Nemesis - Falco 20 Read online

  NEMESIS

  Lindsey Davis

  Copyright © Lindsey Davis 2010

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely Coincidental

  ALSO BY LINDSEY DAVIS

  The Course of Honour

  The Falco Series

  The Silver Pigs

  Shadows in Bronze

  Venus in Copper

  The Iron Hand of Mars

  Poseidon’s Gold

  Last Act in Palmyra

  Time to Depart

  A Dying Light in Corduba

  Three Hands in the Fountain

  Two for the Lions

  One Virgin too Many

  Ode to a Banker

  A Body in the Bath House

  The Jupiter Myth

  The Accusers

  Scandal Takes a Holiday

  See Delphi and Die

  Saturnalia

  Alexandria

  Nemesis

  Falco: The Official Companion

  Rebels and Traitors

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  Marcus Didius Falco a man of mixed fortunes and seeker after truth

  Helena Justina his true love, sought and won

  Falco’s family low grade, but not as bad as they seem:

  Junilla Tacita formidable wife to the deplorable Geminus

  Maia Favonia Falco’s sister, the best of the bunch

  Flavia Albia heartbroken and ready to break heads

  Katutis Falco’s secretary, a disappointed man

  Helena’s family high class, but not as good as they look:

  Aulus Camillus Aelianus keeping a low profile

  Quintus Camillus Justinus keeping his career on target, thanks to:

  Claudia Rufma his wife and financial backer

  Lentullus an accident waiting to happen

  Falco’s associates in Rome

  Lucius Petronius Longus an upright vigiles enquirer (low pay)

  Lucius Petronius Rectus his brother, feeling off colour

  Nero their ox, another one gone missing

  Tiberius Fusculus Petro’s second in command

  Sergius their whip man (always encouraging)

  Clusius a devious rival auctioneer (low motives)

  Gaius a dubious apprentice (high hopes)

  Gornia a tight-lipped porter (no comment)

  Septimus Parvo a family lawyer (absolutely no comment)

  Thalia a contortionist with a problem to wriggle out of

  Philadelphion and Davos her lovers, keeping well off the scene

  Minas of Karystos a lawyer, on the up

  Hosidia Meline a bride (on the make?)

  Also in Rome

  Tiberius Claudius Laeta a smooth bureaucrat with high aspirations

  Momus a rough-edged auditor with low habits

  Tiberius Claudius Anacrites the Chief Spy, a high-flyer of low worth

  The Melitans his agents (dodgy connections)

  Perella an assassin who wants a new job (her boss’s)

  Heracleides party-planner to the stars

  Nymphidias his thieving chef

  Scorpus a singer, spying on spies (an idiot)

  Alis a fortune-teller who blames Mum (a wise woman)

  Arrius Persicus a philanderer, oversexed and over-budget

  A courier newly wed and newly dead

  Volusius Mum’s boy, a numerate victim

  In Latium

  Januaria a waitress at Satricum, an all-rounder

  Livia Primilla & Julius Modestus complainants in high dudgeon

  Sextus Silanus their nephew in Lanuvium, in low spirits

  Macer their loyal overseer, gone missing

  Syrus their runaway slave, fatally roughed up

  A butcher in Lanuvium a very careless creditor

  The horrible Claudii neighbours from Hades:

  Aristocles and Casta cold-natured, hot-tempered parents (deceased)

  Claudius Nobilis so notorious, he has ‘gone to see his granny’

  Pius and Virtus the twins, ‘working away from home’

  Probus ‘upholding the family name’

  Felix ‘lost’

  Plotia and Byrta downtrodden wives

  Demetria runaway wife of Claudius Nobilis (low esteem)

  Costus her new boyfriend (asking for trouble)

  Vexus her father (anticipating the worst)

  Thamyris employer of Nobilis and Costus (over-confident)

  Silvius an officer of the Urban Cohorts, undercover

  Plus full supporting cast:

  Jason the python, dogs, missing persons, slaves (non-persons), personal

  beauticians, impersonal magistrates

  And featuring:

  The Praetorian Guards bastards!

  ROME AND LATIUM: SUMMER, AD 77

  I

  I find it surprising more people are not killed over dinner at home. In my work we reckon that murder is most likely to happen among close acquaintances. Someone will finally snap after years of being wound up to blind rage by the very folk who best know how to drive them to distraction. For once it will be just too much to watch someone else eating the last sesame pancake - - which, of course, was snatched with a triumphant laugh that was intended to rankle. So a victim expires with honey still dribbling down their chin - - though it happens less often than you might expect.

  Why are more kitchen cleavers not sunk between the fat shoulders of appalling uncles who get the slaves pregnant? Or that sneaky sister who shamelessly grabs the most desirable bedroom, with its glimpse of a corner of the Temple of Divine Claudius and almost no cracks in the walls? Or the crude son who farts uncontrollably, however many times he is told …

  Even if people do not stab or strangle their own, you would expect more to rush out into the streets and vent their frustration upon the first person they meet. Perhaps they do. Perhaps even the random killing of strangers, which the vigiles call ‘a motiveless crime’, sometimes has an understandable domestic cause.

  It could so easily have happened to us.

  I grew up in a large family, crammed into a couple of small, sour rooms. All around our apartment were other teeming groups, too noisy, too obstreperous and all packed together far too close. Perhaps the thing that saved us from tragedy was that my father left home - - his only escape from a situation he had come to find hideous, and an event which at least saved us from the burden of more children. Later my brother took himself off to the army; eventually I saw the sense of it and did the same. My sisters moved out to harass the feckless men they bullied into marriage. My mother, having brought up seven, was left alone but continued to have a strong influence on all of us. Even my father, once he returned to Rome, viewed Ma with wary respect.

  As she continually reminded us, mothers can never retire. So, when my wife went into labour with our third child, in came Ma to boss everyone about, even though she was becoming frail and had eyesight problems. Helena’s own mama rushed to our house too, the noble Julia Justa rolling up her sleeves to interfere in her genteel way. We had employed a perfectly decent midwife.

  At first the mothers battled for dominance. In the end, when they were both badly needed, all that stopped.

  My new son died on the day he was born. At once, we felt we were living in a tragedy that was unique to us. I suppose that is how it always seems.

  The birth had been easy, a short labour like our second daughter’s. Favonia had taken a week to seize upon existence but then she thrived. I thought the same would happen. But when this baby emerged, he was already fading. He never responded to us; he slipped away within hours.

  The midwife said a mother should hold a dead baby
; afterwards she and Julia Justa had to wrestle to make Helena give up the body again. Helena went into deep shock. Women cleaned up, as they do. Helena Justina stayed in the bedroom, refusing comfort, ignoring food, declining to see her daughters, even distant with me. My sister Maia said this day would be black in Helena’s calendar for the rest of her life; Maia knew what it was to lose a child. At first I could not believe Helena would ever come out of it. It seemed to me, we might never even reach that point where grief only overtook her on anniversaries. She stayed frozen at the moment when she was told her boy was dead.

  All action fell to me. It was not a legal necessity, but I named him: Marcus Didius Justinianus. In my place many fathers would not have bothered. His birth would not be registered; he had no civic identity. Perhaps I was wrong. I just had to decide what to do. His mother had survived, but for the moment I was alone trying to hold the family together, trying to choose what formalities were appropriate. It all became even more difficult after I learned what else had happened on that day.

  The tiny swaddled bundle had been placed in a room we rarely used. What was I to do next? A newborn should receive no funeral rites; he was too small for full cremation. Adult burials must be held outside the city; families who can afford it build a mausoleum beside a highroad for their embalmed bodies or cremation urns. That had never been for us;

  ashes of the plebeian Didii are kept in a cupboard for a time, and then mysteriously lost.

  My mother revealed that she had always taken her stillborns to the Campagna farm where she grew up, but I could not leave my distraught family. Helena’s father, the senator, offered me a niche in the tumbledown columbarium of the Camilli on the Via Appia, saying sadly, ‘It will be a very small urn!’ I thought about it, but was too proud. We live in a patriarchal society; he was my son. I don’t give two figs for formal rules, but disposal was my responsibility.

  Some people inter newborn babies under a slab in a new building; none was available and I jibbed at making our child into a votive offering. I don’t annoy the gods; I don’t encourage them either. We lived in an old town house at the foot of the Aventine, with a back exit, but almost no ground. If I dug a tiny grave among the sage and rosemary, there was a horrendous possibility children at play or cooks digging holes to bury fish bones might one day turn up little Marcus’ ribs accidentally.

  I climbed up to our roof terrace and sat alone with the problem.

  The answer came to me just before stiffness set in. I would take my sad bundle out to my father’s house. We ourselves had once lived there, up on the Janiculan Hill across the Tiber; in fact, I was the idiot who first bought the inconvenient place. I had since worked a swap with my father but it still seemed like home. Although Pa was a reprobate, his villa offered the baby a resting place where, when Helena was ready for it, we could put up a memorial stone.

  I wondered briefly why my father had not yet come with condolences. Normally when people wanted time alone, he was a first-footer. He could smell tragedy like newly cooked bread. He was bound to let himself in with that house key he would never give back to me, then irritate us with his insensitivity. The thought of Pa issuing platitudes to shake Helena out of her sadness was dire. He would probably try to get me drunk. Wine was bound to feature in my recovery one day, but I wanted to choose how, when and where the medicine was applied. The dose would be poured by my best friend Petronius Longus. The only reason I had not sought him out so far, was delicacy because he too had lost young children. Besides, I had things to do first.

  My mother was staying at our house. She would continue to do so, as long as she believed she was needed. Perhaps that would be longer than we really wanted, but Ma would do what she thought best.

  Helena -wanted no part in the funeral. She turned away, -weeping, when I told her what I planned to do. I hoped she approved. I hoped

  she knew that dealing with this was the only way I could try to help her. Albia, our teenaged foster daughter, intended to accompany me but in the end even she was too upset. Ma might have made the pilgrimage but I gratefully left her to look after little Julia and Favonia. I would not ask her to see Pa, from whom she had been bitterly estranged for thirty years. If I had asked, she might have forced herself to come and support me, but I had enough to endure without that worry.

  So I went alone. And I was alone, therefore, when the subdued slaves at my father’s house told me the next piece of bad news. On the same day that I lost my son, I lost my father too.

  II

  As I turned off the informal roadway into Pa’s rough carriage drive, nothing appeared amiss. No smoke came from the new bath house. There was no one in sight; the gardeners had clearly decided that late afternoon was their time to down tools. The gardens, designed by Helena when we lived here, were looking in good fettle. Since Pa was an auctioneer, the statuary was exquisite. I thought Pa must be down in Rome, at his warehouse or his office in the Saepta Julia; otherwise on a warm summer evening I would expect to hear a low buzz and chinking wine paraphernalia as he entertained associates or neighbours, sprawling on the benches that permanently stood out beneath the old pine trees.

  I had come in a closed litter. The dead baby lay in a basket on the opposite seat. I left it there temporarily. The bearers dropped me by the short flight of steps in the porch. I banged my fist on the big double doors to announce my presence and went straight indoors.

  A peculiar scene met me. All the household slaves and freedmen stood assembled in the atrium as if they had been waiting for me.

  I was startled. I was even more startled by the size of the sombre crowd filling the hallway. Tray-toters, pillow-plumpers, earwax-extractors, dust-dampers. I had never realised how many staff Pa kept. My father was missing from the scene. My heart started pounding unevenly.

  I was wearing a black tunic instead of my usual hues. Still lost in the horror of the baby’s death, I must have looked grim. The slaves seemed prepared for it, and oddly relieved to see me. ‘Marcus Didius - you heard!’

  ‘I heard nothing.’

  Throats were cleared. ‘Our dear master passed away.’

  I was taken aback by that crazy phrase ‘dear master’. Most people knew Pa as ‘that bastard, Favonius’ or even ‘Geminus - - may he rot in Hades with a bald crow perpetually eating his liver’. The bird would be pecking sooner than expected, apparently.

  The whole bunch were deferring to me with new-found humility. If they felt awkward doing it, that was nothing to how I felt. They stood trying to hide the anxieties that characterise slaves of a newly dead citizen while they wait to know what will be done with them.

  It could hardly be my problem, so I gave them no help. My father and I had been on bad terms after he left Ma; our reconciliation in recent years was patchy. He had no rights over me and I took no responsibility for him. Somebody else must be designated to deal with his effects. Somebody else would keep or sell the slaves.

  I would have to tell the family he was gone. That would cause all sorts of bad feeling.

  This was turning into a bad year.

  Officially, it was the year of the consuls Vespasianus Augustus and Titus Caesar (Vespasian, our elderly, curmudgeonly, much-admired Emperor, in his eighth consulship, and his lively elder son and heir, notching up his sixth). Later, ‘suffect’ consuls took over, which was a way of sharing the workload and the honours. The suffects that year were Domitian Caesar (the much-less-liked younger son) and an unknown senator called Gnaeus Julius Agricola - - a non-notable; some years afterwards he became governor of Britannia. Say no more. He was too insignificant for a civilised province, so the Senate finessed him by pretending that Britain was a challenge where they wanted a man they could trust …

  I ignore the civic calendar. Still, there are years you remember.

  Duty began weighing on me. Death wreaks havoc on survivors’ lifestyles. For years I had been forced to play at being the family head, since my father reneged and my only brother was dead. Pa ran away with his redhead when
I was about seven - an even thirty years ago. My mother never spoke to him again and most of us were loyal to Ma. Even after he returned sheepishly to Rome, calling himself Geminus as a halfhearted disguise, Pa kept apart from the family for years. More recently he did impose himself when it suited him. He was a snob about my connections to a senatorial family, so I had to see most of him. Recently my sister Maia took over his accounts at the auction house, one of my nephews was learning the business, and another sister ran a bar he owned.

  Once the twittering slaves made their announcement, I foresaw big changes.

  ‘Who is going to tell me what happened?’

  First spokesman was a wine-pourer, not quite as handsome as he thought, who wanted to get himself noticed: ‘Marcus Didius, your beloved father was found dead early this morning.’

  He had been dead all day and I did not know. I had been struggling with the baby’s birth and death and all the while this had been happening too.

  ‘Was it natural?’

  ‘What else could it be, sir?’ I could think of a few answers.

  Nema, Pa’s personal bodyslave, who was known to me, stepped up to give me details. Yesterday, my father came home from work at the Saepta Julia at a normal time, had dinner and retired to bed, early for him. Nema had heard him moving about this morning, apparently at his ablutions, then came a sudden loud thump. Nema ran in and Pa was dead on the floor.

  Since I was known to spend my working life questioning such statements, Nema and the others looked worried. I suspected they had discussed how to convince me the story was accurate. They said a slave with some medical knowledge had diagnosed a heart attack.

  ‘We did not send for a doctor. You know Geminus. He would loathe the cost, when it was obvious that nothing could be done …’

  I knew. Pa could be stupidly generous, but like most men who accrued a lot of money he was more often stingy. Anyway, the diagnosis was reasonable. His lifestyle was tough; he had been looking tired; we were all not long returned from a physically demanding trip to Egypt.

  Even so, any doubts would bring the slaves under suspicion. Legally, their position was dangerous. If their master’s passing was seen as unnatural, they could all be put to death. They were scared - - particularly scared of me. I am an informer. I fix credit checks and character references. I deliver subpoenas, act for disappointed beneficiaries, defend accused parties in civil actions. In the course of this work I frequently run across corpses, not all of them persons who have died quietly of old age at home. So I tend to look for problems. Jealousy, greed and lust have a bad habit of causing people to end up on a bier prematurely. Clients may hire me to investigate the suspicious death of a lover or a business partner.