are carrying out a lifestyle check!"
"Whether it seems relevant or not," added Anacrites, pleasantly aiming to strike fear into the interviewee. He was a good civil servant after all.
Calliopus shot us a filthy look and bustled off.
I seated myself quietly and began making memos for myself about the lion's death. I held my tablet up at an angle so Anacrites had to guess what my scratchings were about.
He had worked alone for too long. He had been a man who kept his own council with perverted secrecy. Once he joined me he had braced himself to be companionable, but he then found it unbearable to share an office with someone who refused to talk to him. "Are you intending to carry on with the Censor's enquiry, Falco?" It was like doing your school homework with a fidgety younger brother. "Or are you giving up our paid assignment for this silly Circus interlude?"
"May as well do both."
I kept my eyes down. When I finished the notes that I actually wanted, I fooled him by drawing stickmen with busy scratches of my stylus. I completed three different sets of gladiators in combat, together with gesticulating lanistae urging on their efforts. My thinking time ended. I drew a sharp breath, as if I had reached some great conclusion. Then I squashed out the doodles with the flat end of my stylus, which was a shame because some had artistic merit.
I spun around to a pile of scrolls we were supposed to have scrutinized already, and spent the whole afternoon unwinding and rewinding them though never taking notes. Anacrites managed to stop himself asking what I was up to. Without even trying I managed to keep it to myself.
In fact I was re-examining the dockets and price lists for the animals Calliopus imported. We had previously looked at what he paid for them individually, and his overall cashflow for the menagerie account. All that had been aimed at deciding his true personal worth. Now I wanted to acquire a more general understanding of how the importation business worked. Where the beasts came from. In what numbers and what condition. And what it might mean to Calliopus first to buy a lion with the wrong pedigree for the venatio--and then to have him mysteriously killed.
Most of his animals came via his home town of Oea in the province of Tripolitania. They were delivered by one regular shipper, who was probably his third cousin All the shipments were put together over there at the menagerie which Anacrites and I had doubts about, the one which allegedly belonged to Calliopus' "brother", the "brother" whose existence we thought might be faked. We had certainly failed to find any scribbled notes from him saying, "What are the women like in Rome?" or "mother had another bad turn last week"--let alone that old family favourite "Please send more money". If he was real, he seemed strangely unfraternal in making a nuisance of himself.
Occasional entries recorded other purchases Calliopus had bought a bear, five leopards and a rhinoceros (who promptly died on him) from a senator whose private collection was being broken up. Iddibal was right; he rarely acquired big cats, although two years ago he had shared with a fellow lanista called Saturninus a huge purchase from a defunct arena supplier's estate. Going solo again, Calliopus then made a rare acquisition of crocodiles direct from Egypt, but they suffered badly on the voyage and proved unsatisfactory in the arena, where audiences had come to regard exotics from the Nile as less than spectacular unless they had a provenance all the way from Cleopatra's own fishpools. He had accepted a stray python that had been captured in a market by the vigiles.
After a long search I finally turned up the records for Leonidas. Calliopus had bought him last year, through a factor in Puteoli named as Cotys. The original entry merged almost boringly into a hundred others, neatly lettered by Calliopus' accountant, who had been taught enough calligraphy to write a hand so tidy it was illegible;
"Whether it seems relevant or not," added Anacrites, pleasantly aiming to strike fear into the interviewee. He was a good civil servant after all.
Calliopus shot us a filthy look and bustled off.
I seated myself quietly and began making memos for myself about the lion's death. I held my tablet up at an angle so Anacrites had to guess what my scratchings were about.
He had worked alone for too long. He had been a man who kept his own council with perverted secrecy. Once he joined me he had braced himself to be companionable, but he then found it unbearable to share an office with someone who refused to talk to him. "Are you intending to carry on with the Censor's enquiry, Falco?" It was like doing your school homework with a fidgety younger brother. "Or are you giving up our paid assignment for this silly Circus interlude?"
"May as well do both."
I kept my eyes down. When I finished the notes that I actually wanted, I fooled him by drawing stickmen with busy scratches of my stylus. I completed three different sets of gladiators in combat, together with gesticulating lanistae urging on their efforts. My thinking time ended. I drew a sharp breath, as if I had reached some great conclusion. Then I squashed out the doodles with the flat end of my stylus, which was a shame because some had artistic merit.
I spun around to a pile of scrolls we were supposed to have scrutinized already, and spent the whole afternoon unwinding and rewinding them though never taking notes. Anacrites managed to stop himself asking what I was up to. Without even trying I managed to keep it to myself.
In fact I was re-examining the dockets and price lists for the animals Calliopus imported. We had previously looked at what he paid for them individually, and his overall cashflow for the menagerie account. All that had been aimed at deciding his true personal worth. Now I wanted to acquire a more general understanding of how the importation business worked. Where the beasts came from. In what numbers and what condition. And what it might mean to Calliopus first to buy a lion with the wrong pedigree for the venatio--and then to have him mysteriously killed.
Most of his animals came via his home town of Oea in the province of Tripolitania. They were delivered by one regular shipper, who was probably his third cousin All the shipments were put together over there at the menagerie which Anacrites and I had doubts about, the one which allegedly belonged to Calliopus' "brother", the "brother" whose existence we thought might be faked. We had certainly failed to find any scribbled notes from him saying, "What are the women like in Rome?" or "mother had another bad turn last week"--let alone that old family favourite "Please send more money". If he was real, he seemed strangely unfraternal in making a nuisance of himself.
Occasional entries recorded other purchases Calliopus had bought a bear, five leopards and a rhinoceros (who promptly died on him) from a senator whose private collection was being broken up. Iddibal was right; he rarely acquired big cats, although two years ago he had shared with a fellow lanista called Saturninus a huge purchase from a defunct arena supplier's estate. Going solo again, Calliopus then made a rare acquisition of crocodiles direct from Egypt, but they suffered badly on the voyage and proved unsatisfactory in the arena, where audiences had come to regard exotics from the Nile as less than spectacular unless they had a provenance all the way from Cleopatra's own fishpools. He had accepted a stray python that had been captured in a market by the vigiles.
After a long search I finally turned up the records for Leonidas. Calliopus had bought him last year, through a factor in Puteoli named as Cotys. The original entry merged almost boringly into a hundred others, neatly lettered by Calliopus' accountant, who had been taught enough calligraphy to write a hand so tidy it was illegible;
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