“And the barmaid serving them,” Faustus backed me up.
“So did Rufia get in the way?” I pondered. “Had these five men given her a big tip, so she liked them, then she objected to them being set upon and got bludgeoned herself for her pains?”
“Had her head cut off for interfering?” Faustus mused.
“A woman barging into men’s business,” I agreed sourly. I had seen that a few times. “She received double punishment.”
“We don’t know that, love … So, officers,” Faustus asked slowly, “when you look at these bones, nothing tells you how the victims were killed?”
Of course I had asked that at the start, but those bastards Macer and Morellus took him more seriously. They let him see they thought he was being obsessive, however. “Very careful garrotting could leave no signs,” said Macer, now playing the silly ass.
“Or extremely neat throat-cutting,” added Morellus. This disreputable pair had by now mastered working as a tight team. Either alone would have been a trial to a curious aedile; together they were a boot-faced, two-man pack. Their verdict was deemed to be expert, its unhelpfulness was final. According to them nobody could get any further with this.
From experience, I felt that if we mulled over it until another day dawned, new ideas might come.
All of us were tired, depressed and aware that there was very little to steer us toward what really happened here, let alone who might be pursued for it. The two vigiles officers lost interest. They looked at one another. Each gave the other a slight nod, some well-established private code. Morellus, since he knew us, made it official. He announced that Faustus and I were the best people to investigate.
“Let us know.”
“Keep in touch.”
The two useless brutes went off, almost arm in arm, heading to join their men for refreshments down at the Romulus.
We made no move to follow them.
XIX
At last we could mull this over together in private.
Tiberius and I were silent for a time. He and I never needed to be constantly in conversation. One of the first things I ever heard about him was that he was a listener, a man who made up his mind before pronouncing. This is rare. Most give a rash opinion before they hear the full facts. Usually they get it wrong.
We paced around the yard together, gazing down at each skeleton as we reassessed these secret burials. The layout, depth, consistency of them. The oddities. The disarticulated leg. The missing head.
“The men are all of a type,” Faustus said at last. “Not tall, stocky build.”
When I got down low to look closely at number four, with his severed lower leg, I spotted that his other, the one still attached, had a markedly deformed bone. “Look here, Tiberius. This man suffered an accident in his lifetime. His remaining leg had been badly crushed. He had a horrible fracture, as if something disastrously heavy fell on him-a millstone, a huge piece of masonry-bones were broken, a compound fracture that probably stuck through the flesh. He must have been lucky to survive. But it had all mended long before he died.”
Tiberius took it further: “He would have had a very conspicuous, awkward gait. This man stood out. Everybody would have known him. I wonder … Albia, if we think Rufia’s head was taken away to prevent possible identification, did somebody also decide to remove the damaged leg for the same reason?”
“They cut off the wrong one!” I exclaimed.
Tiberius let himself grin, then grew more serious. “Could be understandable. We say they were well-organized, yet killing six people has unimaginable horrors. There must have been huge tension by the point of the burials. A mistake was made. Let’s face it, even surgeons have been known to carry out wrong amputations. Someone realized the error, but they couldn’t face hacking off a second leg, so they cursed, gave up, and tossed the wrong one back into the trench after the body, hoping for the best…”
“Gruesome.” While I still crouched beside the limping man, I swung around to make comparisons with his next neighbor. “Same wear on their teeth. Same diet.”
Tiberius followed my reasoning at once. “Same origin?”
“Likely, though it’s nothing exceptional. Same habits, certainly. Gritty bread. Fruit. Acid wine followed by acidic belching.”
“You make them sound lovable fellows!”
“Who all drank in bars,” I reminded him, with a smile.
“But you are not going so far as to identify their home village?” He was teasing me.
“Could even be Rome. My point is, they all hung around together, leading the same lifestyle. In the same trade, I bet. And somehow they must have made a common enemy.”
“But was it Old Thales?” Tiberius now frowned. “Did Thales himself, helped by his staff, attack these five men? If so, why?”
“Had the five men somehow killed Rufia, so Thales ordered punishment killings?”
“Surely we have no reason to believe Rufia meant that much to him?” I made a note to start asking people just what she did mean to the landlord, while Tiberius continued suggesting alternatives: “Or did a completely separate group have a set-to with these fellows, while Thales either kept out of the way or stood on the sidelines pleading with all parties to stop fighting in his bar?”
I snorted mildly. “I don’t think he was that kind of landlord. But his bar was well-ordered. We know he had the no-nonsense Rufia to stop trouble-she sounds as if she would have kicked him into action if mayhem started.”
“Ah, that kind of woman!” murmured Tiberius gently, as if to no one in particular.
I shot him a cool glance. “If he didn’t himself arrange the attack, who could the antagonists be-people that Thales was scared to interfere with and too frightened of even to report their crime afterward?”
“Soldiers?” suggested Tiberius.
“Serving soldiers would have been missed. Absconding from the army is one crime that does get taken seriously. Especially if it happened in Rome, which is awash with units who could look for deserters.”
“So the victims shared some trade, physical though not extremely hard by the look of their bones? Thales either was so scared of the killers, or so closely in league with them, he allowed them to fill his yard with corpses. He must have agreed to these burials. The killers must have relied on him keeping the graves secret, especially making sure afterward that nobody dug up anything accidentally.”
“Now he’s dead, the killers have lost their security. Do you think they know he’s gone?”
Tiberius lifted his shoulders, saying, “If they are anywhere local, they must find out now. They will hear that we have the bodies, so the authorities will be looking for perpetrators.”
I chortled. “If they hear the vigiles came down here to reconnoiter, and danced off for a drink, they may not be too worried!”
Tiberius returned a rueful look. “So will they realize that you and I are investigating instead?”
I reckoned it was safer for us if they didn’t find out our track record. “Darling, I’d like to think I have a reputation as a dogged inquirer and you as a meticulous magistrate-but luckily on the Viminal we are neither of us known. Here you are merely the building contractor and I am-”
“The contractor’s sparky wife!”
He enjoyed being able to say that. Fortunately, I never felt diminished; he saw us as an equal partnership. In fact, he viewed me as essential. We two would, in every respect, jointly run our family business. The reason I loved Tiberius was that he had never envisaged anything else.
Our foreman, Larcius, came into the courtyard, quietly waiting until we were ready for him. He had been off and found a local undertaker to collect the bones. There were too many, and it was all too public, for us to simply shunt them into a big hole somewhere. Besides, no aedile-well, not this aedile-could be so impious.