‘I would have seen it when I called in to see your wife last night, of course.’ He gave me a peculiarly furtive cross-eyed grin. ‘Funny a pie-seller should choose your workshop as a place to die. And to think that I was in there shortly afterwards and never knew.’ He tapped his nose again. ‘Well, I can see that you don’t want the story spread around, but — considering that I lent you light and embers yesterday — you might satisfy my curiosity at least. Where exactly did you find the corpse?’
It was a kind of blackmail — of a moral sort. I tried to deflect it. ‘You could come in and I’d show you if I’d had the workshop cleansed, but, of course, I haven’t, and we don’t want to court ill luck.’
It would take more than bad omens to put the tanner off. ‘I was in there with your family, so it makes no difference. I’ll make sure I ritually wash my hands and face and make an extra sacrifice to the household gods tonight.’ He gave me that one-toothed grin of his again. ‘Some of us are very careful about that sort of thing.’
I knew when I was beaten. I could see what he would do if I refused to let him in — spread the story that my shop was cursed because I didn’t pay proper homage to the gods. ‘There is nothing particular to mark the spot,’ I said forlornly, but it didn’t help. He was already waiting at the door. I led the way into the inner room, crossed to the window space and took the shutter down.
‘Over there-’ I was about to gesture vaguely at the place when I stopped abruptly short.
The tanner beside me caught his breath. ‘Great Mars and all the gods!’
For there was something on the floor, almost exactly where Lucius had been. Something in a tunic and horribly inert. I had been right in my suspicion of a smell. There was a body lying sprawled out on its front and it was very clearly dead.
The tanner turned to me. His eyes were strangely bright. ‘Is that the pie-seller? The army brought him back?’
I shook my head, too full of shock and grief to speak, for I recognized the lifeless object on the floor. The last time I had seen it, it was a living man and he was shouting ‘Turnips!’ in the street.
Seventeen
I turned Radixrapum gently over, but I knew what I would find. The same cruel biting mark of rope around the neck, the bruise where the ligature had been savagely pulled tight, the same protruding tongue and purpled face. But where Lucius had still been pliant and, if not actually warm, at least no more than cool, my poor turnip-selling friend was as cold and rigid as a stone image of himself. Already, over the scent of sweat and turnips, the distinctive sick-sweet smell of death was beginning to appear. He had been dead for hours — if I had not seen him myself the previous afternoon, I might have wondered if he’d been killed with Lucius.
There were other signs as well that this was not a recent death. Blood was already pooling in his arms and thighs, as I could see where his tunic had ridden up them to reveal the flesh. I am no medicus, but I know that this occurs when the body has been lying in one place for several hours. But not this place, necessarily, I thought.
I looked again. There was evidence of abrasion all across the skin, from his ankles to his armpits, as I soon ascertained, and on both front and back, though worse across his chest and around the tattered modesty binding that he wore round his loins. There was no doubt that the scuffing had happened after death. And the toes of the sandals had scraped fresh tracks on the floor, right across the area where the Apollo piece had been. Like the pie-seller, this man had been killed elsewhere and dragged in here afterwards.
I let him roll back on to his front again, so that I was not obliged to look at his distended face, and stepped back abruptly. I was upset and furious. The death of Lucius had been a shock, but somehow this one upset me even more. I had not known the turnip-man very long or very well, but he had proved himself to be intelligent, and when I was in trouble, he’d set out to help: that was almost a definition of a friend.
‘Citizen!’ The agitated exclamation brought me to myself. The tanner was tugging at my toga in dismay. ‘This man did not just die. Somebody killed him! Strangled, I would say. Look at that red mark around his neck.’
I had forgotten that he did not know the details of the earlier death. I nodded wearily.
‘Robbed him of his purse too, by the look of it,’ the tanner pointed out. ‘It has been chopped through at the cord where it was hanging at his belt.’
I hadn’t noticed that, but it was significant. If Radixrapum had been killed and robbed last night, then Minimus was already locked up in a cell and could not have taken any part in it. I looked at the severed loop that the tanner was pointing at. ‘You are right, of course.’
The tanner was delighted by his own cleverness. ‘So, pavement-maker, you are not the only one to notice things, you see,’ he said with glee. ‘Though you have a reputation for solving mysteries.’ Then he saw my face and asked more soberly, ‘But I see this person was a friend. Do you know who did this?’
I shook my head. ‘I only wish I-’ I was interrupted by a noise outside. Almost without thinking, I picked up a heavy hammer from the table-top, ready, if necessary, to defend myself. ‘Who is it?’ I said loudly. ‘Come in and show yourself.’
There was a moment’s silence and then the door was pushed ajar — and there was Junio, my adopted son. I dropped my makeshift club.
‘What is the matter, Father?’ Junio began. ‘You sounded quite alarmed. Were you expecting trouble? It is only me. Maximus is following. We have found the boy who. .’ He caught sight of the body. ‘Dear Jove! Another one?’ He came over and peered more closely at the corpse. ‘And the same killer, by the look of it. The method seems to be exactly what you had described from yesterday.’
The tanner looked from my adopted son to me with an expression of astonishment. ‘You mean the pie-seller was murdered too?’
It was no good blaming Junio — he didn’t know my neighbour as I did — but I felt my heart sink to my sandal-straps. It would be extremely difficult to hush the tanner now — this story would be all over Glevum by tonight. Any chance of quietly locating Minimus and solving this before my patron came would almost certainly have disappeared — along with most of my likely customers.
Junio looked apologetic, but it was too late. The tanner was already saying in his cracked and mumbling voice, ‘And you kept the knowledge from me?’ He was obviously aggrieved.
This was going from bad to worse. He would spread rumours that I knew more about these murders than I wanted to reveal. I could imagine what my fellow citizens would make of that.
There was no help for it. I seized him by the arm. ‘Of course I kept it from you.’ I almost hissed the words. ‘Be thankful that I did. It was obviously safer for you if you didn’t know. Look at the turnip-vendor. He knew that Lucius was murdered yesterday, and now see what’s become of him. Would you want to end like that? Can’t you see that we are dealing with a ruthless killer here?’
The tanner had turned pale, even under the dark colour of his trade. ‘You mean he only died because he saw the other corpse? I knew that he was round here yesterday, but I didn’t realize. .’ He tailed off. The morbid, gleeful interest was gone, and he was staring at Radixrapum now, his boss-eyes glazed with fear. ‘You think that he was killed so that he couldn’t talk?’
I shrugged. ‘What other explanation can there be? He knew about the other body and what was done to it. That’s the only connection I can see between the two.’ In fact, I realized, this was no more than the truth, and it was disturbing. It did seem that Radixrapum’s death had been to silence him. And warn me to silence too. Why else choose my workshop as the place to leave the corpse? Or was there some other connection that I couldn’t see?
‘I suppose it’s possible the two of them were friends,’ Junio ventured in a doubtful voice. As usual, he had been following my thoughts.