Virgin Territory (10 page)

‘You knew she was going to be murdered?’

‘Claudia, I’m tired. I’ve had a long journey and I’ve been up all night.’ Firmly taking her arm, he swung her round 180° and marched her back into the dining room, pressing his weight against the door. He’d forgotten how her eyes flashed like the sun on water when she was angry. ‘I want this pervert caught and you could do me a big, big favour by filling in some background information.’

She sliced off a chunk of sheep’s cheese. ‘You could do yourself a bigger favour by getting a bath.’ She wrinkled her nose and flapped her hand. ‘Downwind…well, I mean to say.’

Alarm flushed his face as he snatched at a handful of tunic and sniffed. It smelled of nothing more offensive than cloves and sandalwood and bay, and he was annoyed with himself for falling for it.

‘I’m in no mood to play games.’ Orbilio walked across to the table, laid his hands flat and leaned over to face her. ‘A woman lies dead and mutilated right outside that door. Tell me about the family.’

She hadn’t heard from this man in heaven-knows-how-long and he expected her to do his work for him? Unfortunately, telling a policeman to go knot himself wasn’t a particularly clever move. There were laws against that sort of thing. Which was rather a shame, really.

‘Eugenius: dirty old man, face like a walnut.’ Claudia ticked them off on her fingers. ‘Matidia: over fifty, overdressed, over made-up. Aulus: drunk as a skunk with a nose like a trunk. Fabius:—’

Orbilio wanted to pull her into his arms. He wanted to tell her she looked ravishing in pale blue. He wanted to confess his overwhelming relief that the mutilated corpse wasn’t hers. He wanted to bury his face in her thick, wayward curls. He wanted to ask, ‘Do you mean an elephant’s trunk or a traveller’s trunk?’ Instead he heard a pompous voice saying:

‘Point taken, Claudia. You’re not obliged to make an investigating officer’s life easy. But you found the body, you are obliged to co-operate on that.’

‘Very well.’ She folded her arms in a defiant gesture.

‘I was proceeding along the footpath in a westerly direction at approximately noon yesterday, when I espied, lying on the grass—’

Orbilio held both hands up, palm outwards, in a gesture of surrender. ‘All right, forget it.’ He was unable to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘Just remember the key to all successful outcomes, regardless of whether it’s solving murders
or…
anything
else…
is communication.’

That’s rich, coming from a man with your liberal attitude towards it.

‘I appreciate the advice and now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a tan to work on.’

‘Wait.’ Pushing aside a bowl of grapes, he perched himself on the edge of the serving table, leaving one leg dangling. ‘Where’s Junius?’

Uh-oh. She made a great show of studying the hunting scene on the floor. ‘Junius?’ Gracious, that was one ugly stag.

‘You know the fellow. Gaul. Aged about twenty-two. Big chap. Muscular.’ He paused. ‘Heads your bodyguard.’

‘Oh, that Junius. Isn’t he around?’

‘Mother of Tarquin!’ She could hear the grate of nails on stubble. ‘Must I spell it out? Sabina’s been butchered, your bodyguard goes missing. Don’t you think that’s stretching coincidence?’

Claudia began to count the colours in the mosaic. Excluding black and white, there were five shades of brown, three red—

‘Croesus, woman!’ His fist came down so hard on the table that the plates, bowls and goblets rattled. ‘Don’t you care a damn?’

She bit deep into her lower lip. One shade of orange, two greens—

‘Sabina was beaten, bitten, stripped and raped while she lay paralysed and dying. Doesn’t it prick your conscience just a little, hiding a suspect?’

The look she eventually gave him was as impenetrable as she could make it. His were the only red-rimmed eyes in the house, she thought idly, and those from lack of sleep rather than grief.

‘Junius isn’t the killer and you know it.’

‘I’ll ask again. Where is he?’

Ten seconds ticked past. ‘He’s running an errand for me, if you must know. He’s due back any minute.’

‘Now, that wasn’t too painful, was it?’ He helped himself to dates. ‘What about this Tanaquil and her brother?’

‘She’s a two-bit hustler. One whiff of trouble and those two are off faster than chalk on a chariot wheel. Can I go now?’

‘One more question.’

He sank his teeth into an apple, and she was forced to listen to the sounds of crunching for a full half-minute before he followed up.

‘What brings you all the way from Rome to Sullium?’

‘Business.’

It was irritating, the way that single eyebrow lifted like that, as though it didn’t believe her.

‘Would you mind telling me what sort of business?’

‘That’s two questions.’

‘Humour me.’

‘Well, in. case it slipped your sharp investigative mind,’ she replied through a mouthful of almonds, ‘let me remind you that seven weeks ago I inherited a sizeable business from my late husband, and that Eugenius Collatinus is also a wealthy businessman.’ She waved her hands in an expansive gesture. ‘There are certain…certain links and…things.’

‘You’re in wine, he’s in sheep—and you talk of links?’ It was getting bloody warm in this room, someone ought to open a window.

‘Naturally.’

Take the bones out of that.

‘Nothing to do with the fact that you might be living beyond your means in Rome?’

‘Good heavens, where did you hear that ridiculous rumour?’

I never live beyond my means, Orbilio. Not when I can borrow.

‘And nothing to do with the fact that Sabina was passing herself off as a Vestal Virgin? For which purpose, incidentally, she would need an accessory. Ideally a woman.’

‘You
have
heard some funny stories.’

‘But you knew she wasn’t a real Vestal?’

‘I did?’

‘Come on, you spent over two weeks in her company and that bridal dress is brand new. Don’t tell me the retiring priestess ordered a new dress to show off at home.’

‘You’re slipping, Orbilio. Losing your touch.’

‘Oh?’

‘Sabina was due to be married. To Gavius Labienus. At the end of November.’

‘Oh.’

He looked about seven years old at that moment, despite the hollow eyes and roughened chin, and Claudia wondered why she should find Marcus Cornelius Orbilio so damned attractive. Well he wasn’t, of course. She was just desperate.

‘It still doesn’t add up,’ he said, prizing himself off the table and sauntering over to the window. ‘I mean, if you know she’s an imposter and I know she’s an imposter, how come we’re the only ones?’

‘You’re the policeman, you work it out.’

‘The family obviously believe she
was
the retiring Vestal.’

‘And you haven’t put them straight? How noble.’

Orbilio shrugged. ‘I don’t see what good can come of disillusioning them’. ‘After all, it’s not as though it was a motive for murder.’

‘Personally, I wouldn’t go around making sweeping statements until I knew who was responsible,’ she said, surprised to find more astringency in her voice than she bargained for.

‘That’s no problem,’ he said simply, turning his gaze back on Claudia. ‘I know who killed her.’

X

The yellow sandstone of the old Pharos, grating slivers off Claudia’s backbone, was perversely comforting as she sat watching the sun cast a cloak of molten copper over the landscape. Using her palla as a cushion instead of a wrap, she stubbornly refused to acknowledge the nip in the air. The strong, powerful wingbeats of a pair of cormorants whirred overhead. Below, white frills laced the deserted shoreline.

She picked up one of the fallen stones from the crumbling, abandoned edifice and lobbed it, but the peninsula was deceptive and the stone bounced off a boulder before slithering pitifully into the sea.

Where the bay opened out, tightly packed pines whispered softly to each other in the breeze, and beyond them, in the hills, a solitary bleat reminded her this was sheep country, not cornfields. Yet Eugenius had once been a prosperous wheat farmer. Why the switch?

Not that she cared. She was leaving in two days, she should have her answers by then, it would just cost a bit more, that’s all—paying several men to do the job swiftly, instead of one or two at their leisure. Worth it, in the long run,
though…

‘Idiot!’

She hurled the largest stone that would fit into her fist. It fell woefully short of the water.

‘You know the seas close down in October. Why didn’t you think, you silly bitch?’

Another brick followed. Then another, then another. Gradually her temper cooled, and she could forgive the fact that four and a half years of soft living as Gaius Seferius’s wife had eclipsed memories of those early years—years a very different Claudia spent in Genua, living off her wits. Well, it was too late to start scourging herself. She’d jumped in without thinking and had to pay the price. Eugenius expected her to stay the winter, but frankly, the prospect of hanging on, where laughter and compassion were as abundant as hairs on a pickled egg, was too dire to contemplate.

Claudia slipped off her armlet and began to twiddle it round her finger.

It irritated her that Orbilio should have thought the problem through when she hadn’t, and had arranged for a grainship to drop anchor in the bay on Friday. It irritated her even more that the sea situation pressured her into accepting a passage back with him.

No one likes a wiseguy.

And Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was the very worst kind. He was rich and handsome and debonair with it.

Worse still, she didn’t need him cluttering up her life. He was like some noxious disease, cropping up once and just when she thought herself cured, up pops a second bout. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he took her raw emotions and swirled them around in a colander so they came out in tiny droplets, a jigsaw puzzle which took forever to piece together again and left you bruised and bleeding without cause. That was on top of everything else.

Still, her young Gaul should have all the answers by Friday. He was a good boy, Junius. Trustworthy and discreet. And if what he turned up was the worst news possible, plans would have been laid to deal with the situation once and for all.

Which, if she’d had an ounce of common sense, she’d have done in the first place. From Rome.

Goddammit, Sicily had been a mistake. It had turned into a right bloody mess and the more distance she put between herself and this godforsaken island the better, because just now the last thing Claudia wanted was her own name trawled through this. For gods’ sake, the whole idea was to sneak in and sneak out. Would nothing go according to plan?

‘Are you all right, madam?’

Claudia and her skin parted company and the armlet bounced off the stones. ‘Kleon! For gods’ sake, what do you think you’re playing at, creeping up on people?’

‘I wasn’t creeping, madam, it’s the grass, it dulls the—’

‘It dulls your bloody senses. Pip off.’

The Cilician looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m your bodyguard—’

‘Then obey orders. Get lost.’

‘There’s a murderer on the loose.’

‘I know that, Kleon, I found the body. Now run away like a good little Assyrian.’

‘Cilician.’

‘Assyrian, Cilician, Sicilian, I don’t bloody care. Just vamoose!’

‘But it’s getting dark and Master Orbilio told me—’

The pitch of her voice dropped several octaves. ‘Kleon, unless you want to end up as fishbait, I strongly suggest you do as I tell you. Go
away
!’

She watched the twilight swallow him up.

‘Kaak.’ A hooded crow alighted on a boulder nearby, and cocked its head on one side. ‘Kaak, kaak.’

Claudia stared it straight in its yellow eye. ‘And you can sod off, too.’

Where was that damned armlet? Claudia bent forward to retrieve it. It was gold, in the shape of a snake which coiled itself four times round your upper arm. She carefully polished the green jewelled eyes with her hem, then continued to twirl it round her finger.

Who the bloody hell does he think he is, she thought, giving orders to my bodyguard? Let me tell you, Master Smartarse Orbilio, if I choose to sit out here and get myself butchered by marauding maniacs, I’ll bloody well do it, do you hear me? And just what are you playing at? Coming all the way out here, swaggering around and pretending to solve murders? You’ve no idea who did it. When I called your bluff this morning, you probably smelled your own goose charring. Remind me what you said so smugly. Ah, yes.
I know who killed her.

So
what happens when I ask, ‘Who?’ It all changes, doesn’t it? Nothing but bluster and blubber.

‘I need proof,’ you said.

‘You’re the Security Police, I thought you beat the proof out of the poor sods?’ I said, then a blond head popped itself round the door and saved your miserable skin.

‘Claudia, the ceremony’s about to begin in the garden— Oh, sorry!’ Realizing it was interrupting, the head promptly withdrew.

Orbilio’s eyebrows arched slowly. ‘Who’s the gigolo?’

Claudia had felt her colour rising and turned away, ostensibly to pat her bun into place. ‘That young man,’ she’d said loftily, ‘is Diomedes, the family physician. Now if you’ll excuse me, the Meditrinalia is about to begin. What a shame you weren’t invited.’