‘Who rates six?’ I asked Apius. The barber always talked as if he knew everything, though I had yet to hear him answer a straight question accurately.
‘Someone who wants to be announced a long way ahead of himself.’ Lictors traditionally walk in single file in front of the personage they escort.
Six was an unusual number. Two was a praetor or other high official. Twelve meant the Emperor, though he would be escorted by the Praetorians too. I knew Vespasian would be chained to his box at the Circus today.
‘A consul,’ decided Apius. He knew nothing. Consuls also had twelve.
‘Why would a consul be visiting Lenia?’
‘To complain about dirty marks when she returned his smalls?’
‘Or a dull finish to the nap of his best toga? Jupiter, Apius – it’s the Ludi Romani and the laundry’s closed! You’re useless. I’ll pay you tomorrow for the haircut. It offends me to part with money during a festival. I’m off to see what’s going on.’
Everyone believes a barber is the source of all gossip. Not ours. And Apius was typical. The myth about barbers being up to date with scandal has as much truth as that tale foreigners are always being spun about Romans socialising in the public latrines. Excuse me! When you’re straining your heart out after last night’s rather runny rabbit-in-its-own-gravy, the last thing you want is some friendly fellow with an inane grin popping up to ask your opinion of this week’s Senate decree about freemen co-habiting with slaves. If anyone tried it with me, I’d ram him somewhere tender with a well-used gutter sponge.
These elevated thoughts entertained me as I walked along Fountain Court. At the laundry the lictors told me they were escorting an ex-consul, one who had served earlier in the year but had stood down to give some other big bean a chance. He was over the road visiting someone called Falco, apparently.
That put me in a happy mood. If there’s one thing I hate more than high officials burdened with office, it’s officials who have just shed the burden and who are looking for trouble they can cause. I bounced indoors, all set to try to insult him, bearing in mind that if he was still in his named year as consul I was about to be rude to the most revered and highest ranking ex-magistrate in Rome.
XXII
THERE ARE WOMEN who would panic when presented with a consul. One benefit of importing a senator’s daughter to be my unpaid secretary was that instead of shrieking with horror, Helena Justina was more likely to greet the prestigious one as an honorary uncle and calmly ask after his haemorrhoids.
The fellow had been supplied with a bowl of refreshing hot cinnamon, which I happened to know Helena could brew up with honey and a hint of wine until it tasted like ambrosia. He already looked impressed by her suave hospitality and crisp common sense. So when I marched in, hooking my thumbs in my festival belt like an irritated Cyclops, I was presented with an ex-consul who was already tame.
‘Afternoon. My name’s Falco.’
‘My husband,’ smiled Helena, being especially respectable.
‘Her devoted slave,’ I returned, honouring her courteously with this blithe romantic note. Well, it was a public holiday.
‘Julius Frontinus,’ said the eminent man, in a plain tone.
I nodded. He shadowed the gesture.
I took a seat at the table and was handed my personal bowl by the elegant hostess. Helena was striking in white, the proper colour for the Circus; although she wore no jewellery because of the marauding pickpockets, she was bound up in braided ribbons which made her frivolously neat. To emphasise how things were in this house, I pulled up another bowl and poured her a drink too. Then we both raised our cups solemnly to the Consul, while I took a good look at him.
If he was the usual age for a consul he was forty three; forty four if he had had this year’s birthday by now. Clean-shaven and close-shorn. A Vespasian appointment, so bound to be competent, confident and shrewd. Undeterred by my scrutiny and unfazed by his poor surroundings. He was a man with a solid career behind him, yet the energy to carry him through several more top-notch roles before he went senile. Physically spare, a trim weight, undebauched. Someone to respect – or walking trouble: primed to stir things up.
He was assessing me too. Fresh from the gym and in festive clothes, but with militaristic boots. I lived in a squalid area, with a girl who had high social standards: a sophisticated mix. He knew he was facing plebeian aggression, yet he had been soothed with expensive cinnamon from the luxurious east. He was being bombarded by the peppery scent from late summer lilies in a Campanian bronze vase. And his drink came in a high-gloss redware bowl, decorated with exquisite running antelopes. We had taste. We had interesting trade connections – or were travellers ourselves – or could win friends who gave us handsome gifts.
‘I’m looking for someone to work with me, Falco. Camillus Verus recommended you.’
Any commission sent via Helena’s papa had to be welcomed politely. ‘What’s the job and what’s your role in it? What would my role be?’
‘First I need to know your background.’
‘Surely Camillus briefed you?’
‘I’d like to hear it from you.’
I shrugged. I never complain if a client is particular. ‘I’m a private informer: court work, acting for executors, financial assessments, tracing stolen art. At present I have a partner who is ex-vigiles. From time to time the Palace employs me in an official capacity for work I can’t discuss, usually abroad. I have been doing this for the past eight years. I served in the Second Augustan legion in Britain before that.’
‘Britain!’ Frontinus jerked. ‘What did you think of Britain?’
‘Not enough to want to go back.’
‘Thanks,’ he commented drily. ‘I’ve just been appointed to the next governorship.’
I grinned. ‘I’m sure you’ll find it a fascinating province, sir. I’ve been twice; my first mission for Vespasian also took me there.’
‘We liked Britain more than Marcus Didius admits,’ put in Helena diplomatically. ‘I think if informers are ever barred from Rome we might even retire there; Marcus dreams of a quiet farm in a fertile green valley –’ The girl was wicked. She knew I loathed the place.
‘It’s a new country with everything to do,’ I said, sounding like any pompous forum orator. I was trying not to meet Helena’s dancing eyes. ‘If you like work, and a challenge, you should enjoy your term there, sir.’
He seemed to relax. ‘I’d like to talk further – but there’s something more urgent first. Before I leave for Britain I have been asked to supervise a commission of enquiry. I would like to see it completed as swiftly as possible.’
‘So this is not about a private investigation?’ Helena enquired innocently.
‘No.’
She fished the cinnamon stick from her bowl, squeezing it slightly against the rim. Nobody was rushing the formalities. Well, I could rely on Helena’s finely probing curiosity. ‘Is the commission for the Senate?’ she asked.
‘The Emperor.’
‘Did he suggest Marcus to assist you?’
‘Vespasian suggested your father could put me in touch with someone reliable.’
‘To do what?’ she insisted sweetly.
Frontinus turned to me. ‘Do you have to be given approval?’ He sounded amused.
‘I don’t even sneeze without permission.’
‘You never listen to me,’ Helena corrected.
‘Always, lady!’
‘Accept the job, then.’
‘I don’t know that it is.’
‘Papa wants you to do it, and so does the Emperor. You need their goodwill.’ Ignoring Frontinus, she leaned towards me, beating my wrist lightly with the long slim fingers of her left hand. On one was the silver ring I had given her as a love token. I looked at the ring, then at her, playing moody. She flushed. I clapped my fist to one shoulder and hung my head: the gladiator’s submission. Helena clucked reprovingly. ‘Too much of the Circus! Stop playing. Julius Frontinus will think you’re a
clown.’
‘He won’t. If an ex-consul demeans himself by a hike up the Aventine, it’s because he has already read my immaculate record and been impressed.’
Frontinus pursed his lips.
Helena was still urgent: ‘Listen; I can guess what you are being asked to do. There was a public disturbance today in the Forum –’
‘I was there.’
She looked surprised, then suspicious. ‘Did you cause it?’
‘Thanks for the faith, sweetheart! I’m not a delinquent. But maybe the public anxiety did originate with me and Lucius Petronius.’
‘Your discoveries are the talk of the town. You stirred it up; you ought to sort it out,’ Helena said sternly.
‘Not me. There is already an enquiry into the aqueduct murders. It’s under the auspices of the Curator, and he’s using that bastard Anacrites.’
‘But now Vespasian must have ordered a superior commission,’ said Helena.
We both stared at Julius Frontinus. He had put down his bowl. He opened his hands in a gesture of acknowledgement, though slightly baffled at the way we had talked around him and pre-empted his request.
Once more I grinned. ‘All I need to hear from you, sir, is that your commission takes precedence over anything being carried out by the Curator of Aqueducts – so your assistants take precedence over his.’
‘Count my lictors,’ responded Frontinus rather tetchily.
‘Six.’ He must have been awarded a special pack to match the special task.
‘The Curator of Aqueducts is only entitled to two.’ So Frontinus outranked him – and I would outrank Anacrites.
‘It’s a pleasure to do business, Consul,’ I said. Then we swept aside the pretty drinking cups and settled down for a practical review of what needed to be done.
‘I’d like to borrow a dish,’ Frontinus requested calmly. ‘One you don’t use very much, I suggest.’
Helena’s eyes met mine, dark with concern. We both realised what he probably wanted it for.
XXIII
THE THIRD HAND was swollen, but undamaged. Julius Frontinus unwrapped and presented it without drama, placing it in our dish like an organ removed by a surgeon. The first two relics had been dark with decay. This hand was black because its owner had been black. She must have come from Mauretania or Africa. The fine skin on the back of her hand was ebony, the palm and fingertips much lighter. The cuticles had been kept manicured, the nails neatly trimmed.
It looked a young hand. The fingers, all still present, would recently have been as fine and slender as those of Helena’s which had just now so urgently tapped my wrist. This was a left hand. Trapped in the swollen flesh of the fourth finger was a plain gold wedding ring.
Julius Frontinus stayed fastidiously silent. I felt depressed.
Helena Justina had reached out abruptly and covered the severed remains with her own much paler hand, fingers splayed and straight, thankfully not quite touching the other. It was an involuntary sign of tenderness for the dead girl. Helena’s expression held the same absorption as when she made that gesture above our sleeping child.
Perhaps my recognition of it struck a chord; without a word Helena rose, and we heard her walk into the next room where Julia Junilla was safe in her cradle. After a short pause as if she was checking on the baby Helena came back and resumed her seat, frowning. Her mood was dark, but she said nothing so Frontinus and I began discussing our work.
‘This was found during the cleaning of the Aqua Claudia reservoir in the Arch of Dolabella.’ Frontinus’ manner and tone were businesslike. ‘It came up in the sand in one of the dredging buckets. The work gang who discovered it were badly supervised; instead of reporting the find officially they displayed it in public for money.’ He spoke as if he disapproved, yet didn’t blame them.
‘That caused today’s riot?’
‘Apparently. The Curator of Aqueducts was at the Circus, fortunately for him. One of his assistants was not so lucky; he was identified in the street and beaten up. There has been damage to property. And of course there is an outcry for hygienic supplies to be restored. The panic has caused all kinds of difficulties. An epidemic started overnight –’
‘Naturally,’ I said. ‘The minute I heard the city’s water might be contaminated, I started feeling dicky myself.’
‘Hysteria,’ stated the consul tersely. ‘But whoever is doing this must now be found.’
Helena had heard enough. ‘So inconsiderate!’ She spoke too sweetly. We were about to be blasted. ‘Some silly girl gets herself killed by a madman, and disrupts Rome. Women really will have to be deterred from putting themselves in this position. Dear Juno, we cannot have females being responsible for fevers, let alone damage to property –’
‘It’s the man who needs deterring.’ I tried to ride out the tempest. Frontinus shot me a helpless glance and left me to cope. ‘Whether his victims fall into his clutches through their own folly or whether he grabs them from behind in a dark street, nobody suggests they deserve it, love. And I don’t suppose the public have even started to think about what he does to these women before he kills them – let alone the way he treats them afterwards.’
To my surprise Helena subsided quietly. She had had a sheltered upbringing, but she paid attention to the world and had no lack of imagination. ‘These women are being subjected to terrible ordeals.’
‘Not much doubt of it.’
Her face clouded with compassion again. ‘The owner of this hand was warm and young. Only a day or two ago she was sewing perhaps, or spinning. This hand was caressing her husband or their child. It was preparing their food, combing her hair, laying wheatcakes before the gods –’
‘And she was only one in a long line, snatched away to end up hideously like this. All with lives ahead of them once.’
‘I was hoping this was a recent phenomenon,’ Frontinus said.
‘No, it has been happening for years, sir,’ Helena explained angrily. ‘Our-brother-in-law works on the river and says mutilated bodies have been discovered for as long as he can remember. For years the disappearance of women has been going unreported – or uninvestigated, anyway. Their corpses have been hidden away in silence. It’s only when people begin to think the aqueducts are contaminated that anybody cares!’
‘It has initiated an enquiry at last.’ Frontinus was a braver man than me to suggest it. ‘Of course it’s a scandal, and of course this enquiry is too late; nobody denies that.’
‘You’re being disingenuous,’ she chided him mildly.
‘Practical,’ he said.
‘Whoever they were,’ I assured Helena, ‘these women will have the investigation they deserve.’
‘Yes, I think they will now.’ She trusted me. It was a serious responsibility.
I reached for the dish and held it. ‘One thing I shall have to do – even though it seems disrespectful – is remove this poor soul’s wedding ring.’ It would be best done unobserved. The ring was embedded in waterlogged flesh and would be ghastly to extricate. ‘The only way we stand any chance of solving this is to identify at least one of the victims and work out exactly what happened to her.’
‘How likely is that?’ Frontinus asked.
‘Well, it will be the first time the killer has to dispose of remains while somebody is actually looking out for him. The girl’s torso is likely to be dumped soon in the Tiber, as Helena said.’ The consul looked up quickly, already responding and considering logistics. ‘In the next few days,’ I told him. ‘At the latest just after the Games finish. If you have any men at your disposal they could be watching the bridges and embankments.’
‘A day and night watch calls for more resources than I have.’
‘Which are?’
‘A modest allocation of public slaves.’ His expression told me he realised he was heading an investigation on the cheap.
‘Do your best, sir. Nothing too obvious, or the killer will be scared off. I’ll put the word among the water boatmen, and my partner
may be able to get some help from the vigiles.’
Helena’s great brown eyes were still sorrowful, but I could see she was thinking. ‘Marcus, I keep wondering how these smaller remains are being put into the water system in the first place. Surely most of the aqueducts are either deep underground or high on arches and inaccessible?’
I passed on the query to Frontinus. ‘Good point,’ he agreed. ‘We must consult with officials about how unauthorised entry is possible.’
‘If we can find where it’s happening we may trap the bastard in action.’ I was interested in how our intervention would affect Anacrites. ‘But won’t speaking to water board officials cut across the Curator’s own investigation?’
Frontinus shrugged. ‘He knows I have been asked to provide an overview. I will ask for an engineer to be made available for consultation tomorrow. The Curator will have to accept it.’
‘He won’t encourage his staff to help. We’ll have to win them over with guile,’ I said.
‘Use your charm,’ smirked Helena.
‘What do you recommend, love? Approachability and the dimpled grin?’
‘No, I meant slip them some coinage.’
‘Vespasian won’t approve of that!’ I pulled my face straight for Frontinus. He was listening to our banter rather cautiously. ‘Consul, we should be able to extract something useful from the engineers. Will you want to be in on this part of the enquiry, sir?’
‘Certainly.’
Oh dear. ‘Oh good!’
I wondered how Petro and I would manage, sharing our hunches with an ex-magistrate. Cosying up to a consul was not our style.
The question was about to be addressed; Petronius had shambled up to visit us. He must have spotted the lictors wilting in Lenia’s entrance. In theory he and I were still not speaking, but curiosity is a wonderful thing. He hovered in the doorway briefly, a tall, wide-shouldered figure looking diffident at interrupting.
Three Hands in the Fountain Page 12