A well-to-do papyrus-seller thought his wife was two-timing him with his best friend. We had been watching the set-up; I decided the friend was innocent, though the dame was almost certainly being screwed on a regular basis by the family steward. The client was overjoyed when I cleared his friend, didn’t want to hear about the cheating slave, and paid up on the spot. That went in the honesty dish Petro and I were sharing, even the large gratuity.
On the way back to Fountain Court I dropped in at the baths, scraped myself down, listened to some unimportant gossip, and bantered with Glaucus. He was working with another client and I didn’t stay. Back at base Petronius Longus had failed to reappear. I was in for a hard time worrying over his whereabouts; it was like being in charge of a love-lorn adolescent. I hoped his absence meant he had gone to attempt a reconciliation with his wife. I knew it was more likely the dog had sneaked off to see Balbina Milvia.
Pleased with my own efforts I shut up the office, exchanged a few words with Lenia, then strolled across the street. I was the cook here, so long as we lacked a troop of whining slaves. Helena had been marinading the fish steaks in olive oil with a few herbs. I panfried them simply over the embers in our cooking bench and we ate them on a green salad dressed with vinegar, more oil and a dash of fish sauce. We had plenty of oil and sauce after our Spanish adventure, though I applied them sparingly. A good shark steak should stand alone.
‘Did you rinse them well?’
‘Of course,’ retorted Helena. ‘I could see they had been salted. Mind you, I was wondering what had been in the washing water . . .’
‘Don’t think about it. You’ll never know.’
She sighed. ‘Well, if Lollius was right and people have been murdered, cut up, and dumped over several years, I suppose we’re all used to it.’
‘The torsos must have been put straight into the river.’
‘How reassuring,’ muttered Helena. ‘I’m worried about the baby’s health. I’ll ask Lenia if we can draw our water from the laundry well.’
She wanted the horror stopped. So did I. She wanted me to stop it; I was not so sure I could.
We left a decent period so it didn’t look as if we were hoping to be given dinner, then walked over the Aventine to her parents’ house. I thought we were just enjoying a cheap night out, but I soon realised Helena Justina had more precise plans. For one thing she wanted a closer inspection of the situation regarding Claudia Rufina. Claudia and both Helena’s brothers were there, moping because their parents were holding a dinner party for friends of their own generation, so the house was full of tantalising food scents while the youngsters had to make do with leftovers. We sat around with them until Aelianus grew bored and decided he was off out to hear a concert.
‘You could take Claudia,’ Helena prompted.
‘Of course,’ said Aelianus at once, since he came from a sharp-witted family and had been brought up well. But Claudia was frightened of Rome at night and decided to opt out of this invitation from her betrothed.
‘Don’t worry; we’ll look after her,’ his brother told the prospective bridegroom. The comment was quiet and non-judgmental; Justinus had always known how to niggle in an underhand way. There was no love lost between these lads; born barely two years apart they were too close. They had no habit of sharing anything, least of all responsibility.
‘Thanks,’ Aelianus responded laconically. Perhaps he looked as if he were having second thoughts about going. And perhaps not.
He did leave us. Claudia carried on discussing the orphans’ school with Helena, which suited both of them. Claudia was nursing our baby, being the kind of girl who grabs them and shows off how sentimental she can be. It may not have been the way to her betrothed’s heart. Aelianus could only just stomach the thought of getting married; it was tactless of Claudia to let him see she expected him to play his part in filling a nursery.
I enjoyed a long talk with Justinus. He and I had shared an adventure once, rampaging like heroes all over northern Germany, and I had thought highly of him ever since. If I had been of his own class I would have offered him patronage, but as an informer I had no help to give.
He was now in his early twenties, a tall, spare figure whose good looks and easy nature could have wreaked havoc among the bored women of the senatorial classes if it had ever struck him he was cut out to be a heartbreaker. Part of his charm was that he appeared to have no idea of either his talents or his seductive potential. Those big brown eyes with their intriguing hint of sadness probably noticed more than he showed, however; Quintus Camillus Justinus was a shrewd little soldier. According to rumour he was chasing after an actress, but I wondered if the rumour had been carefully cultivated so that people would leave him alone while he chose his own path. Actresses were death to senators’ sons. Quintus was too clever for social suicide.
Vespasian had hauled him back to Rome from a military tribunate in Germany, apparently in great favour. As so often happens, once Justinus arrived home the promise of an upward push evaporated; other heroes were catching attention. Justinus himself, always diffident, showed neither surprise nor resentment. I was angry for him, and I knew that Helena was too.
‘I thought there was talk of you trying for the Senate at the same time as your brother? Didn’t the Emperor hint that accelerated entry might be possible?’
‘The impetus died.’ His smile was wry. Any barmaid would have given him a free refill on the spot. ‘You know how it is, Marcus. So I suppose I’ll now stand for election at the normal age. It spreads the financial burden for Papa.’ He paused. ‘I’m not sure that’s what I want, in any case.’
‘Going through a tricky phase, eh?’ I grinned at him. He wanted to do well – and to beat Aelianus at it. That was understood.
‘Being difficult,’ he agreed.
Helena looked up. She must have been paying attention even though she had appeared deep in conversation with Claudia. ‘I suppose you scratch yourself in front of Father’s illustrious friends and refuse to change your tunic more than once a month, and you’re surly at breakfast time?’
He beamed at his sister fondly. ‘I don’t turn up at breakfast at all, dearest. In the middle of the morning when all the slaves are busy washing floors I emerge from bed – walking straight through the clean bit in last night’s dirty shoes – then I demand a fresh sardine and a five-egg omelette cooked exactly right. When it comes, I leave most of it.’
I laughed. ‘You’ll go far – but don’t expect an invitation to stay with us!’
Looking over her large nose, Claudia Rufina gazed at the three of us with troubled solemnity. Maybe it was just as well she had been linked to Aelianus. He was proper and conventional. He never indulged in ludicrous fantasies.
Helena patted the young girl’s heavily bangled arm, for no obvious reason. Also for no reason her eyes met mine; I winked at her. Shameless, she winked back without a second thought. Then we held each other’s gaze as established lovers sometimes do even when it is socially inconvenient, shutting out the other two.
Helena was looking well. Clear-skinned, good-humoured, alert and intelligent. More formal than she would be at home, since you never quite know what to expect when visiting a senator’s house: a pristine white gown with a shimmering golden stole, an amber necklace and light earrings, her face defined with hints of colour, her hair tucked into several fancy combs. Seeing her confident and content reassured me. I had done Helena no wrong luring her from her father’s house. She had the knack of being able to return temporarily to this upper-class world without embarrassment, taking me with her. But although she must miss the comforts, she showed no trace of regret.
‘Well, Marcus!’ Her eyes were smiling in a way that made me take and kiss her hand. The gesture was acceptable in public, but must have spoken of far deeper intimacy.
‘You have such great affection,’ exclaimed Claudia impulsively. Alarmed by her mood our baby awoke, whimpering. Helena reached to take the child.
Justinus rose from
his couch and came round behind his sister, to hug her and kiss her too. ‘Claudia Rufina, we are a loving family,’ he said wickedly. ‘And now you are to join us – aren’t you glad?’
‘Be a pet,’ Helena reproved him. ‘While you’re jumping about and making silly remarks, pop into Father’s study and bring me his annual calendar.’
‘Planning another party?’
‘No. Showing Marcus that his best partner is the one who lives with him.’
‘Marcus knows that,’ I said.
The senator had an expensive set of the Official Year in Rome: all the dates of all the months, marked with a C for when the Comitia could be in session, F for days when general public business was allowed and N for public holidays. Bad luck days had their black marks. All the fixed festivals, and all the Games, were named. Decimus had sweetly added to the almanac his wife’s and children’s birthdays, his own, and those of his favourite sister and a couple of well-off ones (who might remember him in their wills if he kept in with them). The latest addition in the blackest ink, which Helena pointed out to me, was the day when Julia Junilla had been born.
Helena Justina read all the way through in silence. Then she looked up and surveyed me with a stern gaze. ‘You know why I’m doing this?’
I looked meek, but made sure I demonstrated I could think too. ‘You’re wondering about what Lollius said.’
Naturally Claudia and Justinus wanted to know who Lollius was and what he had pronounced upon. I told them, keeping it as tasteful as possible. Then while Claudia shuddered and Justinus looked grave Helena gave her opinion. ‘There must be well over a hundred public holidays annually, and a good fifty formal festivals. But the festivals are spread throughout the year whereas your brother-in-law said there were special times for finding these women’s remains. I think the connection is the Games. Lollius said they find bodies in April – well, there are the Megalensis Games for Cybele, the Games of Ceres, and then the Floral Games, all in that month. The next big concentration is in July –’
‘Which he also mentioned.’
‘Quite. That’s when we have the Apolline Games starting the day before the Nones, and later the Games for the Victories of Caesar which last for a whole ten days.’
‘It all fits. Lollius maintains there is another bad time in the autumn.’
‘Well, September has the great Roman Games lasting fifteen days, and then at the beginning of next month are the Games in memory of Augustus followed at the end of October by the Games for the Victories of Sulla –’
‘And the Plebeian Games in November,’ I reminded her. I had spotted them earlier when squinting over her shoulder.
‘Trust a republican!’
‘Trust a plebeian,’ I said.
‘But what does this mean?’ demanded Claudia excitedly. She thought we had solved the whole case.
Justinus threw back his neatly shorn head and regarded the smoke-stained moulded plaster of the ceiling. ‘It means that Marcus Didius has found himself an excellent excuse to spend much of the next two months enjoying himself in the sporting arenas of our great city – all the while calling it work.’
But I shook my head sadly. ‘I only work when somebody pays me, Quintus.’
Helena shared my mood. ‘Besides, there would be no point in Marcus hanging around the Circus when he still has no idea who or what he should be looking for.’
That sounded like most of the surveillance work I ever did.
XIX
PETRONIUS LONGUS WAS in an organising mood. His session with the Tiber boatmen had been as useless as I had prophesied, and he declared that we should abandon the pointless effort of wondering who was polluting the water supply. Petronius was going to sort out our business. (He was going to sort out me.) He would impose order. He would attract new work; he would plan our caseload; he would show me just how to generate wealth through blistering efficiency.
He spent a lot of time composing charts, while I plodded around the city delivering court summonses. I brought in the meagre denarii, then Petro wrote them up in elaborate accounts systems. I was pleased to see him keeping out of trouble.
Petronius seemed to be happy, though I was beginning to suspect he was covering something up even before I happened to pass by the vigiles’ patrol house and was hailed by Fusculus. ‘Here, Falco; can’t you keep that chief of ours occupied? He keeps moping around here getting in the way.’
‘I thought he was either in our office causing havoc among my clients or out flirting.’
‘Oh, he does that too – he pops in to see his honeycake when he finally leaves us in peace.’
‘You’re depressing me, Fusculus. No hope that he’s dropped Milvia?’
‘Well, if he had done,’ Fusculus told me cheerfully, ‘your clients would be safe; we’d have him back here permanently.’
‘Don’t flatter yourselves. Petronius loves the freelance life.’
‘Oh, sure!’ Fusculus laughed at me. ‘That’s why he’s constantly nagging Rubella for a reprieve.’
‘He doesn’t get it, though. So how does Rubella know that Milvia is still live bait?’
‘How does Rubella know anything?’ Fusculus had a theory, of course. He always did. ‘Our trusty tribune stays in his lair and information flows through the atmosphere straight to him. He’s supernatural.’
‘No, he’s human,’ I said despondently. I knew how Rubella worked, and it was strictly professional. He wanted to make his name as a vigiles officer then move up to the refined ranks of the Urban Cohorts, maybe even go on to serve in the Praetorian Guard. His priorities never changed; he was after the big criminals, whose capture would cause a flutter and win him promotion. ‘I bet he’s keeping a full-time watcher on Milvia and her exciting husband in case they revive the old gangs. Every time Petronius goes to the house he’ll be logged.’
Fusculus agreed in his usual comfortable way: ‘You’re right. It’s no secret, though the surveillance is concentrating on the old hag. Rubella reckons if the gangs do get reconvened, it will be by Flaccida.’
Milvia’s mother. Still, Petro was no better off, because Cornella Flaccida lived with her daughter and son-in-law. She had been forced to move in with them when Petronius convicted her gangster husband, whose property had then been confiscated. One more reason to avoid tangling with the dainty piece, if Petro had had any sense. Milvia’s father had been a nasty piece of work, but her mother was even more dangerous.
‘So when,’ demanded Fusculus in his cheery way, ‘can we expect you to have a quiet word with Balbina Milvia, pretty floret of the underworld, and persuade her to leave our cherished chief alone?’
I groaned. ‘Why do I always have to do the dirty work?’
‘Why did you become an informer, Falco?’
‘Petronius is my oldest friend. I couldn’t possibly go behind his back.’
‘Of course not.’ Fusculus grinned.
An hour later I was rapping on the huge bronze antelope knocker that summoned the door porter at the lavish home of Milvia and Florius.
XX
IF I EVER acquire slaves of my own, they will definitely not include a door porter. Who wants a lazy, bristle-chinned, rat-arsed piece of insolence littering up the hall and insulting polite visitors – assuming he can bring himself to let them in at all? In the quest for suspects an informer spends more time than most people testing out that despicable race, and I had learned to expect to lose my temper before I was admitted to any house of status.
Milvia’s establishment was worse than most, in fact. She kept not merely the usual snide youth who only wanted to get back to the game of Soldiers he was playing against the underchef, but a midget ex-gangster called Little Icarus whom I had last seen being pulverised by the vigiles in a battle royal in a notorious brothel, during which his close crony the Miller had had both feet cut off at the ankles by a rampaging magistrate’s lictor who didn’t care what he did with his ceremonial axe. Little Icarus and the Miller were murderous thugs. If Milvia and
Florius were pretending to be nice middle-class people they ought to employ different staff. Apparently they were no longer even pretending.
Little Icarus was rude to me before he remembered who I was. Afterwards he looked outraged, and as if he was planning to butt me in the privates (as far up as he could reach). When he was installed as Milvia’s Janus someone had stripped him of his weapons; maybe that was her mother’s notion of house-training. The fact that a gangster’s enforcer was the doorstop here said everything about what kind of house this was. The place looked pretty. There were standard roses in stone tubs flanking the door and good copies of Greek statues dotted around the interior atrium. But every time I came here the skin on the back of my neck crawled. I wished I had told somebody – anybody – that I was coming. By then it was too late; I had barged my way inside.
Milvia seemed wildly excited to see me. It was not because of my charm.
Not for the first time I found myself wondering whatever possessed Petro to involve himself with miniature puppets like this: all big trusting eyes and piping little voices, and probably just as deceitful under the heartfelt innocence as the bold, bad girls I once fell for myself. Balbina Milvia was a priceless specimen. She had a coronet of dark ringlets held up by indecent wreaths of gold, a tightly trussed bosom peeking from swathes of rich gauze, tiny feet in sparkly sandals – and an anklet, needless to say. Snake bracelets with real rubies for eyes gripped the pale skin of her delicate arms. Whole racks of filigree rings weighed down her minute fingers. Everything about her was so petite and glittery I felt like a blundering brute. But the truth was, the glitter covered dirt. Milvia could no longer pretend not to know that her finery was financed by theft, extortion, and organised gang violence. I knew it too. She gave me a bad, metallic taste in the mouth.
Three Hands in the Fountain Page 10