Cotta looked down into the rapidly deepening pit, grinning at Morban as the sweating Tungrians passed the clods of freshly hewn tufa out into the street, where it was thrown into the cart waiting at the door.
‘Ah, well that’s the joy of tufa, standard bearer. When you cut it out of the ground it’s more like thick, spongy mud than rock, but once it’s exposed to the air it hardens up like brick. These lads know that as long as they keep going, and don’t give it time to set, they can have a much easier time of it. We’ll …’
He frowned as one of a group of diggers who had been labouring hard at a spot close to the door, which was stubbornly resisting their picks, raised a hand, calling for Avidus. The weather-beaten engineer took one look at whatever it was that his man had unearthed, and looked up at Cotta, beckoning him down into the hole. Intrigued, Morban followed, only to recoil as he realised what it was that the engineers had uncovered.
‘No wonder your boys were going slower in this spot, the tufa’s already been dug up and replaced once. He waved a hand under his nose and grimaced.
‘Stinks too …’
The excavation had revealed a human hand, black with putrefaction but nevertheless clearly recognisable.
‘You!’ Cotta pointed to one of his men. Fetch the doctor.’
Felicia arrived shortly after, and looked at the corpse for a moment before speaking, her professional curiosity softened by compassion and more than a little relief at the news that only one body had been found.
‘I was worried that you might have found my former husband’s brother and his family.’ She bent closer to look at the now fully excavated corpse, ignoring its revolting smell. ‘It’s a woman’s body, but she must have been dead for weeks, poor thing. Will you bury her?’
Cotta nodded at the question.
‘Yes. We’ll wrap her in enough material to disguise what it is we’re carrying out to the cart, once we’ve got something to take the edge off the smell.’ He looked round at Morban, smiling wanly at his green complexion. ‘Make yourself useful, eh, standard bearer? Do the rounds of the local shops for a block or so. Introduce yourself as the new proprietor of this shop, and explain that we’re digging out a basement for storage. While you’re at it, make enquiries, gently mind you, after the owner of this place.’
Morban stared at him grimly.
‘You want me to find out if he had a wife-’
Cotta raised a finger.
‘Has a wife. Let’s assume that nobody else knows about this act of concealment, in which case the lady in question might just be “visiting her mother”. Or this might not be his wife, it might be a girlfriend who threatened to reveal all and paid for it with her life. So gently does it, eh? And while you’re at it, buy some quicklime.’
Morban was back an hour later, the look on his face no less grim than it had been when he left, and which darkened further at the sight of the dead woman’s excavated corpse.
‘The locals seem like a decent enough lot, especially once they realised we’re not going to give them any competition. Seems our landlord had a young wife, much younger than he is, and the first flush of love was long since over the horizon. More than one of the people I talked to found it fit to mention gladiators …’
Cotta and Avidus exchanged knowing glances.
‘So she was over the side of their canoe and paddling vigorously with men of a more suitable age …’
Avidus nodded wryly at Cotta’s opinion.
‘And stamina.’
‘As a result of which she ended up under the floorboards of his shop. I presume he was just going to give any questions as to her whereabouts a blank face, and wait for her to be forgotten.’
Morban took a foot-high earthenware pot from one of his men and handed it to Avidus.
‘Quicklime. Ought to be more than enough for one little girl like that. What will you do with her?’
Cotta looked down at the corpse for a moment before speaking.
‘Get her in the cart and bury her in rubble, with enough lime to stop her stinking while we take her past the gate guards, and dump her somewhere quiet.’ He gestured to Avidus. ‘You look after that, and I’m going for a chat with our landlord …’
Qadir walked into the tribune’s office and saluted, standing to attention and staring at the wall behind Scaurus’s head, much to Cotta’s amusement. The tribune waved a hand at the spare chair, smiling at his centurion’s determined expression.
‘Do sit down Centurion, and relax just a little?’
Julius nodded encouragingly, and the Hamian perched on the stool provided. Cotta resumed his story of the day’s events in his usual matter-of-fact tone.
‘So I went round to his house, covered in dust from the digging of course, and he came out to greet me with the usual haughty look on his face.’ He grinned at the recollection. ‘I asked him if he had a bad smell in his nose, and then while he was frowning at that, I tossed a piece of her tunic on the floor in front of him. A lovely colour when it was new, I’d imagine, and still recognisable as green despite the fact we had to peel it off her like it was her own skin. He went as white as a vestal’s virgin’s stola, the poor bastard.’
‘And?’
The veteran shrugged at Julius’s question.
‘He stood there for a moment and then just sat down on his arse, as if his legs had suddenly given up on him. I suppose he’d been shitting himself ever since he did it, and then to have the evidence slapped on the floor in front of him without any warning was all too much for him. I helped him up, and got him inside, and then we had a little chat about it. Seems that she got a little too brazen for her own good, thinking that just because he couldn’t get it up any longer he’d tolerate her parading around with her lover. Some gladiator or other. Once she was dead, he realised how deep the shit he’d blundered into was, given that her family aren’t the forgiving kind, so he buried her in the shop by lamplight and then pretended that she’d run off with another man, and that he was the wounded party.’
‘I see.’ Scaurus leaned back in his chair. ‘And what do you propose we do about this crime of passion?’
Cotta shook his head.
‘Beyond using it to make sure that he gives us every little bit of help we ask him for? Nothing. He killed her in a fit of rage, he’s still full of remorse three months on, and turning him over to the Watch isn’t going to bring her back. I think we leave this sleeping dog to lie. Besides, I expect that we can use the leverage to good effect at some point. He owns a selection of commercial properties in some rather nice areas, so there’s bound to be a favour of some sort he can do for us soon enough.
The tribune thought for a moment.
‘I concur. And you, Centurion, what news do you bring?’
Qadir’s Latin, as impeccable as ever, was gently accented from his upbringing in the empire’s east.
‘Tribune, I have a report for you from our spies in the city.’
Scaurus nodded, leaning forward.
‘Julius tells me that you’re to be congratulated on the speed with which you’ve turned some of our wilier soldiers into spies. One of these days you really must take me through how it all works, and where you learned this particular trade for that matter. You’ve had men following Excingus all day?’
‘Indeed, ever since he came here this morning, Tribune.’ Qadir looked down at the tablet he had placed on the desk in front of him. ‘Firstly, the target met with the children who were detained in the barracks yesterday. My best man was close enough to hear the tone of the discussion although not the words, and he reported that it all seemed quite amicable.’
Scaurus looked at Julius.
‘So either they’ve chosen not to tell him about your bribe …’
Julius shrugged.
‘Or they told him and he took his usual pragmatic approach to almost anything, up to and including having a knife at his throat.’
‘Yes. He does rather tend to roll with whatever gets thrown at him, doesn’t he? So we’ll either get accurate information from these children or be fed a pack of lies on the basis that he’ll promptly outbid us on the bribery front.’