A lump blocked her windpipe. There was no mistaking his meaning…
Claudia kept her eyes clear of the powerful frame of the man tracker, the sleek war machine who had silenced her stalker for ever, as she pretended to re-arrange the folds of her gown. ‘Kaeso, I-’
But he had gone.
‘Kaeso?’
She was all alone in the temple. And when she asked the priestess which direction he had taken, the girl frowned. ‘No one came down these steps, but you, ma’am,’ she replied.
Tight-lipped, Claudia smiled. To the end, Kaeso kept up his chicanery, and she knew she could return to that house on the Quirinal a hundred times and never find him.
Not unless Kaeso wanted her to.
XXXII
His body beaded with sweat, his hair hanging limp in saturated ropes, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio made his way towards the steam room. The game of small ball, fast and physical, had exhausted him, but his mind was buzzing like a bee around a hyssop bush as he collapsed face down upon the table to submit to the ministrations of a Spaniard who’d clearly scraped kidskins for vellum in a previous incarnation.
There were many aspects of these bizarre and grisly killings that worried him, he brooded, as the strigil scraped his flesh. Ritual murder’s always tricky, because despite the killer’s distinctive signature upon the crime, in most cases he’s virtually impossible to trace. But for once, Marcus had a fair old list of suspects.
The Spaniard rolled him on to his back and proceeded to torture the remaining life out of his prostrate victim. True, he had eliminated those five suspects, but in the same way he’d overlooked the obvious regarding Zygia’s hair, somewhere along the line, Orbilio knew he had made a crucial mistake.
His flesh raw, he tipped the Spaniard and let a square-jawed Sarmatian work warmed oils of chamomile and marjoram into his skin. Claudia had been positive Shannu could not pass his bars, now a chill descended on Marcus, despite the ministrations of the masseur. Suppose someone deliberately unbolted that door…
Donning wood-soled sandals to protect his feet against the searing tiles, Orbilio clip-clopped into the hot room. ‘Ritual murder, ritual murder’ went the rhythm of the clogs, forcing him to recap the observances which the killer so assiduously followed.
One: lasso the victims, drag them backwards, knock them out. Two: strip them naked, tie their hands and then their feet, and he must gag them too, and remove the gag later, because no one had screamed. Then he started slashing, but why the twenty-seven cuts? What was the significance of the hair in the lap? And where did the whistle fit in? It all seemed so over the top. Almost an over-kill. Pinching his nose, Orbilio dived beneath the steaming waters. Of course! Bobbing up, he pushed the hair from off his face and grinned. It was the ritual which mattered, not the actual killing.
As he shook off the drips, Severina’s face floated into his memory. Not how she’d looked in death, but how she looked in life. Beautiful, full of joy, with everything to live for. Why? he wondered. Why, of all the girls who bore a blue tattoo, should dark, vivacious Zygia be a target for the killer’s warped and twisted mind? What is it that sets the elfin Annia apart?
Orbilio felt he was on the brink of more than just the plunge pool. He was-if only he dared follow up his instinct-poised on the brink of a terrible solution, because suppose (just suppose) he’d got this whole thing back to front? Arms outstretched, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio dived into the icy waters of the plunge pool.
And shuddered.
XXXIII
‘Claudia?’
The bunch of keys jangled in his hand as Marcus let himself in, but only his voice came back to him, the echo undistorted by kitchen steam or by the clatters, bangs and jabber that denote a household’s heart.
‘I need to talk to you about Arbil.’
Tossing the keys upon a vacant chopping block, he crossed the silent kitchen into an atrium where only marble eyes stared out and chatter came solely from the fountain. Where the hell was everybody?
‘Claudia,’ he bellowed, and ‘ya, ya, ya’ echoed back to him as he belted up the stairs. Her bedroom, and all the guest rooms, were deserted. Where the devil were the servants?
‘Like whether a goblet is half empty,’ he called out, as he checked the second gallery, ‘or half full-’
Dare he barge into the bathroom? Nine days ago, she’d staunched his bleeding wounds and pressed sweet balms on to his bruises. You’d never know, from looking round, what had passed between them in this room.
‘-it’s a question of perspective.’
Dammit, Claudia, I thought you’d be home. And then he remembered the musical farce. She must have taken the whole household as a treat.
‘This murder business,’ he said, more to keep himself company in this ringing hall of columns. ‘You talked of conjurors, remember? Seeing only what you’re deceived to see?’
He may as well check the office before leaving.
‘Hell, we’ve been fed a stage set from the start.’
‘I know,’ Claudia said quietly. From her upright, hard-backed chair behind the desk, she swivelled her eyes to meet his, but her head didn’t move, and today he could forgive the lack of courtesy.
On account of the knife which pressed against the artery in her neck.
*
Orbilio felt himself stumble. For the first time in his life, he knew what failure meant. Total, abject failure. He had seen death in all its forms, had killed in war and self-defence. There were occasions, he recalled, where men had died when they need not have, and he had been powerless to help. Partly that was why he joined the Security Police. To rectify those errors, and avenge.
‘Let her go,’ he said, edging through the doorway. ‘Untie her and take me instead.’
A hand slid under Claudia’s chin and jerked it upwards, stretching her neck like a sacrificial beast’s. ‘Suppose I give Nemesis his rein and slit her throat, right here and now? What would you do then?’
He watched, transfixed with horror, as the flat of the blade travelled slowly, almost sensuously, up and down, up and down Claudia’s throat.
Orbilio heard the tremble in his voice. ‘I’d kill you.’ Claudia had closed her eyes, he noticed. Otherwise, there was no trace of fear upon her face. His gut turned over.
‘You might lock me away, like poor Shannu was locked away, an embarrassment to the family-’ the blade reverted to a point and pressed against the throbbing artery ‘-but my dear Marcus, you will never harm Penelope’s beloved baby.’
Annia turned the full force of her beautiful, treacherous smile upon the man she called her cousin. ‘That I’m sure of.’
XXXIV
Marcus was right, Claudia thought. Annia had played him like a sucker from the start.
Three murders so gruesome, so bizarre they would automatically attract the attention of the Security Police, though it was Marcus in particular she needed to hook, hence the encounter with Daphne. Heaven knows how long she’d been trailing the poor woman, waiting for the moment when her path would cross with Orbilio’s, but Annia-as ever-had played her part to perfection. There was no way, after hearing Penelope’s history, that he could remain on the sidelines.
Not that he was the only mug. Claudia, too, had allowed logic and emotion to outweigh her natural instinct, and now she was about to pay the price. How strange, she thought. Despite Nemesis pressing at her throat, her mind drifted high above it, clear and calm. As though all this was happening to someone else and she was merely a spectator, watching from afar. Nothing seemed real. Not this warren of a house, unnaturally silenced. Not Marcus, unbuckling his sword belt with reluctance. And especially not sweet little Annia with her shiny, scrubbed face and glistening fair hair which she washed every day and tied back with a clean cerise ribbon. The same ribbon, incidentally, which bound Claudia’s wrists.