Solid Citizens by David Wishart Read Free Book Online Page A

anything to go with it, sir?’ Scaptius, the barman-owner, asked. ‘A bit of garlic sausage and pickle, maybe?’
    ‘Yeah, OK.’ I took out my purse.
    He put the plate, plus the filled cup, in front of me. ‘Down here from Rome again, then, are you?’
    Like I say, this was my local on the rare occasions I came through to Bovillae while we were at the villa. I couldn’t be called a regular, mind – as I would be at Pontius’s in Castrimoenium – but you don’t see many Roman purple-stripers in a provincial wine shop, and they tend to get noticed. Besides, I took it for the conversational opener that it was.
    ‘Well, obviously,’ I said.
    Scaptius grinned. ‘Going to the big funeral?’
    ‘That’s the idea.’ I sipped my wine.
    ‘I hear the senate’s asked you to look into the death. That true?’
    ‘Did you, now?’ Well, I shouldn’t’ve been surprised, really. Gossip in a wine shop goes both ways, and in a small town like Bovillae most secrets don’t stay secret for long. Not that there was anything to hide in this instance. And it made asking straight questions easier. ‘Yeah, it’s true enough. Popular man, was he, old Caesius?’
    ‘He was OK. For a politician. Straighter than some.’
    ‘Straighter than fucking Manlius, for a start,’ said one of the other punters further along the counter to my left. ‘Him and his mate the fucking quaestor, they’re a right pair of chancers.’
    Par for the course: slagging off the local politicians over a jug of wine is the national pastime wherever you go. It’s done on principle. Me, I don’t pay much attention, normally: if the guys weren’t crooked in some way, or at least on the make, then they wouldn’t be in politics in the first place. Ipso facto.
    Why state the obvious?
    There were a few chuckles, and I noticed one or two heads nodding. Scaptius grunted.
    ‘Manlius?’ I said to him. ‘Who’s he?’
    ‘One of the aediles,’ he said. ‘Quaestor’s Sextus Canidius.’ The aediles were the two top magistrates in a normal year; the quaestor was the guy in charge of the town’s finances. ‘Manlius ran against Caesius for censor. He’s big in the wool business.’
    ‘Big in the wool
burning
business,’ the guy along the row said. Chuckles again, and a ‘Too bloody right, mate’ from someone else in the line.
    ‘Well now, Battus, my boy,’ Scaptius said equably, turning round to face him, ‘we’ll never know the truth of that, will we?’
    ‘Yeah, that’s for fucking sure.’
    ‘Indeed it is. So just shut it, please. And watch the language.’
    I took a bit of the garlic sausage. Strong stuff – more garlic than sausage by the taste of it. I’d be pretty unpopular when I got back home. Maybe I’d stick with the pickles.
    ‘Wool burning?’ I said.
    Scaptius turned back to me and shrugged. ‘The town farms out the right to broker the sale of wool from the public herds every season to a private dealer,’ he said. ‘This year the guy’s business folded just after the contract was signed, and Canidius got the senate to transfer it over to Manlius. The bales were stored in a warehouse that caught fire and burned down—’
    ‘
Mysteriously and unaccountably
caught fire and burned down.’
    Scaptius sighed, but this time he didn’t turn. ‘Sod off, Battus,’ he said. ‘I’m telling this, right? Anyway, it burned down, June, that’d be, just after the shearing, with a year’s worth of wool in it, and—’
    ‘What Manlius
claimed
was a year’s worth of fucking wool.’
    Scaptius’s hand slammed down on the counter and he glared along the line. ‘Battus, you bastard,’ he said, ‘one more word – just one – and you’re barred until the festival, right? And I’ve already told you: less of the sodding language, OK?’
    ‘Yeah, yeah.’
    He turned back to me. ‘Anyway, when Caesius ran for censor he promised that if he won there’d be a full investigation. That’s not going to happen now, is it? Not with