Between them, they were able to recall at least three stories of abductions. Since the victims wanted secrecy, there could have been plenty more. Details were skimpy: women were taken, their male relations pressured. A common thread was that afterward the ransomed women were traumatized. The tendency was to leave Ostia fast.
“You don’t know who does it?”
“Must be foreigners.” Anyone who came from outside Ostia was a foreigner to this lot. They meant that the kidnaps did not form part of the age-old pilfering, skiving, cadging, diddling, dawdling, and mislaying that were regarded as normal trade practice by the long generations of intermarried families who worked in the ports.
One gnarled stevedore with a lopsided shoulder did suggest that someone had reported the problem to the vigiles. “Give those Rome boys something else to think about!” He grinned gummily. These men who worked on the docks and in the warehouses preferred not to be policed.
“Have you seen anyone hanging about around here?” I asked. “Other than us two, of course?”
There was muttering and a little laughter. Somebody mentioned Caninus. Someone else turned his back on the conversation, disgusted. They loathed the navy even more than the vigiles, it seemed.
“I know about Caninus. I was thinking of a clerkish sort, a scribe looking for something exciting to write about. His name is Diocles. Ever seen him?”
Apparently not.
Aulus and I finally hitched a lift back to the ferry on a slow cart, but all across what they called the Island the traffic jam was terrible. Like many others, we soon jumped off and walked. At the ferry dock we herded with the crowds, with people’s toolkits jammed in our backs and elbows in our sides. On the boat, we were hanging off the gunnels, clinging to any handhold, and bruised every time the oars made a stroke. The oarsmen had their work cut out. Accustomed to this frenzy, they just stopped rowing when they were impeded too much. That added to the torture, as we drifted downstream and had to be brought back. The haze of garlic, wine, and perspiration from work tunics formed a breath-stopping miasma above the low-slung boat as it crept across to Ostia. Charon’s filthy punt must be more pleasant. At least there you know you are heading to interminable rest in the Elysian Fields.
Another thing: Charon makes every dead soul pay. Aulus and I were the only men from Rome in this ferry, and we seemed to be the only two who had been asked to cough up fares.
At last we landed, and walked straight back home. It was too late to achieve anything more. I wanted to think first, because I had not come to Ostia to investigate kidnaps; no one would thank me—or pay me. I had to keep sight of my target. My brief was to find the scribe Diocles. So far, I had linked him to a possible retired pirate, but the Damagoras connection led nowhere definite. I had no cause to think Diocles had known about the kidnaps we had just uncovered. He would have liked to know, yes. Kidnap for ransom was an old pirate tradition, but I couldn’t prove Diocles had realized it was going on here.
For all I knew still, he might really have come to Ostia to see his auntie as he told the other scribes. Once here he may have considered moonlighting on the Damagoras memoirs while he was invisible to his Rome superiors. Perhaps he dropped that idea when he realized he would earn better pocket money on a building site. In the end I might find him alive and well, mixing mortar for a construction team and unaware of the fuss he had caused.
Mind you, he would find construction hard labor; he was no stripling. I possessed some personal details. The vigiles recruiting officer had said Diocles was thirty-eight—a few years past retirement for an imperial freedman. Palace slaves were normally manumitted and pensioned off with a bag of gold when they were thirty. Holconius and Mutatus had told me the only reason Diocles was still working at the Daily Gazette instead of marrying and setting up a scrollshop behind the Forum was that the Emperor wanted reliable old hands buffing up the imperial name.
Why did Vespasian care about the Infamia column? According to Holconius, the court circular would constantly display good news affecting members of the ruling Flavian dynasty—impressive deeds in the fields of culture, adorning the city, and bashing barbarians. But Vespasian, famous for his old-fashioned ethics, also wanted tales of immorality toned down in the Gazette so that he—as the Father of his Country—would appear to have cleaned up society. The old spoilsport needed to feel the scandal column was no longer so titillating as it had been in Nero’s day.
I could not see—or could not see yet—how piracy came into that. True, if there really were pirates still roaming the seas, Vespasian would clear them out again. But would he want to be “the new Pompey”? Pompey was an unlucky politician, murdered in Egypt for the delight of his rival, Caesar. In the end the great Pompey was a loser. Vespasian was too canny for that. Wrong message from the signal post. And wrong messages were not Vespasian’s style.
XXIII
First thing next morning I was off to the vigiles station house.
Petronius was not there. In fact, no one much was around. I addressed myself first to the clerk. He told me Brunnus was out somewhere. At the time I took that for a good omen. Ignoring cries of protest from the arsonists and thieves who would have to wait longer to be freed on bail, I extracted Virtus (the clerk’s name, I discovered) and drew him to the open courtyard where nobody would overhear.
“You’ll know this,” I complimented him. “You’re the only one here I can rely on to be up to date with casework—”
“Stop buffing the bronze, Falco. What’s the score?”
“Kidnap.”
Virtus shook his head. He turned to go back to his duties. I grabbed his arm. I told him there had been several victims, and I thought some at least had made vigiles reports.
Virtus assumed the vague expression clerks do so well. “Maybe the snatches occurred months ago when the last cohort were here.”
“Which preceded the Sixth?”
“I forget. The Fourth? No, the Fourth are due to replace us next week. They are Petronius’ unit—”
“I’m well aware of that,” I said. “But it’s an ongoing crime—and you’re a permanent clerk. Don’t mess me about. Now, the kidnappers apply frighteners, but people do get angry when their shock dies down. Victims have been here—and somebody has interviewed them.”
Virtus wavered. “There’s only one place these records may be, Falco.”
I produced a sweetener. Sometimes clerks tell me secrets because they like my approach; sometimes they hate their bosses and are glad to cause trouble. For Virtus, his job would be endangered if he talked (he protested), therefore a bribe was essential.
I paid him. I liked him, and I reckoned it would be worthwhile.
He was still nervous.
We walked to the end of the exercise yard, and right into the shrine. It honored the Imperial Cult. Indoors, we were shadowed by busts of the current Emperor, flanked by his sons, Titus and Domitian Caesar, along with older heads of Claudius—who first brought the vigiles to Ostia—and even the disgraced Nero. That was quite enough witnesses. I made sure no one else was lurking.
Now I was nervous too. The way Virtus and I had entered must look suspicious. Anyone who had seen the two of us skulk up the portico and nip in here would imagine we were planning indecent acts. Sodomy was not my sin, and the Fourth Cohort would have known that, but to the Sixth I was an unknown quantity. I had just handed over money to a public slave, then led him to a murky place. Such an act might ruin my reputation—and since this was a shrine, there could be a blasphemy charge.
“Get on with it, Virtus.”
Anxious to flee, Virtus muttered, “It may be in the Illyrian file.”
I groaned. Just when I had done enough research to master a Cilician angle, here came another provincial bundle of trouble. Illyria, in Dalmatia, is much closer to Italy but yet another rocky coast, also full of inlets and islands, also harboring a nest of pirates in every cove where fishing fails to bring in enough money.
“What’s with Illyrians, Vi
rtus?”
“We keep a set of notebooks that gets passed to each new officer at cohort handovers. Don’t ask what’s in it.”
“You don’t know?”
“It’s top-secret, Falco.” Not the straight answer to my question. This vigiles clerk was falling back on tricks of bureaucracy: “I always thought it was a dead subject. Just because it comes with a high security category, doesn’t mean the case is live—” He was waffling.
“Case, or cases?”
“Can’t say. There is another set of notes just like it, on Florius—” Florius was the gangster Petronius was pursuing as his special subject.
“Florius is irrelevant. You’re telling me another secret bunch of notes relates to someone with an Illyrian background. Is there a special navy contact on this issue? I had the impression Caninus only covers Cilicia.”
“No, it’s the same. Caninus.”
“You sure about that, Virtus?”
“Every time a new detachment arrives, Caninus makes contact with their officer. Brunnus, for instance, had to be told to give Caninus special respect.”
“Who told Brunnus?”
“I did. It’s my job to brief the officers on sensitive issues.”
“So who told you Caninus was sensitive?”
“He did.”
“Caninus instructs you, ‘Tell any new officer: I’m an important secret contact’? But you don’t know what secret issues you are briefing them about?”
Virtus laughed. “So what? I’m a clerk. I do that all the time.”
I failed to find it funny. “How can I get to see the Illyrian notes?”
“Not possible, Falco.”
“More cash help you?”
“Still not possible,” said Virtus—with regret. “Brunnus slept with the Illyrian notes under his pillow last night. Don’t ask me why he suddenly took an interest.” I guessed our party with Caninus had aroused his curiosity. “Today he’s gone off with the tablet in his satchel. I suppose he is chasing up the old cases … Problem, Falco?” asked Virtus, innocently.
“It’s a little inconvenient.”
“If you don’t want Brunnus to know that you have an interest …”
“Yes?”
“Don’t you want to know what I can offer?”
“If you swindle me, you’ll regret it. But I’ve reached my limit, cash-wise. So just tell me.”
Virtus demurred. I got tough. He submitted.
No officer wrote out his own case-notes, however confidential. If a clerk was preparing a top-secret report which would have a long forward timeline—that is, notes that would eventually be handed on to other cohorts—the officer would want them to look good. So the clerk would draft out a rough version, then rewrite it neatly.
Unless the officer was extremely efficient and demanded to see the rough copy being destroyed, then naturally if the case was exciting the clerk preserved his rough copy.
“If I liked you enough,” said Virtus, “I could show you my drafts.”
What a bastard. He had known all along that he could give me what I wanted.
An hour later I was happy, as I clutched my own note-tablet. I had cribbed several names of complainants, some with addresses in Ostia at the time, though they had probably moved on by now. I had dates of abductions. A couple had happened in the Sixth’s term of duty, but there were others before.
It looked as if only one captive was ever held at any time. That might be to lessen the risk, or there might only be one safe house available. All the reported abductions were of women. On return to their husbands they never knew where they had been held, and they seemed very confused. In most cases the husbands paid up at once; they were all carrying large amounts of cash for business purposes. Sometimes the wife had been snatched immediately after the husband had arranged the sale of a large cargo, at the very moment when he was flush.
Each time the clerk’s notes said that now the distressed family were either leaving Ostia for Rome, or leaving the country. If Brunnus had gone out today to double-check their Ostian lodgings, he would have little luck; judging by the couple I talked to, Banno and Aline, nobody stuck around. Perhaps the kidnappers actually ordered the victims to leave.
Those who complained to the vigiles had been brave. They were trying to protect others from sharing their anguish.
Helpfully, Brunnus had had his thoughts summarized. He calculated that there were several people involved in the abductions and holding the prisoners. All were shadowy so far. Brunnus suggested the victims might be drugged to ensure they would not recognize anyone.
One of the captors could write. Husbands were always contacted by letter.
One significant lead came out of these notes: there was a go-between. All the husbands had dealt with a mediator, a man they found very sinister. He asked them to meet him at a bar, different each time; there was no regular venue. He would be a stranger to the barkeeper—or so all the barkeepers claimed afterward. He was very persuasive. He convinced the husbands he only wanted to help, and at the time they somehow believed he was just a generous third party. The contact letters (which he always took back from them) would tell the husbands to ask the barman for “the Illyrian.”
The Illyrian stuck to his line that he had been brought in to act as an intermediary. He implied he was a neutral, respectable businessman doing victims a good turn. He warned that the actual kidnappers were dangerous, and that the husbands must avoid upsetting them, lest the missing women were harmed. His advice was: pay up, do it quickly, and don’t cause trouble. Once this was agreed, he took delivery of the ransom. He dispatched his runner, a young boy, to tell the kidnappers he had the cash, kept the husband talking for a while, then suddenly sent him back to his lodgings, where as promised he would find his wife. No husband ever stopped to watch where the Illyrian vanished to.
“He’s a member of the gang, whatever he claims … Well, thank you, Virtus,” I said. “Tell me, is Brunnus dealing with this personally?”
“He is. It doesn’t tax him, Falco. There are no leads. By the time some brave husband comes to report a new abduction, it’s all over. They always beg Brunnus not to have men visibly investigating. Brunnus agrees to that, because he thinks that if any victims are attacked for reporting the crime, he will cop the blame. He knows in his water he’ll blunder. You have to admire it,” said Virtus. “Whoever planned this out is very clever.”
“And Brunnus is playing along with them.”
“Tell me something I don’t know!” said his clerk. “But be fair, Falco. Brunnus listens when anyone brings information direct to us—but official policy is that he should leave it all to Caninus.”
“So—do we trust the navy to handle this?”
The clerk raised his eyebrows expressively. “What—a bunch of sailors?”
Armed with this new information, I went back to my apartment. It had taken me the first part of the morning to extract the kidnap notes from Virtus—long enough for some new family arrivals to reach Ostia from Rome. I saw a cart, sensibly parked under a fig tree’s shade in the courtyard. Then I found my nephew Gaius, sitting on the steps, looking as if he had earache. Always keen to try new fads, he was poking at his bare chest, on which were infected needle marks from a recent foray into woad tattoos; one thing the poets don’t tell you when they extol the blue Britons is that woad stinks. I looked sick; Gaius grinned ruefully. We did not speak. Upstairs I could hear my elder daughter squealing, and from past experience I guessed she was having her hair combed and pulled into tight fancy plaits—an older generation’s fad. Nux was whining in sympathy.
Indoors, a large mullet was sitting on a dish I knew from home, with its tail lolling up against a well-trussed bag of leeks. Only one person I knew bought fish in Rome even though they were coming to the seaside. Only one person had access to a market garden which produced better leeks than those at Ostia.
“Marcus!” cried Helena, smiling brightly. “Here’s a big surprise for you.”
As surp
rises go, this was eerily familiar. I shoved my note-tablet casually under a fruit bowl and braced myself. “Hello, Mother.”
“You look as if you have been up to no good,” replied Ma.
“I’m working.” Somehow it sounded as attractive as if I had said I was in quarantine with plague. Helena would have told Mother the details. Small, shrewd, suspicious, and convinced the world was full of cheats, my dear mother would not be impressed.
My sisters and I had spent thirty years trying to fool Ma, and only managed to annoy her. It was my late brother, her favorite, who had consistently managed to deceive her; even now, Ma never acknowledged what a lying cad Festus had been. “I’m so sorry to say this, Mother, when you’ve only just arrived, but I must flee back to Rome to follow up a lead, and I need Helena to come with me—”
“Lucky I came then!” my mother retorted. “Somebody has to look after your poor children.”
I winked at Albia. Albia had met Ma before; she managed to ignore the insult to her babysitting.
“So what is behind your visit?” I ventured.
“You keep your nose out of other people’s business, young man!” commanded Ma.
XXIV
My mother was up to something, but Helena and I did not bother to investigate. We knew the answer might have worried us.
We were able to travel that same afternoon. Having escaped Ma, the first person we found on returning to our house in Rome was my father. You never lose your parents. Pa was in our dining room, munching a takeaway stuffed half-loaf, which had leaked purple sauce onto the couch cushions.
“Who let you in?”
My progenitor grinned. He had let himself in. According to Helena, my father’s grin is a twin to mine, but I find it deeply irritating. I already knew that whenever we were away, my father treated our house as if it still belonged to him. We had done a house swap a couple of years before; give Pa another decade and he might actually honor it.
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