Nemesis - Falco 20

by Lindsey Davis

  Baffled by the spy’s stupidity, I shook my head. ‘He is crazy. I suppose he may be struggling to contain them. On an off-day, he may even stupidly have told them to provide a corpse north of the Tiber to distract attention from the Modestus killing on the other side of Rome.’

  Helena had been thinking fast. ‘Anacrites cannot have known originally what these men were. He must have taken them on to work for him - which we think was a couple of years ago -’ That was what Pius or Virtus, whichever we had held captive, had told Petro and me, though I did not remind her of the circumstances. ‘He found out later. Then he may have been attracted by a hint of danger attached to them. You know how he is; he would never admit that he made a mistake in hiring them.’

  I agreed. ‘When he learned the truth, he would simply convince himself he had chosen ideal staff. He would think having a colourful background made them just right for his work’s “special nature”.’

  Justinus barked with laughter. ‘So, being perverted murderers equates with “special intelligence skills”, does it?’

  Aelianus had once been a recruitment target; he knew the spy’s sales patter: ‘Anacrites maintains that spying is a little over the edge of legality. That’s exciting. He sees himself as cunning and dangerous. He gloats that he can get away with using assassins “for the good of the state” - - well, think about Perella.’

  I thought it a good diagnosis: ‘He would tell himself he could control them. But when he came back from Istria and discovered the Modestus murder had drawn attention to the Claudii, faced with them getting out of hand, he tried to take personal control.’

  ‘Marcus, I’m afraid your involvement must have made it all worse for him,’ Helena told me ruefully.

  ‘Too right. Not only must he bury the problem before the Claudii are exposed, he has to distract me.’

  Justinus blew his cheeks out. ‘And there’s no chance for us to expose his position, you know. He will only accuse us of interfering in some covert operation, endangering the Empire.’

  ‘We are stuffed,’ said Aelianus. He was young. He gave up easily.

  I was older. I knew how the world worked. I was starting to think he had the right idea.

  Petronius let out a grim laugh. ‘Well, one of the twins is dealt with. Either Pius or Virtus has been removed from society - - without us even realising who he was.’

  I myself would not have mentioned that again. Helena glowered. The Camilli sensed awkwardness and did not ask what Petro meant.

  Of course it explained why Pius or Virtus would never admit his name to us - and why Anacrites also glossed over his men’s identity. It also explained why the agent - - child of a cold, controlling father and a remote, neglectful mother, growing up with sadistic brothers - had managed to resist our interrogation.

  And it explained the knives he carried. I tried not to look at Helena Justina as we both grasped that I had brought a perverted killer right into our house. I felt queasy remembering we had kept him here, in the same building as my wife and children.

  Petronius may have picked up what Helena and I were thinking. He lowered his voice. ‘So, Marcus Didius, my old tentmate, who volunteers to confront Anacrites?’

  ‘Not us - not yet,’ I answered.

  Ever cautious, Petro nodded too.

  LII

  Claudius Virtus lived in the Transtiberina. Petronius had found the address in the vigiles’ lists. This was the Fourteenth District, a hike across the Tiber, an area I had always distrusted. It had a long history as a haunt of immigrants and outsiders, which gave it a reputation as a refuge for low-grade hustlers. Officially part of Rome for several generations, it retained a tang of the alien. Its dank air was imbued with murky hints of cumin and rue; alive with harsh, foreign voices, its dark, narrow lanes were populated with people in exotic cloaks who kept strange birds in cages up above on their windowsills. Carts here regularly tried to ignore the curfew. The vigiles, whose station house was just off the Via Aurelia, rarely made their presence felt, even to tackle the soft option of traffic nuisance. This area was attached to Rome, yet kept from full participation by more than the yellow-grey loop of the Tiber. The Transtib would always stay separate.

  As I walked with Petro, Aulus and Quintus, I was still remembering that night at the spy’s house. ‘I saw someone else. Just a glimpse. I think he had been with the two agents. Could it have been Nobilis? Nobody we’ve questioned seems to have spotted him, though the chef did say Pius and Virtus asked for double portions with their meal - - that could have been a cover for their brother. I certainly saw enough used dishes for three.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘No good. He was too far away, and in a gloomy corridor. It was after dark by then, and Anacrites is mean with lamps.’

  ‘So who do you think it was, Falco?’

  ‘I don’t know - but don’t let’s forget him. According to the caterer’s chef, the third man was the one with the cameo.’

  Virtus rented a room above a row of crumbling shops. It was in the same building as the bar we chose when we arrived, immediately above us. If he had been there, he could have jumped through a window and landed right on Quintus. But there was a fifty-fifty chance he had gone away, and would not be coming back.

  The barman, who knew him, said Virtus had not lived there full-time for six months. He kept the place on, and had been coming back to check his stuff once a week. Not just lately, however.

  ‘Sounds as though he’s living in with a girlfriend? Keeping up with his rent because he thinks she’s going to throw him out. Or he may want to dump her?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. He’s married, I believe.’ That did not rule out Petro’s girlfriend theory. ‘Working in Rome to earn some cash, but he goes home.’

  ‘Where would “home” be?’

  ‘No idea, sorry.’ We knew: the Pontine Marshes. The wife’s name was Plotia. I had even met her. Petronius had searched the rustic shack where Virtus left her. Not much cash seemed to find its way back there.

  ‘Where else might he go?’

  ‘He mentioned a brother.’

  ‘Pius?’

  The barman shook his head. ‘Means nothing, sorry.’ He was very apologetic. According to Petro, as we went upstairs, the man in the apron should have been apologising for his lousy drink.

  Petronius shouldered in the door. He didn’t care if the occupant learned we were after him. The landlord could claim compensation; from the state of his building, he wouldn’t come around to notice the damage.

  It was a one-room apartment, its interior kept with the squalid housekeeping we recognised as the Claudius trademark. Flies lived here as subtenants; they soared about with the lethargic flight of insects that had gorged on unpleasant decay, close nearby. The smell in the room was familiar: an unclean, earthy odour I recalled from the spy’s house, in those mean corridor rooms where the Claudii were lodged.

  There was no space for four healthy adults. I volunteered to search, with Justinus. Petronius reluctantly agreed to wait downstairs in the bar with Aelianus.

  ‘It’s a simple room-search, Lucius. Let me handle it. Back off; you’re worse than Anacrites!’

  ‘I don’t want you to cock it up.’

  ‘Thanks, friend. Any time Quintus and I can shaft you in return, assume we’ll be available.’

  The ‘stuff’ Virtus came back to check was minimal. Apart from the landlord’s basic furniture - sagging bed, lopsided stool, a skinny old sack on the floor for a rug - - we found only a filthy foodbowl, empty wineskins, and a used loincloth which Aulus lifted up on the handle of a bald broom from the corridor then dropped in distaste.

  We found no trophies from killings. However, hidden behind the inevitable loose wall panel, there were more knives. These were bigger and nastier than the ones we took off the agent.

  After Quintus and I went downstairs again, Petronius insisted on going up to double-check.

  ‘Jove, he’s finicky!’

  ‘Doesn’t want to m
ake a mistake with the Urban Cohorts watching.’

  ‘Doesn’t trust you, Falco!’

  I asked more questions of the barman. This time he changed his story; he now remembered he had met the tenant’s brother. His wife had appeared, curious about us. He was short and sparely built; she was shorter and enormous. She had met the brother too. The fond couple engaged in a hot marital argument; the barman maintained the brother was a scruff and a shambles, which the wife doggedly disputed. ‘Kept himself nice. Good threads. Combed his hair.’ They went on disputing, until it almost sounded as if they had seen two different brothers. Given the numbers of Claudii, this was possible.

  ‘Fancied him?’ asked Aulus, cracking the grimace he used for charm.

  ‘Not likely - - he had funny eyes.’

  It was the wife who knew the real reason Virtus came back so regularly. ‘He’s one of Alis’ regulars. He comes every Thursday.’

  ‘Is Alis the local prostitute?’

  ‘Not her! Fortune-teller. Just around the corner. She does a bit of witchcraft when people want to pay for it. Thursday is her night for seances. Virtus always went.’

  As Petronius could not tear himself away from the room upstairs, I left the Camilli to wait for him. I strolled past a veg stall, a pot shop and a sponge bar, tripped around a corner by a fountain that was so dry its stone had cracked in the sun, and parked myself in a peeling doorway in order to inspect the fortune-teller’s. The place I had been told Alis lived in was anonymous. These women work by word of mouth, usually hoarse whispers passed on in the environs of unscrupulous temples. Anyone who has enough sixth sense to find a horoscope-hatcher, doesn’t need her services.

  After waiting a while, I went across and knocked. A frizzy baggage came to the door and admitted me. She was middle-aged and top heavy, wearing peculiar layers of clothes, over which were dried-flower wreaths with funny feathers sticking out of them. I expected a dead mouse to drop out any minute. The prevailing colour of her wardrobe was vermilion. It was amazing how many scarves and belts and under-tunics she had managed to acquire in that far-from-fashionable shade.

  She moved with a shuffle and was slow getting around. Only her eyes had that sly, kindly glint you find in folk whose livelihood depends on befriending people with no personality, banking on the possibility that the vulnerable might part with their life savings and have no relatives to ask questions.

  ‘My name’s Falco.’

  ‘What do you want, Falco?’

  ‘You can tell it’s not a love potion or a curse, then?’

  ‘I can tell what you are, sonny! You won’t fool me into drawing up a lifeline for the Emperor. I practise my ancient arts fully within the law, son. I pay my dues to the vigiles to leave me alone. And I don’t do poisons. Who sent you?’

  I sighed gently. ‘No fooling you, grandma! I work for the government; I want information.’

  ‘What will you pay?’

  ‘The going rate.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  I looked in my purse and showed her a few coins. She sniffed. I doubled it. She asked for treble; we settled on two and half.

  She toddled into a corner to brew herself some nettle tea before we started. I gazed around, impressed that one elderly woman could have collected so many doilies and corn dollies, so many horrible old curtains, so many amulets with evil eyes or hieroglyphs or stars. The air was thick with dust, every surface was crammed with eccentric objects, the high window was veiled. I bet every superstitious old woman from a two-mile radius came here for her special Thursdays. I bet half of them left her something in their wills.

  Nothing that smacked obviously of witchcraft was out on view. The desiccated claws and vials of toad’s blood must be behind the musty swathes of curtain.

  Eventually she settled down with her tea bowl and I learned Claudius Virtus was a regular at the seances. ‘He was interested in the Dark Side. Always full of questions - - I don’t know where he got his theories. From his own strange brain, if you ask me.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me what you do at your meetings?’

  ‘We try to contact the spirits of the dead. I have the gift to call them up from the Underworld.’

  ‘Really? And did Virtus ask about anyone in particular?’

  ‘Usually he watched the rest. He tried to talk to his mother once.’

  ‘Did she answer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why would that be?’

  Abruptly, Alis turned confiding: ‘I got the creeps, Falco. I don’t know why. I just felt I didn’t want to be in the middle of that conversation.’

  ‘You have some control then?’ I asked with a smile.

  The seer sipped her nettle tea, with the manners of a lady.

  She told me Virtus had never missed a meeting until a few weeks ago. His mother - Casta - had died a couple of years before, he told Alis; he claimed to be close to her and said all the family adored the woman.

  ‘My information is she was vicious,’ I said. ‘She had twenty children and was reputed to treat them all very coldly.’

  ‘That’s your answer,’ replied Alis comfortably. ‘It explains Virtus. He tells himself she was wonderful; he wants to believe it, doesn’t he? In his poor mind, his ma is a darling who loved him. He misses her now, because he wants her to have been someone he should miss. If you were to say to him what you just said to me about his mother, he’d deny it furiously - - and probably attack you.’ I believed that.

  Alis had winkled out of him that his father died before his mother, and that he had other relatives, some in Rome. ‘More than one?’

  ‘I gained that impression. He spoke of “the boys”.’

  ‘There are sisters too.’

  Alis shrugged. She knew about the twin, believed he lived not far away, but had never set eyes on him. Plotia, the wife, had never been mentioned. When I commented that I was not surprised, Alis pulled a face and nodded as if she knew what I meant. Of course I despised this woman and her arcane dealings - yet in her frumpy, frowsty way, she was a good judge of character; she had to be.

  ‘Did you think him capable of great violence?’

  ‘Aren’t all men?’

  Virtus had ceased coming to the meetings, without warning. I took this as evidence that he was the agent we had sent to a hard death in the mines.

  Alis put down her tea bowl. She sat motionless, as if listening. ‘I don’t feel we have lost him, Falco. He is still among those who wander the earth in body.’

  I said I was sure she knew more about that than me, then I made my farewells as politely as a sceptic could.

  This conversation had made me feel closer to Virtus now than in all the time Petronius and I had spent with him.

  LIII

  We men had a short case conference as we walked back towards the river. We would have preferred to stay at the bar, but that meant the helpful barman and his inquisitive wife would have listened. Anyway, Petro hated their drink.

  We agreed it was futile for us to tackle Anacrites. However, the time had come to explore whether any higher authorities would take an interest. Camillus senior was on friendly terms with the Emperor; the senator might speak on the subject next time he was chatting with Vespasian. It would be tricky: so tricky, I shied off it until we gathered better evidence though I instructed Aulus and Quintus to tell their father what we believed. We had convinced ourselves, but that was not the same as proof.

  Titus might be open to an approach, though his reputation varied from kind-hearted and affable to debauched and brutal. As commander of the Praetorians, he was Anacrites’ commander too; that could rebound on us. If we failed to persuade him the spy was compromised, we could unleash a violent backlash from Anacrites - all for nothing. Even if Titus believed us, it could look as if he had misjudged his man. Nobody wanted Titus Caesar as an enemy. His dinner parties were more fun than the spy’s - - but he exercised the power of life or death over people who upset him.

  I said I would have another word wi
th Laeta and Momus. All the others thought that an excellent idea. They went to a bar near the Theatre of Marcellus that Petro reckoned was really well worth visiting, while they waved me off to the Palace.

  I saw Laeta first, my preference. He did not turn me away. His method was to greet you with interest, listen gravely - then if your story was unwelcome politically, he let you down without a qualm. Unsurprisingly, he let me down.

  ‘It’s too thin. On what you’ve got, Falco, I don’t see this going anywhere. Anacrites will simply say he made a mistake when he employed those men, and thank you for pointing it out to him.’

  ‘Then he’ll get me for it.’

  ‘Of course. What do you expect with his background?’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘As far as I know, his background is the same as yours. An imperial slave who made good -in his case, for unfathomable reasons.’

  ‘He is bright,’ Laeta said tersely.

  ‘I’ve known pavement sweepers who could think and talk and grade dog turds to a system as they collected them - but such men don’t end up in senior positions.’

  ‘Anacrites was always known for his intellect - though he was more physical than most secretaries, which suits his calling. He had pliability; he could bend with the political breeze - which, when he and I were coming up the staff list, was a must!’

  ‘He adapted himself to the quirks of emperors, whether mad, half-mad, drunkard or plain incompetent?’

  ‘Still at it. Titus thinks well of him.’

  ‘But you don’t. You have a singer spying on him at home,’ I threw in.

  Laeta brushed it aside. ‘The same man who observes me for Anacrites! Suspicion is a game we all play. Nevertheless, Marcus Didius, if you find genuine proof of corruption, I am sure I can persuade the old man to act on it.’

  ‘Well, thanks! Tell me what you meant about the spy’s background,’ I persisted.

  Laeta gave me a fond shake of the head - but then what he said was enlightening: ‘Many of us feel he never fitted in. You compared him with me - - but my grandmother was a favourite of the Empress Livia; I have respected brothers and cousins in the secretariats. Anacrites came up the ladder by himself, always a loner. It gave him an edge, honed his ambition - - but he never shakes off his isolation.’