lamplight.
‘Now, Kamar, you have a choice. Either I holler and bring Pylades running with a whole host of witnesses to hear what you’ve just told me, or you can whisper in my dainty shell-like ear where I can find him and we can negotiate your departure from Atlantis with some degree of dignity.’
‘Who’s “him”?’ Kamar blinked slowly several times.
Still playing games, eh? Claudia leaned forward and placed the tip of her nose to the tip of his. ‘He sold you out, you know.’
‘Who did?’ A flicker of puzzlement danced across the turtle face. ‘Pul?’
‘I’m after the miller, not the donkey grinding the corn. Where is Tarraco holing up?’
‘How should I know where he is,’ he said testily. ‘He escaped from bloody jail, he could be any…’ His voice trailed off, and a strange expression came over his face. ‘Wait-’ It had to be fear. Yet he looked suspiciously smug. ‘You said Tarraco sold me out, right?’
Claudia nodded.
‘Then why do you need me to tell you where he is?’
Shit. ‘Because.’ Claudia straightened up and to buy time pretended to read the papyrus label gummed to a small horn container. Think, girl. Think! Make it plausible. ‘Because Orbilio-’ (yes!) ‘-believed his story that you were the mastermind behind the racket and he was the innocent dupe, and so he…let him out of jail. Now, of course, we know otherwise, and while Marcus is chasing his tail with the er, paperwork, I’ve been authorized to make a deal with you.’
Kamar’s low brows knitted together. ‘You wouldn’t be lying to me?’
‘Now why should I do a thing like that?’ She smiled. ‘You’ve seen me talking to Orbilio, you know he’s paid for the room. I’m his top undercover agent.’ Had she pushed it too far?
‘A deal, eh?’
‘You have my word.’
‘And you promise that, if I give you what you want, you’ll let me walk away? No repercussions?’
‘My solemn oath.’
‘Very well,’ Kamar said, with what could almost pass as a twinkle in his eye. ‘In that case, I’ll tell you exactly where you can find your Tarraco.’
XXXIV
You could cut the heat with a wood saw as Claudia’s oars slurped through the oily, black water. She shivered. Clouds had long since swallowed the hills and behind her, dark and silent, Tuder’s island rose austere and jagged in the spears of white which flashed and flickered as the thunder rolled and rumbled. She swallowed the lump in her throat.
The Titan was breaking free of his chains.
With a boulder in her stomach and a stranglehold round her throat, she hauled the boat ashore, the crunch of gravel a pinprick in the wild night, and to the croak of a million frogs and with crickets buzzing in the grass, she zigzagged her way towards the villa. Along the colonnade, torches hissed and spat in the torrid night air, their pitch and their sulphur sour in her throat. Keeping close to the shadows, she worked her way round to the dining terrace. The purple upholstered couches had been taken indoors, but the pots of spiky palms pointed accusingly and the scent of the garlands was overpowering. Slipping off her sandals, Claudia padded up the steps, alert for the least sound or sensation. The last time she had seen the atrium, inhaled its myrrh, marvelled at its gilded rafters, had been the night Tarraco tried to seduce her… The night he presented her with his wife’s harebell-blue gown… She shuddered again, and mastered the brief spell of nausea. Tonight, as before, the hall was deserted, and flitting between the soaring columns and cold-eyed statuettes, Claudia paused to take stock. It was the old, old riddle, wasn’t it? Where’s the best place to hide a pebble? Answer, on the beach. With hindsight, it was obvious Tarraco would not hole up in the hills, but would scuttle back to home. He had his slaves to cover for him. They would be his eyes and ears until the furore subsided. Meanwhile, any number of legionaries could search Tuder’s island and not find his hiding place. Unless someone confessed.
An explosion of thunder overhead sent Claudia’s heart hurdling into her mouth and when a second roll joggled the ceramic votive dishes in the family shrine, her jittery wrist almost sent a vase of deep blue delphiniums crashing to the floor. Calm down, she told herself, steadying the jar. Relax. You can do this on your own.
Typical bloody aristocrat, bunking off. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. The one time you need help, and where is he? Probably finishing off his game of rams and rustlers with the luscious Phoebe, her of the straining seams, kohl eyes and generous bosom. Generous in the sense that she gave it to anyone who wanted it, that is. Well, wherever he’d slunk off to, Claudia had no time to lose. Sooner or later Kamar would come round and although she’d left him trussed up like a waterfowl and dosed with enough of his own anodyne to lay him out flat for three hours (thanks, Ruth!), at some stage his wife would wonder where old Turtleface had gone…and next time Tarraco would take care not to choose a hiding place which could be blabbed about.
It was now. Or it was never.
The atrium fountain splashed and sputtered as another silver shaft splintered the heavens, lighting up the potted ferns and herbs and animating the paintings on the wall. From a distant wing came the clatter of pans and skillets as supper pots were washed and cleared away, and the faint smell of leather permeated the air. Suddenly masculine voices drifted across. Tarraco? Claudia flattened herself against the stonework just as two swarthy slaves appeared in the doorway, rolling an amphora of olive oil across the floor to the storeroom. She dared not breathe. Please, Jupiter. Go easy on the thunderbolts! Her prayer was answered. The men trundled their cargo right past her, chatting, laughing, not thinking to peer in the shadows…