Claudia made to stand up, but a huge hand sent her crashing back down and a boot on her back kept her there. There was a look on Lais’ face which suggested this wasn’t her first experience of violence. Or that she did not enjoy what she watched. Claudia licked away the dribble of blood which trickled from the side of her mouth and tried to ignore the swelling coming up on her cheek.
‘I’m in Atlantis on holiday-’ she began, before Pul’s boot slammed her forehead against the tessellated floor.
‘Nice try,’ Lais said, sipping at her wine. Claudia could smell the strength of the vintage even through the taste of her own blood. ‘But Pul watched you when you arrived, observed you taking note of your surroundings like a true professional, even to weighing him up. Oh, don’t be fooled. His expression is impassive enough, but he doesn’t miss much, do you, Pul?’
Claudia could not see, of course, but she knew that the walrus moustache had lifted in a grin. With his foot on her neck, she was powerless to move. There was no way she could reach for the blade.
‘He watched you make a beeline for Cal,’ Lais was saying, ‘and I overheard you myself from the loggia, pumping him for information while he bragged about how much he knew. Why, you practically signed his death warrant yourself.’
Don’t you dare pin this on me, you bitch! ‘Taking a risk, weren’t you, Lais?’ This was not the time to let them see she was scared. ‘Out and about in broad daylight, when you were supposed to be dead?’
Hooded eyes glinted in unashamed triumph, rings glistening off every finger joint, and despite the jab of revulsion at her crimes, a part of Claudia could still acknowledge the woman’s cunning and admire her daring.
‘Who’s to see me? The slaves in Atlantis? Those overworked, obsequious morons don’t differentiate between one paying guest and another, and as for Pylades, please don’t insult my intelligence. I conduct my business only when it’s essential and only when everyone’s asleep, either at night or during siesta or even, like today, during mealtimes, if needs must.’ Her tongue flickered in and out like a snake’s. ‘Not that I need explain this to you. Since you’ve been tracking me, you must be familiar with my movements.’
Pul’s boot was heavy on Claudia’s neck, pushing her chin hard on the floor. ‘Now why should I be interested in you, Lais, my peach?’
‘Oh, cut the crap,’ Lais snapped. ‘You’ve been hanging round me like a bad smell ever since you arrived, or are you going to pretend it was coincidence that night I met Kamar in the hall?’
Claudia felt the room spin. How could she explain that it suited her own purposes to be out and about during those same antisocial hours? Her only chance for survival lay with pretending she was employed by Tuder’s relatives…
Croesus, she needed to buy time. Somehow she had to win Lais’ confidence.
‘Whose was the body they fished out of the water?’ she asked. No wonder the victim’s face was mashed to a pulp, it was to render the poor cow unrecognizable, and now it made sense, Pul playing the model citizen role by ‘helping’ to retrieve the corpse. It would have been him who choreographed the event.
Lais waved an airy hand. ‘Who knows? Who cares? Right height, right size, right bone structure-dressed in my clothes with a few of my jewels, let the fish take care of the rest.’
Claudia suppressed a shudder of revulsion at this callous, premeditated crime. ‘How long had you been planning your own murder?’
‘A couple of months,’ Lais shrugged, ‘maybe three had passed, since I set Pul to search for a suitable double.’
Claudia goggled. ‘You held her prisoner all that time?’ Did she know? Did the poor bitch have any idea what they planned?
‘We could hardly have the body decomposing, now could we? The timing was crucial. A public occasion, a crowd-and my little bit of Spanish rough fell right into the trap. But then I knew he would.’ Lais slipped out of her chair and lifted Claudia’s chin with her exquisitely crafted sandal. ‘Tarraco is so predictable, don’t you agree?’
Meaning that under attack, he would throw back his head rather than cringe. Would defy, rather than defend. ‘I don’t know him as intimately as you,’ Claudia purred back.
‘The bastard gave you my harebell gown for nothing? He’s slipping.’ When Lais laughed, deep furrows appeared in her cheeks. ‘You don’t know what you missed. In that department he is truly exceptional. However, one expects loyalty from one’s subordinates.’
She clicked her fingers and Pul released his boot. Claudia wondered whether she might be reduced to looking right for eternity.
‘Also-’ incredibly, Lais appeared to be offering her a glass of wine. Girl to girl, and all that. ‘-my husband,’ she sneered over the word, ‘had ideas way above his station.’ She indicated Claudia take a seat. ‘You know, that little toe-rag began to imagine he owned me. Me! Can you believe it? After all I’d done for him, too.’
As though her face was not bleeding, grazed and swollen, Claudia accepted the chair. ‘Such as?’
‘Disposing of that awful Virginia, for a start.’ Lais rolled her ridiculously painted eyes. ‘Dreadful woman. Brayed like a donkey, stank of cheap scent, Virginia had absolutely no conversation whatsoever. Tarraco was far better off with me.’
‘You drowned her in the lake?’
‘So gullible, that woman. And you’d think Tarraco would have shown a pinch of gratitude. Hell, were it not for my intervention, Virginia would have willed everything to some silly daughter in Gaul instead of him.’
Except, mused Claudia, at that stage Tarraco believed he had been doing Lais a favour. There was a subtle irony in the two of them playing off against each other.
‘Unfortunately,’ Stonypuss said, ‘despite the clothes I bought him, the trinkets I lavished on him, indeed the decent manners that I taught him, that little dago bastard had the temerity to shag some kitchen slut from Atlantis and expect to get away with it.’ She flashed her flint-hard eyes at Claudia. ‘No one crosses me. No one.’
As though in a theatre, the play ran before Claudia’s eyes. The staged argument. A weeping prisoner secretly throttled and beaten. Innuendoes whispered concerning Lais’ disappearance. The athletics display. The body, weighted underwater in the oyster beds for the requisite length of time, now cut loose to be ‘discovered’. Cyrus enters the stage. So, too, Tarraco, strutting, arrogant, haughty, defiant. A dramatic arrest. Execution follows…
Revenge was clearly a dish Lais served icy cold.
‘After a couple of months,’ Claudia supposed aloud, ‘no doubt the grieving widow would make her reappearance, admitting the row, to storming off, saying-what? you’d sought solace with a friend in Ancona? — and my, my, how horrified you’d be to hear of your poor husband’s fate.’
‘Another superlative performance,’ Lais agreed. ‘Without a single flaw.’
Except that Tarraco didn’t care you’d done a bunk.
‘Except that Tarraco is free.’ Unwise, Claudia felt, to declare her role in that particular interlude.
‘Pity,’ Lais said sadly. ‘I’d set my heart on seeing him pay, but I know that boy. He’ll be in Cadiz by now, out of my grasp.’
For once, Lais, I am in total agreement with you. He’ll bluff, he’ll bluster, yet deep down Tarraco is insecure. Cyrus had played on that aspect beside the running track, when Lais’ double was fished out of the water, and Claudia had added to it, when she provided him with the means to escape. A bittersweet chord tugged inside her. At least she was right on one count. Tarraco was not capable of killing Lais in a murderous frenzy.
‘Do have another glass of wine-you have no idea how I’ve longed for an appreciative audience,’ Lais was saying.
Claudia glanced at the door, guarded by the massive Oriental in his leather vest and kilt, feet solidly apart, hands across his chest. She did not like the gleam in his eye.