Enemies at Home: Falco: The New Generation - Flavia Albia 2 Read online

  There was time before I was needed at the Esquiline. I decided I had to see it.

  I could not find Dromo. None of the Camillus slaves would agree to wake up and take me, especially after all the excitement yesterday. Luckily it was early enough to hope no one dangerous was out on the streets. Never mind safety precautions, I could move faster on my own.

  First I dropped in to check on Uncle Quintus. He seemed to be drowsing, though the poppy juice had worn off so there were fitful movements and groans. Claudia must have gone to bed; she would want to be rested to cope with today. One of their sons had crept downstairs and lay curled up beside his father.

  ‘Looking after him?’ The child – I think it was the one called Constans – nodded. He was afraid I was going to send him back to his own room, but I ruffled his hair and left him. He looked about seven, worried and tear-stained. Uncle Quintus would not want this young soul sent off on his own in a state of such anxiety. ‘Good boy. Try not to worry; he’s getting better. I have to go out. Will you tell your mother I went to see Uncle Aulus?’

  After another nod, Constans said suddenly, ‘That boy left.’

  ‘Who?’ Surely not Dromo?

  ‘The lamp boy who came with you. He went home to see his dog.’

  ‘Right. I hope he can find the way all by himself …’

  ‘I don’t like him.’

  I paused, on my way out. ‘The lantern holder? Why not, Constans?’ He shrugged. ‘He’s just a slave. Did he do something to you?’ A headshake.

  My nephew lost interest. He put his thin arm around his father and buried his face against Quintus’ side. I went over and gently placed a light rug over both of them before I slipped away.

  I can be a sickroom attendant. I just had no time to hang about right then.

  The streets were quiet, apart from stallholders unrolling their awnings and setting out their stock. At one bar someone was doling out hot broth to market workers, but most places still had their shutters closed. Occasionally I passed a sleepy public slave sweeping up the sad remains of last night’s parties, which were best not examined closely. The air felt thin and chilly as if the city had not yet properly opened its lungs. Overhead was cloudless, though washed out, in the waiting period before the sun burned the mist off the river and turned the sky to its hot summer blue.

  The Fourth Cohort’s station house stood at low level on the lesser of the Aventine’s two heights, beside the Clivus Triarius. The troops at the end of a long shift should have been too tired to call indecent suggestions after me but, well done those boys, they bravely managed it. I looked straight ahead and kept going. The catcalls had nothing to do with me being unchaperoned. Dromo would have been no help.

  The Fourth Cohort had held the prisoner in special custody all night. By the time I arrived, inevitably he had talked. I did not ask what persuaded him to speak. I had lived long enough around investigators to be sure I preferred not to know. I never saw him, nor even knew his name.

  The aedile and my uncle were in the tribune’s office, looking tight-lipped, while Scaurus, a loud-voiced, long-in-the-tooth ex-centurion, bragged about what his men’s brilliant interrogation had achieved. As Faustus muttered under his breath to me, there was no guarantee anything their now blood-spattered prisoner had told them was true. I agreed, but pulling limbs out of sockets and cutting off fingers is what makes the vigiles feel comfortably professional. Scaurus was a caring commander, who liked to think his men were happy in their work.

  Fairly early on in what the vigiles shyly called ‘processing’, the prisoner had claimed that to his certain knowledge nobody from the Rabirius gang (to whom he had admitted he belonged) had broken into the Aviola house. No one of theirs took the silver. No one murdered the householders. That was all Faustus and I wanted to know, though for Aulus and the tribune there were bigger questions.

  The man had agreed – wisely, given the circumstances of his capture − that he took part in battering Camillus Justinus but he would not name who gave him orders. Whoever despatched him must be more frightening than the vigiles. Cassius Scaurus said dolefully, ‘My lads could put more pressure on – but the pathetic lump would only go and die on us. I’m not going to tolerate do-gooders asking how a prisoner came to expire in custody before the praetor even knew we had him, when I can wait for the parts we toasted to heal over, then have him nicely executed as a treat for the public – well, am I?’

  No, we answered.

  The praetor, holding a post second only to consul, was Rome’s chief law officer. His role was to examine suspects that the vigiles said should be sent for trial. In public order cases, outside their remit of imposing set fines for basic misdemeanours, this gave their victims a tier of appeal − not that most praetors troubled to look closely at pleas of innocence. Well, not without strong inducements of a kind I won’t mention.

  This prisoner expected to avoid seeing the praetor. He thought he would be rescued. It seemed he was right. Just then the man I talked to at the Galatea, Gallo, paid the Fourth Cohort a visitation, full of swagger and hung about with an expensive-looking legal team: a couple of shiny lawyers wearing togas with a fancy nap. They must have earned a lot of fees to pay for those outsize signet rings. The entire party was belching after what must have been a good breakfast.

  Gallo was so blunt and straightforward he could have just come from reading a tract on republican values. What happened to criminal deviousness? The direct furrow he ploughed here from the Esquiline would have impressed Romulus. Why muck about? He came to pick up their man. When Gallo arrived at a vigiles barracks, his aim was to walk away with what he wanted, plus a sack of compensation money. His lawyers were mouthing that dire speech about ‘loss of reputation’ and ‘mental distress’. They hadn’t even seen the physical damage yet. As soon as they did, they would be charging double for consulting their lexicon of indignant adjectives.

  Aelianus, Faustus and I stood back in silence to watch how Scaurus dealt with this. Doubts must have been running through all our minds. I was sure the useless slob of a tribune would either cave in just to save himself bother, or he would be influenced by gain. When Gallo asked ‘How much?’ that seemed to be the clincher.

  But Gallo was about to be caught out by a technicality. The Rabirii did not extend their criminal reach to the Aventine, so they had never bought off Cassius Scaurus, tribune of the Fourth. As a result, he could pretend to a high-mindedness that was, for those of us who knew him, a revolting spectacle.

  ‘Gallo, when I want to have a sweetener slipped into the contingency fund, I can get it from my own despicable crooks – if I let them. The Second may like you all cosied up under one blanket, but the Second are stupid bastards and I don’t run their kind of show. Shove off, Gallo!’

  This was the way Rome kept a degree of control over chaos, with no single group of villains able to take over the whole city. Each criminal gang would have to buy off not only its own local cohort, but six others. It would be too expensive and not worth the bother.

  The fancy lawyers spoke up again, earning their keep in front of Gallo. I could not bear to listen. I knew Scaurus would happily let them bleat all day without him getting a sweat on. Camillus Aelianus, being a lawyer himself, stubbornly wanted an argument, so I tipped the wink to the aedile to stay with him and ensure my uncle did not resort to libel, or even to thumping the opposition. Aulus was chunky, more muscular than his brother, and what happened to Quintus had made him genuinely angry.

  I took myself across to the Esquiline to oversee the local search.

  Manlius Faustus had told me the orders he intended giving. He provided a mix of men, as many as he could muster in a hurry. He must have sent out notes last night to organise this. Aulus’ wife would have had to provide stationery and messengers; it is a usual courtesy for a guest who needs to contact his associates, be they friends, aunts-in-law, or hapless farm managers. She must have been relieved that Manlius Faustus was not a man penning endless letters so one day he could
publish his collected correspondence. Imagine the nightmare of having Cicero or that tacky show-off Pliny to stay.

  With a normal law and order search, doors are shoved in with their latches broken before people have time to come and open up. There is much noise, damage and aggression – a supposed aid to public order. Property is smashed on purpose, other property is later found to have gone missing. Women are routinely felt up; dogs are kicked in the ribs; scared children are bawled at until they scream their heads off. From time to time wise men, or men who think they are, have explained to me why this approach is regarded as efficient. I once told Uncle Petro it was bull’s bollocks. He just grinned.

  Some of the men were from the aediles’ office, others seemed to be Faustus’ own staff or at least his uncle’s. They were all so careful they never had to shake off protesting housewives and never became nervously hysterical themselves. Everything went smoothly. That was so like Manlius Faustus.

  No complaints arose. No stolen silver drinks vessels turned up either. A couple of householders were cautioned about other items, mainly unused materials that had obviously walked off building sites, plus five wine amphorae of unknown provenance that were found hidden under hay. No arrests were made. We wanted people to be on our side, and stressed our willingness to listen to anyone who might have witnessed something useful – where ‘listening’ meant giving modest payment for information.

  Towards the end it became clear there was one horrible place left to inspect. All the men put a copper into a bowl, then sticks were cut and they drew lots. The lucky winner of the sweep had to lift off the wooden seat then go down the hole to empty Aviola’s kitchen lavatory.

  Nobody in Rome uses a household latrine if there is any alternative. They are disgusting. The man was given a bucket and a scoop to remove the contents; we sieved the sordid products of his labour. I helped. I don’t hang back. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the household’s eating habits, until I feared I would never manage dinner myself again. What we produced was the usual: apart from fish and meat bones, vegetable husks and nut shells, horrible pot and bowl scrapings, dead rats, and enough human pooh for an army cohort, there was lost jewellery, oil lamps that had fallen in at night, fresco painters’ leavings that ought to have been taken off site, odd shoes, snapped styluses, tablets that could have been fascinating love letters or significant lists of property but which were too indecipherable now to be clues for me, and a big group of broken potsherds that must be the end result of the quarrels between slaves that I had heard about.

  There was no silver. Still, it could not be called a waste of time. I had nothing else to do that afternoon. At least we would be leaving the apartment with a spotless, free-running home facility.

  Manlius Faustus had sent a docket that his foreman brought me to sign on completion. I was able to certify that the search had been thorough. This must be a bluff on the aedile’s part. I could not decide whether he genuinely believed it would make the men more diligent if I was watching them – or if he thought ticking off the job on a waxed tablet would give me a laugh.

  28

  Failing to find that silver left me downhearted. It had to be key to the mystery. While it might yet turn up a few pieces at a time in some dodgy backstreet homeware shop, the longer those goblets stayed missing, the less chance we had of finding them and we were missing the big clue as to who came into the apartment and carried out the murders.

  If the Rabirius gang never took the loot, I had to accept that the vigiles investigator Titianus had been right all along: this must be an inside job. I badly wanted to best Titianus. But suppose he was right and the slaves were guilty: what had they done with the items they stole? Those who fled surely did not rush through the dark streets to the Temple of Ceres carrying a sack full of rattling bullion.

  Well, it was just possible. We would look really silly if the lost property had been hidden there in plain sight all along. I would ask Faustus, the next time he was in the Temple, to double-check the display cases of gifts to the goddess. People deposited treasure to win themselves divine favour (or at least the glutinous thanks of the priests).

  No, I do not care for priests. My father taught me to distrust them, whether they are members of the public holding office to further their ambition, or devious professionals with filthy morals and an eye for behind-the-cult-statue liaisons.

  Yes, some priest must have upset my papa badly. Though Didius Falco can take against members of other professions just because they have a wart or are wearing pea green. Actually I agree with him over green.

  Enough of this rambling – another thing my father taught me. You are supposed to witter on about nothing important, while the answer to your problem pops into your mind.

  Look, even a brilliant informer can believe in crackpot routines. Father had them. I had them. You do your work your own lousy way, legate, and leave us to solve our cases in ours.

  I admit, I had hit the low point here: that moment in an inquiry when frustration and even boredom threatens to make you abandon it. I had to remind myself that I was hired to report to Manlius Faustus that the slaves at the temple could be proven innocent. The truth threatened to be that I could not prove it – and maybe they were not.

  It seemed impossible to say that any of the refugee slaves, except the deceased porter Nicostratus, were certainly not involved in strangling their master and mistress. Even Nicostratus could have been part of a conspiracy to steal the silver.

  I kept returning to him. Even allowing a scenario where Aviola and Mucia were killed by their slaves for one of the normal reasons slaves turn against masters, I was unable to explain the first attack that night. However I looked at it, what happened to Nicostratus was an anomaly. Who killed him? Who beat him up so violently he died of his injuries – and why?

  I supposed it was feasible that the other slaves conspired against Aviola and Mucia, but Nicostratus remained loyal to the couple and refused to join in. So the others may have turned on him. Perhaps they carried him away with them because if he regained consciousness he could tell the vigiles what the rest had done? But that was no surety because he could still have told the temple authorities.

  If the other slaves had murdered Aviola and Mucia, they cannot have been tender-hearted. Why in that case did they not finish off Nicostratus straightaway?

  Another curious aspect: why was Libycus, Aviola’s bodyslave, out of the house? If he was part of a conspiracy, what was the point of him being off-scene when the killing took place? Had he too objected to killing Aviola, whom he had served so intimately for so many years? Did somebody suggest he go and see his friends in the shop, to get him out of the way?

  Supposing Libycus refused to contemplate killing Aviola, how did Amaranta feel about disposing of Mucia Lucilia? Of course male cynics will tell you women are more bloodthirsty. But she seemed a perfectly decent young woman to me.

  You may think I am bound to say that. Not me. I am ready to believe the worst of anyone. I judge by feel and instinct, the informer’s precious tools. My gut said Amaranta was hoping to be freed in the near future, which gave her no motive for murder. Far from it. Her mistress’ sudden death had removed all her hopes. I could not imagine that sharp girl, with the fancy hair plaits and plenty of men hankering, would jeopardise her prospects.

  I thought back to the day I interviewed the slaves. When I saw them at the aediles’ office there had been no sign of tensions between them. Even though I had now been told there were ructions in this household, the small group had sat together quietly, dull-eyed and anxious over their fate, but as far as I could tell they were bonded, a single entity. Some – Amaranta, Phaedrus the other porter, Chrysodorus the philosopher, Olympe the girl musician – came from Mucia Lucilia’s previous house; the rest had a long-term service with Aviola. Some had general duties in the house or garden; others carried out more personal services. Some – Amethystus and Diomedes – seemed reconciled to a life of slavery; others were hankering for
freedom and perhaps very close to obtaining it. Had they not told me, I would have been unable to distinguish.

  Did this mean they were indeed bonded – through joint involvement in the crime?

  After mulling until my brain was in turmoil, I left the apartment. I had no wish to stay there that particular night, especially since I had mislaid Dromo. Last night’s violence against Quintus Camillus had made me jumpy.

  I ventured out of doors nervously. To my relief, as I scanned the street for anyone from the Rabirius gang, I spotted the foreman Faustus had sent for the search. He was finishing snacks at a bar with his men, so I asked to join them as they made for home. Escorting me to where the Camillus brothers lived hardly took them out of their way to the Aventine.

  At the Capena Gate I found that Uncle Quintus was awake, up to a point. He had chosen to dull his pain with a large goblet of Chian red wine. This, he claimed, was a more natural and cheering painkiller than medicine – and anyway the Chian was ready to drink. Lying on multiple pillows, with offspring sprawled around him telling him stories and playing quiet games among themselves, he smelt curiously of turpentine balms when I leaned in to kiss him. He was not making much sense, though seemed easy in himself.

  I found Claudia Rufina in a salon with Aulus’ first wife, Hosidia Meline. These two well-dressed women from ancient civilised provinces, Spain and Greece, regarded me as a wild barbarian since I came from Britain. Meline had a habit of teasingly calling me a druid. The Romans had invited, cajoled and coerced most gods of the Mediterranean into their city, no doubt to cover themselves in case the Olympic pantheon were not truly the tops. At no point had they brought the druids. Nor would they.

  The elegant ones told me Aulus had gone out. On occasions he surprised us with brief bursts of social manoeuvring; today he wanted to move among his peers, canvassing support for the speech he intended to make about gangland criminals.

  ‘I hope I was not expected to invite that aedile to lunch!’ Claudia said, at which Meline shook her head. In cahoots, these two senatorial wives openly shunned Faustus for his plebeian status, even though he belonged to a family that had been established and wealthy for years, and was himself the holder of a high office. ‘I know he is your client, Albia …’