Blood on Albintimilium

By Franco Garrone

Albintimilium, a Roman city in Cisalpine Gaul, in the year 264 AD.

The lifeless body of a prostitute is found tied to a pole on the beach. The milites immediately sense they are dealing with a ruthless killer. The murders have just begun.

Milites Marco Decimo Apronio is young, determined, and more intelligent than the older colleagues he works with in the local Urbaniciani barracks. He is called upon to solve the case; his colleagues need a young and brilliant mind that has already helped them in the past solve difficult cases. However, this time, the mystery seems impossible even for Apronio: no one has ever seen anything like it before. With the support of the Pretorians, the manhunt begins.

Marco Decimo, shaken by a dark past and failed relationships, must confront his own anxieties as the search for the murderer plunges him into the darkest corners of consciousness. He delves into the mind of the killer, trying to understand the twisted actions, but discovers evil and hopes not to get entangled in it as everything seems to collapse around him.

With the discovery of more murdered women, a race against time begins. The only solution is to uncover the murderer before he kills again.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Jan 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9781667468617

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Albintimilium, year 264 AD

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On another occasion, the first light of dawn that touched the sea's water would have seemed beautiful to her. She saw the daylight dancing on the ripples of the waves, creating a delicate golden hue, and she tried, with all her might, to appreciate its beauty. She had to try to distract herself, or the pain would be unbearable.

She was tied to a large wooden post that extended against her back, ending two feet above her head.

Her hands were bound behind her, secured to the post. She was dressed only in a loincloth and a breastband that accentuated her ample breasts, making them appear higher and closer together. It was the breastband that allowed her to earn more tips at the lupanare, the same one that made her breasts look like those of a twenty-year-old, not those of a thirty-four-year-old mother of two.

The post rubbed against her bare back, chafing it, but it was incomparable to the pain inflicted by the man with the deep and unsettling voice.

She straightened up when she heard him approaching, his steps muffled by the beach's sand. There was another sound, softer. He was dragging something: she realized it was the whip, the one he used to strike her.

It had spikes, and its tip fanned out. She had only caught a glimpse of it once, and it was enough. Her back burned from the dozens of blows. Feeling the whip being dragged on the ground filled her with panic. She let out a scream, what seemed like the thousandth of the night, which dispersed and died on the beach. At first, the screams had been cries for help, hoping that someone would hear. Over time, however, they had become inarticulate moans of pain, laments emitted by someone who knew that no one would come to their aid.

I could set you free, the man said.

He had the voice of someone who had screamed a lot. Furthermore, he spoke with a strange accent.

But first, you must confess your crimes.

It was the umpteenth time he had said it. She agonized over finding an answer again. She had no crimes to confess. She was a good person to everyone she knew. She was a good mother, not as good as she would have liked, but she had tried.

What did he want?

She screamed again and arched her back against the post. She felt the grip on her wrists loosen, and the sticky blood oozed onto the rope.

Confess your crimes, he repeated.

I don't know what you're talking about!

No, you know it,

she heard it as a hiss as the whip was raised in the air. When it struck her, she screamed and stretched against the post.

Another wound opened, and she barely noticed. She focused on her wrists. The blood that had collected there had mixed with sweat. Between the rope and her wrists, she could feel a small gap, thinking that maybe she could escape. The whip struck her squarely on the shoulder, making her scream.

Please, she begged. I'll do anything you want! Just free me!

Confess your...

She pulled the rope as hard as she could, moving her arms forward. A searing pain in her back made her scream, but she was immediately free. She felt a slight burn as the rope rubbed against the back of her hand, but it was nothing compared to the pain on her back. She pulled forward with all her strength, nearly falling to her knees and ruining her chance of escape. The primal need to survive took over, and without even realizing it, she started to run.

She lunged forward, amazed at her freedom, her legs still moving after being bound for so long. She wouldn't stop to ask questions.

She ran across the beach, through the sand. Breathing was difficult, but she focused on placing one foot in front of the other. She knew the Via Julia Augusta was nearby. All she had to do was keep running and ignore the pain.

The man began to laugh behind her, a monster's laughter that had been hidden in the beach for centuries. The woman whimpered and kept running, her feet pounding against the sand, her body cutting through the air. Her breasts bounced up and down ridiculously, and her right breast slipped out of the breastband. She promised herself in that moment that if she survived, she would never work as a prostitute again. She would find a more suitable job, a better way to support her children.

The idea ignited a new fire within her, and she ran faster, gliding through the dunes. She increased her pace. She had to get away and be rid of him. The road had to be very close. Right? Maybe.

But even if it was, there were no guarantees that someone would be there. It wasn't even the first hour, and the Via Julia was deserted at that time.

Further on, the beach ended.

The turbulent light of dawn washed over her, and her heart leaped at the sight of the road. She approached the road, and in disbelief, she heard the clopping of horse hooves approaching.

Hope surged.

She also heard the creaking of wagon wheels and ran even faster, but when she reached the edge of the road, the wagon was already far away.

She started to scream and wave her arms.

Help, please!

But to her horror, the wagon continued to creak away. She waved her arms again, crying.

She heard a hiss in the air, a pain exploded behind her knee, making her fall to the ground.

She screamed and got back up, but she felt a hand grabbing her by the hair, pulling her back to the beach. She tried to free herself, but this time, she couldn't. There was one last lash of the whip, she knew it, and then it would all be over: the sound, the whip, the pain, and the short life full of suffering.

I

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Milites Marco Decimo Apronio prepared for the worst as he crossed the beach that afternoon. The sound emitted by the sand underfoot unsettled him; it was a dead sound, rubbing against his sandals as he stepped over dune after dune. The clearing he sought seemed miles away.

When he finally reached it, he stopped abruptly, wishing to be anywhere but there. There lay the half-naked body of a woman in her thirties, tied to a pole, her face frozen in agony. It was an expression he hoped never to see again and knew he would never forget.

Five urbanicians wandered around, doing nothing in particular. They tried to appear busy, but he knew they were trying to make sense of the scene. He was sure none of them had seen anything like this before. To Marco Decimo, a brief glance at the woman tied to the wooden pole was enough to understand that something significant was going on. Something different from anything he had encountered before. These were not things that happened in Albintimilium.

He approached the corpse and slowly circled it. As he moved, he could feel the gaze of the urbanicians on him. He knew some thought he took the job too seriously. He examined things, looked for abstract threads and connections. He was a man who had risen to the position of urbanician too quickly in the eyes of many colleagues at the Intemelian barracks, and he knew it. He was an ambitious young man whom everyone assumed aimed for something more than working as an urbanician in the law enforcement forces of the Decurion.

He ignored them. He focused only on the corpse, swatting away the flies buzzing around. They swirled haphazardly around the woman's body, creating a black cloud. The temperature certainly did not favor the corpse. It had been hot all summer, and it seemed like all that heat had concentrated in that spot on the beach.

He studied the corpse, trying to suppress the feelings of nausea and sadness. The woman's back was covered in wounds. They seemed uniform, perhaps inflicted with the same instrument. There was blood, mostly dry and sticky. Even the back of her thong was crusted with it. When he finished circling the body, a short and stout man approached.

He knew him well and stiffened.

"Hail, milites Apronio," said Lucreziano.

"Decurion," he replied.

Where is Prisco? There was no presumption in the voice, but he sensed it. That seasoned Decurion of the urbanicians did not want a young man shedding light on the case. Caio Prisco, the fifty-year-old colleague, would have been more suitable for that job.

He's on the Via Julia, he replied. "He's talking to the liberto who discovered the body. He'll join us shortly."

"Hoc est, he said, feeling more at ease. What do you think?"

He was pretty sure that Lucreziano behaved this way only with him because he was young. Instinct told him that this was more than just a straightforward murder. Was it because of the countless lashes on the back? Or was it because the woman had an attractive body? The breasts were ample, and even the backside wasn't bad. The makeup was rather heavy, partially smeared and streaked due to tears.

I believe, he said, addressing the question, "that it's a crime of violence. We won't find signs of sexual abuse. Rarely do men who kidnap a woman for sex violate the victim in this way, even if they plan to kill her afterward. Additionally, the type of lingerie she's wearing suggests that the woman had a provocative nature. Judging by the heavy makeup and ample breasts, I'd start checking some lupanare to see if any prostitute went missing the other night."

Already done, he replied smugly. "The deceased is Licinia Amona, a liberta, thirty-four years old, mother of two boys, and a prostitute at the Infinita voluptas."

He rattled off the facts as if reading from a scroll of papyrus. He had played the role for so long that he made murder victims seem not like people anymore but rather puzzles to solve. Apronio had been in the field for only two years and wasn't as hardened and heartless. He studied the victim with an eye to uncovering what had happened, but he also saw her as a woman leaving two boys who would live the rest of their lives without a mother.

If a mother of two children turned to prostitution, he imagined she must have financial problems and would be willing to do anything to support her children. Instead, there she was, tied to a pole and tormented by a faceless man. The crunch of the sand interrupted his thoughts. He turned and saw Caio Prisco advancing through the dunes.

He entered the clearing huffing, cleaning his sandals from sand and seaweed. He looked around for a moment before his eyes settled on the corpse of Licinia Amona. A look of astonishment crossed his face, then he looked at Marco Decimo and Lucreziano, approaching without wasting time.

Prisco, said the Decurione. Apronio here is already solving the case. He's quite sharp.

Sometimes he is, Prisco said disdainfully.

He always acted like that. Lucreziano wasn't giving him a real compliment. Instead, he was teasing Prisco for ending up with a young man who had emerged from nowhere and had taken the position of urbanician that few men in the district over thirty took seriously.

Even though he enjoyed seeing Prisco teased, it wasn't worth feeling inadequate and underestimated. Many times, he had closed cases that older men couldn't solve, and he knew that made them feel threatened.

He was too young to start feeling disgust for the career. Yet now, stuck with Prisco and that team, he was beginning to hate it.

Prisco intervened between them to make him understand that now he was the lead. Marco Decimo began to tense up, but he suppressed the feeling. He had been repressing it for three months, ever since they had been assigned as partners. From the first day, Prisco had not hidden his contempt. After all, he had replaced the colleague with whom he had been teamed up for twenty-eight years—he had been pushed aside, according to him, just to make room for the young milites. He ignored the lack of respect; he refused to let it affect professional ethics.

Without a word, he returned to the corpse and studied it carefully. Examining it was painful, and yet, as far as he was concerned, no corpse would ever have the same effect on him as the first one he had seen. He had reached the point where he no longer saw his father's body when he stepped onto a crime scene. He was seven years old when he entered the cubiculum and saw him semi-reclined on the bed in a pool of blood.

He looked for clues that would prove the murderer had no sexual motive. He saw no bruises or scratches on the breasts or buttocks, and at first glance, there was no blood around the vagina. From the brief report he and Prisco had received, he knew that the victim's clothes had not been found. Perhaps it meant that the murderer had them, or that he had disposed of them.

This suggested that he was cautious, bordering on obsession. Adding that the motive was not sexual, one could deduce that they were dealing with a determined and elusive killer.

He stepped back to the edge of the clearing to observe the scene in its entirety. Prisco glanced at him briefly and completely ignored him, continuing to talk to Lucreziano. He noticed that the other urbanicians were watching him. He had started his career with the reputation of being skilled and highly regarded by many instructors at the barracks. Sometimes, younger colleagues asked for his opinion.

It was possible that some of the men there with him on that beach were watching him, laughing behind his back: considering him just a kid playing at being an urbanician. As he studied the scene, he was once again overcome by the feeling that something was wrong.

This is just the beginning, he thought.

He inspected the sand around the pole and saw indistinct marks of caliga, military sandals, but nothing that could provide true footprints. On the ground, there were also marks that looked like snake shapes.

He crouched down to examine them more closely and noticed that there were many of them side by side, circling the pole in a disjointed manner, as if whatever left them had circled the pole multiple times. Looking at the woman's back, he noticed that the wounds had the same shape as the marks on the ground.

Prisco, he called.

What's up? he replied in a gruff tone, annoyed at