Time to Depart (21 page)

XLII

Helena's birthday. My poor girl loyally spent her time trying to find my lost niece. She set about interviewing all the Aventine householders who had reported missing children. Gaius Baebius had turned up just as I was myself leaving home, so I found a piece of rope in my skip to tie Ajax to a pillar in the laundry portico, then arranged with Gaius that he would stick close to Helena. It was protection for her, something I could not spare time to provide myself; and kept him out of trouble too.

Lenia bawled something angrily about the dog.

'Leave off, Lenia. If I'm to provide your augury, you owe me a favour or two.'

'Don't push your luck, Falco! Seems to me you're using this as an excuse to behave like a complete tyrant.' 

'Don't underestimate the lies I'll have to make up.' 

'If you feel like that I'll find somebody else.'

'I wish you would.'

Nobody else would do it, we both knew. Every lockup shopkeeper in Fountain Court had already given himself a hernia laughing at the thought of me having to suffer under the sacrificial veil.

Dear gods. That was another problem: I would have to acquire a headdress to parade in at the altar on the wedding day.

'Gaius Baebius, you look like a man with a sense of duty. Have you got a priest's veil?'

'Of course,' smirked my brother-in-law. Trust him. What a pious operator. How could even Junia have married him? (Answer: for his customs salary. Do not ask me, however, how a placid lump like Gaius ever married a spiteful stick like her.) 'Marcus Didius, I am hoping to be elected to the college of the Augustales soon.'

Official religion. Oh spare me, Gaius! 'Excellent fellow! And thanks for the loan of your bonce sheet,' I cried, setting off in the opposite direction from Helena and him at a fast pace. I could see him looking puzzled; Helena would explain. If I knew Gaius Baebius, lending me his head veil would make him think he had the right to attend Lenia's nuptials. Things were looking up. He and Junia were bound to bring their dog; Ajax was their child substitute, treated as one of the family. Maybe Ajax could be trained to bite the bride's beloved. Maybe, if the gods were very kind, they would give me time to train Ajax myself.

Walking to the station house, I enjoyed myself thinking of fierce canine teeth being sunk into my landlord's most petsonal assets on his wedding day.

I already knew how my own day would be unfolding. Fusculus had called at the apartment early to break the news of the doctor's murder. He said Petro had been up half the night pursuing investigations into the Saepta thefts. When he heard of Alexander's murder he had given up and gone home to grab a hasty nap. The plan was for us all to meet at midmorning in order to tackle the new disaster after the crew had rested and were fresh.

This gave me a couple of hours to spare. Time for serious preparations: I went to the gymnasium and put in some wrestling and weapons practice. Given the grim state of Rome it seemed a good idea.

I had forgotten about my shoulder. That very promptly sent me out of the gym and into the massage room.

'You're full of flab,' complained Glaucus the proprietor, who acted as my personal trainer whenever I allowed him access. 

'Get me into condition then.'

'In half an hour, Falco?'

'Half an hour is all I have.'

'You're slow, you're weak, you're dopy. It's going to take me months to undo this. I hope you're not planning anything dangerous in the near future.

'Just tackling a gang of vicious murderers. And mind it, man! I had a dislocated shoulder poked back yesterday.'

'Jupiter, Juno and Minerva! I presume', moaned Glaucus sarcastically, 'somebody also landed some heavy blows to the soft part of your head?'

I do like to approach threatening situations with such warm encouragement.

Petronius Longus was in a filthy mood. 'What in Hades is wrong with these bastards? Can't they give us time to run ourselves into the ground on one job before they have to jump up like flea-bitten rabbits? Time was you could rely on growing thoroughly depressed with your first case before some cluck decided to throw the next at you...'

He was just ranting. I could understand why.

He had Scythax in the interrogation room. The poor man was so deeply in shock he seemed drunk. Every few minutes he wandered out muttering a confused suggestion, or asking the same question he had put to us three times already. 'What did they think they were achieving? Why did they have to torture him? Why, oh why?'

'Revenge, Scythax. Porcius, make yourself useful. Go in there and sit with him.'

'Just talk to him,' counselled Fusculus in a low voice. 'Or if he talks about his brother, just nod and listen.'

As the nervous recruit obediently led the grief-stricken man indoors again, Petro covered his face briefly. 'I can't send him home. Oh gods on Olympus, Falco! What a mess. He lived with his brother. He'll go mad in those surroundings. Besides, these bastards may be looking for Scythax too.'

'The patrol couldn't hold him back,' Fusculus told me. 'The door was ajar. As soon as Scythax saw the situation, he was in like an arrow, howling and covered with blood himself. They had a terrible time dragging him away from Alexander and getting him back here. He still keeps trying to return to the surgery.'

Everyone present was white-faced. There was plenty to do, but they were sitting together in the patrol house, impotent. They saw violence daily; hideous death far too frequently. This had struck too close. This affected one of them. This - though nobody had yet mentioned it - was something their own work had caused. Alexander might have been attacked by a deranged patient, but we all thought this was directly related to his false diagnosis of Nonnius Albius.

We spent a day trying to make sense of it. First we all said there was no point going to look at the surgery - or no point all of us going. We all went. It seemed a gesture of respect. We had to force ourselves to see what the man had endured. Petronius imposed it on himself as a punishment. Some of the others made it serve as an apology. I went because I knew from experience that if you don't, you never stop worrying whether there was some clue you could have spotted if you had been there. We badly needed evidence. The squad was so shaken up that any clues there were might easily be missed or misinterpreted.

Young Porcius was the only one who actually vomited. The scene knocked back his composure completely; there was nothing for it but to send him to the station house to sit with Scythax again. By the end of the day the youngster was a gibbering wreck, but we had too much else to think about. He was given sympathy, but no one could nursemaid him.

'The chief's heartbroken,' Martinus muttered at me. Even he had lost all his cockiness.

'I've never seen him so bad,' Fusculus agreed dolefully.

I was his friend. They all seemed to want to tell me about Petro's distressed state. I could hardly bear it. I needed nobody to tell me. He was as foul-tempered as I had ever seen him - except once, during the Boudiccan Rebellion in Britain. He was older now. He knew more obscene words, and more painful ways to take out his anger on people nearby.

I would have hauled him out for a drink, but the mood he was in he would have stayed knocking it back until he passed out or killed himself.

By the afternoon we had exhausted ourselves asking questions. Several innocent householders had gone off to complain to the Prefect's Office about the way they had been pushed around and bawled at. Nobody had seen or heard anything suspicious, either last night or the previous day. Nobody knew anything. Nobody wanted to know. Everyone had caught a whiff of gangster involvement. Everyone was terrified.

We all believed the same people had killed both Alexander and Nonnius. Even that simple fact was hard to prove. The evidence denied it. One victim had been abducted; one was killed at home. One was a declared informant; the other had been sensibly discreet. The methods used were completely different. The message sent out seemed less flagrant the second time. Apart from the fact both murders happened at, night - like most crimes in Rome - only the violence inflicted was common to both. Only instinct and experience convinced us we were right to link the two deaths. But it all made sense if we decided that Nonnius had been killed as an act of revenge for betraying Balbinus, and Alexander had died because someone found out it was him telling Nonnius he was dying that had led to that villain's 'reform'.

The public baths were opening by the time the investigation broke up for the day. The scent of wood smoke on the damp October air gave an autumnal gloom and added to our melancholy mood. We were no further forward. There was a sense that we would spend this coming night waiting for more deaths. We were losing. The villains had all the dice turning for them.

With a set face, Petronius ordered the body's removal - to an undertaker this time, not the station house, where the dead man's distraught brother was still being looked after. He then arranged for members of the foot patrol to be brought in to clean up and leave the surgery neat. Fusculus volunteered to oversee that. He seemed to need something to fill his time. Petro thanked him, then sent the rest home.

I saw Petronius to his house. He said almost nothing as we walked. I left him at his door. His wife let him in. She glanced at his drawn features, then her chin went up, but she made no comment. Maybe she even gave me a half-concealed nod. Arria Silvia loved to rant, but if ever Petro looked beaten she rushed to protect him. So Silvia took over, and I was not needed. As the door closed, leaving me alone in the street, I felt momentarily lost.

It had been a terrible day. I had seen Rome's underbelly, smelt the matted filth beneath the ravening wolf. It was nothing new, but it forced me to face the lack of hope that lives alongside crime. This was the true face of the Caesars' marble city: not Corinthian acanthus leaves and perfect gilt- lettered insctiptions, but a quiet man killed horrendously in the home and workplace he shared with his brother; a vicious revenge thrust on the one-time slave who had learned a respected profession then repaid his freedom and citizenship with a single act of assistance to the law. Not all the fine civic building programmes in the world would ever displace the raw forces that drive most of humankind. This was the true city: greed, corruption and violence.

It was dusk as I made my way to Fountain Court. My heart lay heavy. And for me, the day was nowhere near over yet. I still had to put on a smile and a toga - then go out to dinner - with my girlfriend's family.

XLIII

Once we got past the porter, who had always viewed me like a door-to-door lupin-seller who was aiming to snatch silverware, it was an occasion to remember.. The hosts were so considerate that guests felt free to behave badly. Helena Justina's birthday, in the consulship of whoever it was, laid the foundation for many happy years of family recrimination. For once, it was not my family involved.

Being a mere private citizen, my manners were the best on display. As soon as I escorted Helena from the carrying chair I had grudgingly hired, I turned to find her mother right behind me waiting to knock me aside and embrace the birthday girl. I kissed the matron's cheek (smoothly oiled and scented) with grave formality. She was a tall woman who had not expected me to tackle her, so the manoeuvre required dexterity. She was even more surprised than I was.

'Julia Justa, greetings and thanks. Twenty-five years ago today you gave the world a great treasure!' I might not be the ideal son-in-law, but I knew how to press a rather nice soapstone casket of balsam into a lady's receptive hands.

'Thank you, Marcus Didius. What a pretty speech.' Julia Justa was a mistress of elegant hypocrisy. Then her expression froze. 'Why,' queried Helena's mother icily, 'is my daughter carrying a child?' Helena had brought the skip babe.

'Oh Marcus found him in a rubbish skip!' cried Helena Justina breezily. 'But there's another child I'm carrying that you'll want to hear about.'

This was hardly the tact and decorum I had tried to plan. On the other hand, nobody could say that it was my fault.

I had a side bet with the Fourth Cohort that the night would end with women in tears and men losing teeth. (Or the other way round.) Before we even crossed the threshold there was some jostling for position among the female element.

Helena's mother wore leaf-green silk with an embroidered stole; Helena wore not merely silk, but a fabulous cloth from Palmyra woven in multiple patterns of purple, brown, deep red and white. Helena's mother wore an expensive parure of golden scrolls and droplets set with a clutch of evenly matched emeralds; Helena wore an armful of bangles, and absolutely enormous Indian pearls. Helena's mother was scented with highly refined cinnamon perfume, the one Helena herself often wore; Helena tonight wore a few vivid dabs of a precious liquor containing frankincense. She also had the gracious air of a daughter who had won.

We men were in white. We started in togas, though we soon flung them off. Helena's father had his fond, faintly cautious expression. Her brother Aelianus boasted a scowl and a Spanish belt. I had been smartened up until I felt like a whole guild of shoemakers on their big day out.

Justinus had failed to appear that night. Everyone knew he must be mooning around Pompey's Theatre. 'He won't forget,' his mother assured us as she led us indoors. He might. (The actress might be exceptional, and she might choose tonight to notice him.) Helena and I gulped, then prayed for him.

While the women rushed away to share urgent news, I was led off for a predinner winecup with the Senator (honeyed mulsum, strictly traditional; makes you feel sick without letting you get drunk). Camillus Verus was shrewd and intelligent, with a diffident manner. He did what was necessary, and didn't waste effort on the rest. I liked him. It mattered to me that he should be able to tolerate me. At least he knew the strength of my feelings for Helena.

The Camillus family were certainly patrician when viewed from my own perspective, though there were no consuls or generals in their ancestry. They were rich - though their wealth was in land and my father probably owned far more portable collateral. Their house was spacious and detached, a lived-in town villa with water and drainage but rather tired decor. Lacking expensive works of art, they revelled on old- fashioned features for domestic tranquillity. Tonight the courtyard fountains were splashing merrily, but we needed more than that to cool the air as the Senator introduced me to his elder son.

Aelianus was two years younger than Helena, two years older than Justinus. He looked much like his father - sprouting straight hair and slightly stooped shoulders. More chunky than Justinus and Helena and heavier-featured, he was less good-looking as a result. His abysmal manners were a patrician cliche. Luckily I had never expected a senator's son to approve of me. That was fine; it let me off having to like him. 

'So you're the man who's been pushing my young brother's career along!' exclaimed Aelianus.

Nearly a decade his senior, and worth ten times more in useful qualities, I refused to agitate myself. 'Quintus has a warm personality and a fine intellect. People like him, and he's interested in everything - naturally such a man stands no chance in public life! Unlike you, I'm sure.' Well done, Falco; an insult, but nicely ambiguous.

Young Justinus stood every chance, in fact. But I don't stir up trouble; close relatives can usually find enough things to be jealous about.

'And did you get him interested in the theatre too?' his brother sneered.

It was the Senator himself who said, 'He selects his own hobbies - like all of you.' That had to be a fatherly dig; I sat back and wondered what dubious activities the pious Aelianus liked. If he gave me any trouble, this would be something to find out.

'Let's hope my brother's hobby doesn't last - or my sister's either!'

There were now so many stars alongside Justinus' name on the army list, a scandal might just make him appear more intriguing to the public. I refrained from saying that. Aelianus had completed his own military service rather dully, then a year as a governor's unpaid aide-de-camp in Baetica had failed to give him lustre. On the other hand, none of that had been his own fault. Luck stepped around me pretty smartly too, so I said kindly, 'Don't be jealous. Your brother was just in the right province, at the right time.'

'And of course he knew you!'

Again there was an unpleasant, scornful note. Aelianus was naive enough to expect me to flare up. Instead his father said mildly, 'That was indeed fortunate. When Marcus was sent on one of his peculiarly demanding missions, your brother was able to join him.'

'Did you approve of that?' Aelianus demanded accusingly. 'I've heard what Justinus got up to in Germany was damned dangerous.'

'I didn't know until it was over,' Camillus replied honestly.

The young man was bursting with outraged dignity. 'There are things we ought to get straight.' The Senator and I glanced at one another, then let him get on with it. He needed to make a racket. That was easier than arguing. 'This man is a common informer.' I noticed he found it impossible to use even my formal name. 'The situation with my sister is damaging our family.' He meant that it might reflect on his own career.

The Senator looked annoyed. Whatever he thought about his finely bred daughter absconding with a piece of rough cheese, he always put the best face on it. 'Falco is an imperial agent. He has the confidence of the Emperor.'

'But Vespasian hates informers.'

I laughed. 'Except when he needs them.'

The younger Camillus was still sounding off pompously. 'I have seen no public recognition of the role of "imperial agent". It carries no official title or salary. And as I understand it, although there was once talk of a substantial reward, it has failed to materialise!'

I made an effort to avoid reacting. I had promised Helena not to involve myself in conversations that might end with my fist shattering her brother's jaw.

Camillus Senior looked embarrassed. 'Falco's work is necessarily secret. Don't be offensive to our guest.' He tried gamely to change the subject: 'You look in good form, Marcus. Travel suits you.'

'You should see me in my Palmyrene trousers and embroidered hat... I sighed. Chitchat on Oriental matters would dodge the problem but not solve it. 'Your son is quite right, Senator. I was promised social advancement, and it has been refused.'

Camillus must have heard about it from Helena. As a member of the Establishment he seemed to feel personally responsible. He scratched his nose; light gleamed on a workaday garnet signet ring. 'It's a misunderstanding, Marcus. It can be resolved.'

'No, Domitian Caesar gave me a very clear ruling, and when I discussed the matter with Titus last week he was unable to change that.'

'Titus told me,' answered the Senator. 'Rulings do tend to become immutable if they involve denying just rewards!' His sense of humour was always refreshingly dry. 'Well, tell me if I can help... I gather you're working on the law-and-order issue at present?' So much for keeping the post-Balbinus investigation confidential.

'Yes, I'm on the special commission.'

Camillus noticed my dark mood. 'Not enjoying it?'

'Mixed feelings; mixed loyalties.' The conversation had shifted. The Senator and I were talking at a level that now excluded Aelianus. I went back to one aspect of what Camillus had said: 'I'm asking myself how much of my personal chat with Titus Caesar he passed on, sir? Has he pre-empted a private discussion I intended to have with you?'

Camillus smiled, waving a hand in acceptance of the fact that he had been told he was to be a grandfather by someone other than me. 'I realised Titus was being premature.'

'I'm sorry for it. You know how things work, sir.'

'You had to seize your opportunity,' he agreed. Well, for Helena's sake he would want me to have tried. Our relationship stayed easy. 'Are you pleased?' he asked. I let a grin answer him. Then we both stopped looking so delighted, as like dutiful men we both considered the perils to Helena.

'I still think something can be sorted out for you, Marcus.' Vespasian, like any good Roman, had his private clique of friends who advised him; the Senator was one of them, once close, and still consulted. It could be made to work on my behalf - if I could accept having strings pulled. The senator knew my feelings about that. 'Will you let me speak to the old man?'

'Better not.' I smiled. Even with his personal interest, it was gracious of him to offer. But I had to do this myself. 'My new assignment is a complex one. Let's see the results before I call in imperial favours!'

'Maybe you'd better leave my sister alone then,' Aelianus grappled himself back into the discussion even though unsure of its content.

'I note your advice,' I said pleasantly. Suddenly I was too angry to carry on fielding his jibes. 'I'm sorry you're distressed. I can see it must have been difficult, coming home from abroad to find that the respectable family you had left behind was now tainted with scandal.' He began to speak. I stabbed the air with my finger. 'The scandal I mean has nothing to do with your sister. I refer to the sad mess which brought me into contact with the Camillus in the first place, when various of your noble relations - now fortunately dead - engaged in a treasonous attempt of staggering ineptitude! Camillus Aelianus, before you embark on public life I suggest you ask your father to explain just how much the Emperor allowed to be covered up.'

The jaw of the not so noble Aelianus had dropped open. Clearly he had not realised I knew about his family's near- disgrace.

'Excuse me,' I apologised briefly to his father, for I normally tried not to mention all this.

'Was the cover-up organised by you?' Aelianus was catching on. But now he assumed Helena Justina had been presented to me in return for my silence.

'My job is to expose things. Still, I'm glad we had this opportunity to clear the air... Philosophical insights are traditionally brought to light by men drinking at a symposium.' Trying to improve the atmosphere, I raised my cup.

Aelianus glowered at me. 'What exactly do you do, Falco?' Sometimes I wondered that myself.

'Nice of you to ask this time, before condemning me! I do what's needed - what nobody else is able or willing to tackle.' 

'Do you kill people?' He had no finesse.

'Not regularly. It's too much trouble making my peace with the gods afterwards.'

I avoided looking at the Senator. He was sitting very silent. The last time I remembered killing a man, it was a thug who attacked Helena on her father's own doorstep. Camillus saw me do it. But there were other deaths, closely connected to that, which the Senator and I never talked about.

'It's a glorious thought' Aelianus was still sneering. 'Some dogged Ione operator attempting to right society's wrongs without praise or pay!'

'Pure foolishness,' I agreed briefly.

'Why do it?'

'Oh, the hope of gain.'

'Strength of character?' The family irony had not entirely bypassed Aelianus.

'You've found me out. I'm a soft touch for ethical actions.' 

'And it's a short cut to the women too?'

'The very best of them... You'd better grit your teeth. I know I've found a good one, and I'm here to stay. My relationship with your sister is permanent. And you're going to be an uncle to an informer's son or daughter by next spring!'