Deadly Election by Lindsey Davis Read Free Book Online Page B

been uncooperative over promising his support. Murdering him seemed extreme … Even so, feelings can run high. I wondered facetiously which candidate might stoop to murder.
    Trebonius and Arulenus, the smooth-talking bruisers, looked the most likely. Dillius Surus, white-faced with his hangover, seemed too washed-out, though he might possess friends who were fixers. The mother’s boy, Ennius Verecundus, I dismissed. He had the mark of a man who would fail to get elected through simple worthiness – despite which, I thought he would make the best aedile. Throughout his year in office his mother would make it her business to patrol the streets, reporting problems to her son. If he didn’t know what to do about antisocial behaviour, she would soon tell him.
    Salvius Gratus, Laia’s brother, seemed unlikely to load a man into someone else’s strongbox, or even to use an agent to do it by proxy. And Vibius Marinus had been turned out by Faustus looking utterly decent and trustworthy. Mind you, Vibius and Faustus had said they knew Callistus Primus, the owner of the chest … Still wondering how that was, and why they were reticent about it, I began the gentle process of making candidate-enquiries.
    I moved around, standing quietly on the edges of crowds, listening at first. When I had the feel of things, I murmured questions to fellow bystanders.
    ‘That one sounds all right. Nice speaking voice. I’ll tell my husband to vote for him. Is he rich?’
    ‘Must be.’
    ‘Promising! I wonder who he banks with?’
    Given how dearly people like to keep their business confidential, it was surprisingly easy to winkle out background. Helpful members of the public passed on dirty details. Soon I knew Trebonius Fulvo was involved in a lengthy wrangle about mortgages (a law case brought by his own elderly grandfather, who had a terminal disease, poor man, and feared he would not live to see justice), while his colleague Dillius Surus had been accused by a heartbroken mistress of fathering a daughter on the promise of marriage and (this was the real eye-waterer) stealing her jewellery, including a valuable necklace that another lover had given her … As I found out later, much of this was unreliable.
    Rumours would do. When you blacken someone’s name in politics, hearsay can be freely deployed. Scandal needs to be colourful, not true. Vibius was never going to win if he had a conscience.
    ‘Surus looks like a lush to me,’ I suggested.
    ‘Oh, he’s a wonderful character. Laugh a minute, really enjoys life. We need a breath of fresh air in Rome.’
    Nobody knew who financed the candidates but I think that detail is always telling. I had to find out for myself. I would ask a banker.

8
    O n the left side of the Forum, as you face away from the Capitol and just after the Curia, lies the two-storey Basilica Aemilia, adorned with a colonnade called the Porticus of Gaius and Lucius. This was the Emperor Augustus honouring his grandson heirs through fancy shops. Gaius and Lucius died, but their fine arcade was still here, still smart enough to be frequented by bankers pretending to be upmarket. Our family used Nothokleptes, which Father claimed means
thieving bastard
, a pseudonym bestowed by my uncle, Lucius Petronius. There were now two generations in the firm, and we used the son even though wicked Uncle Petro said that for him we should add
useless
.
    Young Notho still kept chained deposit chests in the main aisle, on the lower level where desperate debtors could rush straight in from the Forum, into the arms of the kind-hearted financiers who were waiting to save them from creditors. For a huge fee.
    The banking stations graced a lofty interior that had massive floor-slabs of marble in beautiful, expensive international varieties. There I found the folding bronze stool Nothokleptes used, standing empty beside a change table, guarded by an ugly Pisidian bouncer, under a frieze with scenes from Roman myth and an enormous statue of a