So when I’d left the fuller’s shop I started off for the Laurentian Gate and home.
I’d just got through the city wall and was walking along the coast road when I realized I had company. Oh, there’d been other pedestrians and carts on the road, sure, although not as many as there would’ve been earlier: the coast road’s only used for local traffic, Ostia’s much more laid-back than Rome, most of the locals – the agricultural element, anyway – take their main meal in the middle of the day, and in the summer over the next couple of hours or so, when the sun’s at its hottest, they tend to get their heads down for a snooze. Still, despite the fact that the rest of the road as far as I could see was empty at present there were these two guys behind me, one a good bit in front of the other. The nearer of the two had on a cloak with the hood up; strange enough, on a warm day without a rain cloud in sight, but if he wanted to broil that was his own affair. Thing was, the first time I’d glanced back, he’d been keeping pace; the second time, he’d speeded up and the gap between us was closing.
Yeah, well; maybe I was just being over-suspicious here: the guy was probably just a local farmer late for dinner, with a wife who took that sort of thing seriously. I turned round and carried on walking …
I’d only got a few more yards when a sixth sense made me turn round again. Which was lucky, because another few steps and the bastard would’ve had me cold. As it was, I barely had the time to spot the knife he was carrying hidden under his cloak when he was on me. I grabbed at his wrist, but this time I’d misjudged things, and I felt the blade slice across the outside edge of my hand. My knee came up into his groin, but he stepped back in time, swore and lunged at me again …
Which was when somebody grabbed him from behind, pulling him off balance like he weighed nothing at all, then followed up with a swinging punch that would’ve felled a bull. The guy went down, catching the side of his head with a sickening crunch against a boulder by the side of the road, and lay still.
Shit.
‘You all right, Corvinus?’ the other guy, the one who’d punched him, said.
I knew him now: one of Agron’s lads, the biggest of the bunch.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘More or less.’ I looked at my hand. He’d cut me, sure, and there was a lot of blood, but the wound was shallow, no more than a long thin gash from knuckle to wrist. It could’ve been worse. Easily worse. ‘I’ll live. Thanks, pal.’
He grinned. ‘Agron thought you’d need a babysitter after all,’ he said.
‘Just as well.’ I held the wound closed against my tunic. Bathyllus was going to have a fit: bloodstains were hell to get out, and the tunic was practically new. Not to mention Perilla, when she saw it. The lady gets quite upset when I’m beaten up or similar during a case. ‘My mistake.’
Maybe I hadn’t been as disingenuous with Fundanius as I thought I’d been. Unless, of course, he was one of Mamilia’s boys. I looked down at him.
The hood had slipped back early in the struggle. He wasn’t Fundanius’s, or Mamilia’s, as far as I knew, or not as such, anyway. He was Sextus Nigrinus. Had been, rather: from the looks of the damage to his head, and the way he was lying, he was definitely an ex.
Fuck.
The big guy didn’t look too concerned. He lifted what was left of Nigrinus, hefted him across his shoulder, carried him into the bushes at the side of the road, and dumped him.
‘You should be OK now,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll bring a cart along after dark and get rid of him properly.’
‘Right. Right.’ I was feeling just a tad light-headed. Well, this was Ostia. Maybe they did things a bit different here from in Rome.
‘Who was he? Do you know?’
‘Yeah. A guy by the name of Sextus Nigrinus. We’ve crossed paths before.’
He grunted. ‘Fine. I’ll be getting back. Have a nice day.’
And he started off up the road towards town.
Fair enough. There wasn’t any point in hanging around here with only an embarrassingly dead body in the bushes for company. I took a quick glance around to check that our little fracas hadn’t been observed – no one in the offing apart from a very phlegmatic goat who’d obviously decided to take a constitutional of its own and was watching me with its jaws going – and carried on towards the villa.
Perilla was sitting on the terrace with a book unrolled in her lap. She looked up when I came over.
‘Marcus! You’re back very early,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I-’
‘What’ve you done to your hand?’
‘Ah. Right. Well, it was like this-’
She set the book down, stood up, took hold of my wrist, and turned the hand over. The cut had stopped bleeding, sure, but it was still pretty noticeable, and the part of the tunic I’d been holding it against wasn’t looking too healthy, either.
‘Oh, Marcus!’
‘Just a slight brush on the way back with Sextus Nigrinus, lady. Nothing to be concerned about.’
‘Damn that. What happened?’
I told her.
‘And Nigrinus?’
‘Uh … he didn’t make it. Agron’s pal left his body in the bushes. He said he’d clear up later.’
‘He said what? Marcus, a man has been killed. You have to report it.’
‘He started it. And the other guy just punched him. The rest was pure accident.’ The lady didn’t look convinced. ‘Come on, Perilla! It could’ve been me lying in those bushes.’
‘Yes, I know. Do you think that makes it any better?’
‘Yeah, I’d say so. From where I’m standing, anyhow.’
She turned aside, and sat down again.
‘One of these days, dear,’ she said quietly, ‘it will be you lying in the bushes. You understand that, don’t you?’ I didn’t answer. ‘Very well. There’s no point in talking to you, is there? I don’t think it needs stitching. Just go inside, get cleaned up, and have Bathyllus bathe it in vinegar and put a bandage on.’
I did. When I came back out again she was a bit more like herself. She hadn’t picked up the book, though.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Sextus Nigrinus.’
‘Yeah, well, he was persistent, anyway.’ I sat down and took a mouthful from the full wine-cup that Bathyllus had poured for me after doing his patch-up job. ‘And it’s a reminder. If I needed one, which I didn’t.’
‘A reminder of what?’
‘That the key to all this – to Tullius’s murder, at least – is Nigrinus’s brother’s ship. The Porpoise. Oh, it’s obvious there’s some sort of trading scam involved, no mystery there; the details don’t particularly matter, and I’m no expert where these things go, but it’s pretty clear that the Nigrini brothers were in it with Correllius: they provided the ship, he provided the merchandise, and whatever the set-up was or is it was important enough for Sextus to be seriously interested in taking out anyone who shows unwelcome curiosity.’
‘You think he could have been the original killer? Tullius’s, I mean?’
‘He fits the maid’s description as well as Doccius does. And we don’t know the full circumstances of what happened that day at the quay, when Tullius was almost beaned by the falling amphoras.’
‘Marcus, you do realize that, as things stand, none of this makes any kind of sense, don’t you?’
‘How so?’