Finished Business by David Wishart

Author:David Wishart
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781780105758
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2014-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

It was just shy of the seventh hour next day when I got to Pollex’s. Not one of my favourite wine shops: the wines are only so-so in quality, seriously overpriced for what they are, and the décor’s Early Empire grunge. The Sacred Way being what it is, you get a mixed clientele, sure, but because it’s not too far from the city’s administrative hub, there’s always a fair sprinkling of broad- and narrow-striper mantles on their lunch break chortling over how old Marcus or Titus or Decimus has screwed up yet again over the stationery order. Good lad, Marcus or Titus or Decimus, but a bit past it these days, yah?

Still, wine and ambience wasn’t what I was here for. Luckily, the place was fairly quiet for a change, possibly because the bad weather was encouraging the mantles to stick closer to the Market Square area itself. I couldn’t see my tribune pal around yet, so I bought a half-jug of Massic and a plate of sliced sausage and took them plus two cups to a secluded corner table and sat down to wait.

The whys and wherefores of the meeting were pretty obvious, or at least I thought they were. Either the guy, in the course of his duties, had heard something that seriously worried him and wanted to pass it on, or he was involved in the conspiracy itself and had got cold feet. The second was by far the most likely, because it would answer the question of why me. He’d’ve had to get my name from somewhere, and the most likely source, given that I’d accidentally shown my hand as an interested party and potential problem at Longinus’s get-together, was an inside one. If he’d been a pure innocent who’d just stumbled across something that made him suspicious, I wouldn’t’ve figured as an option at all, and he’d just have passed the information on up the line, to someone he could trust.

Assuming, of course, he still knew who he could trust …

The problem was that I was working in the dark here. If there was a military component to this – and that, now, was pretty well beyond doubt – then what level were we talking about? Given that the only necessary criterion for success was that the assassin was within easy reach of the target and legitimately armed with a sword, it could just be the one guy. Oh, sure, under those circumstances it’d be suicide, but the world’s not short of fanatics, death-and-glory boys who’ll willingly sacrifice their own lives for an ideal. And since we already had a definite Stoic element figuring in this case, that was by no means impossible. It fitted with Surdinus’s Harmodius and Aristogeiton clue as well, because if I remembered the story correctly, they’d both ended up chopped.

On the other hand, if the conspiracy was at a fairly high level – and again, given that there definitely had to be at least one broad-striper involved, that was more than likely – then the chances of success and survival were a lot higher.

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