Three Hands in the Fountain Read online

  ‘Falco! What have you done to acquire six rod-and-axe men in your train?’

  ‘Belated recognition of my value to the state . . . Come in, you bastard. This is Julius Frontinus.’ I saw that Petro was receiving the message in my glance. ‘He’s this year’s Consul – and our latest client.’ As Petronius nodded pleasantly, pretending to be unaffected by rank, I explained about the commission of enquiry and how our expertise was needed for the legwork. I managed to slide in a warning hint that our client intended to impose himself on our interviews.

  Sextus Julius Frontinus was of course the man who in our lifetime would achieve an unrivalled reputation for his talents as lawyer, statesman, general, and city administrator, not to mention his skilled authorship of major works on military strategy, surveying and water provision (an interest which I would like to think he acquired while working with us). His career structure would be the illustrious ideal. At the time, though, the only question that concerned Petro and me was whether we could endure him as a supervisor – and whether the mighty Frontinus would be prepared to bunch up his purple-bordered toga on his knobbly knees and stand his round like an honest trooper in the seedy winebars where we liked to hold our debates about evidence.

  Petronius found himself a seat and installed himself comfortably in our group. He took the dish containing the most recent hand, stared at it with a suitably depressed sigh, listened while I pointed out some apparent axe-marks on the wrist bones, then placed it carefully on the table. He did not waste his breath on hysterical exclamations; nor did he demand a tiresome review of the conversation he had missed. He simply asked the question which he reckoned took priority, ‘This is an enquiry of major importance. I presume the fee will be appropriate?’

  I had trained him well. Lucius Petronius Longus was a real informer now.

  XXIV

  WITH THE WEDDING ring we had our first useful clue. Removing it sickened me. Don’t ask me how I managed it. I had to slide off to another room alone. Petronius assessed the job then pulled a face and left me to it, but I relied on him to keep Helena and the Consul out of the way.

  I was glad I persevered: inside were engraved the names ‘Asinia’ and ‘Caius’. There were thousands of men called Caius in Rome, but finding one who had recently lost a wife called Asinia might prove feasible.

  Our new colleague said he would ask the City Prefect to make enquiries of all the vigiles cohorts under his command. We let Frontinus take this initiative, in case his rank speeded up the response. Knowing how the vigiles tended to react to rank, however, Petronius also made a private approach to the Sixth, who patrolled the Circus Maximus and were now the hapless hosts of his old second in command Martinus. Since the murders seemed to be connected with the Games, the Circus might be where the victim had met her assailant. The Sixth were the most likely candidates to receive her husband’s plea to find her. Martinus, in his unreliable-sounding way, promised to tell us at once if it happened. Well, he wasn’t entirely hopeless; he might eventually get round to it.

  While we waited to hear something, we tackled the aqueduct issue. Petro and I presented ourselves at Frontinus’ house early the next morning. We wore neat tunics, combed-down hair, and the solemnity of efficient operatives. We looked like the men for the business. We folded our arms a lot and wore thoughtful frowns. Any ex-consul would be happy to have two such sparks on his staff.

  Although we were allowed to interrogate an engineer, the Curator of Aqueducts had had the choice of which to send. The man he imposed on us was called Statius, and we could tell he would be a nincompoop by the size of his back-up team: he brought a couple of slaves with note tablets (to record what he said so he could check it minutely afterwards and send us corrections if he had inadvertently been too frank), a satchel-carrier, an assistant, and the assistant’s chubby clerk. Not to mention the litter-bearers and the armed guard with cudgels he had left outside. In theory he was here to contribute expert knowledge, but he behaved as if he had been summonsed on a full-blown corruption charge.

  Frontinus asked the first question, and it was typically direct: ‘Do you have a map of the water system?’

  ‘I believe a locational diagram of the substrata and super-strata conduits may exist.’

  Petronius caught my eye. His favourite: a man who called a spade a soil redistribution implement.

  ‘Can you supply a copy?’

  ‘Such classified information is not generally available –’

  ‘I see!’ Frontinus glared. If he ever assumed a position administering water, we could tell who would be the first bad nut tossed out of the window.

  ‘Perhaps, then,’ suggested Petro, playing the sympathetic fraternal type (well, a big brother with a hard stick in his fist), ‘you could just tell us something about how things work?’

  Statius had recourse to his satchel, wherein he had secreted a linen handkerchief to mop his brow. He was overweight and red in the face. His tunic crumpled around him in grubby-looking folds, even though it had probably been clean on that day. ‘Well, it is complicated to explain to lay persons. What you are requesting is highly technical . . .’

  ‘Try me. How many aqueducts are there?’

  ‘Eight,’ admitted Statius, after a horrified pause.

  ‘Nine, surely?’ I ventured quietly.

  He looked annoyed. ‘Well, if you’re going to include the Alsietina –’

  ‘Is there any reason why I should not?’

  ‘It’s on the Transtiberina side.’

  ‘I realise that.’

  ‘The Aqua Alsietina is only used for the naumachia and for watering Caesar’s Gardens –’

  ‘Or for the Transtiberina paupers to drink when the other aqueducts are dry.’ I was annoyed. ‘We know the quality is filthy. It was only ever intended to fill the basin for mock trireme fights. That’s not the point, Statius. Have any women’s hands, or other parts of human corpses, been found in the Alsietina?’

  ‘I have no precise information on that.’

  ‘Then you concede remains may be there?’

  ‘It could be a statistical possibility.’

  ‘It’s statistically certain that a watercourse somewhere is awash with heads, legs and arms too. Where there are hands the rest of the set tends to exist – and we haven’t found any of them yet.’

  Petronius weighed in again, still complementing me by playing the kind-hearted reasonable type: ‘Well, shall we call the tally nine? With luck some can be eliminated fairly quickly, but we must start by considering the whole system. We have to decide how a man, and his accomplices if he has any, are taking advantage of the aqueducts to flush away the relics of their hideous crimes.’

  Statius was still bound up in irrelevance. ‘The water board accepts no responsibility for that. You cannot be suggesting that the notoriously unpleasant quality of the Aqua Alsietina is accounted for by illegal impurities of human origin?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Petro grimly.

  ‘Of course not,’ I agreed. ‘The Alsietina is full of perfectly natural crap.’

  The engineer’s eyes, which were too close together, fluttered nervously between us. He knew Julius Frontinus was too important to despise, but he saw us as unpleasant insects he would like to swat if he dared. ‘You are trying to trace how a few – a relatively few – undesirable remains have been introduced to the channels. Well, I sympathise with the initiative –’ He was lying. ‘But we have to appreciate the magnitude of scale impeding us –’ At least he was talking. We listened in silence. He had somehow gained confidence; maybe refusing requests made him feel big. ‘The freshwater installation comprises between two and three hundred miles of channel –’ That seemed a very vague calculation. Somebody must have measured more accurately, at the very least when the aqueducts were built. ‘I am given to understand that these extraordinary pollutants –’

  ‘Limbs,’ stated Petronius.

  ‘Have been manifesting themselves in the water towers of which the system is provi
ded with a daunting multitude –’

  Frontinus demanded immediately, ‘How many?’

  Statius consulted his assistant, who readily informed us, ‘The Aqua Claudia and Anio Novus together have nearly a hundred castelli, and for the whole system you could more than double that –’

  I noticed that Frontinus was jotting down the figures. He did it himself, not using a scribe though he must own plenty. ‘What’s the daily water discharge?’ he barked. Statius blenched. ‘Roughly,’ Frontinus added helpfully.

  Again Statius needed the assistant, who said matter-of-factly: ‘It’s difficult to measure because the currents are constantly flowing and also there are seasonal variations. I roughed up some statistics once for the Aqua Claudia, one of the big four from the Sabine Hills. It was mind-boggling, sir. We managed to do some technical measurements, and when I extrapolated the figures I reckoned on a daily delivery of something over seven million cubic feet. Call it, in everyday terms, going on for seven million standard amphorae – or by the culleus, if you prefer, over sixty thousand.’

  Since a culleus is one great mountain of a cartload, sixty thousand rolling up full of water was indeed hard to imagine. And that was only the quantity delivered to Rome by a single aqueduct in one day.

  ‘Is it relevant?’ asked Statius. Far from being grateful, he seemed annoyed at being shown up by a subordinate.

  Frontinus looked up, still round-eyed from the figures. ‘I have no idea, yet. But it’s fascinating.’

  ‘What nobody knows,’ continued the assistant, who was rather enjoying himself, ‘is whether any human remains are lying undiscovered in the settling tanks along the route.’

  ‘How many tanks are there?’ asked Petro, jumping in before the intrigued Consul could beat him to it.

  ‘Innumerable.’ Statius supplied the put-down crisply for himself. The assistant looked as if he knew the real answer, but he kept quiet.

  ‘You can take a census and count them now,’ growled Frontinus to the senior engineer. ‘I understand this revolting contamination has been happening for years. I am astonished the water board has not investigated long ago.’

  He paused, obviously expecting an explanation, but Statius failed to take the hint. Petro and I were watching a head-on clash between intelligence and stodge. The ex-Consul had all the flair and quickness that shines in the best administrators; the engineer had floated up through a corrupt agency by virtue of just sitting back and putting the seal on whatever his underlings passed to him. Neither man could quite believe the other specimen existed.

  Frontinus saw he had to be firm. ‘Vespasian intends this dreadful business to be stopped. I shall instruct the Curator to have all the castelli searched immediately – then you must start working through all the settling tanks as quickly as possible. The victims need to be found, identified and given reverent funerals.’

  ‘I understood they were assumed only to be slaves,’ Statius, still resisting, said feebly.

  There was a pause.

  ‘They probably are,’ agreed Petronius. His tone was dry. ‘So this is all a waste of resources as well as a risk to public health.’

  The engineer wisely made no reply. We could hear echoing in his silence all the mockery and obscenity that must have greeted each new ghastly discovery by the aqueduct workers over the years, and the groans of their superiors as they planned how to cover it up. Helena had been right: these deaths were seen as an inconvenience. Even the formal commission that might stop them was an irritation imposed unfairly from above.

  Julius Frontinus glanced at Petro and me. ‘Any further questions?’ He was making it no secret that he had had enough of Statius and his noncommittal verbiage. We shook our heads.

  As the engineer’s party was leaving, I collared the assistant’s chubby clerk. I had brought out a note-tablet and a stylus, and asked him for his name as if I had been deputed to take minutes of the meeting and needed to concoct the normal list of persons present to fill up my scroll. He confided his cognomen as if it were a state secret. ‘And who’s the assistant?’

  ‘Bolanus.’

  ‘Just in case I need to check that I’ve got his statistics correctly, where can I find Bolanus?’

  The clerk reluctantly gave me directions. He must have been warned to be unhelpful, but clearly thought that if I did approach the assistant, Bolanus would put me off. Well, that was fine.

  I went back and told Frontinus that I reckoned Bolanus might be a goer. I would seek him out in private and request his help. Petronius meanwhile would visit the City Prefect’s office and our own contacts in the vigiles, to see if anything new had turned up on the latest dead girl. Looking rueful because neither of us seemed to need him, Frontinus could only spend his day busying himself with whatever ex-consuls do at home.

  Presumably they potter about the same as the rest of us. But with more slaves to tidy up their half-eaten apple cores and to look for the tools and scrolls they put down somewhere and then can’t find again.

  XXV

  THE ENGINEER, STATIUS, almost certainly lorded it over a neat spacious office full of charts he never consulted, comfortable folding chairs for visitors, and wine-warming apparatus for reviving his circulation if ever he was forced to climb up an aqueduct on a slightly chilly day. I could guess how often that happened.

  Bolanus had a hutch. It was close to the Temple of Claudius, hard to find because it was crammed in a corner, against the Aqua Claudia’s terminal reservoir. There was a reason for that: Bolanus had to be near his work. Bolanus, of course, was the person who did the work. I was pleased I had spotted it. I would be saving us a lot of pain.

  I knew he would talk. He had so much to do he couldn’t afford to fluff about. We were going to be imposing extra tasks whatever he did, so it was best to respond practically.

  His tiny lean-to site hut was a haven from the summer heat. A rope on a couple of bollards protected the occupant from unofficial sightseers. A mere gesture: anyone could step over it. Outside, ladders, lamps and wind-breaks were piled up, looking well used. The inside was also crammed with equipment: those special levels called chorobates, sighting rods, dioptra, gromas, a hodometer, a portable sundial, plumb bobs, pre-stretched and waxed measuring cords, set squares, dividers, compasses. A half-eaten bread roll stuffed with sliced meat perched on an unfurled skin that I could see was one of the charts which the lofty Statius had suggested were too confidential for us. Bolanus kept his openly on his table, ready to be consulted.

  When I turned up he must have just arrived back himself. Workmen who had been waiting for his return were queuing outside patiently to present him with chits and variation orders. He asked me to wait while he dealt swiftly with those he could, promising others a site visit shortly. They went away looking as if they knew he would follow up. The queue was cleared well before I grew bored.

  He was a short, wide, solid, shaven-headed man with stubby fingers and no neck. He wore a dark cerise tunic, the shade that always grows streaky in the wash, under a twisted leather belt that he should have thrown out five years ago. When he sat down he hoiked himself on to the stool awkwardly, as if his back troubled him. One of his brown eyes looked misty, but both were intelligent.

  ‘I’m Falco.’

  ‘Yes.’ He remembered me. I like to think I make an impression, but plenty of people can talk to you for an hour, then if they see you in a different context they can’t recollect you.

  ‘I don’t want to be a nuisance, Bolanus.’

  ‘We all have our jobs to do.’

  ‘Mind if I try to take this morning’s conversation further?’

  Bolanus shrugged. ‘Pull up a seat.’

  I squatted on a spare stool while he took advantage of the occasion to finish his half-eaten salami roll. First he dug out a basket from under the table, flipped open a pristine cloth, and offered me a bite from a substantial picnic. That worried me. People who are polite to informers are usually hiding something. However, the tastiness of his snack convince
d me to stop being cynical.

  ‘Look, you know what the problem is . . .’ I paused to signal that the welcome bite was top quality. ‘We have to find a maniac. One thing that’s puzzling us is how he gets his relics into the water in the first place? Aren’t the conduits mostly underground?’

  ‘They do have access shafts for maintenance.’

  ‘Like the sewers.’ I knew all about those. I had disposed of a body down there myself. Helena’s Uncle Publius.

  ‘The sewers at least have an exit to the river, Falco. Anything in the aqueducts is bound to end up startling the public in a bath-house or a fountain. Does he want the things to be discovered?’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t put the remains there deliberately. Maybe they arrive in the aqueducts by accident?’

  ‘Seems more likely.’ Bolanus bit off a huge mouthful with a hearty appetite. I waited while he chewed it. I felt he was a man I did not need to push. ‘I’ve been thinking about this, Falco.’

  I knew he would have done. He was practical, a problem-solver. Mysteries of all kinds would prey on his mind. His solution, if he proposed one, was liable to work. He was the kind of fellow I could use as a brother-in-law, instead of the deadbeats my sisters had actually wed. A man you could build a sun terrace with. A man who would drop in and mend your broken shutter if you were away on holiday.

  ‘The aqueducts that run up on arcades have vaulted roofs, or occasionally slabs. It’s to stop evaporation mainly. So you can’t just throw up rubbish and hope it lands inside, Falco. There are access shafts, at two-hundred-and-forty-foot intervals. Anyone can find them, certainly; they are marked by the cippi –’

  ‘The “gravestones”?’

  ‘Right. Augustus had the bright idea of numbering all the shafts. We don’t use his system, actually; it’s easier to go by the nearest milestone on the road. That’s how a work gang will be approaching the site, after all.’