‘But?’
‘Right. Definitely but. First of all, he’d’ve done the killing personally, not sent someone else to do it. Someone like Otillius would want the satisfaction of bashing the old guy’s head in himself.’
‘We can’t be absolutely sure he did send anyone else.’
‘Come again?’
‘Cilix only said he saw a strange freedman acting suspiciously and coming from the direction of the tower at approximately the right time. He didn’t see him actually leave the tower, let alone commit the murder. At first he thought the man was a poacher. Why shouldn’t he have been right?’
I sat back. Shit. True; absolutely true. We were assuming the freedman Cilix saw was the killer, but that’s all it was: an assumption. If he’d been what was effectively an innocent bystander, then the whole thing was up for grabs.
Thank you for that, clever-clogs. Thank you so very much. Just what I needed.
‘Even so, lady,’ I said, ‘Otillius wasn’t a planner. He’s a porter in the vegetable market, for the gods’ sakes.’
‘So?’
‘Jupiter, Perilla, intelligence in a job like that is a positive drawback. Some of the cabbages are smarter than those guys.’
‘Marcus, that is judgmental and completely unfair.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe. But he didn’t seem much of an intellectual giant to me. And he was genuinely surprised that Surdinus was dead. Either that or he was a bloody good actor.’
‘Are you so certain that he wasn’t?’
‘Come on, lady! Give me a break! Trust me, Otillius isn’t the one we want.’
‘Very well. What about Naevius Gallio?’
I just stared at her. ‘What?’
‘He’s a possibility. Not as good a one as Surdinus Junior, I admit, but far better, to my mind, than anyone else. And for much the same reasons.’
‘You care to elucidate, maybe?’ I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
‘Certainly. His family have managed the Naevius estate finances for three generations, and he clearly takes considerable pride in the fact. How do you think he felt when the current head of the Naevius family started dismantling the estate and effectively giving and continuing to give away large parts of it to a common nightclub dancer?’
Bugger; I could see where she was heading. Put like that, it was obvious. A client/patron link that went that far back would be pretty much bred in the bone, and its loyalties would be to the family as a whole, not to any of the individual members. Furthermore, those loyalties would override everything, absolutely everything, even the moral and legal concepts of right and wrong. Pace Perilla, Gallio had a motive that, in its own way, was at least as strong as Junior’s.
‘Pretty hacked off,’ I said. ‘Particularly when he was forced to sit on his hands and watch it happening. Or, even worse, organize the transactions himself.’ Hell. ‘Yeah, fair enough, lady. Add him to the pot. Anyone else, while we’re about it? You haven’t got an axe to grind regarding Sullana, have you?’
‘No, dear. Not so far. But then I’m keeping an open mind.’
I grinned. ‘OK. Fair enough. Just get off my back, will you?’
She smiled and ducked her head. ‘There’s the other son, of course. He’s a completely unknown quantity at present.’
‘Yeah, right.’ I emptied my wine cup and refilled it. ‘Actually, I’ve got him scheduled. He’s tomorrow’s assignment.’
‘Do you know where to find him?’
‘Not exactly. Postuma said he’s got a place — a workshop or whatever — near the Circus.’
‘She couldn’t be more specific?’
‘I didn’t ask her at the time, but I’d guess not. Even so, tracking him down shouldn’t be too difficult.’
‘Oh, really?’ Perilla sniffed. ‘Marcus, dear, be sensible! The phrase near the Circus covers everything bounded by the Caelian, the Palatine and the Aventine. That is an appreciable chunk of the city.’
‘Yeah, I know. But he’s an artist, right?’
‘So?’
‘So where do you find artists — artists of a kind, anyway — in the neighbourhood of the Circus?’
I could see the answer registering. Perilla grinned.
‘In the arcades beside the entrances to the Circus itself,’ she said. ‘Marcus, that is brilliant!’
‘Yeah, well,’ I said smugly, and took a modest swig of wine, ‘score one for the boys.’ Of course, most of the hucksters who sold the cheap pottery models of the top chariot drivers were just that — hucksters, without an artistic bone in their bodies, and a lot of the stalls only opened on race days when there were plenty of punters around, but you did see a few booths run by genuine artists and craftsmen who produced their own stuff, mainly for the quality end of the market. Better, some of them — and I hoped that Marcus Surdinus was one — were fixed up more permanently in ground-floor properties opposite the arcades themselves: potters, sculptors, jewellers, bronze-workers and the like. Even if I struck out there, the art-and-craft community in Rome, as happens with any other trade or profession, is a small world where everyone knows everyone else. If I asked around long enough, someone was sure to know where the guy was based.
I was giving myself another top-up when Bathyllus tooled in to say that dinner was ready. Well, I couldn’t really complain about how things were going. There were plenty of possible angles to explore still, and even if Surdinus Junior was our man, maybe we’d strike lucky. In any case, after a day traipsing round more than half of Rome and a lunch that’d consisted of a few olives, a hunk of bread, and a bit of cheese, I was starving.
Time for dinner. Tomorrow was another day.
ELEVEN
In the event, I shouldn’t’ve been so smug: finding chummie wasn’t easy after all. Which, I suppose, was fair enough, given that — barring at its ends, where the starting gates and triumphal parade entrance are — the Circus has more access points for the punters along its almost-mile circumference than you can shake a stick at. Naturally, this being a non-race day, most of the souvenir booths and shops that serviced them were closed, but even so by the time I’d worked my way along the Palatine side and back round to the southern edge, I’d asked at a good couple of dozen places with no result. The weather didn’t help, either: I’d barely come down off the Caelian before it had started to drizzle, and ten or fifteen minutes later it’d been throwing it down. Not pleasant; not pleasant at all.
When I did finally strike lucky it was in a cookshop where I’d stopped off for a dry-out and a restorative late-morning plate of beans and bread.
‘Hellenus?’ The guy ladling the beans said when I asked him. ‘Young guy, well-spoken. Not a freedman; free-born, yes?’
‘That’d be him,’ I said. ‘Artist, right?’
‘Sure.’ The cookshop owner nodded in the direction of one of the side walls. ‘That’s one of his over there.’
I turned and looked. Not a mural as such, just a small painting that was part of a more simply decorated walclass="underline" a still life with a loaf of bread, various dried pulses, and a few assorted vege-tables. The subject was suitable for a cookshop, sure, but even so a piece of decoration like that was a lot more upmarket than you’d expect in a place like this. It was well done, too; not one of your cack-handed amateur’s daubs.
‘It’s good,’ I said.
‘Isn’t it?’ The guy beamed and passed me my bowl and hunk of bread. ‘He did it cheap, too. That’s his thing, painting, he doesn’t touch this souvenir tat. Me and the wife, we was thinking of having him do a portrait of us. He does a lovely portrait, Hellenus. Tasteful, you know? Maybe for the wedding anniversary, something to hand on to the kids. Twenty-five years, that’ll be, come January.’
‘Congratulations.’ I picked up the spoon. ‘So where would I find him?’
‘Practically next door. Three or four doors down. He rents part of the old Luccius place.’