A DYING LIGHT IN CORDUBA

Placidus laughed.

'Tell me more about Quadratus-he was out here last year?'

'His father sent him, allegedly to supervise their estate.'

'Including the eviction of tenants whose faces didn't fit!'

At my sharp retort, Placidus looked purse-lipped. 'There was some trouble, I gather.' He was being cautious. I signaled that I had heard the full story. He then said, with a bluntness that seemed uncharacteristic, 'Quinctius Quadratus is the worst kind, Falco. We've had them all. We've had them rude and overconfident. We've had debauched young tyrants who live in the brothels. We've had fools who can't count, or spell, or compose a sentence in any language, let alone in correspondence-Greek. But when we heard that Quadratus had been wished on us as quaestor, those of us in the know nearly packed up and left.'

'What makes him so bad?'

'You can't pin him down. He looks as if he knows what he is doing. He has success written all over him, so it's pointless to complain. He is the sort the world loves-until he comes unstuck.'

'Which he may never do!'

'You understand the problem.'

'I've worked with a few golden boys.' 'High-flyers. Most have broken wings.'

'I like your style, Placidus. It's good to find a man who doesn't mind sticking his head over the rampart when everyone else is cowering. Or should I say, everyone except the proconsul? Despite everything, Quadratus is on hunting leave, you know.'

'I didn't! Well that's one bright spot. His father's influence made the appointment look staged: the proconsul hates anything that looks off-color.'

'Quadratus may have a black smudge against his name,' I hinted, remembering what the proconsul's clerks had told me about the dead soldiers in Dalmatia. 'Then a query about the family's role from Anacrites does not exactly help him maintain a glowing aura-somebody worked a flanker to be proud of,' I commented.

Placidus beamed. 'Terrible, isn't it?'

'Tragic! But you're stuck with him unless he or his father, or both if possible, can be discredited. That's my job. I'm partway there. I can finger them as ringleaders when the cartel was being mooted last month in Rome- though I can't put up witnesses. Of course they were both on the spot. Even young Quadratus had finished his agricultural clearances and gone home again to triumph in the Senate elections and the jobs lottery.'

'Yes. He must have known Cornelius wanted to give up his post; he and his father somehow maneuvered the quaestorship

into their own hands. From here, it looks difficult to see why Rome fell for it.'

'The graybeards in the Curia would approve. The family had interests here. The Emperor may have assumed the proconsul would be delighted by his catch.'

'The proconsul soon told him otherwise. He was livid!' Placidus muttered. 'I heard about it from Cornelius.'

It sounded as though this proconsul liked breaking rules: he could spot a wrong move coming-and he was not afraid to dodge it. Not afraid of telling Vespasian he was annoyed, either. He was exceptional among men of his rank. No doubt he would live down to my expectations eventually, but at the moment it looked as though he was doing his job.

I returned to the main problem: 'I'll be fair to Aelianus. Assume he meant no harm. He arrived in Rome with the report for Anacrites, all full of the importance of his mission. He was bursting with it, and could simply have boasted to the wrong friend in Rome. He may not have realized the Quinctii were involved.'

'Did Cornelius tell him what the sealed letter said?' Placidus scowled.

'Apparently Cornelius used some discretion. Of course that only excited the lad's curiosity; Aelianus confessed to me he read the report.'

Placidus was raging again: 'Oh I despair of these young men!'

I smiled, though it took an effort. Pedants irritate me. 'At risk of sounding like a ghastly old republican grandfather, discipline and ethics are not requirements for the cursus honorem nowadays… With or without the connivance of Aelianus, someone altered the report. Even with that done, they knew Anacrites would be taking it further. They decided to stop him. The results were disastrous. Somebody killed the agent who was on surveillance when the oil producers came to Rome-and they made a brutal attack on Anacrites too.'

'Dear gods! Is Anacrites dead?'

'I don't know. But it was a serious misjudgment. It drew attention to the plot, rather than burying it. The investigation wasn't stopped, and won't be now.'

'If they had kept their heads,' Placidus philosophized, 'nobody could have proved anything. Inertia would set in. Cornelius has left; Quadratus is installed. He can't be left on hunting leave forever. The financial affairs of this province are under his sole control. For myself, I expect every hour to be recalled to Rome, due to some quiet manipulation by the tireless Quinctius Attractus. Even if I stay on, anything I say can easily be dismissed as the ravings of an obsessive clerk with cracked ideas about fraud.'

'You know how the system operates,' I complimented him.

'I should do. It stinks-but gods alive, it rarely involves the murder of state servants!'

'No. That was arranged by somebody who doesn't know.' Somebody inexperienced. Someone who lacked the patience and confidence to wait and let the inertia Placidus mentioned creep insidiously through the state machine.

Placidus was frowning. 'Why are you so vague about the report, Falco? There ought to be copies of everything filed by the quaestor's clerk.'

'He tried to find it for me. Gone missing.'

'Why did you think that was?'

'Stolen to hide the evidence? Quinctius Quadratus is the obvious suspect. I'm only surprised he knew his way around the office.'

'I bet he doesn't,' Placidus retorted sourly. 'But he will one day. Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe the documents have been removed by someone else to stop him seeing them!'

'Who do you suggest?'

'The proconsul.'

If that was true, the bastard could have told me he had done it.

Placidus took a deep breath. When governors of provinces have to start prowling offices, censoring records in order to deceive their own deputies, order has broken down. Governors of provinces are not supposed to know how the filing system works (though of course they have all held lowly posts in their youth). Allowing them to fiddle with scrolls opened up frightening avenues. This was all filthier and more complex than Placidus had thought. 'So what now, Falco?'

'A tricky piece of reconnaissance.'

I explained about finding the dancer. The procurator did not know her, or was not aware of it if he did. He expressed a theory that men may watch, but do not learn the names of girls who entertain. Obviously his past life had been more innocent than mine.

'And where does she fit in, Falco?'

'I found evidence that she and her African musicians carried out the attacks in Rome on Anacrites and his man.'

'What did she have against them?'

'Nothing personal, probably. I imagine that somebody paid her. If I find her I'll try to make her tell me who it was. And if his name happens to be one of those we have been discussing, you and the proconsul will be happy men.'

I told him the address the two shipping tycoons had given me. Placidus said he believed it was a dangerous area of town- though inspired by the excitement of our conversation, he decided he would come along with me.

I let him. I believed he was straight, but I do have my standards; he was still a man who held a salaried government post. If I got into trouble with Selia and needed a decoy, I would cheerfully throw him to her as bait.