Wolf Whistle

Claudia could almost feel the intoxication that the plotting and the planning would induce. The illicit meetings, whispered messages. The knowledge that Arbil might find out any moment and exact his terrible revenge…

Kaeso stopped pacing and ran his hands through his collar-length hair. In his belt was the knife he’d used to still Magic. ‘I didn’t know, until yesterday, that Angel meant Arbil harm.’

‘She meant to kill him, Kaeso.’ The bitch wanted him dead. It’s the only way she could get her hands on his money box.

The junior priestess shook her egret feather duster out of doors and began to sweep the steps with a broom. The swishing of the heather twigs grew fainter stair by stair, and the heat inside the shrine intensified. Blood pounded through Claudia’s veins, throbbing at her pulse points and at the base of her ears.

‘Are you…in love with her?’

‘I was,’ he said slowly, turning to look Claudia full in the face.

Her cheeks coloured, and the only sound was the trickle of the fountain. ‘What changed your mind?’ she asked.

For several seconds, Kaeso simply held her gaze without blinking. ‘What changed my mind,’ he said huskily, ‘is that I met someone else.’

A lump blocked her windpipe. There was no mistaking his meaning…

Claudia kept her eyes clear of the powerful frame of the man tracker, the sleek war machine who had silenced her stalker for ever, as she pretended to re-arrange the folds of her gown. ‘Kaeso, I-’

But he had gone.

‘Kaeso?’

She was all alone in the temple. And when she asked the priestess which direction he had taken, the girl frowned. ‘No one came down these steps, but you, ma’am,’ she replied.

Tight-lipped, Claudia smiled. To the end, Kaeso kept up his chicanery, and she knew she could return to that house on the Quirinal a hundred times and never find him.

Not unless Kaeso wanted her to.

XXXII

His body beaded with sweat, his hair hanging limp in saturated ropes, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio made his way towards the steam room. The game of small ball, fast and physical, had exhausted him, but his mind was buzzing like a bee around a hyssop bush as he collapsed face down upon the table to submit to the ministrations of a Spaniard who’d clearly scraped kidskins for vellum in a previous incarnation.

There were many aspects of these bizarre and grisly killings that worried him, he brooded, as the strigil scraped his flesh. Ritual murder’s always tricky, because despite the killer’s distinctive signature upon the crime, in most cases he’s virtually impossible to trace. But for once, Marcus had a fair old list of suspects.

The Spaniard rolled him on to his back and proceeded to torture the remaining life out of his prostrate victim. True, he had eliminated those five suspects, but in the same way he’d overlooked the obvious regarding Zygia’s hair, somewhere along the line, Orbilio knew he had made a crucial mistake.

His flesh raw, he tipped the Spaniard and let a square-jawed Sarmatian work warmed oils of chamomile and marjoram into his skin. Claudia had been positive Shannu could not pass his bars, now a chill descended on Marcus, despite the ministrations of the masseur. Suppose someone deliberately unbolted that door…

Donning wood-soled sandals to protect his feet against the searing tiles, Orbilio clip-clopped into the hot room. ‘Ritual murder, ritual murder’ went the rhythm of the clogs, forcing him to recap the observances which the killer so assiduously followed.

One: lasso the victims, drag them backwards, knock them out. Two: strip them naked, tie their hands and then their feet, and he must gag them too, and remove the gag later, because no one had screamed. Then he started slashing, but why the twenty-seven cuts? What was the significance of the hair in the lap? And where did the whistle fit in? It all seemed so over the top. Almost an over-kill. Pinching his nose, Orbilio dived beneath the steaming waters. Of course! Bobbing up, he pushed the hair from off his face and grinned. It was the ritual which mattered, not the actual killing.

As he shook off the drips, Severina’s face floated into his memory. Not how she’d looked in death, but how she looked in life. Beautiful, full of joy, with everything to live for. Why? he wondered. Why, of all the girls who bore a blue tattoo, should dark, vivacious Zygia be a target for the killer’s warped and twisted mind? What is it that sets the elfin Annia apart?

Orbilio felt he was on the brink of more than just the plunge pool. He was-if only he dared follow up his instinct-poised on the brink of a terrible solution, because suppose (just suppose) he’d got this whole thing back to front? Arms outstretched, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio dived into the icy waters of the plunge pool.

And shuddered.

XXXIII

‘Claudia?’

The bunch of keys jangled in his hand as Marcus let himself in, but only his voice came back to him, the echo undistorted by kitchen steam or by the clatters, bangs and jabber that denote a household’s heart.

‘I need to talk to you about Arbil.’