Terror of Constantinople (38 page)

    I cautiously made my way round the edge of the room and drew the bolts that held the shutters in place. The cold silver of dawn streamed in.

    A body in a dark robe lay face down in the middle of the blood pool. A few feet away from it, a chair was overturned. So far as I could tell from its fast-congealing edges, the pool of blood was undisturbed.

    ‘No!’ I said sharply as others stepped in behind me. ‘No one comes into this room. No one touches anything. I want you all out now!’

    I took hold of Demetrius and slapped him hard across the face. He choked back his growing howl of terror. I glared the others into silence.

    ‘Martin,’ I said, ‘please get a message sent off to Theophanes. Then do come straight back. I need your assistance.’

    ‘His Excellency has committed the ultimate sin against God,’ Demetrius struck up again in a melodramatic whisper.

    Antony joined in: ‘We are all polluted by the enormity of his sin.’

    ‘Shut up!’ I snarled at the pair of them. ‘Shut up if you don’t want to be shitting teeth tomorrow. Whatever you think, whatever you think you’ve seen, doesn’t constitute a fact until it’s been verified. You will all go and sit together at the end of the corridor. You will say nothing to each other. You will wait until I speak with each of you.’

    It seemed an age before Martin came hurrying back up the stairs. He’d brought a book of waxed tablets and some of our silver pens. If I hadn’t known him better, I’d have complimented him on his forethought. As it was, I marvelled that he hadn’t gone to pieces on the spot and joined in the lamentations around me. Instead he gave me a calm glance that called for instructions and looked into the room. He added that he’d checked the nursery. Except Gutrune was returning to her previous grumpy self, all was unchanged there.

    Like me, Martin was coming to terms with this new horror by following a procedure that, since our first investigation together in Rome, had become a familiar routine.

    Unless Demetrius was lying or mistaken about times, the man I’d killed couldn’t also have murdered the Permanent Legate. The chance that two unconnected killers had broken into the Legation on the same night was equally unlikely.

    That attempt on my life might not be the last. This being so, it made sense to get as much information as I could from the crime scene before the usual duffers arrived to remove any possible clues. It would also help to take my mind off the growing chaos of my own life by focusing on the last moments of another person’s.

    ‘It is dawn on Sunday the 27th of September,’ I dictated, walking carefully back into the room. Martin followed, making silent strokes of his shorthand on the soft wax surface of his boards, while Authari kept the doorway barred to anyone who might be inclined to ignore my instructions.

    ‘We arrived to find the door locked and apparently bolted from the inside. Having broken the door down, we found the window bolted from the inside.

    ‘There is a body lying on the floor. It seems to be of a man in late middle age. Without turning the body over and looking for a wound, it seems fair to say that death was violent and from a slash to the throat.’

    I looked around. The only real difference between this room and my own was the lack of any balcony with stairs down to the garden.

    ‘There are no other obvious means of entry to the room,’ I said, again looking around me. I went to the window and looked down. It was a sheer drop of some thirty feet as I knew from experience. I’d have the ledge above the window checked later. If there was a ladder long enough to get someone up here, it would surely have left some traces.

    I turned back to the room and stood over the body. I could see that Martin was sketching its position unbidden.

    ‘The body,’ I added to my description, ‘is wholly unstained by blood behind. It is dressed in outgoing clothes. There is no evidence that it was approached once the blood had spread around it. There is no evidence that the bed has been slept in.’

    I learned over the body. The left arm was outstretched, the hand empty. The right arm was underneath.

    I took hold of the right shoulder and lifted the body over. It flopped stiffly on to its back. Eyes open, face contorted with some final terror, it stared lifelessly up at me. A dark gash across the throat, stretching from one ear to the other, confirmed the most likely cause of death.

    The right hand was empty too, with traces of congealed blood on the wrist where it had touched the floor. The index finger and thumb had the sooty blackness of a hand more accustomed to pen and ink than to water. It was only then that I noticed the body had a rather clerical smell about it of unchanged undergarments.

    The lack of hygiene aside, was that how I might have been found, had I gone to bed as usual? You may think the question would depress me. In fact, it rather cheered me. I hadn’t gone to bed as usual. Because of that, I wasn’t lying in a pool of my own blood.

    My luck – so far as you can call it that – was holding.

    ‘Martin,’ I asked after another round of dictation, ‘can you see any razor in the room, or other weapon that might have produced this wound?’

    He swallowed hard, fighting back an obvious urge to vomit. But he edged round the blood pool and looked under the bed. I looked in and behind the cupboards. We went carefully through the bedclothes together.

    No weapon.

    ‘Well,’ I said, dropping my voice to a soft mutter, ‘whatever can be said about the locked door and window, this isn’t looking much like suicide.’

    I leaned over the body again and gently pulled the head backward. That slash across the throat had severed not only blood vessels but also the windpipe.

    ‘My understanding of suicide’, I said, ‘is that the culprit starts with light strokes across the throat, getting up courage for something more radical. Whoever did this almost took the head off with a single stroke.’

    ‘I’m not sure a man would have the strength to do this to himself,’ Martin added.

    ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘And where’s the weapon? If this isn’t murder, I don’t know what is.’

    We looked again at the locked window and smashed-in door, and back at each other.

    ‘But how?’ Martin asked.

    ‘It was the Dark One himself,’ someone called out from behind Authari. It was Antony. He’d crept forward to poke his head through the doorway. The Dark One has been among us. Let God bear witness—’

    He would have said more but Authari had seized him from behind, his sword against Antony’s throat. The sudden pressure on the scabbing of his back choked off his words to a gasp of pain.

    ‘Get back to where I sent you, scum,’ I reminded him, pushing my face close to his. ‘Or you’ll be joining your boss on the floor.’

    I stopped. Since I’d taken on the preliminary investigation, I might as well do it properly.

    ‘No,’ I said to Authari, ‘release him. You’ – I pointed to the man – ‘come over here.’

    Antony shuffled reluctantly forward, keeping his eyes off the body.

    ‘Is this the Permanent Legate?’ I asked.

    ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Only Demetrius ever dealt with His Excellency.’

    I had Demetrius brought in and repeated the question.

    ‘Who else could it be?’ he muttered, looking away from the body.

    ‘I didn’t ask who it must be,’ I said, resisting an urge to grab at the man. ‘I will ask yet again – is this the body of the Permanent Legate?’

    Demetrius looked down at the body. Yes, he said quietly, this was the Permanent Legate.

    I asked if anyone else could identify the body and he confirmed that there was no one. He was the only official who’d not been sent out of the city before I arrived. Since then, he’d been the only one to deal with the Permanent Legate. He’d been with him every day – most recently the evening before, when they’d been going over the accounts of a charitable foundation in Ephesus.

    I stopped him at the mention of Ephesus. Hadn’t Theophanes discussed the place with the Permanent Legate? I’d investigate this later.

    Alone again, Martin and I searched the room more thoroughly. We kicked at the boards to see if any were loose. We stripped the bed. We tapped carefully along the walls. We pulled the bookcase and the wardrobe away from the wall to make sure there wasn’t any hidden doorway or other point of access.

    As I finished dictating my notes, Theophanes arrived.

    ‘This is a terrible thing,’ he announced in a sonorous voice. ‘A suicide – and of one so high in Holy Mother Church!’

    He looked at me, plainly taking in my outdoor clothes. His eyes flickered to Martin and Authari.

    ‘Not suicide,’ I said, choosing to ignore how quickly he had got here. I gave him the facts we’d gathered. His eyes darted rapidly about the room, taking in the scene.

    ‘Alypius,’ he rapped in his official tone, ‘I want the Legation sealed at once. No one enters. No one leaves. And I want this room and the whole corridor sealed off.’

    ‘Theophanes,’ I suggested, taking him aside, ‘you should station someone here in the room – someone you can trust not to mess everything up behind your back. There might be someone hidden in the room. You need to make sure he doesn’t slip away before the room can be taken apart.’

    Theophanes nodded. He suggested Authari should stay and keep watch. It would take a while for any of his trusted investigators to get over from the Ministry. For the moment, the Legation officials had to be watched as well as the body.

    He gave my outdoor cloak another hard stare and seemed about to remark on it. Instead he arranged his features into their official blandness.

    ‘I’m afraid the pair of you will need to give the story in person to the Emperor,’ he said. ‘This is a matter of state importance.’

40

After a long wait outside his office, we were ushered into the Imperial Presence. Phocas sat at his desk, giving responses to a mass of letters and petitions. Secretaries surrounded him, taking down his brief words for the usual writing up into more cere monious utterances.

    Theophanes had made sure to tell us that there was no need for the usual prostrations in a matter of utilitarian business. We nodded respectfully at Phocas as he looked towards us. He pointed at two chairs against a wall as he continued work with his secretaries.

    Theophanes went and stood beside him.

    ‘Have the man torn apart by hyenas in the Circus,’ Phocas said in a low monotone, discussing someone presumably accused of treason.

    The secretary scribbled a note in the margin of the papyrus sheet. He added the sheet to a pile on a wheeled table beside him, then reached into a bag for another.

    Phocas stopped him. ‘Correction,’ he said, taking hold of the anonymous denunciation. ‘Have that done to his wife and children. Make him watch. Then have him blinded and put in the Monastery of St Placidius. There he can await our further pleas ure.’ He paused, taking one final look at the denunciation. ‘Total confiscation of goods,’ he added. ‘Refuse any Petition of Share if the informant comes forward.’

    He raised a hand to indicate that the matter was closed and moved on to the next one. Should the Army of the Euphrates be ordered to Constantinople? It could be used here against Heraclius, who was now sending further contingents over from Abydos to complete the encirclement.

    Phocas got up and walked over to a mosaic map of the Empire that covered the far wall away from the windows. This was an old map that showed the Empire as it had been in ancient times, including the Western Provinces and even Britain. He put up a hand to trace the length of the Euphrates frontier with Persia.

    ‘Leave the army where it is,’ he said at length. ‘It can’t arrive here in time to serve any useful purpose. In any event, it’s all we have left to cover Syria. Whoever is Emperor come the next moon, he’ll need something there to stand against Chosroes.’

    He laughed unpleasantly as he turned to face me.

    ‘You stay,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘Everyone else – out!’

    He pointed at Theophanes. ‘That includes you.’

    Theophanes opened his mouth to speak but thought better of the idea. He bowed low and followed the secretaries out, closing the door softly as he went.

    Before it closed, Martin turned back and stared at me, a frightened look on his face. I tried a smile of reassurance. I don’t think it worked very well.