‘It’s … well, it’s a bit complicated. But it has to do with a man by the name of Marcus Correllius. You both used to work for him, I understand?’
‘Correllius, eh?’ The thin mouth twisted into a smile with no humour in it. ‘That bastard! What’s your connection with him?’
‘He’s dead as well. Murdered, in fact.’ Best to keep things simple. ‘I’m looking into the whys and wherefores.’
‘You were a friend of his?’
This, I suspected, would weigh. ‘Uh-uh.’ I shook my head decisively. ‘Definitely not. In fact, I never even met him. I told you: it’s complicated. But I need to find out more about him.’
‘He was a crook. I’ll tell you that straight. And if he’s dead – murdered – the bastard had it coming. You won’t find me shedding tears for Marcus Correllius.’
‘So if he was a crook, what sort of crook was he, exactly?’
‘Every kind. You name it, he was into it. So long as it turned a profit, that was fine with him.’
‘Can you give me some examples?’
Cispius frowned. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I used to work for him, right? Nothing fancy, just the heavy stuff. Loading, unloading, carts or ships mostly, sometimes on the regular quayside, sometimes up or down the coast at a time and place when there wasn’t no one around to notice. Doing what I was told and no more. I kept my eyes shut and my mouth closed, and I didn’t ask no questions. Never, ever. And if I did see something I shouldn’t’ve seen, or something happening that didn’t quite square with the law, then I put it out of my mind straight off. The pay was good, compared with what I’d’ve got breaking my back heaving wine jars and so on over at the docks, so I wasn’t complaining. I even put by enough to give Cispilla and her man a hand paying to set up the business. So no, purple-striper, I can’t give you no examples, because I was fucking careful not to think about what I was doing. Clear?’
‘Yeah, it’s clear. Clear and understood.’ I waited until the frown had left his face. ‘So. What about Gaius Manutius?’ I prompted gently.
Cispius grunted. ‘Manutius was different,’ he said. ‘He was a proper bad one, was Gaius Manutius. Cocky on top of it, thought he was smart, the sharpest knife in the box. Oh, don’t get me wrong; he was a good mate, best I ever had although he was young enough to be a son, and I’d’ve trusted him with my last copper coin. But he was too smart for his own good. That’s what did for him in the end, the poor bugger.’
‘Yeah? So what happened?’
Cispius frowned again. ‘If you want details, you’ll have to whistle for them,’ he said. ‘I told you: I didn’t ask, and if he’d offered to tell me, I’d’ve shut him up as soon as he started. All I know is he’d got hold somehow of some information he should never’ve had and tried to make something out of it on his own account. Next thing, we were down at the docks doing a bit of loading and the crane slips its load right above where he was standing. Smashed the poor bugger’s head to pulp like a ripe melon. And that was that.’
‘It could’ve been an accident.’
‘Sure it could. And pigs can fly.’
‘What makes you so sure it wasn’t?’
‘Look. We all worked as a team, right? Same lads, every time. Each of us had a job to do, and it was a man by the name of Geminus who worked the crane. Only that day Geminus had been transferred to another job at one of the other quays and there was someone else at the levers. Youngish guy, name of Doccius. You come across him in your travels?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know Doccius.’
‘He’s gone up in the world since, I’ve heard. Not that I’m surprised, the bastard. Anyway, that was him on the crane. He swore blind the cog had slipped its ratchet, but these things are checked regular, and if it had slipped then it’d been fixed to slip. The report went in to the dock authorities, sure, but whatever they may tell you all they care about is their harbour dues, and if one of their own men isn’t working the crane and being paid through the nose by the shipper for doing it, then if someone gets hurt or a load gets dropped and smashed then it’s just hard cheese. No, what happened to Manutius was no accident. You take my word for it.’
I said nothing.
‘So that was me. Last job I ever did for that bastard Correllius, good money or not, and if he didn’t like it he could lump it. I walked away from the quay and I didn’t look back. First thing I did was go round to Manutius’s house to break the news to his widow. Vinnia, her name was. You met her?’ I nodded. ‘I told her the whole story, just like I’ve told it to you. Like I say, Manutius was no saint, and he had his faults, but doing badly by his wife wasn’t one of them. He’d a bit put by, like I had, and I helped her get set up in a little wineshop by the Square and get the business running.’ He chuckled. ‘There wasn’t no more to it than that, mind. She was a fine-looking girl in sore need of another husband, but she was no older at the time than Cispilla, and besides my Sosta was still alive, and if I’d even looked at another woman she’d’ve had my head. Then a few months before she died this started to come on’ – he patted his legs – ‘and by the time I buried her I was past walking through the front door, let alone marrying again. There now. That’s all about it. Get what you came for?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, thanks. Uh … this Vinnia. There was no one else to look after her? Family, that sort of thing?’
‘No one local. She wasn’t from around here, originally; from somewhere in Gaul, I think. She’d a brother; has, if they’re both still alive. Gaius, his name was. Went for a soldier early on, must be a good twenty-odd years back, with one of the legions on the Rhine. Last I heard, which is a few years ago now, he was doing pretty well for himself. Made it up to optio and was set fair for his centurion’s stick. Manutius, now, his two brothers both died young. The parents were both dead, too, like Vinnia’s were, and she’d no other kin that I ever knew of.’
Hmm. I stood up. ‘Thanks, pal,’ I said. ‘You’ve been really helpful.’
‘How did he die? Correllius?’
‘Stabbed in the back, over in Rome.’
Cispius nodded slowly and with satisfaction. ‘Good. Good,’ he said. ‘Well, I thank you for coming. Corvinus, was it?’
‘Yeah. Marcus Corvinus.’
‘Corvinus, then. I’ll sleep better tonight for the visit, Corvinus. And Manutius would’ve been pleased, too. If I’d had the guts and the opportunity, I’d’ve knifed the murdering bastard myself. Doccius, too.’
I left.
It hadn’t been much of a day’s work – the sun was barely past the midday point – but I reckoned we’d done pretty well here. Seeing Doccius at Fundanius’s place more or less confirmed that we were on the right track about some sort of collusion between Fundanius and Mamilia, which meant that barring the details we could regard the Correllius side of things – or his stabbing, at least – as being pretty well sewn up. Of course, there might always be a more innocent explanation: I’d left Correllius’s house practically at the moment that Fundanius had arrived, and so whatever had passed between him and the lady I knew nothing at all about it. Perilla’s first point, that the guy had come round with the specific intention of burying the feud now that Correllius himself was out of things, could well be true; in which case, comings and goings between the two households might’ve eased off a tad.
There again, to quote Cispius, ‘and pigs can fly’.
If Mamilia hadn’t been putting on an act for my benefit, then I’d guess the meeting would’ve been pretty short and stormy, and ended with Fundanius being escorted from the premises with a flea in his ear: long-standing feuds don’t get buried that quickly, and if I was any judge of character, Mamilia would’ve been as easy to get round as an elephant in an alleyway. Added to the fact was that, if everything had been above board, when he caught sight of me Doccius wouldn’t have shot back in the door he was coming out of fast as a High Priest of Jupiter spotted sticking his nose out of the entrance to a brothel.
So scrub that idea.
Anyway, there wasn’t much point in faffing around town with no particular end in view as opposed to going back to talk things over with Perilla and relaxing before dinner with a cup of wine or three. We might, in fact, if the lady felt like it, do what I’d told Fundanius we’d do and take a walk further down the coast road to have a look at the villa for rent that he’d mentioned: ploy it might have been, but I hadn’t been totally unserious about looking around for a cheapish property in the area, and this Rusticellius place had sounded promising. Taking it would mean, for a start, that on the occasions when I did go through to Ostia I didn’t have to spend the night kipping out in Agron’s living room with the jolly prospect of being woken first thing by a gang of screaming kids.