Orbilio chewed on a blade of couchgrass and stared up at the darkening clouds. ‘Which means Cal was killed for an altogether different reason,’ he said slowly. ‘Let me tell you what’s happening in Spesium.’
‘Has this any connection with the crimes in Atlantis?’
‘Crimes?’ he mocked. ‘With an “s”? Oh no, we’re dealing with one crime, just one, but it’s so big, you can’t see it close up.’ Marcus spat out the stalk and sat up. ‘Thanks to Pylades building this resort,’ he said, ‘all manner of shops and businesses were attracted to the area. First a few lodging houses appeared for those unable to afford Atlantis prices, then bootmakers, glassblowers, goldsmiths and so on trickled in, tempting the clientele to take home reminders of their holiday. Then one day, someone looks around and notices a whole new town’s sprung up. Brickworks, granaries, tile-makers, you name it, it’s here. In fact, everything and everyone is represented over there in Spesium except, funnily enough, law and order. Because it has all happened so fast.’
‘Hardly,’ Claudia reminded him. ‘There isn’t a single part of the Empire which isn’t under someone’s governorship.’
‘Correct. But the Prefect whose patch this includes has a massive area to cover. Don’t forget, until Pylades moved in, Plasimene had been left to the fishermen for two hundred years. Indeed, just across the stream, on the far side of that gully there, lies the expanse of marshy wasteland known as The Place of Bones.’
Claudia kicked off her sandals and dangled the tips of her toes in the brook. In contrast to the sweltering steambath formed by the clouds, the water was a delicious icy cool. Upstream a dipper negotiated the current.
‘So then,’ Marcus turned over to lie on his stomach, running his finger round and round the rim of the honeypot, ‘we’ve established that the Prefect more than has his hands full policing the Etruscan countryside while Spesium continues to expand at breakneck speed-and even when he does put in the odd appearance, what does he see? A gentle, law-abiding community too busy building houses and laying out its temples to allow something as ugly as crime to intrude.’ Orbilio tossed her a pie and reached for one himself. ‘The Prefect files his report accordingly, a garrison is built-small, but effective-and Cyrus is appointed on the first leg of his career. But what the Prefect doesn’t see, in fact no one does, is the spectre of greed moving about in the background. One who covets Spesium’s flourishing new trade.’
He paused to munch on the pie.
‘One by one, shopkeepers, landlords, property owners are approached and it’s pointed out to them that, without military protection, all manner of things might occur, and a hint is dropped that for a few sesterces per month…’
A sudden shudder ran through Claudia, colder than the mountain stream in which her toes splashed. Coming from the slums herself-lawless, dangerous places-she knew all about rackets like those. Traders who took a stand against protection would find their shopfront smashed in, their stock tainted and unfit for sale, and since the insurance was low, it would be stupid not to give in. Gradually, though, the premiums would be stepped up and those who refused to pay would wake to find fire raging through their premises or find their wives and children beaten up, and once again they would be terrorized into submission until finally, destitute and broken, they had nothing left to give. Either the business was sold for a pittance or else the craftsman/shopkeeper/landlord was retained as a poorly paid manager. But whichever way it went, it ended in tragedy.
No wonder they needed to trade through a funeral. No wonder that when they had the chance to unwind, they went overboard.
Claudia made a pastry raft and floated it on the bubbling waters. It had eddied round two rocks and was heading for the lake before she said, ‘Naturally, this mastermind would want a henchman to oversee the day-to-day running of his investments-a chap of particular distinction, charm and grace, you’d think. Such as Pul?’ Strange how a man she’d never met, had never spoken to, had instinctively stirred up such deep-rooted misgivings. And it went deeper than that sinister walrus moustache, the curved blade at his hip, or his menacing attire. It was more than curiosity which made her question where Pylades (who else?) would have met such a man…
Marcus hauled himself to his feet and watched an otter swim towards the marshes round the headland. ‘This whole sordid business-call it murder, extortion, whatever-it all boils down to money. Just the cold, hard jangle of coins.’
Sweet Jupiter. Claudia was suddenly transported back to Thursday afternoon, when Cal had shown her the secret of the concealed door, the hidden cave, the tunnel leading to the foreshore. ‘Remember the golden rule,’ he had said. That whoever possesses the gold rules.
Now she understood why Cal had been killed. How easy for Pylades, standing in the loggia, to overhear the conversation below, and hadn’t Cal deliberately raised his voice? Knowing full well, Pul’s paymaster was listening, to let him know that he could, if he wished, spill the beans and destroy the Greek’s evil business in one swipe?
‘Why don’t you have Pylades and his succubus arrested?’
‘Well, for one thing it’s pretty obvious Cyrus is on the payroll. He deliberately keeps the few troops he has well clear of town. Which means that if I start rocking the boat by bringing Pul in for questioning, it’s going to alert everyone involved in this racket.’
Claudia remembered Lalo with his split knuckles, disappearing for hours on end. ‘That’s not the reason, though?’
‘Nope.’ Marcus punched his fist into the palm of his hand. ‘Dammit, Claudia, Pylades is the obvious suspect, but I tell you, I’ve searched his office top to bottom, rummaged through his records, sat up all night last night going over his accounts and I can find nothing, nothing to indicate the incredible wealth which would have been generated from squeezing Spesium dry. He’s rich, yes, but so obsessed is our friend the Greek, he ploughs everything back into Atlantis. A library here, a loggia there, but nothing on the scale you’d expect from mass extortion.’
‘Well, if Pylades isn’t masterminding it-’ Claudia watched coracles reel in their lines, and realized it must be late afternoon by now ‘-you don’t have many options. That only leaves Mosul or Kamar.’
‘I’ve investigated them, as well.’ Orbilio shrugged. ‘Mosul is a wealthy man, which you would expect of a priest of his stature, although there’s nothing to suggest he’s anything other than a conscientious pawn in a very successful enterprise.’
‘I’ll say Atlantis is successful.’ Miracle or mirage? ‘From the moment I arrived and Cal revealed the secrets of the spa, I wondered…why? Why hide a door in a niche behind a statue? Why hide the entrance to the cave? Come to that, why hide the cave at all? Why not encourage pilgrims to visit the spring, rather than dispense water from outside the shrine? But most of all, why have the tunnel’s entrance at the rear of the grotto and its mouth concealed by a thicket? Why disguise a masterstroke of civil engineering?’
There was a light dancing in Orbilio’s eyes. ‘I’m assuming you found the answer?’
Damn right. And I stumbled across it the day poor Leon took a beating.
‘It all hinges on whether Mosul is a conscientious priest-or a man with something to hide.’ Cal had virtually told her, hadn’t he? In his own way, he’d shown Claudia the answer. ‘You said it yourself, Lake Plasimene had been left to its own devices for two centuries,’ she said, ‘and suddenly a Greek architect appears on the scene and stumbles across an underground spring-hey presto, it’s a miracle. But what if that Greek architect had done no such thing? What if that Greek architect saw a vision for a splendid place of luxury? The only thing missing was the reason for its generation, but what the hell, there’s water all around, let’s invent a reason.’