‘I’ve studied the works of Homer, if that’s what you mean, sir,’ he replied, with a puzzled look on his face.
‘No, the ballad, the one by Arctinus of Miletus. He was one of Homer’s pupils.’
‘Can’t say I’ve ever heard it, sir.’ Josephus cursed himself the moment the words left his mouth: he knew what was coming next. Sure enough, with a beatific smile the emperor raised the lyre and began to strum, singing in a high falsetto of King Priam gazing down on his burning city and of the rage of Athena at the rape of Cassandra by Ajax of Locris. At least he’s most of the way through the Trojan War, thought Josephus, if he’d started with the judgement of Paris, I could be here all night. For a moment his spirits rose as help, in the form of two palace officials, rushed onto the balcony with news of further outbreaks of fire in the eastern wing of the building, but the sulphurous look on Nero’s face at their interruption sent them scurrying away again.
Seizing his chance, with a quick, ‘Excuse me, sir, there’s something I must do,’ Josephus ran after them.
Before Nero had chance to call him back Josephus was out of earshot. The corridors of the palace had begun to fill with a haze of smoke and the smell of destruction was everywhere as he hurried down the steps to the Praetorian guardroom. There he found Giora who was toasting their success with the squad who’d raided the meeting. Peter was locked in a cell, scowling and cursing at anyone who came near. The detachment commander invited Josephus to join the party and so he went to find something to drink from.
On entering the stone-flagged pantry adjoining the kitchens he was surprised to see a balding, heavy-jowled man – he looked about sixty to Josephus – sitting on a stool with a half-empty Samian drinking vessel in one hand and his other cupping a strong, upward-tilted chin. What surprised him even more were the two broad crimson stripes – a colour the Romans called purple – that ran vertically from the shoulders to the bottom hem of the man’s tunic: the mark of a senator. ‘Can I be of assistance, sir?’ asked Josephus. ‘Are you lost?’
‘Lost? I wish I was,’ said the senator, looking up at him with sorrowful brown eyes. ‘I’ve been waiting down here for the last ten days.’
‘What are you waiting for? Perhaps I can help.’
He made a noise that was something between a snort and a laugh. ‘I think I’m past helping, young man. I’m waiting on the emperor’s pleasure: sooner or later I find out what he’s going to do with me.’
Josephus looked at him nonplussed. ‘But aren’t you? –’
‘A senator? Yes I am. Titus Flavius Vespasianus, better known as Vespasian.’
Josephus in turn introduced himself. ‘I thought you were governor of North Africa,’ he said.
‘I am,’ he replied, ‘Or rather I was until a few weeks ago. My tenure’s over and I was due to join the emperor’s personal staff until this happened.’
Curious, Josephus pulled up a stool and sat next to him. ‘If it’s not an impertinent question, sir, until what happened?’
Vespasian gave another ironic laugh. ‘Until I became so highly esteemed in Nero’s eyes that he invited me to one of his recitals.’ Their eyes met: fellow sufferers, there was no need for either of them to risk saying what they thought. ‘I’m not as young as I used to be, I hadn’t fully recovered from the voyage and, if I’m honest, I’d fortified myself for the ordeal – sorry, for the concert, with rather too much wine.’
‘And you fell asleep?’
‘Worse,’ said Vespasian, ‘I’m told I snored so loudly that I drowned out his singing. Anyway, Nero was furious and sent me down here to wait on his pleasure while he went down to Antium to give a private recital at his villa.’
‘If it’s any use, he got back yesterday,’ said Josephus.
‘Do you know him?’
Josephus chose his answer carefully. ‘I wouldn’t flatter myself that far, sir,’ he replied. ‘But I have the privilege of working directly for the emperor and he seems satisfied with what I do.’
‘I don’t suppose you could put a word in for me do you?’ asked Vespasian.
Josephus tried to hide his surprise; a senator asking a favour of a foreign hireling. He hesitated. ‘Er, I’ll do what I can, sir, it’s just –’
Vespasian looked him straight in the eye. ‘It’s just that you want to know what’s in it for you, isn’t that right, Josephus?’ He made no reply and the senator continued. ‘You can’t have too many friends in this city. Who you know is more important than what you know.’
‘The lady Poppaea said the same to me the other day, sir.’
Vespasian nodded. ‘Then she was right. Even emperors come and go. You help me out of this jam, young man, and you won’t be the loser for it. I have a long memory.’
‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ replied Josephus, getting to his feet. Despite the drunken barracking and cat-calls he declined the offer to join the celebration, and with a final glance into the cells at his father’s nemesis, retraced his steps along the maze of corridors towards the imperial apartments.
Chapter Twenty-four
Pompeii, the present day
The three men sat on the hard stone tiers of the Pompeii arena. Ahead of them to the north, just visible above a row of umbrella pines, the summit of Vesuvius loomed out of the haze. ‘Her number just keeps bouncing to voicemail,’ said Moretti. ‘I’ve left messages, sent her e-mails, tried to call the university. Nothing.’
Elvis and the bald one looked at each other. ‘OK, that’s good, just don’t overdo it,’ the former said. ‘Tell me, Francesco, how well do you know her colleagues at Oxford?’
He shrugged. ‘Not well. I met a few of them when I was over for a conference last year, but that’s all.’
‘How about this one?’ Moretti frowned as he studied the first photograph.
‘Never seen him before.’
‘This one?’
‘No.’
‘How about the third one?’
Moretti peered at the image: tall, overweight, middle-aged, florid English complexion, frizzy hair that looked as though it had been cut by the council, and dressed like a flood victim.
‘Definitely not,’ he replied, handing it back with a shake of his head. ‘I think I’d have remembered someone like that. ‘Where was this taken?’
‘Fiumicino. Two days ago.’
‘Who is he?’ asked Moretti.
‘That’s the problem,’ said the bald one. ‘We don’t know. She checked in as normal and was just picking her things up after going through security when this character greeted her like a long-lost uncle, said something about being on the same flight and then never left her side.’
‘So she bumps into a friend at the airport. It happens. What of it?’
‘What he means,’ cut in Elvis, ‘is that before our people could get close to her, she and this haystack disappeared out of sight. We’re not even sure she boarded the flight. If she did, she certainly didn’t go through the gate with the rest of the passengers. We’ve got lots of friends at Fiumicino – reliable people – and not only does Flora Kemble disappear into thin air but there’s no trace of a passenger fitting the description of her long-lost colleague boarding a flight that day either. Once is coincidence, twice stinks. We need your help, Francesco. Find out what she’s doing, what she knows, who she’s working with.’
Moretti had prepared what he was about to say. He’d lain awake in his stuffy flat the entire night endlessly rehearsing and refining it. He took a deep breath. ‘No, gentlemen, enough is enough. I’ve already told you everything I know and all of it’s true. You’ve offered to help me financially in order to get back with Anna and the kids. Don’t think I’m ungrateful…but I’ve been thinking –’
‘Clearly not thinking straight, Francesco –’ said Elvis.
‘Just let me finish. I’ve decided I don’t need your help any more and it’s clear that I can’t help you, so if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I’ve got work to do.’ He stood up to leave but the bald one caught h
im by the arm. In the other hand he held a semi-automatic pistol.
‘Just sit down and stop being so bloody silly. You were born in Naples, right?’
Moretti looked at him with contempt. ‘Sure. What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Everything. Now sit down.’ Moretti sat. ‘You of all people should know how things work round here. You’re forgetting that we’re the ones who decide when it’s over, not you. Co-operate with us and what we discussed as a loan could well become, let’s say… a gift. Screw us around and people near to you could get hurt.’
Moretti’s face went the same colour as the pale stonework of the arena, his hands bunched in rage. ‘You leave Anna out of this. If you’ve got a problem, you sort it out with me –’
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Elvis said with one of his crocodile smiles. He nodded to the bald one who slipped the gun back into his pocket. ‘You’re right you know,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Maybe you can’t help us, or maybe you don’t want to. Either way, all I’d ask is that before you go you take a look at some more photos.’ He handed Moretti an envelope. He recoiled as though it were toxic. ‘Go on, open it, it won’t bite you,’ Elvis said.
Moretti slid open the flap to reveal a deck of photographs all showing the same subject: Anna. Anna cycling alongside the river Po with their youngest child in a carrier on the back of the bike, Anna walking with the children in the Giardini Reali, Anna out shopping under the porticos of the Via Roma, Anna outside her parents’ house.
‘You bastards,’ he said, turning on them, his face a mask of pure, undiluted hatred. ‘Touch my family and I swear to you that I’ll –’
Elvis looked at him like something he’d just stepped in. ‘That you’ll do what, Francesco?’ his voice dripping with contempt. ‘Please remember who you’re talking to and don’t make silly threats. Just do as we ask; nobody gets hurt and I promise we’ll help you get your little family back together again. It’ll be just like old times, you’ll see. Now, first things first: we want you to find Miss Kemble for us.’
Without a word Moretti handed the envelope back to Elvis and lowered his head almost to between his knees, his thick black fringe flopping down over his face and hiding his tears.
***
Flora took a taxi for the short journey from Oxford station to her house near the Iffley road. It was all very odd: her front garden, far from being overgrown, had been tended and when she turned the key in the lock, instead of having to push the door against a mountain of junk mail, it swung open unhindered to show the envelopes neatly stacked on the hall table next to a vase of freshly-cut flowers. Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice, Flora thought, leaving her bags in the hall and making her way into the sitting room, her initial delight at the state of the house mingled with unease as to who could have let themselves in. Here, unseen hands had tidied, vacuumed and dusted, leaving nothing but the smell of furniture polish. She clapped her hand to her forehead and sighed with relief. You idiot, it must’ve been mum and dad, she thought, bless their cotton socks. She opened the French windows to her small courtyard back garden: instead of the usual sea of healthy weeds and dead bedding plants, there wasn’t a weed in sight and someone had been watering.
After bundling her washing into the machine and checking her voicemails, she locked up once more and made her way down the path. I hope the car starts, she thought. As she drew closer, she realised that there was something odd. Then she realised: instead of being coated in a year’s worth of traffic film, the bodywork was shining like new. She pressed the plipper on the key fob, expecting a dead battery to deny her access after so long away, but again she was wrong. With a satisfying clunk the doors unlocked and inside, she saw that for probably the first time in the car’s existence, the interior had been valeted and all her receipts, shopping lists and assorted junk tidied up into two plastic bags. A handwritten note was wedged into the steering wheel: it read, “Hope this fits the bill. Best Regards, Giles S.” All very thoughtful but it left her with a strange sensation: a mixture of gratitude but also of disquiet that strangers, even well-intentioned ones, had once more let themselves into her life with such ease.
The car started first time and on setting off towards her parents’ house, she noted with satisfaction that it had lost its lifetime urge to pull to the left. She turned off the main road to Chipping Norton, diving into the cool darkness between the high, tree-lined hedgerows that transformed the narrow Oxfordshire lanes into dappled green tunnels. As she bowled along with the windows down and the wind tousling her thick, dark hair, the unease she’d felt earlier slowly faded from her mind.
The following morning she left Shipton-under-Wychwood and with the cat on the back seat, yowling his displeasure at being shut in his box, headed back for Oxford.
The brief reacquaintance with normality felt wonderful but every time she thought of what lay ahead it put her stomach into knots. The episode at the airport haunted her by day and even her dreams by night, giving her the sensation of jumping – being pushed was more like it – into waters that were way out of her depth. She resolved to go and talk to the Dean but then hesitated: presumably, her vow of silence included him too.
Flora had only been at her desk for half an hour when the phone rang. It was the Dean’s secretary. Could she pop over for a cup of tea and a chat? Guess the decision’s just been made for me, she thought. She locked her PC screen and set off round the quad, the afternoon sunshine filtering through the leaves of the horse-chestnut in the middle of the lawn. She stopped and ran her hand along the weathered stone of one of the pillars supporting the cloisters: it was warm to the touch. This was home, an island of security and permanence far from the world of tombaroli and organised crime. By the time she reached the Dean’s office, Flora had almost convinced herself that Mike Hayek, Agent Cohen and “The Friends” would surely have forgotten all about her by now.
Flora hesitated at the doorway of the outer office, almost afraid to break the silence that pervaded the college out of term-time. The Dean’s secretary beckoned to her, ‘Just go right on in, dear, Stephen’s expecting you.’
Flora knocked, walked in and Professor Stephen Braithwaite looked up from under the bushiest eyebrows in Oxford. His face lit up with affection as he stood, hand outstretched, to greet her. ‘Flora, how absolutely wonderful to see you again. Margaret,’ he called to his secretary. ‘Could you be a dear and bring us some tea, please? Now then,’ he said, closing the door and showing Flora to an armchair.
The office showed no trace of a woman’s touch. Inside, there wasn’t what Flora would have called a smell – that would have been pejorative – it was more an atmosphere, a distilled essence of Oxford bachelor academic, made up of gently mouldering paper and leather binding, blended with hints of pipe smoke, floor polish, linseed oil and elderly dog.
Braithwaite took a seat beside her. ‘I understand you’ve been living in interesting times. I heard about what happened in Pompeii – dreadful business, absolutely frightful. But it’s what you’ve been up to in Rome that I want to hear all about. Do tell.’
Flora hesitated and broke eye contact. ‘I’m sorry, Stephen, but it’s on a need to know basis.’
‘Good answer,’ he replied, leaning forward to knock out the bowl of his pipe into the grate. ‘You’re quite right and in the normal course of events you’d be perfectly entitled to tell me to take a running jump. Now I know you’d never be so rude, but in this instance I do need to know if I’m to help our dear friends the woodentops keep you safe and sound while you’re in Oxford.’
‘The woodentops?’ she asked, perplexed.
‘Better known as the Thames Valley Constabulary,’ replied the Dean with an avuncular twinkle. ‘Inspector Morse, a police officer of towering intellectual capacities, remains, sadly, a fictional character.’
In an instant, Flora’s illusion of security vanished. ‘Why would the police need to protect me here? Surely I’m safe in Oxford.’
‘Sorry, Flora. You’re
probably as safe as houses but it’s best to make sure. The kind of people who can organise a raid like the one you saw at Pompeii, then spirit themselves into and out of air side at Fiumicino, aren’t going to be too worried about having a go at you over here if the mood takes them.’
‘I hadn’t thought about it like that,’ said Flora.
‘Forgotten your training already?’ he asked with a smile.
Flora laughed. ‘Rusty, that’s all.’
‘Luckily for all of us, Giles Smith has everything covered. I presume he told you we were at Cambridge together?’
‘He did.’
He looked up at the ceiling and chuckled. ‘A great climber in his day was Giles Smith.’
‘You mean mountains and things?’ Flora was used to the byways and back-roads by which the Dean arrived at the point he was trying to make, but this time he’d lost her.
‘No, colleges mainly. Usually after rugger or cricket and always after a skinfull. Have you ever heard of Whipplesnaith?’
‘Er, no,’ replied Flora. ‘Is he a colleague of Giles Smith’s?’
‘Good heavens, no,’ chuckled Braithwaite. ‘Long dead by now: Whipplesnaith was a pseudonym used by a fellow called Symington who wrote a definitive guide to climbing Cambridge colleges in the nineteen-thirties. The tradition pre-dates Whipplesnaith of course; there was another chap called Winthrop-Young who wrote The Roof-climber’s Guide to Trinity in nineteen hundred. He and his friends used the colleges as practice for their trips to the Alps during the long vac, East Anglia being a bit short on mountains of course.’
Flora shook her head in disbelief. ‘Giles Smith climbed colleges while drunk?’
‘You bet he did,’ chuckled the Dean. ‘Left a chamber pot on top of the “Wedding Cake” – that’s the New Court building at St John’s College. Then he stole a policeman’s helmet after a May bumps dinner and put it on one of the pinnacles of King’s College Chapel – nearly got sent down for that, silly beggar.’
‘And he seemed such a stuffed shirt when I first met him.’
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