of the cage and examined the straw. “Look-no blood. You haven't mucked him out today, have you? If he was alive and crawling, he would have bled.” I walked the keeper back to where the lion lay. Seizing the beast by its massive paws I braced myself and dragged him sideways to examine the straw under his belly. Buxus lent a hand.
“Some blood, but not enough.”
“What's it mean, Falco?”
“He was not killed through the bars, and I doubt if anyone came inside the cage. It would be far too risky and there isn't enough space to wield the spear.”
“So what happened to Leonidas?”
“He was killed somewhere else. Then his body was moved in here after he died.”
8
“IF LEONIDAS WAS taken elsewhere, let's look for signs of what happened-”
“Falco, nobody could have got him away from here!”
“It will do no harm to look.”
Buxus was looking nervous now, as if he had remembered that Calliopus wanted him to mislead me. I needed to search for evidence quickly, before some slave came along with a flat-headed broom and either accidentally or purposely swept away clues.
Outside in the exercise area the gladiators had stirred up so much dust there was no longer any chance that tracks from last night would show. I wondered if this was deliberate, but the fighters had to train, and this was where they normally did it. They had gone back to their exercises and kept up their racket, leaping around me with horrible yells as I crouched looking for paw prints on the hard dry ground. Their aggression made me feel tense. It was supposed to be practice, but they were big enough and moving fast enough to do serious damage if we collided. Occasionally one of the sparring men crashed so close I was forced to scramble aside. They ignored what I was trying to do. That in itself was unnatural. People are normally more curious.
“There's no hope of prints or spots of blood. We're too late-” I stood up. Time for a new tack. “Buxus, if you had been moving Leonidas to the arena, how would you have done it? I presume you don't take the big growlers out for walkies on dog leads?”
The slave looked shifty for some reason. “We have traveling cages.”
“Where are they kept?”
Controlling his reluctance he led me slowly around the back of the barracks to a row of lean-to stores. Impassively he watched as I glanced into most of them, finding bales of straw and tools-buckets, long poles for controlling angry animals, straw figures to distract the wild beasts in the arena, and finally under an open-sided shed three or four compact cages on wheels, neat enough to be squeezed between the cages of the menagerie, and just large enough to transport a lion or leopard from place to place.
“How do you get the beasts inside one of these?” “It's quite a game!”
“But you're well practiced?”
Buxus squirmed in his rough tunic; he was embarrassed, though pleased, by my praising his skill. I examined the nearest cage closely. There was nothing suspicious. I was walking away when intuition drew me back. Empty, the wheeled cages were easy to manipulate. I managed to pull out the one I had examined single handed; Buxus stood by, glaring. He said nothing and made no attempt to stop me, but nor did he weigh in to help. Perhaps he knew, or guessed, what I would find: the next cage did provide evidence. Kneeling down inside it, I soon discovered traces of blood.
I jumped out and dragged the second cage into the light. “Someone has made a very crude attempt to hide this, simply pulling out another cage and parking the significant one at the back.”
“Oh really?” said Buxus.
“Pathetic!” I showed him the blood. “Seen that before?”
“I might have done. It's just an old stain.”
“That stain is not too old, my mend. And it looks as if somebody tried to wash it away-the kind of useless scrubber my mother would refuse to have working on her kitchen floor.” The watery run-off had been absorbed far along the grain of the wooden floor of the cage, but the original splashes of blood could still be seen as darker, more concentrated marks. “Not much effort went into it-or else there wasn't enough time to do a good job.” “You think Leonidas was taken somewhere in this cart, Falco?”
“I bet he was.”
“That's terrible.”
I gave Buxus a sharp look. He seemed deeply unhappy, though I could not tell whether he was simply grieving for his lost big cat, or whether he was uncomfortable with my discovery and line of questioning “He was taken away and then brought back dead, Buxus. What's puzzling me, is how anyone could have extracted him from his normal cage without you hearing the commotion?”
“It's a real puzzle,” the keeper said sorrowfully.
I kept my eyes boring into him. “He would have been quiet enough when he came back with the spear in him, but whoever delivered the corpse may well have been panicking I doubt if they were able to stop themselves making some noise.”
“I just can't understand it,” Buxus agreed. A barefaced lie.
“I don't think you're trying.” He feigned not to notice my dangerously low tone.
I left the wheeled cage where it was. Someone else in this deceitful establishment could put it away again. Then something caught my eye, against the side wall of the shed. I pulled up what seemed to be a bundle of straw. What had attracted my attention were twined strands binding it into a definite form. “this is a straw man-or what's left of him.” The crude shape had been savaged and torn. The ties at the tops of its legs were still in place but the shoulder bindings were broken. One of the arms and the head had been ripped off altogether. Half the straw of the body had been pulled away and the rest was all over the place. As I held the pathetic remains, they fell into two pieces. “Poor Fellow's been thoroughly ravaged! You use these as decoys, don't you?”
“In the ring,” said Buxus, still playing the unhelpful misery.
“You throw them in to draw the beasts' attention, and sometimes to madden them?”
“Yes, Falco.”
Some extremely maddened creature had torn at the manikin I was holding. “What's this wrecked one doing here?”
“Must be just an old one,” said Buxus, managing to find the innocent expression I had no faith in.
I looked around. Everywhere was neat. This was a yard where items were routinely stacked, counted, inventoried and put away. Anything that was broken would be replaced or repaired. The straw men were kept on ceiling hooks in the same shack as the safety poles. All the used decoys that currently dangled there had been rebound to a reasonable shape.
I tucked the two halves of the dismembered figure under my arm, making a big point of confiscating the evidence. “On two occasions last night there must have been quite a commotion near Leonidas' cage-when he was fetched, and when he was brought home. You claim you missed all of it. So are you now going to tell me, Buxus, where you really were that evening?”
“I was here in bed,” he repeated. “I was here and I heard nothing.”
I was a good Roman citizen. No matter how brazenly he was defying me, I knew better than to beat up another citizen's slave.
9
WHEN WE RETURNED to the main area Buxus pointedly involved himself in his work while I took a last look around the cages. He surrounded himself with the four ostriches, who nuzzled close, lining their feet with the
