Time to Depart

by Lindsey Davis

  We were in an area which had featured frequently in my life the past few days: that part of the Eleventh region which bordered the Circus. At one end lay the Forum Boarium, where the body of Nonnius Albius had been left on the pavement in the stink of animal blood. Along the valley of the Circus ran a narrow finger of land where stood the lavish houses inhabited by Flaccida and Milvia. Then, at the other end, were the cluster of dingy, unattractive streets which included Plato’s Academy.

  By the time we had gone that far, I felt unsurprised that the brothel should be where my two men were heading. I was also certain they were rogues. I could prove it: I had recalled where I first saw them, though it was not in Rome. Their names – their working names anyway – were Gaius and Phlosis. They were the pair of fake boatmen at Ostia who had tried to relieve me of my father’s glass before I brought it to Rome for that other great fraud to try stealing it from himself.

  I watched them enter the brothel, greeting the girl on the door as if they knew her. They could have been clients, visitors to Rome who had had Plato’s recommended by a friend. That was my assumption until I realised the girl had let them enter without money changing hands.

  There was no doubt Lalage had customers who kept monthly accounts here. However, the kind of men who were so favoured would not be lowlifes from the waterfront, but trusted people like the Very Important Patrician who came with lictors in tow. Gaius and Phlosis were here in some other, very different, context. And from the doorkeeper’s friendly attitude, even if they had got lost on the Hill, down here at Plato’s the incompetent couple were regular visitors.

  I wondered whether to follow them in. I was in the wrong condition for adventures tonight. I was tired. It had been a hectic week, packed with incident, and I knew my concentration was slipping. Besides, Plato’s was a huge warren; nobody knew I had come here tonight, and if I went inside I had no idea what I would be going into.

  The situation was far too dangerous. For once, discretion won.

  LVI

  I needed help with this. I needed someone who would be tough if we ran into trouble, someone trained to carry out surveillance properly. If my hunch was correct, I had stumbled across something major. It would be hazardous. It needed the vigiles. The person I really should take this evidence to was Petronius Longus. Well, that was impossible.

  I could ask Rubella. Pride – pride and the fact that if I was wrong I could be merely watching a couple of paltry sneak thieves enjoying themselves at a brothel – determined me to take this forwards unofficially.

  There were practical problems. I did need a partner. I wanted to subject the brothel to all-day surveillance, with the possibility of tailing some of its visitors as they came and went. I wondered whether I could risk using one of my nephews. But with Tertulla still missing I knew all the young Didii were being marched to school in convoys and supervised by anxious mothers. There was no way I could cream one off without an angry rumpus flaring up. Besides, even I could see this work was too dangerous.

  Still desperate, I faced the fact that if Petronius would not help me what I needed was one of his men. With luck, whoever I picked would not be the happy sneak who had betrayed Linus.

  As chance had it, on my way back up the Aventine I ran into Fusculus. He would have been ideal. Fusculus was fascinated by the world of small-time criminals, an expert on specialist dodges. He would be full of ideas on why a set of cargo raiders from Ostia might have come to Rome. It was he himself who had inspired my belief that Gaius and Phlosis might have serious significance: I remembered that after my own close shave with the stolen boat at Portus, he had told me Balbinus Pius used to run a whole gang of craft-rig thieves along the wharves in Rome. Maybe these two were part of his old network. Maybe it was Balbinus who had brought Gaius and Phlosis here. Maybe that meant the brothel was being used to run his empire now. It looked like that good old ruse, a cover joint.

  When I fell into step beside him Fusculus growled, ‘Get lost, Falco!’

  Presumably Petronius had been unable to confide in any of his men the fact that one of them was a traitor. He needed to identify the bad apple first. So I could not call on that to justify my role in working for their tribune. ‘Settle down. So Petro’s told you all that I’m a management nark. He says I betrayed his friendship to spy on you – and naturally you simple souls all think that’s terrible.’

  ‘I don’t want to know you, Falco.’

  ‘What beats me, Fusculus, is how if you’re all in the clear you can take the attitude that anyone trying to oppose corruption has to be your enemy.’

  ‘You’re poison.’

  ‘Wrong. What you mean is, he’s your chief, so even if he wants to play the silly ass you’ll stick by him to protect your promotion chances. You would all do better starting a whipround to buy Lucius Petronius a new brain.’

  Fusculus told me to get lost again, and this time I did.

  * * *

  I felt sour. Nobody likes being hated.

  Luckily there was one person left whom I could safely call upon. Someone sufficiently experienced for my purposes. Someone who was hated too.

  I knew where he lived: back again on the opposite side of the Hill, by the Clivus Publicus. The Fates were enjoying themselves tonight. I marched my weary feet there again, and fortunately found that he was not yet out on night patrol. It was as I thought. Petro always took the busy first shift. He left the later, quieter one to Martinus his deputy.

  It was late. I came to the point. I had been hoping to avoid telling him all my suspicions, but I soon saw that the best plan was to throw the big idea at him: ‘How’s the hunt for Balbinus going? Not well. Of course not; he’s too clever. But I think I’ve got a lead. I’d take it to Petronius, but since he wants to play soft, I’ll have to do the surveillance alone. Maybe once I can demonstrate how the Balbinus empire now operates undercover at Plato’s, Petro will want to join in. Maybe I won’t give him the chance. I could keep all the glory – me and whoever shares my trouble…’

  Martinus did not fail me. He was overjoyed at being asked to help. Well I knew why: he thought it was his great chance to do Petro down.

  I told him what I had seen at Plato’s, and what I reckoned we might see if we watched the place. ‘Does Rubella know about this, Falco?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty –’

  ‘Don’t get pious! I know what that means.’

  I considered for a moment. ‘He doesn’t know, but we shall have to tell him. You can’t go missing from the official team.’

  ‘I’ll see Rubella,’ Martinus suggested. ‘If he goes along with this, he can fix it. He can say he’s sending me to some other cohort. The chief won’t be the least surprised. It’s more or less traditional that as soon as you’re stretched beyond endurance on a really major case, your best man gets filched to look for brooch thieves in some disgusting bath-house in another watch’s patch.’

  I had no doubt that the axiomatic secondment would be easy to arrange. Whether Martinus was the Fourth Cohort’s ‘best man’ could brook more argument. That didn’t matter. The pompous self-satisfied article was good enough for what I wanted. Martinus would love to spend all day just sitting in a food stall waiting for nothing much to happen. As long as I could be in a different food stall at the opposite end of the alley, I didn’t care how tedious he was.

  * * *

  When I finally made it back there for the second time that night, Fountain Court lay in complete darkness. No one there wasted lamp oil providing light for muggers and porch-crawlers to go about their dirty work. I steeled myself and trod quietly, keeping to the centre of the lane. As I walked past the bakery I thought I heard a shutter creak above my head. I looked up, but could see nothing. The apartment above the bakery, the one with half its floor missing, could hardly have been let and all the storeys above it were supposed to be even more derelict. Once beside the laundry I looked back again to make certain, but nothing moved.

  Climbing the endless steps to my apartm
ent I should have felt more confident. I was now on my own territory. That situation can be deadly dangerous. You relax. You assume the problems of night-time in Rome are over. You know too much to be really observant. Your ears stop listening for unnatural sounds. You can easily be rushed by some unexpected watcher who is lurking in the pitch dark halfway up the stairs.

  But nobody attacked me. If anyone lay in hiding, I never noticed. I reached my own door, opened it stealthily, and soon stood indoors.

  There were no lights here either, but I could feel the familiar presence of my furniture and possessions. I could hear the breathing of Helena, of the unwanted mongrel who had adopted us, and the skip baby. Nothing else. Nothing more sinister. Everyone within these two rooms was safe. They had lived through the day even without me to guard them, and now I was home.

  I said quietly, ‘It’s me.’

  The dog thumped its tail, but stayed under the table. The babe said nothing, but he could not have heard. Helena half roused herself as I climbed into bed, then came into my arms, warm and drowsy. We would not talk tonight. I stroked her hair to put her back to sleep again, and within a short period I drifted into sleep myself.

  Out in the streets the foot patrols would be marching, on the search for fires and loiterers. Somewhere Petronius Longus also kept watch, hearing in the sharp October air endless rustles and creaks of evil at work, but never the certain footfall of the man he sought. In the restless pulse of the city lone thieves crept over windowsills and balconies, conspirators plotted, off-duty gangs drank and swore, lechers grabbed and fumbled, hijackers held up delivery carts, organised robbers ransacked mansions while bleeding porters lay bound in corridors and frightened householders hid under beds.

  Somewhere, in all probability, Balbinus Pius was dreaming peacefully.

  LVII

  One day might be enough. It could certainly be enough to make me look a fool. If we watched the brothel all day and there was no discernible criminal activity, my name would be bog weed. Whether I wanted to skulk around longer looking for a chance to apprehend Gaius and Phlosis for annoying me at Ostia would be up to me. Martinus would curse me and storm off to tell the entire cohort what incompetent, aggravating blocks of wood informers were, and how he had been taken in.

  On the other hand, if there was enough toing and froing of known members of the Balbinus gangs to suggest a link with his empire, I would be justified. Not a hero, but entitled to swank at the bathhouse. It would be a pleasant change.

  Martinus and I arrived at dawn. We began by sitting in a doorway like runaway slaves. Later a sad thermopolium was opened by a creaky woman who spent ages dabbling around the floor with a flat-headed broom and a bucket of grey water. We watched her desultory efforts at wiping down counters, then she fidgeted about with her three shelves of cups and flagons, emptied some blackened pots into her counter holes, and stood a few amphorae crookedly against a wall.

  We ambled up. We told her we were foxing – watching the streets for ‘opportunities’, illegal ones being understood. She seemed neither surprised nor shocked by this notion. Martinus engaged in brief negotiations, coins chinked into her apron pocket, and we were encouraged to park ourselves indoors on tall stools. There we could look as if we were picking at olives while we watched Plato’s. We bought a dish of something in cold dark gravy. I left most of mine.

  Things were very quiet to begin with. Despite my good intentions I ended up staying in the same bar as my assistant (stalwartly ignoring the fact that he seemed to assume I was helping him). The only other food stall was the one where Petro and I had sat when we first eyed up the brothel before visiting Lalage, a place where we had shown ourselves to be law-and-order men. Today I wanted to pass for ordinary street grime.

  I could just about trust Martinus to blend in. He must have been forty, so older than Petronius, the chief he was longing to elbow aside. As far as I knew he had remained unmarried, and though he talked about women his relationships were quiet incidents in a fairly ordered life. He had straight brown hair, cut neatly across the forehead, heavily shaded jowls and a dark mole on one cheek. He seemed too boring to arouse comment.

  As the morning passed we started to see typical activity – locals visiting Plato’s routinely. It seemed a long time since I had groaned over this with Petro, though when I bothered to work out the time scale (needing mental entertainment) I realised it was only five days ago. In those five days Rome had descended from a city where you were wise to keep your eyes open into one of complete lawlessness.

  ‘Here we go!’ Martinus had spotted suspects. From the brothel emerged three figures; a thin man in sky-blue tunic with an intelligent face and a scroll dangling from his waist, and two companions, one plump, one pockmarked, both inconspicuous. We had not seen them going in that morning; they must have been at Plato’s overnight.

  ‘Know them?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘The one in blue is a Cicero.’ I lifted an eyebrow. ‘A talker, Falco. He engages the attention of men drinking in wine bars, then keeps them laughing at his stories and jokes while the other two rob them.’

  Martinus drew out a tablet, and stylus, then began making notes in firm square Latin lettering. As the day progressed, his writing was to shrink as the tablet rapidly filled up. To make us more unobtrusive, he later produced a pocket set of draughts, glass counters in black and red that he kept in a small leather bag. We set out a board, drawn in gravy on the marble. To look authentic we had to play for real, worse luck. I hate draughts. Martinus was an intelligent player who enjoyed his game. In fact he was so keen it would have been insulting to fake it, so I had to join in properly and attempt to match his standard.

  ‘You should practise, Falco. This is a game of skill. It has parallels with investigation.’ Martinus was one of those pretentious board-game philosophers. ‘You need mental agility, strength of will, powers of bluff, concentration –’

  ‘And little glass balls,’ I remarked.

  The morning continued without much incident, though we did see a limping man whom we reckoned must be on the ‘wounded soldier’ racket and another whom Martinus had once arrested for hooking cups off drink stall shelves. He ignored the Oily Jug, our perch. At lunch time a whole parade of men who appeared to be legitimate customers were crowding to the brothel when my companion stayed his hand just at the moment of capturing my last viable counter. ‘Falco! There go a real couple of gangland educators!’

  I didn’t need him to point out the enforcers. Emerging from Plato’s for a midday stroll were the Miller and Little Icarus. ‘I know them. Those are the pair who tried acting as rough masseurs to me. They must be living there.’

  ‘Seeing two from the old Balbinus set-up gives us enough to mount a raid, Falco.’

  ‘You sure? We have to be certain we land the big one.’

  ‘If he’s there.’

  ‘If he isn’t there all the time, I reckon he comes visiting.’ Before we did anything rash I wanted to watch for an evening and night at least. Martinus made no attempt to demur. He was not stupid – far from it. The bastard was a champion draughts player.

  In the afternoon three more seedy characters caught our attention as they emerged. We decided they were low-life. There was a flash type in punched sandals and a niello belt, a broken-nosed hearty who kept kicking kerbstones, and a weed who came out scratching his head as if a whole herd of little lodgers were bothering him. I felt itchy just looking.

  ‘Fancy stretching your legs?’ I asked. Martinus swept up his glass counters in an instant and we set off to trail the trio. We both had to go. One man can’t follow three.

  For a nicely brought-up Aventine boy it was a real eye-opener. First two of them joined the squash in an elbow joint, pretending to buy a stuffed-vine-leaf lunch while they worked through the customers with a skill that left me gasping. When someone went to pay for a flagon too early, found his purse gone and caught on to them, out they ran like eels. The third man was loafing on the doorstep as if unconnected; he m
isdirected the robbed man, who pelted down the wrong street while our friends met up together and mooched off the other way. We never saw them cleaning out the purses they had lifted, but we noticed the empty pouches flipped into a cart.

  We split up to walk on either side of the street for a while, still tailing the three. They were now heading for the Forum. It was at its busiest, all the temple steps crowded with moneychangers and salesmen, and the spaces around the rostra packed. Our mark with the overactive lice paused to kick and rob a drunk near the House of the Vestals. The crunch of his boot going in symbolised all that was vicious in the Balbinus gangs.

  They moved on through the press of fishwives and bread-sellers, ‘sampling’ rolls, sausages and fruit as the fancy took them, never paying for any of it. One was a real reacher, adept at leaning across shop counters to grab money or goods. In the end we could bear to watch no longer, not without arresting them. That might alarm the brothel; we had to hold back. They were tackling the Basilica Aemilia, the main centre of commerce in Rome, which was cluttered with itinerant sellers and tacky stalls; plenty of scope for our boys to spend a lucrative hour.

  Incensed, Martinus and I walked back into the Forum. We took a breather in the shade of the Temple of the Divine Julius, reflecting on our researches so far.

  ‘Those three were sharp little movers. What you’ve uncovered has Balbinus’ seal stamped all over it,’ Martinus commented. He seemed depressed.

  ‘What’s up? Do you think we’re wasting our time taking on the gangs?’

  ‘You never wipe out thieves, Falco. If we put those three in a cell, someone else will be along, aiming to relieve diners of their purses while they’re licking out their bowls.’

  ‘If you think that, why do this job at all?’

  ‘Why indeed!’ He sighed bitterly. I said nothing. I knew this mood was a hazard of life in the vigiles. I had known Petro long enough.

  Sometimes the pressure and danger, and the sheer weight of despair, caused one of them to resign. The others became even more unsettled for a while. But normally they moaned a lot, got paralytic with an amphora, then carried on. Given their lousy pay and harsh conditions, plus the traditional indifference of their superiors, complaint seemed understandable.