‘Well, of course she was,’ the barber replied. ‘We’d have noticed if one of our own women had gone missing, you daft oaf!’
‘No, no, I didn’t mean that. I was just remembering that time when one of Senator Cotta’s slaves ran away. The one who screamed her bloody head off when they caught her.’
A different kind of silence gripped the tavern now.
‘She had long, dark hair,’ the fuller reminded everyone.
‘So do lots of women,’ the barber said carefully. But he, too, remembered her well from the fight she put up. Her screechings, kicks and protests had drawn a wagonload of attention that afternoon. Which, for a town at the junction of three main roads to Rome and long accustomed to drama, had to be quite a show to draw a crowd, especially when it came so hot on the heels of the old man blowing himself up, although it was before Senator Cotta had gone swanning off to Cumae to consult with the Oracle.
‘There was talk she’d run away a second time,’ the potter said.
‘So there was.’
Memories surfaced now. Of the Senator’s men searching high and low for a girl who had effectively disappeared off the face of the earth. Now they knew why. The earth itself had claimed her ‘If she was that important to him, I’d best send word to the Senator,’ the woodsman said. ‘Tell him we’ve found her body.’
But he wasn’t really concerned about how crucial the slave girl might or might not have been to Sextus Valerius Cotta.
The harrowing image of the hand plopping from his dog’s mouth refused to leave him, and it wasn’t much of a leap of the imagination to picture any number of pretty young women taking their last walk with this killer. A smooth operator, the woodsman thought, who could win a girl’s trust so completely that she’d followed someone wielding a spade meekly into the woods. What an actor that person must be!
What worried the woodsman more than the past, though, was the future.
That the killer had already marked out another victim. And was simply waiting for the right moment to strike.
Nineteen
Damp from the air mingled with the damp from the river, cloaking the city in a cold, dark blanket of grey. The tramontana might have relented, but the moist air it left in its wake carried sickness and disease disguised as a mantle of softness. Lungs would soon start to clog, just as surely as the damp would smuggle in fevers, rheumatics, colics and piles, and steadfastly refuse to heal sores. At times like this, the Roman people looked to two sources to safeguard their health and that of their children.
One was religion. Money (from the rich), garlands (from the poor) would be left for Aesculapius at his temple on the island in the Tiber, for Aesculapius was the god of medicine and healing, and it was to him they looked if sickness descended. Carna’s shrine up on the Caelian Hill would be inundated with cakes of fat bacon and beans in the hope that the goddess who watched over their vital organs might make them stronger, if she was propitiated accordingly. And they would pour solemn libations to their family gods with the prayer, ‘Admit no plague or sickness into this household. If disease comes to our threshold, make it stay there.’ However, the populace was well aware that the Immortals would be rushed off their feet in times of crisis and, even though they’d hedged their bets three ways, it was still possible for their entreaties to slip through the divine net. Hence the second arm of the pincer.
Armed with potions and ointments, tablets and suppositories, the trickle of visitors from the herbalist’s door was slow but steady as Orbilio and Dymas approached.
‘Trust me, mate, we have to do this,’ Dymas said, his hobnailed boots echoing dully on the timbers of the Sublician Bridge.
‘The rape only took place yesterday morning.’
The people who visited the herbalist were not rich. Their coarse cloaks were patched, their sandals made from woven palm leaves rather than leather, and the men wore beards, since they were not in a position to afford barbers. Yet they were prepared to hand over what, to them, were vast sums of money for poultices and infusions, indemnity against the inevitable.
‘I know, but you said yourself we don’t have any fresh leads. Bloody fuck, mate, we need Deva’s statement or we’re screwed.’
Orbilio knew Dymas was right, but calling on the poor girl so soon after the attack felt like another assault. Unfortunately, time wasn’t on Marcus’s side. This morning another girl had fallen victim to the Halcyon Rapist. More lives had been destroyed by this monster. Panic was filling the streets. As much as it went against his personal and professional grain, he had caved in to his colleague’s demands.
‘We’ll take it slowly,’ he told him. ‘See how it goes.’
The sneering allegation of his boss that Orbilio knew the victims had cut no ice. Whether he knew the girls directly, indirectly or not at all was irrelevant, but that was something he could sort out later, this vicious attempt to smear his reputation and character. Right now, all he cared about was that four young women had been brutalized. Four more young women violated because of him.
‘Bloody fuck, mate!’ Dymas had snorted with derision when Orbilio confided to him how he felt. ‘You did everything you could, didn’t you? Confession. Identification. Evidence. You got the bugger bang to rights, he paid the price, now quit beating yourself up. This is the work of a sick bastard copycat and don’t you forget it.’
‘What made you keep the records of this case, Dymas?’ They were almost at the herbalist’s door. ‘I mean, if you didn’t have reservations about the rapist yourself, then why bother?’
‘Same reason I keep all the others,’ the Greek said dryly. ‘Insurance, mate.’
‘Insurance?’
Dymas glanced up from his feet. ‘Oh, fine for you. Midwife removed the silver spoon before she cut the umbilical bloody chord, didn’t she?’ The eyes dropped again. ‘Me, I’m a foreigner. What you Romans very nicely call an alien, and a low-born blacksmith’s son at that. If anything goes arse-over-tip, I don’t have no poncy family to fall back on, do I? I’m in no position to bribe my way out of the shit, like some I might mention. Them case notes are my insurance policy.’
There it was, the old chip on the shoulder revealing itself to be half a pine tree. Another reason Marcus despised the surly Greek.
The herbalist opened the door to his knock and his eyes narrowed when he recognized his visitors.
‘Have you caught him?’
Orbilio shook his head sadly. ‘How’s Deva?’ he asked.
‘How do you think?’ the herbalist rasped back. Deep purple hollows surrounded his eyes and the skin on his face hung slack, like a person newly bereaved.
The house consisted of three tiny chambers. His workroom, the main room which served as living-area-cum-kitchen with wood-burning stove, plain, wooden furniture and functional clay plates and pots. And the sleeping chamber above, masked off by a makeshift screen that the herbalist had hastily thrown up and behind which Deva lay curled like a foetus, clutching her red Damascan shawl. The cottage smelled of balsam and fennel, horehound and sulphur, and sprigs of herbs hung from the joists on the ceiling. Thyme, hyssop, licebane and borage.
‘We need to ask a few questions,’ Marcus told the distraught herbalist under his breath. ‘Any detail, no matter how small, how trivial it might seem, brings us one step closer towards putting this bastard where he belongs.’
‘She hasn’t uttered a word since it happened,’ the man replied, ‘and I haven’t forced her. But- Well, if it’s important, I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Of course it’s bloody important,’ Dymas snapped, making no effort to keep his voice low. ‘If this is a repeat of last year’s shenanigans, we’re looking at ten more girls getting buggered and beaten, and if we don’t nail the sick bastard this time, it’ll be fourteen more next year, as well.’
The makeshift curtain was suddenly pulled back. Three heads jerked upwards in surprise. Her face battered and swollen, the skin beneath white as parchment, Deva stood looking down at the men. Her fingers clenched over the wooden rail.