Opposite, a smart litter was pulling up outside the laundry. A small figure jumped out. All I could see was flimsy swathes of light violet, with heavy gold hems dragging at the fancy cloth, and a glimpse of anklet on a slim leg. The wearer of this flimflam spoke briefly to Lenia, then nipped up the stairs to my old apartment.
Immediately she was out of sight Petronius hopped down to ground level and made off with a long easy stride. Frontinus had noticed nothing, but I followed feeling curious. It rather looked as if Petro’s sweet little turtledove had become somebody he was trying to avoid.
I glanced back to my own door. Helena Justina was waving us off, standing on the porch holding Julia. She too was looking thoughtfully across the street. I caught her eye. She smiled at me. I knew that expression. When little Milvia came down again she was going to be treated to a stern conversation with the daughter of the illustrious Camillus. I would be very surprised if Milvia ever showed her dainty ankle in Fountain Court again.
By the way he was sneaking off round the corner into Tailors’ Lane, that suited Petronius.
XXVII
AS WE WERE to the address Martinus had passed on to Petro, we heard a muffled roar from the Circus. The fifteen-day Ludi Romani were still in progress. The president of the Games must have dropped his white handkerchief, and the chariots had set off around the long arena. Two hundred thousand people had just exclaimed in excitement at some spill or piece of dramatic driving. Their massed exhalation whomphed through the valley between the Aventine and the Palatine, causing doves to rise and circle before they dropped back on to heated roofs and balconies. A lower hum continued as the race went on.
Somewhere in the Circus Maximus would be the young Camillus brothers and Claudia Rufina (well, Justinus and Claudia anyway). Somewhere there too might be the killer who chopped up women, the man whose latest dreadful deed we now had to explain to an unwitting husband. And unless Caius Cicurrus could tell us something useful, then somewhere at the Circus Maximus might be the next woman who was destined to end up in pieces in the aqueducts.
Caius Cicurrus was a chandler. With his wife but no children he lived in a typical third-floor apartment in a tenement full of identical small lets. His living space was cramped, but well kept. Even before we had knocked at his gleaming bronze lion-head knocker, the respectable flower tubs and rag mat on the landing had warned us of one thing: his Asinia had probably not been a prostitute. A young female slave let us in. She was clean and neat, shy though not cowed. Careful housekeeping was evident. Ledges looked dusted. There was an attractive scent of dried herbs. The slave girl automatically invited us to remove our outdoor shoes.
We found Caius just sitting by himself, staring into space, with Asinia’s spinning in a basket at his feet. He was holding what must have been her jewel box, running skeins of glass and rock crystal beads through his hands. He looked obsessively troubled and drowsy with grief. Whatever was making him miserable, it was not the purely financial loss of a deserted pimp.
Caius was swarthy, but plainly Italian. He had the hairiest arms I had ever seen, though his head was nearly bald. In his mid-thirties, he was just a perfectly harmless, perfectly ordinary man who still had to learn of his loss and its terrible circumstances.
Petronius introduced us, explained that we were conducting a special enquiry, and asked if we could talk about Asinia. Caius actually looked pleased. He liked talking about her. He was missing her badly and needed to console himself by telling anyone who would listen how sweet and gentle she had been. The daughter of his father’s freed-woman, Asinia had been loved by Caius since she was thirteen. That explained why her wedding ring had grown so tight. The girl grew up wearing it. She would have been – she was, said Caius – only twenty now.
‘You reported her missing this morning?’ Petronius continued to lead the interview. Through his job with the vigiles he had had considerable experience of breaking bad news to the bereaved, even more than me.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But had she been missing for longer?’
Caius looked perturbed by the question.
‘When did you last see her?’ Petro probed gently.
‘A week ago.’
‘Have you been away from home?’
‘Visiting my farm in the country,’ said Caius; Petro had guessed something of the sort. ‘Asinia remained at home. I have a small business, a chandlery. She looks after it for me. I trust her entirely with my affairs. She is a wonderful partner –’
‘Wasn’t your business closed for the public holiday?’
‘Yes. So when the Games began, Asinia went to stay with a friend who lives much closer to the Circus: then Asinia would not have to make her way home late at night. I am very particular about her being out in Rome alone.’
I saw Petronius breathe heavily, embarrassed by the man’s innocence. To relieve him I weighed in quietly, ‘When exactly did you realise that Asinia was missing?’
‘Yesterday evening when I returned. My slave told me Asinia was at her friend’s house, but when I went there the friend said Asinia had gone home three days ago.’
‘Was she sure?’
‘Oh, she brought her here in a litter and left her right at the door. She knew I expected it.’ I glanced at Petronius; we would need to speak to this friend.
‘Excuse me for asking this,’ Petro said. ‘We have to do it; you’ll understand. Is there any possibility Asinia was seeing another man in your absence?’
‘No.’
‘Your marriage was perfectly happy, and she was a quiet girl?’
‘Yes.’
Petronius was treading very carefully. Since we had begun our enquiry with the assumption that the victims were good-time girls (who could vanish without attracting too much notice), there was always the possibility that Asinia had led a double life, unknown to her anxious mate. But we knew it was more likely the maniac who carved her up was a stranger; that Asinia had just had the bad luck to put herself where she caught his eye and he was able to abduct her. The mutilations Lollius had described to me pretty well stamped a seal on it. Men who carve up women in that way have never been emotionally close to them.
Now we were being told that this victim was a respectable girl. Where had she been after she was dropped at her door? What adventure had she set out for? Did even her girlfriend know about it?
Petronius, who had been carrying the ring, now brought it out. He took his time. His movements were slow, his expression grave. Caius was supposed to have started guessing the truth, though I could see no signal that he had let himself be warned. ‘I’d like you to look at something, Caius. Do you recognise that?’
‘Of course! It’s Asinia’s ring. You’ve found her, then?’
Helpless, we watched as the husband’s face lit with delight.
Slowly he realised that the three men sharing his tiny room had remained sombre. Slowly he saw that we were waiting for him to reach the real, tragic conclusion. Slowly he grew pale.
‘There is no way I can make this easy for you,’ Petronius said, ‘Caius Cicurrus, I am afraid we are assuming that your poor wife is dead.’ The stricken husband said nothing. ‘There really can be very little doubt about it.’ Petronius was trying to tell Cicurrus that there was no actual body.
‘You have found her?’
‘No – and the worst part is that we perhaps never will find her.’
‘Then how can you say –’
Petronius sighed. ‘Have you heard about the dismembered human remains that have been found from time to time in the water supply? Women have been murdered, over a long period, by a killer who cuts up his victims and deposits them in the aqueducts. My colleagues and I are investigating that.’
Cicurrus still refused to understand. ‘What can this have to do with Asinia?’
‘We have to believe that this killer has abducted her. Asinia’s ring was found in the terminal reservoir of the Aqua Claudia. I’m sorry to have to tell you, one of her hands was with it.’
‘Only her hand? She could still be alive!’ The man was desperate. He sprang at any shred of hope.
‘You mustn’t believe that!’ Petro rasped. He was finding this almost unbearable. ‘Tell yourself she is dead, man. Tell yourself she died quickly, when she was first abducted three days ago. Believe she knew as little as possible. Tell yourself what was done to the corpse afterwards does not matter because Asinia did not feel it. Then tell us anything you can that will help us catch the man who killed your wife before he robs any other citizens of their womenfolk.’
Caius Cicurrus stared at him. He could not go so fast. ‘Asinia is dead?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid she must be.’
‘But she was beautiful.’ He was grappling with the truth now. His voice rose. ‘Asinia was unlike other women – so sweet-natured, and our domestic life was so affectionate – Oh, I cannot believe this. I feel she is going to come home any minute –’ Tears began streaming down his face. He had accepted the truth at last. Now he had to learn to endure it: that might take him for ever. ‘Only her hand has been found? What will happen to the rest of her? What am I to do? How can I bury her?’ He became wilder. ‘Where is her poor hand now?’
It was Frontinus who said, ‘Asinia’s hand is being embalmed. It will be returned to you in a locked casket. I beg of you, don’t break the lock.’
We were all crushed by the thought that if other remains did appear, we would have to decide whether to return them to this devastated man piecemeal. Was he then to hold funerals for each limb separately, or collect them for one final burial? At what point was he supposed to decide that enough of his darling had been returned to him to justify a ceremony? When we found her torso, with her heart? Or her head? What philosopher would tell him where the girl’s sweet soul resided? When should his agony end?
There was no doubt his devotion to Asinia was genuine. The next few weeks were likely to drive him into insanity. Nothing we could do would protect him from brooding over the horror of her last hours. We would say very little to him, but like us he would soon be imagining how the killer probably treated his victims.
Petronius left the room as if he were going to fetch the slave to attend to her master. First I could hear him speaking to her in a low voice. I knew he was discreetly checking the story of Asinia’s last known movements, and probably taking the name and address of the female friend with whom she had stayed. He brought the girl in, and we took our leave.
Outside the apartment we paused for a moment in a group. The encounter had demoralised us all.
‘A perfect housewife,’ said Frontinus, grimly quoting the conventional memorials. ‘Modest, chaste and unquarrelsome. The best of women, she kept indoors and worked in wool.’
‘Twenty years old,’ growled Petronius in despair.
‘May the earth lie lightly upon her.’ I completed the formula. Since we had yet to find what was left of Asinia, perhaps it never would.
XXVIII
NONE OF US could face doing any more that evening. Petro and I escorted the Consul to his house, where he returned my tunic after divesting himself on the doorstep. You could tell he was upper class. A plebeian would shy off such eccentricity. I’ve known wrestlers who turned their backs to strip, even in the suitable surroundings of the baths. Frontinus’ own door porter looked alarmed, and he presumably was used to his master. We handed over the Consul into safe keeping, and the porter winked to thank us for keeping straight faces.
Then Petro and I walked slowly back to Fountain Court. A few shops were reopening to catch the evening trade as the Circus emptied. All the streets seemed to contain men with sly expressions, drunks, hustlers, slaves up to no good, and girls on the make. People talked too loudly. People barged us off the pavement, then when we took to the roadway others knocked us into open drains. It was probably by accident, but anyway they didn’t care. Instinctively we started shoving too.
This was the city at its worst. Maybe it was always like this, and I was just noticing it more tonight. Maybe the Games had brought out extra dross.
Upset by the interview with Cicurrus, we did not even pop into a winebar for a pre-dinner relaxer. Perhaps for once we should have done. We might have missed a very unpleasant experience in Fountain Court. We were walking along glumly with our heads down, which gave us no time to make good our escape. Instead I laid a warning hand on Petro’s arm, and he groaned loudly. The litter we had seen outside the laundry when we left earlier was still there. Its occupant had clearly been watching for our return.
She jumped out and publicly accosted us. However, this was not little light-footed, violet-clad Balbina Milvia. The litter must be a shared one, used by all the women of the Florius household. It had brought us a much more terrifying visitor than Petro’s pert piece of dalliance: this was Milvia’s mama.
Even before she flew at Petronius and started bawling, we could tell she was furious.
XXIX
CORNELLA FLACCIDA HAD all the grace of a flying rhinoceros: big hands, fat feet, an irretrievably immodest mien. She was nicely decked out, though. On the features of a bitter hag had been painted a mask of a fresh-faced maiden, newly risen from the foam of Paphos in a rainbow of scintillating spray. On a body that had indulged in long evenings of gorging wine-soaked heron wings were hung translucent silks from Cos and fabulous collars of granular gold filigree, all so light they fluttered and tinkled and assaulted the startled senses of tired men. The feet that stumped towards us wore pretty tinselled bootees. A devastating waft of balsam punched us in the throat.
Considering that when Balbinus Pius had been put away by Petronius all the gangster’s property had been transferred to the state, it was amazing so much money could still be spent on his ferocious relict. On the other hand, Balbinus was a hard nut. He had made sure a good proportion of his worldly effects had been cunningly dumped out of official reach. Much of it had been placed in trust for Flaccida by calling it part of the dowry of her nifty offspring Milvia.
Mama was living with her daughter now: her own mansions had all been confiscated, so the two were thrust together in the far-from-dowdy abode of Milvia’s husband Florius. All the vigiles cohorts were running books on how long the three could put up with each other. So far they were clasping hands as stickily as bee-keepers in the honeycomb season: it was the only way they could hang on to the cash. An accountant from the Treasury of Saturn checked the health of Milvia’s marriage daily, because if she divorced Florius and her dowry reverted to her family, then the Emperor wanted it. This was one case where the encouragement-of-matrimony laws did not apply.
Since our new Emperor Vespasian had made a platform of supporting the quaint old-fashioned virtues of family life, it will be seen that if the amount of money he stood to grab on Milvia’s divorce could persuade him to muffle his quaint old-fashioned conscience, then it must be very large indeed. Well, that’s the joy of organised crime for you. It’s astonishing more people don’t take it up.
No; actually, there was a reason why other people stayed honest: setting up as a rival to Cornella Flaccida was just too frightening. Who wants to be parboiled, roasted, skewered through every orifice, and served up trussed in a three-cheese glaze with their internal organs lightly sautéed as a separate piquant relish?
Of course I made that up. Flaccida would have said that as a punishment it was far too refined.
‘Don’t you damn well run away from me!’ she yelled.
Petro and I were not running anywhere; we had not been given time even to think of it.
‘Madam!’ I exclaimed. Neutrality was a dubious refuge.
‘Don’t play about with me!’ she snarled.
‘What a repulsive suggestion.’
‘Shut up, Falco.’ Petro thought I wasn’t helping. I shut up. Normally he was big enough to look after himself. The hard-bitten Flaccida might be more than he could deal with, though, so I stuck around loyally. Anyway, I wanted to see the fun.
I noticed Helena coming out on to o
ur porch. My dog Nux nosed eagerly after her, sensing the master’s return. Helena bent and clutched her collar nervously. She must be able to tell that our visitor was a woman who probably bit off watchdogs’ heads as a party piece.
‘Haven’t I met you two grimeballs before?’ Milvia’s mother cannot have forgotten Petronius Longus, the enquiry chief who convicted her husband. Meeting her again face to face, I decided I preferred that she should not realise I was the hero with the social conscience who had actually widowed her.
‘Charming that our vibrant personalities made such an impression,’ I gurgled.
‘Tell your clown to keep out of it,’ Flaccida ordered Petro. He just smiled and let her run.
The dame tilted back her fading blonde coiffure, and surveyed him as if he were a flea she had caught in her underwear. He gazed back, completely calm as usual. Big, solid, full of understated presence: any mother should have envied her daughter’s choice of him for a lover. Petronius Longus reeked of the controlled assurance women go for. The gods know, I had seen enough of them rush at him. What he lacked in looks he made up in size and obvious character, and these days he wore wicked haircuts too.
‘You’ve got a nerve!’
‘Spare me, Flaccida. You’re embarrassing yourself.’
‘I’ll embarrass you! After everything you’ve done to my family –’
‘After everything your family has done to Rome – and is probably doing still – I’m surprised you haven’t felt obliged to move to one of the remote provinces.’
‘You destroyed us, then you had to seduce my little daughter too.’
‘Your daughter’s not so little.’ And she doesn’t take much seducing, Petronius implied. He was too courteous to insult her, though, even in his own defence.
‘Leave Milvia alone!’ It came out in a low hard growl, like the raw noise of a lioness threatening her prey. ‘Your superiors in the vigiles would like to hear about you visiting my Milvia.’
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