Two For The Lions (5 page)

"Were you the only person who had dealings with the lion, Buxus?"

"Him and me were like brothers."

When you investigate murders, that claim often turns out to be untrue. "Oh yes?"

"Well he was used to me, and I was used to him--as far as I wanted to be. I never turned my back on him."

The keeper was still facing Leonidas now. With his eyes as much on the lion as if it were still liable to spring and maul him, Buxus crouched down to where I had set the spear and the bloody spearhead alongside one another.

Calliopus might be trying to hush this up, but I had a feeling Buxus wanted to know who had killed his powerful pal. "Falco--" His voice was low as he gestured to the snapped-off spike. "Where's the shaft off the one that did for him?"

"Have you looked around, Buxus?"

"No sign of it here."

"The man who stuck it in probably carried off what was left. Do you think it could have been one of the bestiarii?"

"It was someone who could fight," Buxus reckoned. "Leonidas wouldn't just roll over and let any killer tickle his tum with a weapon."

"Had any of the lads been showing an interest in Leonidas?"

"Iddibal had a chat to me about him."

I raised an eyebrow. "What was he asking?"

"Oh just general talk. He knows a lot about the business."

"How's that, Buxus?"

"Don't know. He just takes an interest."

"Nothing suspicious?"

"No, Iddibal was just homesick for Africa."

"He comes from Oea like Calliopus?"

"No, Sabratha. He doesn't talk about his old life. None of them do."

"All right." This seemed to be going nowhere. "We need to know what happened last night, Buxus. Let's start with whether Leonidas was killed in his cage."

The keeper looked surprised. "must have been. You saw this morning. It was locked."

I laughed. "Oldest trick there is.
The body was in a locked room: nobody could have got in there
'. Usually it's meant to look like suicide. Don't even try to tell me this lion killed himself!"

"No call to," joked his keeper darkly. "Leonidas had too good a life. Me to hunt for him and talk to him all day then every few months we put ribbons in his mane and sprinkled him with real gold dust to make him look pretty, and sent him to run free after criminals."

"So he wasn't depressed?"

"Of course he was!" the keeper snapped, changing mood suddenly. "Falco, he was turning into a cage-pacer. He wanted to be running after gazelles back in Africa, with lionesses available. All lions can be solitary if they have to--but for preference they love to fornicate."

"He was fretting, and you were very fond of him. So was it you who put him out of his misery?" I asked sternly.

"No." Buxus' voice was miserable. "He was just restless. I've seen worse. I'm going to miss the old beast. I never wanted to lose him."

"All right. Well that puts us back with the mystery. A locked cage isn't a closed room though; it's accessible. Could he have been speared through the bars?"

Buxus shook his head. "Not easily."

"I was outside the cage by then, trying it out with the long spear. "No, there's not much space--" With hardly room to draw back my arm, it was a short, awkward throw. "It would take someone extremely accurate to loose off a shot through the bars. The bestiarii are good, but they don't hunt indoors. I suppose they could have just poked him--"

"Leonidas would have tried to avoid the spear, Falco. And he would have roared. I was only next door. I'd have heard him."

"That's a good point. It was some spear thrust that killed him anyway. From close quarters, and with space to manoeuvre." I knelt beside the corpse, checking it over again. There were no other wounds on the body. The lion was definitely killed by one terrific blow--with the weapon hand-held, I reckoned, not a throw--impaling the beast from straight in front. It was extremely professional. The situation must have been damned dangerous. The spear itself would have been a heavy one, and withstanding the onrush of the lion would have taken courage and power. Then I guessed Leonidas had fallen immediately, right where he was killed.

"Maybe he was killed near the front of the cage, the spear broke, then he crawled away." Buxus lacked my expertise in working out the processes. He had a slave's habit of self-contradiction too--unless he were deliberately trying to confuse me.

"We said killing him through the bars wouldn't work." Even so, to cover the possibility, I led Buxus to the front of the cage and examined the straw. "Look--no blood. You haven't mucked him out today, have you? If he was alive and crawling, he would have bled." I walked the keeper back to where the lion lay. Seizing the beast by its massive paws I braced myself and dragged him sideways to examine the straw under his belly. Buxus lent a hand.

"Some blood, but not enough."

"What's it mean, Falco?"

"He was not killed through the bars, and I doubt if anyone came inside the cage. It would be far too risky and there isn't enough space to wield the spear."

"So what happened to Leonidas?"

"He was killed somewhere else. Then his body was moved in here after he died."

VIII

"IF LEONIDAS WAS taken elsewhere, let's look for signs of what happened--"

"Falco, nobody could have got him away from here!"

"It will do no harm to look."

Buxus was looking nervous now, as if he had remembered that Calliopus wanted him to mislead me. I needed to search for evidence quickly, before some slave came along with a flat-headed broom and either accidentally or purposely swept away clues.

Outside in the exercise area the gladiators had stirred up so much dust there was no longer any chance that tracks from last night would show. I wondered if this was deliberate, but the fighters had to train, and this was where they normally did it. They had gone back to their exercises and kept up their racket, leaping around me with horrible yells as I crouched looking for paw prints on the hard dry ground. Their aggression made me feel tense. It was supposed to be practice, but they were big enough and moving fast enough to do serious damage if we collided. Occasionally one of the sparring men crashed so close I was forced to scramble aside. They ignored what I was trying to do. That in itself was unnatural. People are normally more curious.

"There's no hope of prints or spots of blood. We're too late--" I stood up. Time for a new tack. "Buxus, if you had been moving Leonidas to the arena, how would you have done it? I presume you don't take the big growlers out for walkies on dog leads?"

The slave looked shifty for some reason. "We have traveling cages."

"Where are they kept?"

Controlling his reluctance he led me slowly around the back of the barracks to a row of lean-to stores. Impassively he watched as I glanced into most of them, finding bales of straw and tools--buckets, long poles for controlling angry animals, straw figures to distract the wild beasts in the arena, and finally under an open-sided shed three or four compact cages on wheels, neat enough to be squeezed between the cages of the menagerie, and just large enough to transport a lion or leopard from place to place.

"How do you get the beasts inside one of these?" "It's quite a game!"

"But you're well practiced?"

Buxus squirmed in his rough tunic; he was embarrassed, though pleased, by my praising his skill. I examined the nearest cage closely. There was nothing suspicious. I was walking away when intuition drew me back. Empty, the wheeled cages were easy to manipulate. I managed to pull out the one I had examined single handed; Buxus stood by, glaring. He said nothing and made no attempt to stop me, but nor did he weigh in to help. Perhaps he knew, or guessed, what I would find: the next cage did provide evidence. Kneeling down inside it, I soon discovered traces of blood.

I jumped out and dragged the second cage into the light. "Someone has made a very crude attempt to hide this, simply pulling out another cage and parking the significant one at the back."

"Oh really?" said Buxus.

"Pathetic!" I showed him the blood. "Seen that before?"

"I might have done. It's just an old stain."

"That stain is not too old, my mend. And it looks as if somebody tried to wash it away--the kind of useless scrubber my mother would refuse to have working on her kitchen floor." The watery run-off had been absorbed far along the grain of the wooden floor of the cage, but the original splashes of blood could still be seen as darker, more concentrated marks. "Not much effort went into it--or else there wasn't enough time to do a good job." "You think Leonidas was taken somewhere in this cart, Falco?"

"I bet he was."

"That's terrible."

I gave Buxus a sharp look. He seemed deeply unhappy, though I could not tell whether he was simply grieving for his lost big cat, or whether he was uncomfortable with my discovery and line of questioning "He was taken away and then brought back dead, Buxus. What's puzzling me, is how anyone could have extracted him from his normal cage without you hearing the commotion?"

"It's a real puzzle," the keeper said sorrowfully.

I kept my eyes boring into him. "He would have been quiet enough when he came back with the spear in him, but whoever delivered the corpse may well have been panicking I doubt if they were able to stop themselves making some noise."

"I just can't understand it," Buxus agreed. A barefaced lie.

"I don't think you're trying." He feigned not to notice my dangerously low tone.

I left the wheeled cage where it was. Someone else in this deceitful establishment could put it away again. Then something caught my eye, against the side wall of the shed. I pulled up what seemed to be a bundle of straw. What had attracted my attention were twined strands binding it into a definite form. "this is a straw man--or what's left of him." The crude shape had been savaged and torn. The ties at the tops of its legs were still in place but the shoulder bindings were broken. One of the arms and the head had been ripped off altogether. Half the straw of the body had been pulled away and the rest was all over the place. As I held the pathetic remains, they fell into two pieces. "Poor Fellow's been thoroughly ravaged! You use these as decoys, don't you?"

"In the ring," said Buxus, still playing the unhelpful misery.

"You throw them in to draw the beasts' attention, and sometimes to madden them?"

"Yes, Falco."

Some extremely maddened creature had torn at the manikin I was holding. "What's this wrecked one doing here?"

"Must be just an old one," said Buxus, managing to find the innocent expression I had no faith in.

I looked around. Everywhere was neat. This was a yard where items were routinely stacked, counted, inventoried and put away. Anything that was broken would be replaced or repaired. The straw men were kept on ceiling hooks in the same shack as the safety poles. All the used decoys that currently dangled there had been rebound to a reasonable shape.

I tucked the two halves of the dismembered figure under my arm, making a big point of confiscating the evidence. "On two occasions last night there must have been quite a commotion near Leonidas' cage--when he was fetched, and when he was brought home. You claim you missed all of it. So are you now going to tell me, Buxus, where you really were that evening?"

"I was here in bed," he repeated. "I was here and I heard nothing."

I was a good Roman citizen. No matter how brazenly he was defying me, I knew better than to beat up another citizen's slave.

IX

WHEN WE RETURNED to the main area Buxus pointedly involved himself in his work while I took a last look around the cages. He surrounded himself with the four ostriches, who nuzzled close, lining their feet with the exaggerated delicacy of any farmyard fowls. "Watch yourself: Falco; they can give a hefty kick."

Kicking was not their only talent; one of them took a fancy to the wavy-edged braid around the neck of my tunic and kept leaning over my shoulder to give it a peck.

The keeper made no attempt to control the pestilential things, and I soon gave up my sleuthing, which was undoubtedly what he had hoped.

I walked back to the office, still holding the scraps of the straw man. Anacrites was talking to Calliopus. They both eyed my trophy. I propped up the pieces on a stool and said nothing about it.

"Calliopus, your lion was taken out on an excursion last night, and not--presumably--because his doctor had recommended fresh air carriage trips."

"That's impossible," the lanista assured me. When I described the evidence he merely scowled

"You did not sanction the trip?"

"Of course not, Falco. Don't be ridiculous."

"Does it cause you concern that somebody made Leonidas their plaything on an illicit night out?"

"Of course it does."

"Any idea who might have done it?"

"None at all."

"It must have been someone who felt confident about handling lions."

"Mindless thieves."

"Yet thoughtful enough to bring Leonidas back."

"Madness," moaned Calliopus, burying any real feelings in a show of theatrical woe. "It's incomprehensible!"

"Had it ever happened before to your knowledge?"

"Certainly not. And it won't happen again."

"Well not now Leonidas is dead!" provided Anacrites. His sense of humour was infantile.

I tried ignoring my partner, which was always the safest way to deal with him except when he was actually hiring hitmen and had been seen writing my name on a scroll. Then I watched him very closely indeed.

"Buxus has not been very helpful, Calliopus. I wanted him to give me some clues as to how the lion could have been pinched--and, indeed, put back in his cage afterwards--without anybody noticing."

"I'll speak to Buxus," Calliopus fussed. "Please leave this business to me, Falco. I really don't see why you have to involve yourself." Behind his back, Anacrites nodded agreement vigorously.

I gave Calliopus my threatening auditor's sneer. "Oh we always take a keen interest in anything peculiar that happens while we are carrying out a lifestyle check!"

"Whether it seems relevant or not," added Anacrites, pleasantly aiming to strike fear into the interviewee. He was a good civil servant after all.

Calliopus shot us a filthy look and bustled off.

I seated myself quietly and began making memos for myself about the lion's death. I held my tablet up at an angle so Anacrites had to guess what my scratchings were about.

He had worked alone for too long. He had been a man who kept his own council with perverted secrecy. Once he joined me he had braced himself to be companionable, but he then found it unbearable to share an office with someone who refused to talk to him. "Are you intending to carry on with the Censor's enquiry, Falco?" It was like doing your school homework with a fidgety younger brother. "Or are you giving up our paid assignment for this silly Circus interlude?"

"May as well do both."

I kept my eyes down. When I finished the notes that I actually wanted, I fooled him by drawing stickmen with busy scratches of my stylus. I completed three different sets of gladiators in combat, together with gesticulating lanistae urging on their efforts. My thinking time ended. I drew a sharp breath, as if I had reached some great conclusion. Then I squashed out the doodles with the flat end of my stylus, which was a shame because some had artistic merit.

I spun around to a pile of scrolls we were supposed to have scrutinized already, and spent the whole afternoon unwinding and rewinding them though never taking notes. Anacrites managed to stop himself asking what I was up to. Without even trying I managed to keep it to myself.

In fact I was re-examining the dockets and price lists for the animals Calliopus imported. We had previously looked at what he paid for them individually, and his overall cashflow for the menagerie account. All that had been aimed at deciding his true personal worth. Now I wanted to acquire a more general understanding of how the importation business worked. Where the beasts came from. In what numbers and what condition. And what it might mean to Calliopus first to buy a lion with the wrong pedigree for the venatio--and then to have him mysteriously killed.

Most of his animals came via his home town of Oea in the province of Tripolitania. They were delivered by one regular shipper, who was probably his third cousin All the shipments were put together over there at the menagerie which Anacrites and I had doubts about, the one which allegedly belonged to Calliopus' "brother", the "brother" whose existence we thought might be faked. We had certainly failed to find any scribbled notes from him saying, "What are the women like in Rome?" or "mother had another bad turn last week"--let alone that old family favourite "Please send more money". If he was real, he seemed strangely unfraternal in making a nuisance of himself.

Occasional entries recorded other purchases Calliopus had bought a bear, five leopards and a rhinoceros (who promptly died on him) from a senator whose private collection was being broken up. Iddibal was right; he rarely acquired big cats, although two years ago he had shared with a fellow lanista called Saturninus a huge purchase from a defunct arena supplier's estate. Going solo again, Calliopus then made a rare acquisition of crocodiles direct from Egypt, but they suffered badly on the voyage and proved unsatisfactory in the arena, where audiences had come to regard exotics from the Nile as less than spectacular unless they had a provenance all the way from Cleopatra's own fishpools. He had accepted a stray python that had been captured in a market by the vigiles.

After a long search I finally turned up the records for Leonidas. Calliopus had bought him last year, through a factor in Puteoli named as Cotys. The original entry merged almost boringly into a hundred others, neatly lettered by Calliopus' accountant, who had been taught enough calligraphy to write a hand so tidy it was illegible; luckily his figures were cruder and easier to read. I was immediately intrigued by what looked like a later note, added alongside the original entry with blotchier ink in a wilder hand. After "bought from Cotys' someone had scrawled angrily" Acting for Saturninus, that bastard!"

Well. Whatever the man's legal parentage, I had just unearthed the third reference to this Saturninus today. First Iddibal had told me that when Calliopus discovered he had bought a trained man-eater by mistake, he had tried to sell Leonidas to another lanista who bore that name. Now it transpired that Saturninus had been the seller all along--so presumably Calliopus was really trying to make the agent take the lion back to the man who had tricked him. This followed a partnership they had joined in the previous year--which in my experience of partnerships was likely to have ended in at least an awkward parting, if not a blazing row.

Rivalry, eh?