XL
We separated and approached from two directions. It was still light. The day's heat had diminished slightly, but blue sky still soared over the marbled bank, the Tiber, and the low hills opposite. The frenetic hum of city life had lost a little of its persistence as businesses slowed down and individuals thought about going to the baths. Those bath houses that had already opened would have just allowed admittance to their outer porticoes. Stokers were busy raising a smoke, ready for the formal entry to the changing rooms when the bell rang. There was plenty of banging and shouting, which carried further across the water as the last boat relays brought goods up to the Emporium from Ostia, making the weary stevedores curse as they longed to down tools and bunk off to wine shops.
Surveillance could not be easy. My house had no side or back approaches. The front looked straight out across the Tiber over the Transtiberina slums, towards the old Naumachia where Augustus had staged mock-sea-battles. Nobody here kept topiary in terracotta pots, suitable to hide behind, because if we did night-time drunks just rolled them over the road and pushed them in the river. Occasionally carts were parked, but as the Embankment was a main thoroughfare and a commercial artery, the street aediles had them moved to avoid congestion. All an observer could do was hang around in the road chewing a bread roll, hoping I would not appear in person and spot him. Last time the two so-called Melitans were watching us, the whole family used to wave at them as we came and went. Even the dog once ran up to wag her tail and say hello.
Albia was right. He was there. One of them, on his own. I wondered where his brother was. Maybe the two agents were taking turns – - or if Anacrites was thoroughly obsessed with us, the other might be outside Petro and Maia's apartment. We would have to find out. My sister would become hysterical if she thought the spy was having her watched.
What we did next was totally unplanned. Petronius and I had been in this kind of dark situation once before, in Britain. An officer who betrayed our legion had to be dealt with. Justice was done. Maybe it gave us a taste for hard revenge. I for one had hoped we'd never find ourselves in such a situation again, but when we ended up here on the Embankment with the spy's agent, neither Petro nor I thought twice.
The man saw me coming, as I walked directly up to him. He was considering resistance when Petro tapped him on the shoulder from behind. We were already too close for him to run or fight. So we had him. We simply took him into custody.
At the time we presumed he thought Anacrites would rescue him. Perhaps he did think that. Perhaps we did. He may have expected we would merely argue about the surveillance, at worst throw a few punches, then order him to stop harassing me. That may even have been what we initially intended.
We searched him. It was no surprise to find that he was carrying: four knives of different sizes plus a short piece of rope that was only suitable for strangulation. We kept him standing in the road while we stripped him of this armoury, not bothering to be polite, though since it was a public place, we were not particularly brutal. He grunted a bit. Petro and I were feeling our way towards a decision.
Once we made him safe, we took him into my house. He had not expected that. Neither had we, to be honest; it seemed to follow on naturally from the search process. In this way we took him off the street and out of sight very rapidly – and we saved Petronius the potential awkwardness of imprisoning one of the spy's men at the station house. As soon as we stepped inside and the front door closed, everything became intensely serious.
We put him in a downstairs room. It was one of the damp ones I reserved for summer storage. In August he would not develop asthma or foot rot. The walls and door were thick. I pointed out that nobody would hear him call for help. Then we gagged him anyway. By this time, the black implications were growing. For him, there could now be no happy ending. For us, too, there was no going back.
We worked quietly. He endured it with resignation. This would not be a job for the vigiles punishment officer, Sergius and his metal-tanged whip; we would give it our personal treatment. The agent was an unimpressive specimen, but it was soon clear he would be professional. We bound his arms behind his back, tied his ankles together, then picked him up like a long parcel and roped him carefully to the top of a heavy bench, face up. We turned the bench on its end so he hung upside down, then left him to think about his situation while we went for refreshments and warned all my household that the room was out of bounds. Albia would probably have rushed straight in there, but she was out on one of her long solo walks.
Helena was apprehensive, though we tried to avoid her concern. She could tell Petro and I were beginning to feel raw. We had no regrets about our capture, but we had put ourselves in a grim deep hole. Helena drew herself up and said, 'I live here with very young children. I want to know what you are intending to do to this man.'
'Ask him questions.' Ask him questions in a particular way, a way that would produce answers – - eventually.
'And if he refuses to answer?'
'We'll improvise.'
'How long should it take?'
'Perhaps a few days, love.'
'Days! You are going to hurt him, aren't you?'
'No. There's no point.'
'Am I to provide food and drink for him?'
'That won't be necessary.'
'I wish you meant he won't be here that long.'
'No. We don't mean that.'
'You cannot starve him.' We could. With this kind of man, we would have to. And that was just the start.
'Well, maybe a bowl of delectable soup, with an aromatic scent,' suggested Petronius with a smile. 'After two or three days…' To stand in the room and tantalise.
'What about toilet facilities?' Helena demanded angrily.
'Good thinking! A bucket and a large sponge would be wonderful, please.' We would clean up as we went. Petro and I had fathered babies; we could look after a prisoner hygienically. A regime of squalor has been known to work, but Helena was right; this was our house.
Our first conversations with him were civilised.
'Anacrites sent you – agreed? How long have you known him?'
'Couldn't say.'
'I can check the payroll. I have contacts.'
'Couple of years.'
'Who is the other fellow I've been seeing with you? A brother of yours, I'm thinking.'
'Could be.'
'Where is he?'
'Gone to see his wife.'
'Where's that?'
'Where he lives.'
'Don't be funny with us. You two look like twins.'
'And you two look like donkey-fuckers.'
'I'll overlook that, but don't push us. Do you have a name?'
'Can't tell you.'
'Are you from Melita?'
'Where?'
'Small island.' Ma had a Melitan lodger once. Thinking about it, at close quarters, this man was not olive-skinned, hairy or stumpy enough. He was hard to place – - not from the East, but not from as far north as Gaul or Britain either.
'Don't insult me. I'm from Latium,' he claimed.
'You don't look like it.'
'How would you know?' A generation back, on Mother's side, I was from Latium myself. His accent was right: Latin, though countrified. This was almost the first occasion I had heard him speak. Three-quarters of Rome sounded just the same.
'What part of Latium?'
'Can't tell you.'
'Could be anywhere from Tibur to Tarracina. Lanuvium? Praeneste? Antium? Come on, what's the harm? Be specific'
Silence.
'At least he never says, Find out yourself!' Petronius weighed in. 'He's being wise. That only leads to a big kicking.'
'Not our style.'
'No; we're soft little cupids.'
'So far.' I think we knew we were on the cusp of surprising ourselves.
'He doesn't like you, Falco. Perhaps he has a point. Let me talk to him. I expect he wants to deal with a professional.'
'Just don't thump him. You'll
defile my house.'
'Who needs to touch him? He's going to be sensible. Aren't you, sunshine? Tell us your name now.'
'Find out yourself
Oh dear. Well, Petronius Longus had warned him.
We left him soon afterwards. It was dinnertime. For us.
XLI
We continued. One at a time, then in tandem. Long pauses. Short pauses. For the agent, existence became concentrated on events in this small room. When Petronius and I left the door open briefly, so he heard a child's cry or a rattle of pots in the distance, it must have seemed other-worldly.
'What's your name?'
'Can't tell you.'
'Won't, you mean. Why did Anacrites order you to watch my house?'
'Only he knows.'
'We may have to ask him, then. So much easier all round, if we can stop him knowing you were so easily spotted and caught… No, I'm wrong. He must realise by now. How soon do you think he missed you? Can't have taken long. Where is he, I wonder? What's he going to do about you? You would think Praetorian Guards would rip in here to grab you back for him. 'Has he given up on you? Perhaps he's away – could he have gone to the Pontine Marshes, working the Modestus case? Looking for the Claudii – - have you heard about them?'
'Can't tell you.'
Petronius Longus suddenly spun the cameo in the air. 'Did you have this?'
'Never seen it before.'
'You or your brother?'
'Better ask him.'
'Now I'm depressed, Falco – imagine having to talk to two of them!'
'Suits me. One each. You could take yours to the station house, give him a real thrashing, use your implements. I could keep one here to play with.'
'Yours would talk first. You wear people out with your wonderful kindness. Villains cave in, weeping. They want the brutality they are used to. They understand that. You being their lovely benefactor just confuses people, Falco.'
'No, I think people respect humanity. After all, we could pull out his fingernails and crush his balls. Instead, what does he get? Moderate language and a pleasant manner. Look at this one – he admires restraint, don't you? – Oh don't hit him again; he's going to tell us everything without that… I still think he and the other one are twins. Twins can communicate through thought, you know. I bet his brother's sweating. What's your name again?'
'Can't tell you.'
'What's your brother's name?'
'Can't tell you.'
'Where did this cameo come from?'
Long silence.
XLII
Once, I thought he had been weeping while we left him alone. On my return, his eyes were dull, as if in the long interval of solitude, he had been remembering old pain. But his resistance stiffened. Someone had spent years conditioning this man. We could not touch him. He would endure all, without weakening and collapsing. He would ride it out, even curbing signs of hostility, until we gave up.
We were tiring of the game. He had stopped refusing to tell us things. He stopped talking to us at all.
'I'm going to throw a bucket of cold water at him.'
'No don't do that. This is my house, Petro. I don't want water everywhere. You go and have a bite. There's some really good goat's cheese, just came from the market this morning, strong and salty. And I've put out a flask of Alban wine; believe me, you really need to try it. Leave me with our friend here.'
Petronius left the room.
'Now, here we are, cosy and private. How about you tell me who you are and what you do for Anacrites?'
No answer.
I threw a bucket of cold water at him.
XLIII
A development. Helena Justina had been brooding ever since we first brought the man into the house. Now she braced herself, waited until everyone else was preoccupied, then came down to see what was happening.
We had the bench standing properly at that time. He was looking up at the ceiling, or he would have been, had he not appeared to be asleep. Petronius and I were standing back, arms folded, thinking up our next move. At that quiet moment, Helena must have been surprised by the ordinary atmosphere. She may have felt relieved by the lack of violence. Then she realised it was more sinister than it appeared.
Petronius and I greeted her affably. Outwardly normal, we could have been two men in a workshop who had been preoccupied with a big carpentry project; she could be the woman of the house just making sure two simple lags were not drinking nettle beer brewed in a billycan or reading pornographic scrolls. Our sleeves were rolled up high. Our attitude was businesslike; though drained by days of concentrated, unsuccessful effort, we were feeling weary.
The man on the bench seemed aware that Helena had entered the room. His eyelids flickered, though his eyes stayed closed. She stood there: more gaunt facially since she lost the baby, tall, positive though wary, dressed in drifting summer white, wafting a light silver-blue stole, as cool as refreshing sorbet chilled in a rich man's snow-cellar. He might smell her citrus perfume. He must hear the quiver of her bangles and her clear voice.
Observant and intelligent, she absorbed the scene. I watched her looking for signs of what we had been doing – while dreading what she might learn. There was nothing to see. Everything looked clean and neat. She focused on the man. She saw his exhaustion, how hunger, thirst, isolation and fear were bringing him close to hallucination, despite his ferocious will to resist. He had to fight now, to stop his mind wandering.
Helena realised how our task had dispirited Petronius and me too, how our power over the helpless man would soon defile us. Most men would have been corrupted from the moment the prisoner was taken and tied up, his helplessness freeing them from moral restraint. Even we had to struggle to avoid being most men.
'This is too brutal. I want you to stop.' The words were firm, but Helena's voice shook.
'We can't, love. It's about long-term sanction of bad neighbours' bullying. It's about murder, and official cover-ups of murder. He seems to be involved. If his activities have an innocent explanation, he only has to tell us.'
'You are being bullies too.'
'Necessarily.'
'He is close to collapse.'
'He has endured worse, we can tell.'
'Then you won't break him,' Helena said.
We ourselves were starting to dread that. We had learned that he had been ready for the ordeal. He had put himself into a state of passivity. His background must be bad. His past experience hardly showed physically; there were no old marks or scars. We could not deduce what his previous life consisted of, though we could tell he knew humiliation and deprivation. When we made threats, he knew that situation too. He was in many ways quite ordinary, a face in any crowd. He was like us, and yet unlike us.
Helena had come with a prepared speech. Petro and I stood at rest and heard her out.
'I have only agreed to what you have been doing because Anacrites is so dangerous. I am horrified by what you have done to this man. You have toyed with him, teased him, tortured him. You have obliterated his personality. This is inhumane. It goes on for days, he never knows what will happen in the end – Marcus, Lucius, can you explain to me what difference there is between your mistreatment of this man, and the way that the killers of Julius Modestus abducted and abused him?'
'We have not used knives on him,' said Petro bleakly. The urge to keep up pressure on the agent got the better of him: 'Well – not yet.' He gestured to the hideous collection we had taken from our abductee. 'Those are his. Assume he carried them to use.'
It was an instinctive response, not the real answer. I knew Helena, loved her, respected her enough to find a better reply: 'There is a difference. We have a legitimate purpose – the general good. Unlike the killers, we don't relish this. And unlike their victims, this man can easily stop what is happening. All he has to do is answer us.'
Helena still stood there rebelliously.
'He has a choice,' Petronius reinforced me.
'He looks half dead, Lucius.'
; 'That makes him half alive. He is better off than a corpse – by a long way.'
Helena shook her head. 'I don't approve. I don't want him to die here in my house. Besides, you are running a huge risk. Surely Anacrites could burst in to rescue him any minute?'
The man on the bench had opened his eyes; he was now watching us. Had mention of Anacrites revived him? Or did Helena's spirited speech awaken hopes he had not known he harboured?
Helena saw the alteration. She moved closer, inspecting him. His light-skinned, now heavily stubbled face had a faint scatter of liver spots or freckles. His nose was upturned; his eyes were pale, a washed-out hazel colour. He could be, as he had told us, from Italy, though he looked different from true dark-eyed Mediterraneans.
In a much lower voice, Helena spoke to him directly. 'Anacrites will not be coming for you, will he? For some reason he has abandoned you.'
The man closed his eyes again. He shook his head very slightly, in resignation.
Helena breathed in. 'Listen, then. All they really want to know is where that cameo jewel originated.'
At last he spoke. He said something to her, speaking almost inaudibly.
She moved away again and looked at us. 'He says it was found in undergrowth, out on the marshes.' Helena walked to the door. 'Now you two, I want him out of here, please.'
She refrained from saying, That was easy, wasn't it?
We refrained from pointing out he could be lying; he probably was.
When she had gone, Petronius asked him, in a quiet, regretful tone of voice, 'I don't suppose if we took you to the marshes, you would point out the spot where you say this cameo was found? Or tell us more about the context?'
The man on the bench smiled for once, as if he let himself enjoy our understanding; he shook his head sadly. He lay quite still. He seemed to believe that the end was coming. It looked as if he had decided there was no hope now, never had been any.
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