We sent Marius home to Maia’s, telling him to confess his loss of Tertulla and to promise that if the girl was still missing this evening Helena and I would organise a search from Fountain Court. Marius looked happier about owning up. He knew nobody would thump him once I was involved; they would rather wait for a chance of thumping me. We made him take the skip baby to his mother’s for the afternoon. It was leading a busy life. Helena had found a wet nurse to feed it sometimes, while in between it went to Ma’s house to be weaned on the gluey polenta that had produced my sisters, me and numerous sturdy grandchildren.
‘Your mother agrees with me; there’s something odd about the baby,’ Helena said.
‘You’d seem odd if you found yourself abandoned in a rubbish skip on the Aventine. Incidentally, I met Justinus this morning. He’s in love with an actress, but I’ll try to cure him of it. We are invited to a birthday dinner with your parents. I’m to have the extreme pleasure of being introduced to Aelianus.’
‘Oh no!’ cried Helena. ‘I wanted my birthday to be fun!’
I always enjoyed discovering that relationships in patrician homes were as terrible as those in my own low family.
‘There will be fun,’ I promised. ‘Watching your mother trying to be polite to me while your father hankers to nip off and hide in his library, your friendly brother nags me to teach him flirting with floosies, and your nasty brother flicks sauce in my eye should provide hours of jollity.’
‘You go,’ Helena urged despondently. ‘I think I’ll stay at home.’
* * *
Flaccida, the Balbinus wife, lived in a gorgeous gem of town architecture just south of the Circus Maximus, at the Temple of Ceres end. It was a rare residential block in the Eleventh district – well placed for the crime empire Balbinus had run along the Tiber waterfront. It lay in the lee of the Aventine but on a piece of land that was patrolled, along with the racecourse itself, not by Petro’s cohort but by the Sixth.
At least, Flaccida was living there this week. A huge notice advertised that the spread was for sale; confiscated straight after the trial verdict. Flaccida would be moving house soon.
Indoors, everything echoed. The place was virtually empty, and it was not done for stylish effect. Only the fixed assets remained to show the opulent lifestyle master criminals enjoy: ravishing yardages of mosaic floor, endless perspectives in top-quality wall painting, meticulously plastered ceilings, fascinating shell grottoes that housed well-maintained fountains. Even the birdbaths were gilded.
‘Nice place!’ I remarked, though for me the columns were too massive and the artwork too frenetic.
‘It was nicer when it was full.’
Flaccida was a short, thin woman, a blonde of sorts, about forty-five. From twenty strides away she would have looked fabulous. At six feet she showed signs of a troubled past. She wore a gown in material so fine its threads were tearing under the weight of its jewelled fastenings. Her face and hair were a triumph of cosmetic attention. But her eyes were restless and suspicious. Her mouth set in a hard, straight line. Her hands seemed too big for her arms. Size mattered here. On both wrists she wore bangles that were trying too hard to tell people how much they cost, and on her fingers two full rows of high-budget rings.
Naturally Flaccida was giving us the eyeball. I reckoned we would pass: whereas Helena had dressed down for the occasion, I had dressed up. Smartness always helps in gaining access to the houses of the wealthy. Anyone with a clean face is acceptable to thugs.
I wore my best white tunic, newly laundered, and even a toga, which I knew how to handle with an air. A recent shave and a faint splash of pomade announced status, a bold lie. A money purse clinked on my belt and I was flaunting my great-uncle’s massive obsidian finger ring. Helena had followed me quietly. She was also in white, a straight gown with sewn sleeves and a plain woollen belt. She usually fixed her hair very simply, and she wore no jewels today apart from one insignificant silver ring that she never took off. Some might imagine her a slave. I tried to view her as a highly trained freedwoman inherited from an aunt. Helena herself seemed quite at ease, without being explained away.
I found a bland smile. ‘I am working closely with Marcus Rubella, the tribune of the Fourth Cohort of vigiles.’
‘So you’re in the Prefect’s Office?’ Flaccida’s voice had a smoky rasp that came from a misspent life in ill-lit places.
‘Not really. I normally represent a more senior outfit…’ Leaving it vague was easy. Half the time I didn’t know who I was working for myself. ‘I have some news to break, and I need to ask some questions.’
She pinched her mouth, but did gesture me impatiently to a seat. Her movements lacked grace. She dumped herself on a couch while I took its partner. They were handsome pieces in silver, with winged griffin armrests and sinuous backs, but they looked slightly too small for the room. We had found Flaccida in one more-or-less furnished salon, though as I settled in I noticed bare curtain rods. Shadowed lines on the wall showed where display shelves had been removed. Dark marks on the ceiling spoke of candelabra, though there were none now.
Helena had perched on the other end of my couch, with a note tablet on her knees. ‘My assistant may take a few notes,’ I informed Flaccida, who replied with a gesture of indifference. Interesting that she accepted Helena’s presence so readily.
‘What’s this about?’
‘Your husband, partly.’
‘My husband is abroad.’
‘Yes, I met him briefly as he was leaving. So how will you manage? I notice the house is up for sale.’
‘I shall be living with my daughter and son-in-law.’ Her tone was dry enough to elicit any sympathy we could find for her. She was still too young for that option. She was neither a widow nor divorced. Moving in with the youngsters was not going to work. Something about her manner suggested she would not even try to co-operate.
‘Your daughter must be a great comfort,’ I said. Without meeting her, I felt sorry for the girl.
‘Get on with what you came for,’ Flaccida snapped. ‘What’s the news you mentioned? Has somebody died?’ Watching for any reaction, I told her it was Nonnius Albius. ‘That traitor!’ She said it fairly quietly. I happened to catch Helena’s eye, and reckoned she thought that Flaccida had already known.
‘I suppose you’re glad to hear it?’
‘Correct.’ She was still speaking in a flat tone. ‘He ruined my life.’
I decided not to waste my breath mentioning all the people whose lives had been ruined by the crime empire her husband had run. ‘Nonnius was murdered, Flaccida. Do you know anything about it?’
‘Only that I’d give whoever did it a laurel wreath.’
‘He was tortured first. It was very unpleasant. I could tell you the details.’
‘Oh I’d like that.’ She spoke with a disturbing mixture of contempt and enjoyment. I found myself wondering whether Flaccida would herself be capable of ramming a wine bowl on a man’s head and having the rest of him mutilated while he choked. She sat very still, scrutinising me through half-closed eyes. It was easy to imagine her presiding over horror.
Various pale maids were sitting in on the interview. A rapid scan indicated that most were undernourished, several had bruised arms, and one bore the remnants of a black eye. Flaccida’s immaculate coiffure had been achieved with a level of violence that would not disgrace a gladiators’ training school.
‘Were you aware what kind of business your husband ran?’
‘What I know is my affair.’
I kept trying. ‘Have you seen any of the men who used to work with him recently? The Miller? Little Icarus? Julius Caesar, and that lot?’
‘No. I never mixed with the work force.’
‘Is it true they are all out of Rome?’
‘So I heard. Driven out by the vigiles.’
‘So you cannot say if any of them were behind the recent theft from the Emporium?’
‘Oh, was there a theft?’ cooed Flaccida, this ti
me scarcely concealing her prior knowledge. The raid had certainly not been announced in the Daily Gazette as a national triumph, but word had galloped around the bathhouse circuit the same day. Flaccida was just giving us the routine false innocence of a regular villain.
‘A big one. Someone who wants to be very big must have organised it.’ Flaccida herself, for instance. If she had done it, though, she knew better than to signal the fact. I wondered how she would react to the notion of a female rival. ‘Do you know Lalage?’
‘Lalage?’
‘Keeps the brothel called Plato’s Academy.’ Helena, who had not previously heard the popular name for the Bower of Venus, stifled a giggle. ‘She’s a business contact of your husband’s.’
‘Oh yes. I think I’ve met her.’ They were probably best friends, but Flaccida would never admit it under official questioning. She would lie, even if there was no reason to do so. Lying was her way of life.
‘Do you think Lalage might be trying to take over where your husband was forced to leave off?’
‘How should I know? You’d better ask her.’
‘Oh I’ve done that. She knows how to lie as well as you.’ I changed tack wearily: ‘Let’s start again. Nonnius Albius, your husband’s one-time associate, turned him in. It could be suggested that now your husband has left the Empire, you may be acting as his agent of revenge against Nonnius.’
This charge, though unproven, could go straight into the mouth of a prosecutor in a court of law. Flaccida started fighting back seriously. ‘You have no right to make such suggestions to an unsupported woman.’ Legally this was true. A woman had to have a male representative to speak for her in public. The answer was well rehearsed too. Not many women I knew would raise that objection. But not many of my associates needed to shelter behind the law.
‘Quite right. I apologise.’
‘Shall I strike the question from the record?’ Helena interrupted demurely.
‘I shouldn’t think it matters, since the lady has not answered it.’
Helena smiled gently at my anger. She suggested, in a way that sounded straightforward but was actually sceptical, ‘Perhaps Flaccida has a guardian acting for her now her husband is away?’
‘I have a guardian and a battery of barristers, and if you want to ask questions about the business,’ barked Flaccida, using the word ‘business’ as if the family were engaged merely in carving cameos or in scallop fishing, ‘you can go through the proper procedures.’
‘Make an appointment?’ I grinned, but my tone was bitter. ‘Send a prior written list of queries to some pompous toga who charges me five hundred just to tell me you cannot comment? Expect a writ for slander if I mention this discussion in public? Find myself barred from the Basilica Julia on some frivolous charge? Discover no one in the Forum wants to talk to me? Lose my clothes every time I go to the bath, find my mother’s rent has been put up threefold, receive a summons from the army board of deserters, have mule dung shovelled into my doorway?’
‘You’ve done this before,’ smiled Flaccida. She was quite blatant.
‘Oh I know how intimidation by the powerful works.’
‘Lucky for you, you didn’t tell me what your name is!’
‘The name’s Falco.’ I could have used an alias. I refused to be dragged down to the level of fear these operators used. If they wanted to humiliate me, they would have to find me first. My normal clients were sadder and seedier; I was not well known amongst major criminals.
‘And who’s your friend?’ This Flaccida was nasty work. It was a threat against Helena – and not a subtle one.
‘No one you should tangle with,’ I answered coolly.
‘Unusual to see an official with a female scribe!’
‘She’s an unusual scribe.’
‘I assume you sleep with her?’
‘So long as it doesn’t affect her handwriting…’ I rose. ‘I’m not intending to bother you further. I don’t like wasting effort.’
‘I don’t like you,’ Flaccida told me frankly. ‘Don’t harass me again!’
I said to Helena, ‘Make a note that the wife of Balbinus Pius refused to answer routine questions, then described polite enquiry by a civil investigator as “harassment”.’
‘Get out!’ sneered the more-or-less blonde.
In some circles the women are more fearsome than the men.
XXXIV
‘Oh you really made a mess of that!’ Helena Justina was furious with me. ‘Is that how you normally conduct interviews?’
‘Well, yes. With slight variations.’
‘For instance, sometimes people throw you out right at the start?’
‘Sometimes they never even let me in,’ I admitted. ‘But it can be easier than that was.’
‘Oh? Sometimes the women are all over you?’
‘Naturally a handsome lad like me gets used to asking questions while fending off attention.’
‘Don’t fool yourself. She slaughtered you!’ growled Helena.
‘Oh I wouldn’t say that. But what a hard-faced hag! At least she gave us the full flavour of life among the big-time crooks: lies, threats, and legal bullying.’
We were standing in the street outside Flaccida’s house, having a warm set-to. I didn’t mind. Arguing with Helena always cheered me up. So long as she thought I was worth fighting, life still held some hope.
‘You learned nothing from her, but you told her all the lines of enquiry you’re pursuing – plus the fact you can’t prove any of them! This is no good at all,’ Helena continued crossly. ‘We’ll have to go and see the daughter. We’ll have to go fast, before the mother sends to warn her, and when we get there, leave the talking to me this time!’
Investigating with Helena as my partner was wonderful fun. I gave way gracefully and we marched off to see the girl.
* * *
Milvia and her gambling husband, Florius, lived pretty close to her parents’ house. Perhaps that was how Balbinus had come to notice the young equestrian on whom he had foisted his daughter. At any event, this house was even larger and more elaborate than the one where Flaccida had seen us off. That probably meant we should expect an even more rapid dispatch here.
The husband was out. The girl saw us. She was about twenty, dark, sharp-faced, very pretty. Nothing at all like either of her parents. She was dressed in an extremely expensive gown of deep purple silk weave, with panels of silver-thread embroidery. None too practical for eating pears in a sloppy honey sauce, which was what she was doing. Somehow I doubted whether young Milvia had ever worried about a laundry bill. Her jeweller was more tasteful than her mother’s; she was decked out in a complete set of antique Greek gold, including a neat little stephane on her crisply curled hair.
She saw us without any chaperone, so I could not check whether the maids who wielded the curling tongs in this mansion had to endure being thrashed if they misplaced a ringlet. Milvia had a bright, intelligent expression that suggested she could manage staff by guile. Or bribe them, anyway.
Taking charge firmly, Helena proffered a smile that would polish sideboards. ‘I do apologise for bothering you – you must have lots to do. This is Didius Falco, who is conducting enquiries on behalf of an important committee. He’ll be sitting here quietly while we have our chat, but you don’t need to worry about him. It was thought that you might prefer to be interviewed by a woman, so that’s why I’m here.’
‘Anything I can do to help!’ promised the bright-eyed, innocent daughter of gangsters, as if she was agreeing to assist in raising a subscription for a new shrine to Juno Matrona.
‘Well, perhaps I can just make sure that I’m clear on one or two details … You’re Balbina Milvia, daughter of Balbinus Pius and Cornella Flaccida, now married to Gaius Florius Oppicus?’
‘Ooh that’s me!’ Apparently it was a great delight for little wide-eyes to find herself so well documented.
‘Of course,’ said Helena kindly, ‘your recent family difficulties are known. It must have bee
n a shock to discover the serious charges against your father?’
The pretty face clouded; the sweet mouth pouted slightly. ‘I don’t believe it,’ Milvia protested. ‘It’s all lies made up by wicked enemies.’
Helena spoke in a low, stern voice. ‘I wonder how you think your father made such enemies, though?’ The girl shuddered. ‘We cannot help our relations,’ Helena sympathised. ‘And sometimes it’s hardest for those who are closest to see the truth. I know this from personal experience.’ Helena had had an uncle who dabbled in treason, not to mention the husband she divorced, who had been a maniacal social menace. ‘I understand that your father did ensure you had a perfect upbringing. I’m sure your husband thinks so too.’
‘Florius and I are very close.’
‘That’s wonderful.’ As this conversation proceeded I was more and more glad it was not me being obliged to maintain a sickly expression in the face of so much mush. I reckoned the girl was a complete sham. So long as she kept up the act consistently, it would be difficult to prove, however. ‘My dear, you’re clearly a credit to Rome, and I’m sure,’ smiled Helena serenely, ‘I can rely on you to help our enquiries…’
‘Oh I’d love to be of use,’ lilted the creditable citizen, stroking the lovely skirts that had been acquired for her with the proceeds of theft and extortion. ‘Unfortunately, I know nothing at all about anything.’
‘You may know more than you think!’ Helena informed her decisively. ‘Let me just ask a few questions, and we’ll see.’
‘Oh whatever you want.’
I personally wanted to upend the innocent protester over a knobbly log and thrash a conscience into her. Helena restrained herself. ‘Let’s think about your father’s associates, Milvia. I’m sure you won’t know this, but Nonnius Albius, who used to be your father’s chief assistant, has just been found dead in rather ugly circumstances.’
‘Oh goodness!’
‘Have you seen Nonnius, or heard anything about him, since your father’s trial?’
‘Oh no!’ burbled the dainty one.
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