He was big physically; quiet; not tired by life. His grey hair was still close-cropped in the military manner, giving him a tough appearance. His strength was enough to move an ox aside merely by leaning on it. The knowledge soothed him. Rubella took the world at his own pace. He was utterly composed.
Fusculus introduced me. Rubella forced himself to pause between the seeds. ‘Thanks for coming over. I like to induct new attachments personally. Welcome to the squad, Falco.’
The tribune’s welcome was deceptive. Like Petro, he didn’t want me near the squad. He seemed friendly, but it was a barely concealed front. I was an outsider. Uninvited. Liable to uncover private grief.
Some officials would have made me talk about my work for the Emperor. Rubella must have been told of my past career. He might have picked it over, full of prejudice and seeking to belittle me. Instead he ignored that side completely: a worse insult.
‘You’re an old colleague of Petronius’.’
‘We go back ten years.’
‘Same legion?’
‘Second Augusta. Britain.’
‘A good man,’ said Rubella. ‘Absolutely straight…’ His mind seemed somewhere else. ‘I’ve been having a talk with Petro about this task with the gangsters. He suggested I assign you to looking up some past history.’
I noticed the subtle way Rubella had put himself in charge of allocating duties. Clearly it wouldn’t just be Petro and me haggling over the booty. Rubella wanted in. Any moment I expected the Prefect of the Vigiles to put an oar in the stream too. Then there was probably the Fourth Cohort’s interrogation officer – Petro’s immediate superior – to contend with. And no doubt each of the seven cohort centurions thought himself top man on the Aventine. If I wanted work, I would have to grapple for it.
‘Past history?’ I asked, giving nothing away. If a client paid I would look up birth certificates or wills, but it was not my favourite activity.
‘You have skills we should be using.’ I noticed his dismissive tone. I had plenty of skills available. Informing needs rugged persistence, intelligence, intuition and hard feet. ‘Attention to detail,’ Rubella selected.
‘Oh dear. I feel like a rather plain barmaid when offered as a chat-up line, “I like you, you’re different from the other girls…”’
Rubella stared at me. Apparently he had as much sense of humour as a centipede. He couldn’t take an interruption either. ‘Petro doesn’t agree, but I think we should send you to meet Nonnius.’
‘The nark who used to work with Balbinus? The rent-collector whose testimony put the big rissole away?’
‘We have an excuse to intervene. The man is involved with tracing Balbinus’ assets –’
‘Oh I’m thrilled!’ I was annoyed. I let it show. ‘So while there’s juicy work on the streets, I’m to be sitting with an abacus playing at audits!’
‘No. There already is an auditor.’ He had failed to notice I was ready to explode. ‘A priest from the Temple of Saturn is representing the state’s interest.’
He could represent the Establishment on this enquiry too, if blinking at profit-and-loss columns was supposed to be my fate. ‘I can contribute something more useful than spotting a few dodgy figures on a balance sheet!’
‘I hope so! You were assigned to us with a reputation, Falco. You’ll want to sustain the myth.’ Rubella was smiling now. He could. All he had to do was munch endless seeds in his official throne of office while minions scurried in the dust. He knew he had riled me; he was openly enjoying it. ‘Do I detect a problem with rank? I bet when you were in the army you hated your centurion!’
‘I don’t expect he liked me much either.’ Aware of the goad, I came under control at once. Maybe he was trying to pack me back to the Palace with a complaint that I was uncooperative. If he imagined he could shed me before we had started, tough. I wasn’t intending to play.
Rubella walked away from the fight. Barely pausing, he reiterated, ‘Past history, yes. If we believe that the gangsters who robbed the Emporium have dropped into a hole that formed after Balbinus was removed, maybe we should have a look at what existed before the hole.’
The man made sense. My mind leapt, and I threw in quickly: ‘Whoever ploughed the Emporium was lined up and waiting to go. Balbinus had only taken ship the night before. Someone could hardly wait to announce there was a new criminal regime.’
‘They were effective,’ Rubella commented. His manner was restrained. He looked like a cook who hopes the pudding will get stirred if he just stands gazing at the bowl.
‘They knew how to get things done,’ I agreed. ‘Maybe it is someone from the Balbinus organisation – maybe even Nonnius himself.’
‘That’s an interesting suggestion,’ Rubella murmured, apparently taking no interest at all.
Suddenly I quite liked being given Nonnius to tackle. I said I would visit him at once; Fusculus offered to come with me and effect the introductions.
At the door I paused. Rubella was busy opening a new cone of sunflower seeds. ‘Tribune, a question. How much am I allowed to say to Nonnius?’
He looked back at me almost dreamily. ‘Anything you like.’
‘He turned state evidence. Doesn’t that mean he gets treated with circumspection?’
‘He’s a hardened criminal,’ said Rubella. ‘He knows the numbers on the dice. Balbinus has been safely put away. Nonnius is no use to the state now, not unless he comes up with further evidence. If he helps you, you may feel it is appropriate to behave respectfully. If not, feel free to trample his toes.’
‘Fine.’ I could trample toes. I could even be respectful if the situation really warranted. I had one more question. It concerned another sensitive area. ‘Does Petronius know that I’m being given a wider brief than he suggested?’
‘You can tell him when you see him,’ said Marcus Rubella, like a man who really did not know he had just put the lid down on a very old friendship. He was still smiling benignly as I shut the door.
He could be one of those dark types who like to pretend they never lift a digit, while all the time they have a swift comprehension of events, a warm grasp of human relationships, and an incisive grip on their duties in public life. He could be loyal, trustworthy and intelligent.
On the other hand, he could be just as he appeared: a lazy, carefree, overpromoted swine.
XVII
Nonnius lived in the Twelfth region – about two streets from Helena Justina’s father. Which proves that money can buy you respectable neighbours – or a house next door to criminals. It was no better than where I lived. The criminals in the Capena Gate sector just happened to be richer and more vicious than the ones in Fountain Court.
The senator was a millionaire; he had to be. This was the rough-and-ready qualification for the job. Well, nobody needs exorbitant talents like judgement, or even a sense of honour, to vote in an assembly three times a month. But possessing a million is useful, I’m told, and the Camillus family lived comfortable lives. Helena’s mother wore her semiprecious jasper necklace just to visit her manicurist.
Nonnius Albius had been chief rent-runner for a master criminal. The qualifications for his job were simple: persistence and a brutal temperament. For employing these over thirty years of violent activity he had earned the right to live in the Capena Gate area, just like a senator, and to own his own freehold, which in fact many a senator has mortgaged away. His house, which looked modest but was nothing of the kind, had a subdued portico, which carefully refrained from drawing attention to itself, where callers had to wait while a growling porter who had only peered at them through a fierce iron grille took news of their arrival indoors.
‘It’s like visiting a consul!’ I marvelled.
Fusculus looked wry. ‘Except that Nonnius’ bodyguards are better groomed and more polite than consuls’ lictors tend to be.’
There were stone urns with well-watered laurel bushes just like those at Helena’s father’s abode. Clearly the topiary-tub supplier at the Capen
a Gate didn’t care who his customers were.
‘What did you make of Rubella?’ queried Fusculus as we still tapped our boot heels in the unobtrusive portico while the porter went off to vet us. ‘A bit of a complicated character?’
‘He has a secret sorrow.’
‘Oh! What’s that, Falco?’
‘How would I know? It’s a secret.’
Petro’s team had investigated too many inarticulate inadequates. None of his lads could spot a joke coming. ‘Oh, I thought you were in on something.’
‘No,’ I explained gently. ‘I just get a deep sexual thrill from speculating wildly about people I have only just met.’
Fusculus gave me a nervous look.
* * *
Nonnius was, as everybody knew, a dying man. We could tell it was true because when we were let in we found him lying on a reading couch – but not reading – while he slowly ate a bowl of exquisite purple-bloomed plums. These were the hand-picked fruits, weeping unctuous amber, that are sent to console invalids by their deeply anxious friends. Perhaps thinking of your friends laying out silver by the purseload takes your mind off the pain.
The bowl they were in was a cracker too: a wide bronze comport two feet across, with three linked dolphins forming a handsome foot and with sea-horse handles. The bowl was far too heavy for a sick man to lift, so it was held for Nonnius by an even-featured eight-year-old Mauretanian slave-boy in a very short, topless tunic with gold fringes all around the hem. The child had gilded nipples, and his eyes were elongated with kohl like a god on an Egyptian scarab. My mother wouldn’t have taken him on even to scrub turnips.
Nonnius himself had a lean face with an aristocratically hooked nose, big ears and a scrawny neck. He could have modelled for a statue of a republican orator. In the old Roman manner he had features that could be called ‘full of character’: pinched lips, and all the signs of a filthy temper if his dinner was late.
He was about sixty and pretty well bald. Despite being so poorly he had managed to shave; to make it more bearable his barber had aided the process with a precociously scented balsam. His tunic was plain white, but scrupulously clean. He wore no gems. His boots looked like old favourites. I mean, they looked as if they had already kicked in the kidneys of several hundred tardy payers, and were still greased daily in case they found a chance of kicking more. Everything about him said that if we annoyed him, the man would cheerfully kick us.
Fusculus introduced me. We had fixed a story: ‘Didius Falco has a roving commission, in a supervisory capacity, working alongside the public auditor.’
Nobody believed it, but that didn’t matter.
‘I’m sorry to learn you’re off colour,’ I mouthed sympathetically. ‘I may need to go through some figures eventually, but I’ll try to limit the agony. I don’t want to tire you –’
‘You being funny?’ Nonnius had a voice that sounded polite, until you noticed threads of a raw accent running through it. He had been brought up on the Tiber waterfront. Any semblance of culture was as incongruous as a butcher calmly discussing Heraclitus’ theory of all things being in a state of eternal flux just as he cleavered the ribs of a dead ox. I knew one like that once; big ideas, but overprone to making up the weight with fat.
‘I was told you had to take it easy…’
‘Raiding Balbinus’ accounts seems to have given me a new lease of life!’ It could just have been the desperate jest of a genuine deathbed case. I was trying to decide if the bastard was really ill. Nonnius noticed, so he let out a pathetic cough. The exotic slave child rushed to wipe his brow for him. The tot was well trained in more than flirting his fringes, apparently.
‘Is the Treasury man helping you?’ I asked.
‘Not a lot.’ That sounded like most Treasury men. ‘Want to see him?’ Nonnius appeared perfectly equable. ‘I put him in a room of his own where he can play with the balls on his abacus to his heart’s content.’
‘No thanks. So what’s the score so far?’ I tossed at him unexpectedly.
He had it pat: ‘Two million, and still counting.’
I let out a low whistle. ‘That’s a whole bunch of radishes!’ He looked satisfied, but said nothing. ‘Very pleasant for you,’ I prompted.
‘If I can get at it. Balbinus tried to lock it in a cupboard out of reach.’
‘Not the old “present to wife’s brother” trick?’
He gave me a respectful gleam. ‘Haven’t come across that one! No: “dowry to daughter’s husband”.’
I shook my head. ‘Met it before. I took a jurist’s advice and the news is bad: you can’t touch the coinage. So long as the marriage lasts it has passed away from the family. Title to the dowry goes with the title to the girl. The husband owns both, with no legal responsibility to the father-in-law.’
‘Maybe they’ll divorce!’ sneered the ex-rent-collector, in a tone that suggested heavy whacks might be used to end the marriage. Once a muscleman, always a thug.
‘If the dowry was big enough, love will triumph,’ I warned. ‘Cash in hand tends to make husbands romantic.’
‘Then I’ll have to explain to the girl that her husband’s an empty conker shell.’
‘Oh I think she must have noticed that!’ Fusculus put in. He glanced at me, promising to elaborate on the gossip later.
I saw Nonnius looking between us, trying to work out how Fusculus and I were in league. None of the vigiles wore uniforms. The foot patrols were kitted out in red tunics as a livery to help them force a right of way to the fountains during a fire, but Petro’s agents dressed much as he did, in dark colours with only a whip or cudgel to reveal their status, and with boots that were tough enough to serve as an extra weapon. They and I were indistinguishable. I wore my normal work clothes too: a tunic the colour of mushroom gravy, a liverish belt, and boots that knew their way around.
The room was full of working boots. There were enough soles and studs to subdue a crowd of rioting fishmongers in five minutes flat. Only the slave boy, in his embroidered Persian slippers, failed to match up to the rest of us.
‘What’s your background?’ Nonnius demanded of me, bluntly suspicious.
‘I’m an informer basically. I take on specials for the Emperor.’
‘That stinks!’
‘Not as much as enforcing for organised crime!’
I was pleased to see he did not care for me standing up to him. His tone became peevish. ‘If you’ve finished insulting me, I’ve got enough to do chasing my stake from the Balbinus case.’
‘Stay busy!’ I advised.
He laughed briefly. ‘I gather your “roving commission” will not include helping me!’
I wanted to tackle the area that Rubella had called past history; the one that had big implications for the future. ‘I need to rove in other directions.’
‘What do you want with me?’
‘Information.’
‘Of course. You’re an informer! Are you buying?’ he tried brazenly.
‘Not from a jury fixer!’
‘So what are you looking for, Falco?’ Nonnius asked, ignoring the insult this time as he tried to startle me.
I could play that game. ‘Whether it’s you who masterminded the Emporium heist.’
It failed to nettle him. ‘I heard about that,’ he said softly. So had most of Rome, so I couldn’t accuse him of unnatural inside knowledge. Not yet anyway. I was starting to feel that if he had been involved, handing him over to justice would give me great pleasure. I had a distinct feeling that he knew more than he ought. But crooks enjoy making you feel that.
‘Somebody could hardly wait for Balbinus to leave town,’ I told him. ‘They snatched the inside lane of the racecourse – and they want everyone to know who’s driving to win.’
‘Looks that way,’ he agreed, like a convivial friend humouring me.
‘Was it you?’
‘I’m a sick man.’
‘As I said earlier,’ I smiled, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Nonnius Albius
… I’ve been away. I missed your famous court appearance, so let’s run over a few things.’
He looked sulky. ‘I said my piece and I’m finished.’
‘Oh yes. I heard you’re quite an orator –’
At this point Fusculus, who had been watching with amused patience, suddenly cracked with anger and had to butt in: ‘Get a grindstone and sharpen up, Nonnius! You’re a committed songbird now. Tell the man what he needs to know!’
‘Or what?’ jeered the patient, showing us the ugly glower that must have been forced on countless debtors. ‘I’m dying. You can’t frighten me.’
‘We all die,’ Fusculus replied. He was a quiet, calm philosopher. ‘Some of us try to avoid being hung up in chains in the Banqueting Chamber first, while Sergius gives his whip an airing.’
Nonnius was hard to terrify. He had probably devised and carried out more excruciating tortures than we two innocents could even imagine. ‘Forget it, shave-tail! That’s the frightener you use for schoolboys filching oysters off barrows.’ He glared at Fusculus suddenly. ‘I know you!’
‘I’ve been involved in the Balbinus case.’
‘Oh yes, one of the Fourth Cohort’s brave esparto-grass boys!’ This was the traditional rude nickname for the foot patrols, after the mats they were issued with for smothering blazes. Used of Petro’s team, who thought themselves above firefighting, it was doubly rude. (All the worse because the esparto mats were regarded as useless anyway.)
I managed to break in before things got too hot. ‘Tell me about how the Balbinus empire worked.’
Time to Depart Page 10