Ode To A Banker Part 22

x.x.xV.

IN THE morning, just after breakfast, I was whistled up by Petronius. I was in the middle of whispering to Helena about Maia and Anacrites; Marius, who had slept the night on our living-room floor, had taken his bowl of chopped fruit into the bedroom to check on the pup.

'The spy is right in there, after her. Maia appears to go along with it.'

'What about Anacrites?' asked Helena, staying calm.

'He's playing it quietly; he looks as if he is not sure his luck will hold,' I complained bitterly.

'Leave it; he won't last.' Helena seemed far less worried than I was. 'Maia needs to adjust. She will never stay with the first man who takes an interest.'

Petronius had despaired of attracting my attention. He came up and stood listening as he waited to break in on the conversation. Something was up; I was on my feet by then, strapping up a boot.

'Maia won't be an easy catch for anyone. Marcus, listen,' Helena insisted, 'don't drive her to him!'

I shook myself, breaking free of my worries. 'Petro - what's the excitement?'

'Report of a corpse, possible suicide. Hanging from the Probus Bridge.'

'Some poor family man, no doubt...Am I interested?' Still frazzled by my wrath over Anacrites, I enjoyed a hope that it might be him strung up.

Petro nodded. 'I'm paying you to be fully involved, Falco. The corpse may be one of the authors in the Chrysippus case.'

We walked down to the river at an even pace. Dead men wait. It was an early hour, when it seemed natural to walk along in silence. Otherwise, I might have thought Lucius Petronius was preoccupied. Any other bridge in Rome would have been out of the Fourth Cohort's remit. We were lucky, if you cared to look at it that way.

The boundary of the Thirteenth district touched the Tiber just below the Trigeminal Gate, which was the way we approached from the Aventine; the Probus lay just south of that. Beside the great wharf called the Marble Embankment and close to the bustle of the Emporium, it was a favourite spot for suicides.

Across the river we could see the Transtiberina, the lawless quarter into which only brave men ventured. Coming towards us from the far side of the bridge were red-clad members of the Seventh Cohort, in whose jurisdiction that lay. Their patrol-house stood not far from this bridge. Fusculus was also visible going to meet them, his rotund figure unmistakable.

'A confrontation?' I asked Petro.

'I'm sure the Seventh will see it our way.'

'Are they looking for work?'

'No - but if they get the idea we are keen to have this one, they may argue just to be difficult.'

'Where is the dividing line between cohorts?'

'Halfway across the river, officially.'

'Where was the corpse found?'

'Oh, about halfway,' answered Petronius sardonically.

'I see it's walked to this side!' Petro's men were cl.u.s.tered at the Thirteenth's end of the bridge. 'I suppose normally if a bloated jumper drifts ash.o.r.e in the Emporium reaches, you would try to poke the body with an oar until it ends up on the other side and the Seventh have to deal with it?'

'What a shocking suggestion, Falco.' True, though.

The Seventh must have been bored with fishing floaters out, because before Petronius and I fetched up at the scene properly, they had already turned away. Fusculus started walking back towards us with a grin. I made no comment on these delicate issues.

The body was lying on the bridge now. A group of vigiles cl.u.s.tered round it casually. One was still eating his breakfast - half a fatty-looking pie.

'What have we got?' asked Petronius. He glanced at the man who was eating - who, far from feeling the reproof, instead offered him a bite. Petro took the pie from him. I a.s.sumed it was confiscated; next minute he had sunk his choppers into it and was handing on the item to Fusculus, while brushing crumbs off his chin. As I was an informer, they made sure there was nothing left when it came to my turn - but they did apologise. Nice fellows.

The vigiles discussed the event with Petro in their own terse code. 'Suicide.'

'A jumper?'

'Hung himself.'

'That straight?'

'No, chief; he made it really obvious.'

'Too obvious?'

'He was dangling from a noose looped over a corbel. We're just simple vigiles. Of course we rush to the obvious conclusion. That means self-hanging to us.'

'Suicide note?'

'No.'

Petronius grunted. 'I was told something about an identification clue?'

'Correspondence in a bag fastened to his belt. Addressed to Avienus. That's a name from the Chrysippus case.'

'He's a writer; he should have been able to do us a note then,' Petro scoffed.

I could do cemetery humour too: 'Avienus was not good on deadlines.'

'Well, he's one less on our suspects list,' Petro replied.

'You think he killed himself out of guilt, after murdering Chrysippus?' I wondered Then Fusculus laughed. The vigiles wanted to impart something more sensational. 'No - there's more to this! He's the first suicide I ever saw who climbed under a bridge - when most desperate people jump off the top. Then he not only tied himself to the stonework in a very awkward position, but roped a ma.s.sive bundle of roof tiles to himself. Now it could be in case his nerve failed and he suddenly wanted to climb back up -'

'Or not!' muttered one of the others.

The men stood aside. Petro and I approached the corpse. It was Avienus all right; I identified him formally. The skinny frame and beaky face were definitely his. He was dressed in black as previously, the cloth of his tunic rumpled in awkward folds.

They had cut away the rope from around his throat as a courtesy, in case he gasped his way back to life. The vigiles normally did that with hanged bodies; I think it made them feel better. It would have been pointless in this case. Avienus had been dead for some hours when he was found by a cart-driver in the early hours.

'However did the driver see him there?'

'He had climbed off his cart to do a pee over the edge.'

'Noticing a body must have quenched the flow! Did he see anyone else lurking about?'

'No. We took a statement and let him go.'

The noose was an old-looking piece of nautical goat's hair twist, still tarry in places. It might have been found lying handy on a wharf. Suicides, in my experience, turn up at their chosen spot fully equipped.

I had seen suicides by hanging before and the results here did to some extent look right. Apart, that is, from two large bundles of shaped sun-baked pantiles which were strapped to him. They had been parcelled together in the form of a double panther, which Fusculus said had been placed over his head with two ropes on his shoulders, and then other strands knotted each side at his waist. It would have taken some time to organise. Still, some suicides do spend hours formally preparing themselves.

'Ever picked up one of those?' asked Fusculus, indicating the tiles.

'They weigh some,' I agreed. One, falling from sufficient height, can kill a man. Plenty of spines have been ruined for ever by lifting 'roofers' hods.

'What do you think?'

'This is an odd one, right enough. If you don't think about it too much, it looks as though he wanted to be certain he would drop properly - making sure the weight dragged him down when he jumped, so the rope would snap his neck.'

Petronius tried waggling the historian's head to test if his neck was broken, but rigor had set in. 'Get Scythax to check that, will you?' Scythax was the cohort doctor. He examined both wounded and dead, mending whichever he could. His nature was dour and to me he seemed fonder of the dead. 'There are failed hangings sometimes; Avienus might have wanted to make sure, so he chose to take elaborate precautions.'

'But,' I said, leaning over the low wall to see the place of death, 'he could not easily have climbed over this parapet with such a weight attached to him.'

'Desperate men can amaze you. Would it be quite impossible?' asked Petro.

'Where we found him,' Fusculus replied, 'he needed to get out there first, cling on somehow, with no real foothold, yet have free hands to fasten his rope.'

'Want to leg yourself over and demonstrate?'

'No thanks! You can't reach the fixing point properly before you have climbed the parapet. But once he climbed over, so weighted down, tying his noose on the corbel would never have been feasible.'

'So he had help?' suggested Petro.

'Help - whether he wanted it or not,' I agreed sombrely. Murdered then.

I knelt down beside the body, and detected a faint mark on his forehead, possibly a bruise left by a knockout blow. 'Put the word out that we have accepted this as suicide.'

Everyone nodded.

'What about that correspondence?'

Fusculus handed me a doc.u.ment. It was a letter to Avienus from his mother, obviously an elderly and frail widow, fretting about what might happen to the property she lived in. She was afraid of losing her home. I had asked Lucrio what security Avienus had offered for his bank loan, but Lucrio had never reported back to me. This told me the answer.

There was nothing else we could do. Petronius made arrangements to remove the corpse. Somebody would have to go and tell the old lady that she had even more worries now.

'Why,' I asked, still puzzled, 'did they hang him? You could make sure of killing him just as convincingly by tying on the weights, then throwing him over and letting him sink to the bottom. That too could look like a very determined suicide.'

'Somebody wanted to make sure the corpse was visible,' decided Petro. 'They wanted him found - quickly.'

'And something worse.' I was thinking it through. 'They wanted the event talked about. What happened to him is a warning to others.'

'A warning - from whom, Falco?' I could see one possibility. It seemed to me, we might just have found another curious custom of the banking world - though whether this was the traditional punishment for defaulters, or a response to some more serious threat to solvency, I did not know.

I went to see Lucrio.

x.x.xVI.

THE Ja.n.u.s Medius is an open-ended pa.s.sageway at the end of the Porticus Aemilius. This was where Anacrites had told me he would meet up with the freedman if he needed to discuss business. It was just my luck that of the two of them the first person I recognised was not Lucrio but Anacrites himself.

'Don't you own an office to plot in?' I demanded, as mildly as possible. 'You seem to be everywhere I go these days.'

'Falco!' If he called me Marcus, I think I would have throttled him. Trust him to avoid retribution. It was one of his annoying characteristics. 'I'm glad to see you.'

'It's not mutual.'

'Listen.' He was looking worried. Good. 'There are bad rumours being whispered about the Aurelian Bank '

'What rumours?' I asked, intrigued against my will. 'Has the Golden Horse got the staggers suddenly?'

'Stirred up by your enquiries, I gather. You and Camillus have been questioning clients; people are losing confidence. Because of the work you and I did, you do have a reputation.'

'The Census? Our fame as tax terriers was never that extensive!'

Anacrites ignored my derision. 'People think you have been brought in as a specialist because the death of Chrysippus must have been related to problems with his bank.'

'Well, you can tell them I'm just sniffing for bloodstains!' I snapped.

All the same, I started looking around more keenly. The Ja.n.u.s Medius contained small groups of men who probably seemed more furtive than they were. Some had a foreign tinge. Most looked like gangs your mother would warn you not to play with. A couple were flanked by large ugly slaves, probably bodyguards. All could have found more congenial places to discuss the news - places where you could bathe, read, exercise, be ma.s.saged or eat fried pastries at the same time as you were gossiping. By gathering in this dead-end pa.s.sage, they were consciously setting themselves aside in a private clique.

I had the distinct impression many were watching us. I felt they knew why I was there.

You can get like that on a case.

'I just want to know what's what,' Anacrites badgered me. 'I was looking for Lucrio, but he's gone to ground. Even if I corner him, he'll only pretend everything is fine - I have a large amount on deposit, Falco. Ought I to be moving it?'

'I have no information that your bank is in any trouble, Anacrites.'

'So you are telling me to shift my cash!' Why did he bother asking me if he was not prepared to listen? The man had taken a huge bang on the head in the past, and in his concern for his money he was growing hysterical. Never having had much cash myself, financial panic failed to grip me.

'Do what you think best, Anacrites.'

He cast a last desperate glance around and rushed off, intent on hasty action of some kind. Everyone knew who Anacrites was. At this rate, his agitation would itself start a run on the Aurelian Bank. For a wild moment, I speculated that I, by simply asking a few cra.s.s questions, might yet start an Empire-wide financial crash.

Anacrites had hardly vanished when I spotted the freedman, engaged in a hot discussion only a few yards away. He saw me, and managed to extract himself. The other party left, looking unhappy. I thought he threw back a glance at me, almost like a man seething at the source of his trouble. (I had seen enough of those to recognise the look and check that I had my dagger safely down my boot.) Lucrio recovered his composure immediately. Was that a result of regular practice?

'Didius Falco.' Unless my imagination was under too much strain, he was edging me gently to a spot where n.o.body could overhear us.