'It's time you and I counted heads, not beans.' I took him into my confidence. 'Here's my theory: it looks like at least one of our merry supervisors is claiming for a phantom labour force.'
Gaius leaned back with his arms folded. 'Whew! I like working with you, Falco. This is fun!'
'No, it's not. It's very serious.' I could see a black hole opening up. 'It may explain why Lupus and Mandumerus are at odds. There could be a turf war for control of the labour fiddle. That's bad news. Whichever of the supervisors is running the racket, Gaius, listen: take great care. Once they know we've found out, life will become extremely dangerous.'
Gaius then continued with his own work rather quietly.
I slipped out later, to look into another aspect. I had been thinking about Magnus and his peculiar behaviour yesterday around the delivery carts. He had claimed he was 'checking a marble consignment'. I thought it unlikely but clever frauds often deceive you not with lies but with cunning half-truths.
I wanted to find the area where marble was being worked. I was led there by the screeching and scraping noises of saw-blades. With Nux at my heels, I made my way into the fenced enclosure. Men were preparing and squaring up newly delivered irregular blocks, using hammers and various grades of chisels. Nux ran off with her tail down, alarmed by the din, but I could only put my fingers in my ears as I hung around, inspecting various upright slabs.
Four men were pushing and pulling a multi-bladed saw to split a blue-grey block into pieces for inlay. The un toothed iron blades were supported in a wooden box frame, its progress lubricated by pouring water and sand into the cuts. By a slow and careful process, the men were slicing through the stone to produce several delicately fine sheets at once. From time to time they lifted the saw, resting their hands. A boy then moved in to brush away the damp powder produced by their labour, the marble 'flour', which I knew would be collected and used by the plasterers, mixed into their topcoats to give an extra fine glossy finish. The boy then fed new sand and water into the saw grooves to provide abrasion, and the sawyers resumed their cutting.
The resulting slabs would then be stacked vertically according to
their thickness and quality. Lying around haphazardly were also a number of broken blocks, which must have shattered under the saw. Elsewhere fine sheets had been laid out on benches and were now being smoothed to a high finish with ironstone blocks and water.
As I wandered around, I was amazed by the colour and variety of the marble being worked on. It all seemed a little premature, given that the new building was only at foundation stage. Perhaps that was because the materials were coming from far-flung places and needed to be acquired well in advance. Preparation on site would take a very long time, in view of the huge scale of the proposed palace.
The head marble mason found me watching. He dragged me into his hut. There I readily accepted the offer of a hot drink- since he had despaired of Iggidunus and was brewing up his own on a small tripod.
'I'm Falco. You're?'
'Milchato.' They were a cosmopolitan bunch here. Who knows where he hailed from with a name like that? Africa or Tripolitania. Egypt, possibly. He had grizzled grey hair, but his skin was dark; so was his narrow beard. His origin must be somewhere the web-footed Phoenicians left their mark. Or raking up old sores, let's call it somewhere Carthaginian.
'Worth the fire risk.' I grinned, as he blew on the charcoal burner, heating up wine in a small bronze folding saucepan. A man who tolerated life in a temporary camp by bringing his own battery of comforts. It reminded me, with a pang, of my efficient friend Lucius Petronius. Britain was where he and I served in the army. I was seriously missing Petro. 'I've been looking at your stock. I thought most of the planned decoration on the palace would be paint but Togidubnus seems to like his marble too. I'm staying in the old house; there's quite a range there. Surely it's not local?'
'Some.' He sprinkled dry herbs in two beakers. 'You'll see a bluey coloured British stone. Slightly rough.' Ferreting among the clutter, he tossed me a piece of it. 'Comes from down the coast to westward. And what else has the old fella got? Oh, there's a red from the Mediterranean and some brown speckled stuff from Gaul, if I remember.'
'You worked on the old house?'
'I was just a lad!' he grinned.
Like the other craftsmen, he had a vast array of samples scattered around him. Irregular pieces of multicoloured marble lay everywhere. A few had tablets pegged under them, with what must be firm orders for the new scheme. Leaning casually against the hut's doorframe, used as a doorstop, was a superb finished panel of inlaid veneers with a pentagon set in a circle. I picked up a delicate moulding with a seductive shine. It looked like a dado rail or a border between panels. 'Fillets!' exclaimed Milchato. 'I like a few carved fillets.'
'This is exquisite. And I've rarely seen so many types of marble in one place.'
Milchato demonstrated offhandedly. They came from places far apart: the blue stone, plus a similar grey, from Britain and then crystalline white from the central hills of distant Phrygia. He had a fine green and white veined type from the foothills of the Pyrennees, a yellow and white from Gaul, more than one variety from Greece…
'Your import costs must be staggering!'
Milchato shrugged. 'That's why there will be quite a lot of paintwork including mock-marbling.' He seemed relaxed about it. 'They've brought a lad over to do it; naturally it's not his field, he's really a landscape specialist-'
'Typical!' I sympathised.
'Oh… Blandus knows him. Jobs for the guild, you know. Some smart arse from Stabiae -it's no problem; I can train him in what marble really looks like. The young fellow's all right, quite bright really for a painter.' Milchato drained his beaker. He must have a throat that could swallow hot bitumen. 'My contract is big enough to keep me busy and believe me, Falco, I can buy what I want. Free hand. Authority to draw on resources from anywhere in the Empire. Can't ask for more than that.'
But could he, though? Was he somehow topping up his salary? I would have to check how much stone was being imported and whether it was all still here.
'I'll be frank,' I said. 'You know I am here to look for problems. There may be diddling with the marble.'
Milchato gazed at me, wide-eyed. He was giving his most careful attention to this theory of mine. If he studied it any more seriously, I would think he was mocking me. 'Whoops! Do you think so?'
'I wouldn't insult you by claiming it, otherwise,' I replied dryly.
'That's terrible… surely a mistake.' He ran one hand over his beard, which rasped as if he had tough hairs and a dry skin.
'Do you rule it out?' Only an idiot rules out fraud anywhere on a building site.
'Oh I wouldn't say that, Falco.' Now he was being open and helpful. 'No, it's entirely possible… In fact, you may well be right.'
This was easy. I always like that. 'Any ideas?'
'The sawyers!' cried Milchato at once, almost eagerly. Yes, it was very easy. Loyalty to his labour force was not his strong feature. Still, I was the man from Rome; he would feel even less respect for me. 'Bound to be them. Some of them deliberately use too coarse a grain of sand when they're cutting. It wears away more than necessary of the slabs. We have to order more material. The client pays. The sawyers split the difference with the marble supplier.'
'Are you sure of it?'
'I have had my own suspicions for a while. This fiddle is famous. Oldest trick in the book.'
'Milchato, that is extremely helpful.' I rose to leave. He came to the door with me. I slapped him around the shoulders. Tin glad I called on you. This will save me days of work, you know. Now I'm going to leave you with it for a while; I want you to look out for the trick, and see if you can put a stop to it. I could order the bastards to be sent home again, but we're really stuck out here. I can't lose them. Obtaining new labour for a specialism is too difficult.'
'I'll jump on it, Falco,' he promised gravely.
'Good man!' I said.
It was time to leave. He had another visitor. An elderly man in a Roman tunic, wrapped in a dramatic long scarlet cape and with a travelling hat. He acted as if he was somebody but whoever it was, I was not introduced. Though Milchato and I parted on good terms, I was sure the marble master waited deliberately until I left the
