'The Balbinus exercise is finished, Falco. He's dead and we wouldn't want to be accused of harassment. What surveillance team?'
Rubella was an ex-chief centurion, with twenty years of legionary experience behind him and now in command of a thousand hard-bitten ex-slaves who formed his fire-fighting cohort. He had a shorn head, a stubbly chin, and still, dark eyes that had witnessed unreasonable amounts of violence. He liked to think of himself as a dangerous spider twitching the strands of a large and perfectly formed web. I reckoned he thought too much of himself, but I made sure never to underestimate or cross the man. He was no fool. And he wielded a great deal of power in the district where I lived and worked.
I sat down in his office uninvited, leaned back in a relaxed manner, and placed my boots gently on the rim of his officer- quality work table, letting my heel nudge his silver inkwell as if I might deliberately knock it off.
'What team? The surveillance outfit that any intelligent tribune like yourself, Marcus Rubella, will have installed to observe the Balbinus widow, Cornella Flaccida.'
Rubella's brown eyes dawdled on his desk set. His long army career had left him with a respect for equipment; it persisted even now that he held a post where officially there was none. He always kept his inkpot full and his sand tray topped up. A jerk of my insolent foot could make a fine mess of his office. I smiled at him like a man who had no intention of doing it. He looked uneasy.
'I cannot comment on any ongoing investigation, Falco.' 'That's all right. Stuff your comments; I'm not the clerk who edits the Daily Gazette searching for a sensational paragraph. I just want to know where Flaccida has parked herself. It's in your long-term interests.' I could rely on that argument to find favour here. Rubella was a born officer. He never moved unless it was in his own interests, but if it was he jumped.
'What's the score?'
I came clean. He was a professional and I respected that too much to mess him about. Anyway, offering to share a confidence always bothered him, which was pleasing enough. 'Flaccida has had a big fight with her son-in-law, dopey Florius. She's bunked off from home. Dim little Milvia thinks the aqueduct killer has nabbed her mama – nonsense of course. The aqueduct killer likes his victims juicier; that's the one thing about him we do know.'
'So how far have you got?' asked Rubella. 'Is it true a severed head washed up in the Cloaca yesterday?'
'Not quite what the excellent Etruscan engineers originally allowed for – yes, it's true. And a torso in the Tiber the same morning. To tell the truth we seem to be getting nowhere – and that's with full co-operation from all cohorts of the vigiles, and two separate investigations under way. The one for the Curator of the Aqueducts appears to have run into the ground completely; I'm not sorry to hear it, since it's being led by the Chief Spy.'
Rubella snorted quietly. 'You don't like him.'
'I just don't approve of his methods, his attitude, or the fact that he's allowed to pollute the earth… The team I'm on -' Tactfully, I omitted to specify that I was working with Petronius, whom Rubella himself had suspended from duty. 'My team does have a few leads. I'm just off to Tibur with the ex-Consul in charge. Frontinus; do you know him?' No; one up to me. 'Some missing sections of corpses have apparently turned up. Maybe you can tell me, Rubella – what's the set-up for law enforcement out there?'
'In Latium?' The tribune spoke of the countryside with a townsman's disgust. He was scathing about its local administration too: 'I suppose the better villages may have someone like a duovir who organises a posse if they happen to be beset by particularly virulent chicken-rustlers.'
'In foreign provinces the army does the job.'
'Not in sacred Italy, Falco. We are a nation of free men; can't have soldiers giving orders – people might ignore them, and how would the poor lads feel? There's a cohort of the Urban Guard out at Ostia, but that's an exception because of the port.'
'Protecting the newly arrived corn supply,' I added. 'There are Urbans at Puteoli too, for the same reason.'
Rubella looked annoyed at my knowing so much. 'You won't find much regular policing anywhere else.'
'It stinks.'
'They claim there's no crime in the country.'
'And all their goats have human heads, and their horses can swim under the sea!'
'The Campagna's wild – and the worst thing about it is the people who live there. That's why you and I inhabit the big city, Falco, where nice friendly fellows in red tunics ensure we can sleep safe at night.'
This was a romantic view of the vigiles and their effectiveness, but he knew that.
I could cope with Latium. Unknown to Rubella I had spent half my childhood there. I knew the right way up to plant garlic. I knew that mushrooms grow nicely in cowpats, but best not to mention it when you serve them. And he was right; I preferred Rome.
I went back to my original enquiry. 'I doubt if Flaccida has been abducted by a killer. He would have to be brave – and sharp, too. Petronius Longus would probably say we should suspect Florius of wanting her dead. He has his fingers in the gangs now, so he could try to organise it. And he has a motive a mile high. My own cynical theory is that Milvia herself would like to see her nagging parent out of the way -'
'How about Petro?' joked Rubella. 'I always thought he was big, and quiet – and deep!'
'He'd like to see the back of the old hag, but he'd rather catch her out in a felony and throw her to a judge. Milvia's story is that she wants Petronius to find out where her darling mother is. If I can tell her the old bitch is safe, it helps keep the young girl away from Petro.'
'Is it true that somebody put him on his back?' Rubella usually knew the score of any draughts game on his patch.
'Florius heard about the affair. Flaccida told him; that's why they had their bust-up. He decided to make his presence felt at last.'
'Rome can do without Florius thinking big.' The thought of Florius flexing his muscles was sufficient to worry Rubella. Will it affect Petro's attitude to the woman?'
'We can only hope so.'
'You don't sound optimistic.'
I had known Petro a long time. 'Well, I do believe he wants his job back.'
'Funny way of showing it. I gave him an ultimatum, which he seems to have ignored.'
'And you know that,' I pointed out gently, 'because Petronius has been seen going to Milvia's house – by your men. Ever since the Balbinus trial you have had a full-time set of peepers following every move made by Flaccida. But then presumably when she flew away, your man tightened his boot-thongs and followed her to her new roost?'
'I've had to call them off,' Rubella complained. 'She's too clever to give us any leads. It's too expensive watching her – and without Petronius Longus I'm seriously short of manpower.'
'So did you call off the surveillance before she did her flit? Or have the Fates finally smiled on me for once?'
He enjoyed keeping me waiting. Then he grinned. 'They pull out at the end of today's shift.'
I lifted my feet from his table, carefully avoiding his inkpot and sand tray. To add emphasis, I leant forwards and adjusted their positions slightly, aligning them neatly. I don't know whether the bastard felt any gratitude for my restraint. But he did give me an address for Cornella Flaccida.
She had taken herself an apartment in the Vicus Statae, below the Esquiline, near the Servian Walls. To reach it, I had to walk down past the apsidal end of the Circus, through places which had featured so strongly in our hunt for the aqueduct killer: past the Temple of the Sun and Moon, through the Street of the Three Altars, around the Temple of the Divine Claudius. I detoured via the Street of Honour and Virtue and called in hoping to see Marina; she was out. Knowing Marina, I was not surprised.
Flaccida's new doss was a second-floor spread in a clean apartment block. When her husband was convicted and his wealth forfeited to the Treasury, she would have been allowed to keep any money that she could prove was her own – her dowry, for instance, or any purely personal inheritance. So a
lthough she was claiming to be destitute, she had already set herself up with slaves, beaten black and blue as her staff always were, and basic furniture. The whole show had been decorated with co-ordinating frescos and the kind of Greek-style vases that are turned out in sets in Southern Italy for householders who just want to fill up space aesthetically without the bother of hunting in flea-markets. It looked as if Flaccida had established her bolthole some time previously. I bet neither Milvia nor Florius had ever been told it was here.
She was in. I could tell that because her vigiles tail was lurking in a street food shop opposite. Pretending I didn't know his presence was supposed to be a secret, I called out and waved to him. Flaccida probably knew he was there. If the surveillance was about to be lifted, blowing his cover could do no harm in any case.
I was allowed in, if only to prevent me alarming the neighbours. It was not a home where one was offered sesame cakes and mint tea. Just as well. I would have felt unsafe accepting anything into which poison could have been stirred.
To celebrate her freedom from the younger generation, the doughty dame must just have had her hair touched up, in not quite the same blonde as its previous shade. She lay sprawled on an ivory couch, wearing garments in clashing purple and deep crimson whose purchase must have made a large number of fullers and dyers extremely happy. When she sent this outfit to the laundry there was going to be an outcry from other customers whose clothes came back streaky after the hideous colours bled.
She made no attempt to rise and greet me. That may have been because her shoes had platform soles several inches deep which must have been crippling to stand or walk on. Or maybe she thought I wasn't worth it. Well, the feeling was mutual.
'This is a surprise! Cornella Flaccida, I'm delighted to see you alive and well. The word is you've been grabbed for dissection.'
'Who by?' Flaccida obviously supposed it was some underworld enemy. She must have plenty.
'Could be anyone, don't you think? So many people harbour a fantasy of hearing that you've been tortured and massacred -'
'Oh, you always get do-gooders!' She rasped with laughter that set my teeth on edge.
'My money would be on Florius or Milvia – though oddly enough it was your daughter who sent out the bloodhound. Her affection for you is so great, she's actually employing me. I shall have to report to her that you are flourishing – though I don't necessarily have to reveal your whereabouts.'
'How much?' she demanded wearily, assuming I wanted a bribe to keep quiet.
'Oh, I couldn't take money.'
'I thought you were an informer?'
'Let's say, I'll be perfectly happy if you join the general move in your family to lay off my good friend Lucius Petronius. I'm just relieved I don't have to add you to the women who have been hacked to pieces and dumped in the aqueducts.'
'No,' Flaccida agreed, unmoved. 'You wouldn't want to see me grinning up at you from a fountain bowl. And I don't want to come plopping out in the hot room of some men's baths, giving the bastards an excuse to make dirty cracks.'
'Oh, don't worry,' I assured her. 'This killer likes his morsels young and fresh.'
XLVII
Making arrangements and saying goodbye took longer for a fortnight away than it did when we left Rome for six months. My choice would have been not to tell anyone, but there were dangers in that. Apart from the mood of suppressed hysteria in Rome which might cause people to report that the whole family must have been snatched by the aqueduct killer, the weather was still warm and we didn't want my mother to pop in and leave half a sea-bass for us in our best room, with no lid on the plate.
That doesn't mean I did notify Ma. Instead I asked my sister Maia to tell her, after we had gone. Ma would have loaded us down with parcels to take to Great-Auntie Phoebe on the family farm. The Campagna rolls round south and eastern Rome in a gigantic are from Ostia to Tibur, but in Ma's mind only the dot on the Via Latina where her mad brothers lived ever counted. Telling her that we were not going anywhere near Fabius and Junius would be like banging my head on a log-chopping block. For Ma, the only reason for going into the country was to bring back choice crops extracted for free from startled relatives whom you hadn't seen in years.
I was really going for wine. There was no point at all in making a trip to the Campagna simply to chase after a maniac who killed women. Latium was where a Roman boy went when his cellar was low.
'Get some for me!' croaked Famia, Maia's husband, who was a soak. As usual he made no attempt to pay for it. I winked at my sister to let her know I had no intention of complying, though I would probably bring back some cabbages so she could make him hangover cures.
'Artichokes, please,' said Maia. 'And some baby marrows if they're still available.'
'Excuse me, I'm supposed to be going to catch a pervert.'
'According to Lollius, he has already solved that case for you.'
'Don't tell me anyone has started taking Lollius seriously.'
'Only Lollius himself ' Maia had a dry way of insulting her sisters' husbands. Her only blind spot was her own, and that was understandable. Once she let herself notice Famia's deficiencies the rest of us would be in for a lengthy diatribe. 'How's Petronius?' she asked. 'Is he going with you?'
'He's been laid up by the criminal world's society for the preservation of marriages – a smart group of lads with strict moral consciences who see themselves as the thunderbolt of Jupiter. They knocked him about so badly I'm hoping that when his black eyes clear up again he'll march straight back to Arria Silvia.'
'Don't bet on it,' scoffed Maia. 'He may bang on the door – but will she open up? Last I heard, Silvia was making the best of her loss.'
'What does that mean, sis?'
'Oh, Marcus! It means her husband did the dirty, so she dumped him, and now she's been seen going around with a new escort.'
'Silvia?'
Maia gave me a hug. For some reason she always regarded me as a winsome innocent. 'Why not? When I saw her, she looked as if she was having the most fun for years.'
My heart sank.
'How's your poetry?' If Maia was trying to cheer me up with this bright enquiry after my hobby (which I knew she ridiculed) the ploy failed.
'I'm thinking of holding a public recitation sometime soon.'
'Juno and Minerva! The sooner you leave for the country the better, dear brother!'
'Thanks for the support, Maia.'
'I'm always ready to save you from yourself.'
I had one minor task to complete. I could not face an hour of twittering from Milvia, so I refused to visit her house. I wrote a terse report, to which Helena attached a bill for my services, payable on receipt. I assured the girl I had seen her mother, and spoken to her personally. I said Flaccida was well and had enrolled herself for a series of speculative lectures on the natural sciences, from which she did not wish to be disturbed.
That done, my next call was to Petronius at his aunt's house, a trip I was required to make in company with our earnest supervisor, the ex-Consul. His idea of management was to check up personally on staff who might be malingering. Once again I had suggested Frontinus come in plain clothes, lest he cause Petro's wheezing Aunt Sedina to expire with excitement at the idea of having such an eminent man sitting on the edge of a bed in her house and examining her errant nephew. Instead, Sedina greeted me warmly, then treated my companion as if she assumed he was my shoe-changing slave. I was honoured with the visitor's bowl of almonds to munch, but I let the Consul have one or two.
When we first walked in I saw that my old friend looked even worse now the bruises and swellings had reached the glorious stage. He was covered in so many rainbows that he could have played Iris on stage. He was also conscious, and sufficiently himself to greet me with a barrage of obscenities. I let him get it out of his system, then stepped aside so he could see Frontinus lurking behind me, bearing a flagon of medicinal cordial. As consuls go, he was well brought up. I had taken grapes. That gave something for Pet
ro to chew on as he fell gloomily silent in the presence of the great.
Small talk is difficult with an invalid who has only himself to blame. We were hardly going to humour him by discussing his symptoms. Wondering how he could ever have caught his disease was out too. Stupidity is an ailment nobody talks about openly.
Frontinus and I made the mistake of confessing we had come to say farewell before a junket to Tibur. This immediately gave Petro the idea that he would hire a litter and come along with us. He could still hardly move; he would be useless. Still, it might be good to remove him from any danger of renewed attacks from Florius – and I was quite pleased to put him out of Milvia's reach too. His aunt soon stopped being put out in case her own hospitality wasn't good enough, and came round to thinking that fresh country air was just what her big daft treasure needed. So we were stuck with him.
'All very well, but it won't help Lucius Petronius get back together with his wife,' said Helena, when I told her afterwards.
I said nothing. I had been to the Campagna with that rascal before. Grape-gathering with Petronius on various relatives' farms had taught me exactly how he intended to convalesce: Petro's idea of a nice country holiday was lying in the shade of a fig tree with a rough stone jar of Latium wine, and getting his arms around a buxom country girl.
Our final venture was to walk over to the Capena Gate to see Helena's family. Her father was out, taking his elder son on a vote-catching visit to some other senators. Her mother seized our baby with a rather public display of affection, implying that she was displeased with other members of her tribe. Claudia Rufina seemed very quiet. And Justinus only made a brief appearance looking serious, then slid off someplace. I where by himself. Julia Justa told Helena he was trying to reject the idea of entering the Senate, even though his papa had mortgaged himself deeply to make election funds available; the son had now been sentenced to take an improving trip abroad.
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