Behind the Temple of Spes, tantalizing aromas from the baker’s oven overlaid the smell of dust and dryness, tempting Marcus to part at a corner shop with a brass sesterce in exchange for a pudding of cinnamon and nutmeg deep fried in olive oil and smothered in honey.
He had noticed in the gateway to Atlantis, a poster advertising a foot race in the grounds this afternoon. No doubt Dorcan would be drawn by the hoards willing to hand over silver in exchange for a genuine shell of swan’s egg from which Helen of Troy had been hatched. Clearly the giant’s information wasn’t urgent, or he’d have sent a message suggesting an alternative meeting point. Orbilio would simply have to wait.
With his fingers and chin sticky from the pudding, he was making his way towards the pawnbroker’s to wash up when who should come his way? None other than the Spaniard, with his long, dark hair and fancy clothes. Something speared at his gut when he thought about this self-styled stud sucking up to Claudia. Mother of Tarquin, what did she see in him? Yet the professional in Orbilio could not help but admire the professional in Tarraco. Slow, orchestrated movements, designed to show off every well-worked muscle. That well-practised half-glance, expressions veiled by the fall of long hair. On impulse, he stepped in front of the Spaniard and blocked his way.
‘Are you down for the foot race?’
‘Me?’ The Spaniard gave an insolent shrug. ‘I never compete.’
Like the half-glance, the half-smile, even his words were spartan. Doled out sparingly, designed to add to the enigma and mystique. Orbilio bunched his fist, but resisted the urge to rearrange the long, straight nose in front of him.
‘Then the race is mine,’ he said cheerfully. ‘To the winner-’ he shot a wicked grin over his shoulder, to where Atlantis perched on the promontory ‘-the spoils.’
Tarraco’s eyes narrowed and colour suffused his cheeks. ‘You?’ he sneered, but the tendons in his neck stood out like bowlines on a merchant ship. ‘No chance.’ Dark eyes flashed a glance at the rock before travelling with contemptuous slowness over the drips of cinnamon and honey on Orbilio’s patrician tunic, his sticky hands and mouth. ‘I beat you by a furlong.’
‘You’re on,’ replied Marcus, rubbing his hands together in glee. ‘Until this afternoon, then-and be sure to give Lais my love.’
Furrows formed between the Spaniard’s eyebrows. ‘You know Lais?’
‘Never met her in my life,’ Marcus said. ‘Just wanted to give her my love, seeing as how any old bod round here can,’ and leaving Tarraco smouldering in anger, he ambled down Quince Lane and turned left past the grainstore, where the presence of a ginger tomcat washing on the top step of the entrance could not have sent a louder signal to the rats.
Arrogant bastard, he thought. Marries one middle-aged woman, Virginia, who conveniently drowns in the lake and what does he do? Not content with one fortune, he courts Tuder’s wife. Such was the isolation of that wretched island, Orbilio had not been able to establish whether Tuder had died before Tarraco came on the scene or afterwards, but it was a curious coincidence that both Tuder and Virginia were dead-and that Lais had subsequently disappeared.
And if there was one thing guaranteed to make an investigator’s hackles rise, it was the word coincidence. And when it came to coincidence, as with vampires and werewolves, he was an emphatic nonbeliever.
Further down the street, warehouses gave way to high-rise tenements, where babies bawled through open windows, fathers argued with growing sons and wives scolded errant husbands. Irrespective of the fact that he had not come to Atlantis to investigate a dead banker (or his widow), Orbilio decided he would not consider his visit wasted if, when he left, a certain Spanish gigolo lay rotting in a jail awaiting trial…
Surprisingly, the pawnbroker’s shopfront was shuttered and he was forced to make a tortuous detour round the back of the tenement, through the building and out the back, to where the sun rarely penetrated and across a yard criss-crossed with limp wet washing, and not for the first time he thanked Jupiter for his privileged upbringing. For the piped water which flushed his drains. For there being no question of his mother fetching water from a standpipe down the street and emptying night soil on the middens! Remus, from the yard it was difficult to tell one apartment from another-which was the pawnbroker’s? Which tiny window in the roof marked out his own rented garret? On one of the narrow stone steps, a stout squab of a woman sobbed into the hem of her tunic, revealing calves too meaty to warrant further interest and it was therefore with a ripple of revulsion that Orbilio recognized the pawnbroker’s wife.
‘Oh, sir, it’s you.’ She made an effort to pull herself together in the presence of nobility.
‘Here.’ Orbilio held out a handkerchief, which would have cost more than her coarse woollen tunic and cheap leather sandals put together. ‘Is-is there some way I can help?’ Her face was swollen and blotchy, her eyes puffy and red, and any fool could see this was not a question of some minor mishap or a squabble with her husband.
‘No, sir,’ she sniffed. ‘No, sir, there ain’t.’ She scrubbed her eyes with the velvety cotton.
He peered at this allegory of despair. ‘Maybe you’d just like to talk?’
‘We-ell.’ The woman bit her lower lip. ‘I don’t suppose you’d have heard about that trouble down the smokery…’
‘I gather the couple had an argument resulting in a spot of damage-’
‘Is that the word that’s been put out? A row? Well, what about the baby, eh? How did they pass that one off?’ She blew her nose like a conch shell. ‘That lad’s shed was reduced to firewood, his stock ruined, and you can take it from me, sir, that weren’t no row. A gang of thugs ripped that place apart. And the tragedy that resulted, that poor bairn’s death, that was nothing short of bloody murder and if you ask me, they should be crucified, those villains, right there on the lakeside for what they put that young couple through and we’ll be next, I know we will, if we don’t cough up the extra every month.’
A tingle shot through Orbilio’s veins. The tingle he always experienced whenever his pick hit a rich stream of gold ore. Kicking aside a cabbage stalk, he squeezed beside the beefcake on the step.
‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘you’d better tell me the whole story start to finish.’
*
Across the other side of Spesium, a fat bluebottle buzzed around the rooftops. She’d been attracted by an appetizing smell, and this wasn’t just offcuts of offal thrown into the gutter or the remnants of an unwanted pie. Curious, the bluebottle headed for the window on the fourth floor of the apartment block.
The shutters were latched together, but by crawling through the gap by the hinge, the fly could squeeze into the room which so attracted her. She was disappointed to find she wasn’t the first. Hundreds of her relatives were already feasting and she was forced to buzz around the room to orientate herself to this unexpected situation.
Through her multi-lenses, she could see an open stove in the corner, clean and neat, the skillets and the ladles hanging tidily on the wall. An open trunk revealed cheap and faded but distinctly feminine attire, of a type worn by girls who plied their trade in brothels. Nothing there for a fly on a mission! She circled the footstool then the table, which had been wiped too thoroughly to be of any interest. Ah, that’s better. All those scented pots and potions in a trunk inside the door, and a strange collection of curios to boot, but the jumble of jars and phials only served to confuse the more appetizing aromas in the air. Including something which smelled like cardamom…