I sighed gently. Then, although it would normally have been against my principles to go anywhere near such a couple of tipsy witches, I strode straight across to them. The one who had called out was Marina, the mother of my little niece Marcia. I had recognised her voice.
XXXIX
There were probably more people here with us than we realised, but they were lurking around the Regia, flitting among temple columns, or hovering in the deep shadow under the Arch of Augustus. Nobody I could actually see was within earshot. Just as well. The tall girl flopping over Marina's left arm had just been sick against the stately Corinthian columns of the Temple of Vesta. This was supposed to resemble an ancient but built of wood and straw though the mock antique construction appeared pretty crisp. It was less than a decade old, having been burnt down in Nero's great fire then hastily rebuilt 'to ensure the continued existence of Rome'. Marina's friend was making a stout job of imparting a more weathered look to the new colonnade.
The girl being ill with such gusto was also very thin, like a long puppet who had lost her stuffing, hooked around the waist by Marina. Marina herself only came halfway up my chest even when she was upright – a feat she achieved rather unsteadily at the moment. I was accosting a seriously disgraceful pair of women, and I felt ten years too old for it.
'Hello, Marcus. Something for the sacred housekeepers to clean up!'
Marina may have lacked stature but what there was of her had a well-packed allure that turned heads at all levels. She was dressed to show it off, and gorgeously painted. With her free right hand she made a mannered obscene gesture. 'Bitches!' she yelled at the House of the Vestals, rather more loudly than was wise when addressing the guardians of the Sacred Flame. Her friend threw up again. 'Stuff that up your Palladium!' Marina growled at the hallowed hut.
'Now look here,' I began weakly. 'What's happening to -'
'Marcia's at home, idiot. She's safely tucked up in her own little bed, and my neighbour's daughter's looking after her. Clean, sensible girl, thirteen years old, not interested in boys yet, thank the gods – Anything else your nosiness wants to know?'
'Have you been at the Games?'
'Certainly not. Too full of low characters. Is that where you've been, Falco?' The gorgeous vision cackled with abominable laughter.
A lamp stood on the ground, Placed there while Marina attended to her companion. By its wavering light I could see my brother's exotic girlfriend: translucent skin, breathtakingly regular features, and the remote beauty of a temple statue. Only when she spoke did the mystique fade; she had the voice of a winkle-seller. Even then, she had just to roll those huge eyes a few times and I remembered all too clearly the jealous throb that used to drive me wild when Festus was bedding her. Then Festus died and I had to pay Marina's bills. That helped keep me chaste.
'If you weren't at the Games, what coven have you witches been casting spells at?'
'We ladies,' Marina enunciated pompously, although she did seem a great deal more sober than whoever was vomiting against the Temple, 'have been at the monthly reunion of the Braidmakers' Old Girls.'
There had once been a rumour that Marina worked in the field of tunic decoration, though she was doing her best to disprove it. The only thing she reckoned to twist nowadays was me. 'Isn't this late to be leaving a party, girl?'
'No, it's quite early for the Braidmakers.' She let out a disreputable giggle. An answering hiccup came faintly from the bent beanpole.
'Dawn daisies, eh? I suppose when you finished disporting yourself among the pensioned-off tassel-knotters, you came home by way of a tipple at the Four Fish?'
'As I recollect, it was the Old Grey Dove, Marcus Didius.' 'And the Oystershell?'
'Then probably the Venus of Cos. It was bloody Venus who did for this one -'
Marina applied more tender nurture to her friend – an act which consisted of jerking her upright and forcing her head back with a dangerous click of the neck. 'Well, keep your voice lower,' I muttered. 'You'll have the Vestals scampering out here in their nightclothes to investigate.'
'Forget it! They're too busy screwing the Pontifex Maximus around the sacred hearth.'
If I was to be hauled before a judge on a treason trial, I would rather choose the infamy for myself. It seemed high time to leave. 'Can you get home all right?'
'Course we can.'
'What about this petal?'
'I'll drop her off. Don't worry about us,' Marina soothed me kindly. 'We're used to it.'
I could believe that.
Supporting one another, they tottered off down the Sacred Way. I had warned Marina again to take care because the aqueduct snatcher might be working her neighbourhood. She, quite reasonably, had then enquired whether I really thought any pervert would pluck up the courage to attack two of the Braidmakers' Old Girls after their monthly night out? A ridiculous idea, of course.
I could still hear them singing and laughing all the way to the end of the Forum. I myself walked unobtrusively down towards the Tabularium, veering left round the Capitol and out through the River Gate near the Theatre of Marcellus, opposite the end of Tiber Island. I took myself along the embankment past the Aemilian and Sublician bridges. In the Forum Boarium I met a patrol of vigiles, headed by Martinus, Petro's old deputy. They were looking out for whoever I was looking out for. None of us thought we would find him. We exchanged a few quiet words, then I pressed on to the Aventine.
Only as I climbed up towards the Temple of Ceres did I remember that I had meant to ask Marina whatever she thought she was doing when she called out to a strange driver. It was an odd reversal of the scene I presumed might have happened with Asinia: the woman's brash approach and the man's nervousness; then her mockery as he quickly skulked away. I dismissed it as unimportant. For the encounter to connect with my enquiry would be too much of a coincidence.
Even so, something had happened down there in the Forum. Something all too relevant.
XL
It began as an ordinary, bright Roman morning. I woke late, alone in bed, sluggish. Sunlight streaked the wall opposite the closed shutter. I could hear Helena's voice, talking to someone, male, unfamiliar.
Before she called me I struggled into a clean tunic and rinsed my teeth, groaning. This was why informers liked to be solitary men. I had gone to bed sober, yet today I felt like death.
I had a dim recollection of returning in the dark last night. I had heard Julia crying fretfully. Either Helena was too exhausted to waken, or she was trying out a plan we had halfheartedly discussed of leaving the baby sometimes to cry herself back to sleep. Helena had certainly moved the cradle out of our bedroom. Trust me to disrupt the plan: at Julia's heartrending wail I forgot what was agreed and went to her; I managed to walk about with her quietly, avoiding disturbing Helena, until eventually the baby dozed off. I put her back down in the cradle successfully. Then Helena burst in, woken up and terrified by the silence… Ah, well.
After that it was obviously necessary for lamps to be filled and lit, drinks to be made, the story of my night's surveillance to be told, the lamps to be doused again, and bed to be sought amid various snugglings, foot-warmings, kissings, and other things that are nobody's business which left me unconscious until way past breakfast time.
Breakfast would not be featuring in my routine today.
The man whose voice I had heard was waiting downstairs outside. Glancing over the porch rail, I saw thin curly black hair in a polished brown scalp. A rough red tunic and the tops of stout thonged boots. A member of the vigiles.
'From Martinus,' Helena told me. 'There is something you have to see on the embankment.'
Our eyes met. It was not the moment to speculate.
I kissed her, holding her closer than normal, remembering and making her remember how she had welcomed home her late-night hero. Homelife and work met, yet remained indefinably separate. Helena's faint smile belonged to our private life. So did the rush of blood I felt answering it.
She ran her fingers
through my hair, tugging at the curls and attempting to tidy them so I was fit to be seen. I let her do it, though I realised the appointment to which I was being summoned would not require a neat coiffure.
We assembled up on the embankment just below the Aemilian Bridge. In charge was Martinus, the ponderous, big-buttocked new enquiry agent of the Sixth Cohort. He had a straight-cut fringe and a mole on one cheek, with large eyes that could look thoughtful for hours as a cover for not bothering to think. He told me he had decided against sending for Petro because his situation with the vigiles was so 'delicate'. I said nothing. If Petronius had stayed out on watch last night as long as I suspected, he would be needing his sleep. Anyway, the good thing about having a partner was that we could share the unpleasant tasks. This did not call for both of us. All we needed to do in person was note the discovery and record our interest.
With Martinus were a couple of his men and some water boatmen, not including my brother-in-law Lollius, I was pleased to see. Well, it was before midday. Lollius would still be asleep in some little barmaid's lap.
Lying on the edge of the embankment were a dark lump and a piece of cloth. Around them the stone paving was damp for a large area. Water dribbled from both. The items, as Martinus called them when he took down details slowly on his note-tablet, had been retrieved from the Tiber that morning, after tangling in the mooring rope of a barge. The barge had come upriver only yesterday so had been here just one night.
'Anyone see anything?'
'What do you think, Falco?'
'I think somebody must have.'
'And you know we'll have a hard time finding them.'
The material was perhaps old curtaining, for it was fringed at one end. It must have been heavily bloodstained before it went into the water, the blood sufliciently coagulated to survive a short immersion. The cloth had been wrapped around the slender, youthful trunk of a woman who must have had fine, dark skin. Now her once-supple body was discoloured by bruising and decay, its texture altered to something inhuman. Time, the summer heat, and finally the water, had all worked terrible changes. But worse had been done to her first by whoever robbed her of life.
We assumed this was the torso of Asinia. Nobody would be suggesting that her husband be asked to identify her. Her head and limbs had been removed. So had other parts. I looked, because it seemed obligatory. Then it was hard not to throw up. By now Asinia had been dead nearly two weeks. She had been lying somewhere else for most of that time Martinus and the water boatmen all gave as their opinion that the decomposing torso had only been in the water for a few hours. We would have to think about its history before that because the details could help us trace the killer. But it was hard to force our minds to the task.
A member of the vigiles pulled the curtain over the remains. Relieved, we all stood back, trying to forget the sight.
We were still discussing the possibilities when a messenger came for Martinus. He was wanted in the Forum. A human head had been discovered in the Cloaca Maxima.
XLI
When they flung open the access hole we could hear water in the darkness some distance below. There was no ladder. There were not enough wading boots and torches either. We had to wait for these to be fetched from a depot, while curious crowds gathered. People could tell something was happening.
'Why aren't these bastards ever around when the killer comes to dump remains? Why don't they ever catch him at it?'
Swearing, Martinus got his men to organise a cordon. It failed to stop the ghouls from clogging up the west end of the Forum.
We were still waiting for our boots when to my disgust Anacrites appeared. The Curator's office was near here. Some clown had been to notify him.
'Sod off, Anacrites. Your chief is only responsible for aqueducts. Mine has a total remit.'
'I'm coming with you, Falco.'
'You'll terrify the rats.'
'Rats, Falco?' Martinus became eager to stand back and let Anacrites represent him in this unpleasant enterprise.
I glanced at the sky, aware that if it rained the Cloaca would become a raging torrent and impossibly dangerous. Cloudless blue reassured me, just.
'Why didn't they just bring the remains to the surface?' Martinus really did not want to go down there. Where I merely lacked enthusiasm, he was openly panicking.
'Julius Frontinus has given instructions that anything found in the system must be left in situ for us to inspect. it go. If there are any clues I'll bring them back. You can take my description of the layout. I'm a good witness in court.'
'I reckon I'll send for Petronius.'
'There's too many of you already,' put in the gang leader of the sewer men. 'I don't like taking strangers down.'
'Don't worry me,' I muttered. If he was nervous, what chance for the rest of us? 'Listen, when Marcus Agrippa was in charge of the waterways, I thought he toured the entire sewer system by boat?'
'Bloody madman!' scoffed the gang leader. Well, that cheered me up.
Leather waders had arrived: thick clumsy soles and flapping thigh-high tops. A wooden ladder was produced but when they slung it over the edge, we could see it reached only halfway to the water; how deep that was at this point even the sewer men seemed not to know. We were being taken in near where the head was found; they themselves must have approached originally by some underground route, one that was reckoned too difficult for soft stylus- pushers like us.
A new length of ladder soon arrived, which was lashed on to the first with cords. The whole cockeyed artefact was dangled down the dark hole. It just reached the bottom, leaving no spare at the top. It looked almost vertical. Anyone who deals with ladders will tell you that's fatal. A large man was posted up top to hang on with a piece of ragged rope. He seemed happy; he knew he had the best job.
It was settled that I would go down, with Anacrites and one of Martinus' lads who was keen for anything. There was no point forcing Martinus to venture into the burrow if he was nervous; we told him he was our watchman. If we were too long below he was to fetch help. The gang leader accepted this rather too readily, as if he thought something might well go wrong. He told us to cover our heads with hoods. We wrapped our faces in pieces of cloth; muffled hearing and heavy feet made everything worse.
We went one at a time. We had to launch ourselves into thin air above the manhole to find treads on the ladder. Once on, the whole thing bowed disturbingly and looked completely unsafe. The gang leader had gone first; as he was descending we saw the top part swing away from where it was lodged and he had to be pulled back by main force applied to the rope. He went a bit white, as he looked up anxiously from the dark shaft, but the fellow on the rope called out something encouraging and he carried on.
'You don't want to fall in,' Martinus counselled.
'Thanks,' I said.
It was my turn next. I managed not to disgrace myself, though the treads were tiny rungs, too far apart to be comfortable. As soon as I started I could feel my thigh muscles protesting. With every step the whole flimsy ladder moved.
Anacrites hopped down after me, looking as if he had spent half his life on a wobbly ladder. A knock on the head had robbed him of both sensitivity and sense. Martinus' lad followed, and we stood carefully in the pitch dark, waiting for the torches to be lowered down to us. I suppose I could have shoved Anacrites in the water. I was too preoccupied to think of it.
The air was chilly. Water – or water and other substances – rushed past our feet and ankles, feeling cold and giving a false sensation that our boots leaked. There was a tolerable, yet distinct, smell of sewage. We asked the gang leader whether bare-flamed pitch torches were safe if there might be gas down here; he replied cheerfully that there were not often accidents. Then he told us about one the week before.
When the torches came down we could see we were in a long, vaulted tunnel, over twice as high as us. It was lined with cement and at the point where we had entered it the water out in the channel was easily shin-deep. In the centre the curr
ent raced, a fine tribute to gradient. In the shallows along the edges we could see brown weed, wavering all in one direction as it was pulled by slower currents. Underfoot was paved with slabs like a road but there was a great deal of detritus, sometimes rubble and rocks, sometimes sandy areas. The torchlight was not strong enough to let us see our feet properly. The gang leader told us to be careful how we trod. Immediately afterwards I stepped into a hole.
We waded along towards a bend in the tunnel. The water grew deeper and more worrying. We passed an inlet from a feeder channel, dry at present. We were deep under the Forum of the Romans. All this area had once been marsh, and was still natural wetland. The fine monuments above us raised their pediments to baking sun but had damp basements. Mosquitoes plagued the Senate; foreign visitors, lacking immunity, succumbed to virulent fevers. Seven hundred years ago Etruscan engineers had shown our primitive ancestors how to drain the swamp between the Capitol and the Palatine – and here their work still stood. The Cloaca Maxima and its brother under the Circus kept the centre of Rome habitable and its institutions working. The Great Drain sucked down standing and surface water, the overflow from fountains and aqueducts, sewage and rainwater.
Then last night some bastard had dragged up an access cover and chucked down a human head.
It was probably Asinia. Her skull had lodged on a sandbank, where a low beach of fine brown silt jutted into the shallow current.
The condition was too poor for even somebody who had known her to be certain, though some hair and facial flesh survived. Rats had been here in the night. I was prepared to make an identification despite that. There were other black women in Rome, but as far as I knew only one had disappeared a couple of weeks ago.
We could be fairly accurate about the timing: this skull was put into the Cloaca last night. We were told the public slaves with their baskets had worked their way downstream cleaning out the channel yesterday, and they saw nothing then. She must have been dumped just before or just after her torso was disposed of. There was not enough depth of water in the Cloaca to have carried the torso down this way to the Tiber. Anyway, I remembered that it was found upstream of the outlet. It must have been thrown into the river direct, off the embankment or over the parapet of a bridge, the Aemilian probably.
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