Well, there was nothing I could do about it now. Except worry, of course, about her being worried. I settled down to wait.
I’d no way of measuring time exactly, but I estimated there were three days between the door shutting and it opening again. By which point — leaving aside the fact that I was practically climbing the walls — I’d more or less worked everything out: when you’re faced with a choice between ratiocination and Marcus Porcius bloody-skinflint Cato rabbiting on about how to squeeze as much oil as you can out of an olive or work out of a slave, suitably anaesthetized beforehand with Caecuban or not, it’s no contest.
So. After three days of solitary confinement, the door finally opened. Not my slinger pal this time; instead through it came a little guy wearing a freedman’s cap and a sharp lemon-coloured tunic. The boss in person.
No surprises there. It just had to be him, didn’t it?
‘Hi, Felix,’ I said. ‘How’s it going?’ He was alone, which, I supposed, was a safe enough risk to take, given that I knew who he worked for, although even knowing that after three days of being banged up in a cellar with only an increasingly pervasive latrine smell and Cato and his jolly mates for company, I could cheerfully have beaten the little bugger to death with his own chamber pot.
Which, given who he was, would not have been a good idea. I hadn’t seen Gaius’s freedman sidekick — spymaster, intelligence chief, whatever you liked to call him — for three years, not since the last conspiracy against his master had gone down the tubes, but he hadn’t changed. Still the fastidious, dapper little bugger we had grown to know and love for his unfailing cheerfulness, ruthless efficiency, and bacon-slicer brain.
‘Things are going very well indeed, sir,’ he said. ‘May I sit down?’
‘Sure. Why not? Make yourself at home.’
Sarcasm is lost on Felix. He never even batted an eyelid.
‘Thank you.’ He sat on the bed. ‘And do let me say what a pleasure it is to see you again, Valerius Corvinus. You haven’t been too uncomfortable, I hope? Had everything you needed?’
Stupid bloody question, but I took it in the spirit it was meant.
‘I could’ve done with a razor,’ I said. ‘Apart from that — and of course apart from the fact that my wife will be worried fucking sick about where I’ve got to — no, not too many complaints. You total sadistic bastard.’
He looked pained. ‘Really, sir, give me some credit for humanity, please! That is most unfair! I sent a message right away telling the Lady Perilla that you were perfectly safe and well. As for the razor, that was an oversight, and you have my most abject apologies. I will speak to Trupho about it in no uncertain terms.’
‘Yeah, well.’ At least I was glad that I could stop worrying about Perilla. She’d’ve been anxious, sure, but I had to admit that under the circumstances, Felix had done his best. ‘Couldn’t you just have told me to lay off?’
‘Would you have done it?’
‘I might have, if you’d asked nicely and explained the situ-ation.’ Still, it was a fair point, and we’d been there before in our past dealings together. Plus the chances were that, no, I wouldn’t have, and we both knew it. ‘Trupho’s the big guy who brought me here, yes?’
‘Indeed. An ex-auxiliary, and one of my best men. Rather a rough diamond, but he is generally very efficient. Particularly at killing, as you no doubt saw. When did you know, by the way?’
‘That the conspiracy was already blown and you had things in hand? Almost straight off. It was the wine. Imperial Caecuban, right?’
He was beaming. ‘Oh, well done, sir!’ he said. ‘I thought that might do it, or at least provide you with a major clue, if you needed one. The flask was from the emperor’s own cellars. His idea, not mine, so when you see him, please be appropriately grateful.’
Bugger, that did not sound good: the last thing I wanted was a face-to-face with that psychotic bastard. Even so …
‘So what happens now?’ I said.
‘Nothing, as far as I’m concerned. You’re free to go, of course, absolutely free. The conspirators are all rounded up and in custody.’
‘Still alive?’
‘Naturally. For the moment, at least. We need a little more information from them first.’
A cold chill touched my spine. ‘Is that really necessary?’ I said. ‘After all-’
‘Completely necessary, sir,’ he said primly. ‘As you’re quite well aware.’
Shit. Execution, yeah, that went with the crime. But torture, that was something else. Oh, sure, I couldn’t really expect any different, and nor could they. Even so, the thought of it turned my stomach.
‘The two Herennii, father and son?’
‘In the bag, shortly after you left them.’
Well, I’d tried to give them an out, at least, and I felt better for that. Not a lot better, mind.
‘Lucius Papinius?’
‘He wasn’t involved, as far as we know.’
I frowned. ‘You sure?’
‘As sure as one can be, yes. He accepted Herennius Bassus’s word that his brother’s death was an accident in good faith.’
I left it at that. For the moment. ‘So Bassus killed young Sextus? To stop him talking to me. Or manoeuvred him into a position where he could be killed?’
‘Yes again. The precise details aren’t clear, but no doubt they will be before long.’
Shit. Yeah, I guessed they would be, at that; Gaius’s torturers were pretty efficient. The chill touched my spine again, not so much at the thought this time as at the matter-of-fact way Felix referred to it. He was a cold bastard at heart, Julius Felix.
‘What about the father? Adoptive father, that is. Anicius Cerialis.’
‘Cerialis has left Rome.’
‘You mean he’s escaped?’
‘Not exactly, sir.’
I frowned again. ‘So what, exactly?’
‘Anicius Cerialis was working for us.’
‘What?’
Felix smiled. ‘Latterly, at any rate. After a small amount of persuasion. It’s called turning in the trade. Oh, you couldn’t have guessed it, not in the short time you had, and of course his fellow conspirators had — and have — no idea of the truth. Although I must say, before I forget, how impressed I was that you got so far so quickly. To be frank, it was downright embarrassing. Trupho was most put out.’
‘Yeah, I noticed that,’ I said drily. ‘He was keeping an eye on me right from the start, wasn’t he? On your instructions.’
‘That and keeping an eye out for you, sir. Fortunately, with regard to the Janiculan incident.’ Yeah, well, I’d give him that, and I was grateful. ‘But not exactly right from the start; only when you began to show an interest in Cassius Longinus and his friends. That was most unexpected; worryingly so on my part. The poor dears really started to panic, and there was a genuine danger that they’d decide to cut their losses and run. Which would, naturally, at the end of the day have made things far more difficult. As it was, we had to bring our plans forward by almost half a month and get you out of the equation spit-spot. Could you tell me why, by the way?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why your interest in Longinus.’
‘Cornelia Sullana — my victim’s ex-wife — claimed she’d had an affair with him years back.’
‘Really? And did she?’
‘No. At least, I very much doubt it.’
‘So it was simply a coincidence? An unfortunate one, as I say, for both of us.’
‘Longinus was involved, then?’
Felix hesitated. ‘As to that, Valerius Corvinus,’ he said, ‘as you would say, the jury is still out. Certainly he was taken along with the rest, as was Valerius Asiaticus, who is, albeit for different reasons, in a similar situation to his. But he’s simply being detained on suspicion, no more. The emperor thinks it’s unlikely, or at least that things were only at the recruitment stage, and is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, the conspiracy has been in progress for several months, he only returned very recently to Rome, and he wouldn’t be here at all if Caesar hadn’t recalled him.’