Three Hands in the Fountain Page 6

  Justinus himself only smiled, shrugged, and looked mildly curious, like a sweet-tempered lad who wondered what the fuss was all about. I had once worked closely with him abroad. His vague air was masking a broken heart; he had fallen heavily for a blonde visionary prophetess in the forests of barbarian Germany (though once back in Rome he had swiftly consoled himself by starting an even more impossible liaison with an actress). Quintus Camillus Justinus always looked as if he didn’t know the way to the Forum – but he had hidden depths.

  The evening passed off so peacefully that when we were dawdling home in the litter, ignoring the grumblings of the bearers who had expected me to walk alongside, Helena felt drawn to comment: ‘I hope you noticed the transformation, now we have produced a child?’

  ‘How’s that?’

  Her great brown eyes danced with complicity. ‘Nobody takes the slightest notice of you and me. Not one person asked us when we were going to find somewhere better to live –’

  ‘Or when I would be starting a decent job –’

  ‘Or when the formal wedding was to be –’

  ‘If I’d have known all it took was a baby I would have borrowed one long ago.’

  Helena surveyed Julia. Worn out by several hours of accepting adulation, she was sleeping deeply. In about another hour, just as I nodded off in bed, all that would change. Most informers stay unmarried. This was one of the reasons. On the other hand, a night-time surveillance in some street away from home – even if it contained a tannery and an illegal fish-pickle still and was infested with garlic-eating prostitutes whose pimps carried butcher’s knives – was starting to offer unexpected attractions. A man who knows how to prop himself up can doze quite refreshingly in a shop portico.

  ‘What about Aelianus and Claudia?’ asked my beloved.

  ‘Your mild-mannered parents have the knack of taking prompt action.’

  ‘I hope it works.’ She sounded neutral; that meant she felt concerned.

  ‘Well, she said yes. Your father is a fair man, and your mother wouldn’t let Aelianus be trapped if it was likely to go wrong.’ They needed Claudia’s money badly, however. After a moment I asked quietly, ‘When you were married to that bastard Pertinax, what did your mother have to say?’

  ‘Not much.’

  Helena’s mother had never liked me – which proved there was nothing wrong with her judgement. Helena Justina’s first marriage had been suggested for his own sticky reasons by her uncle (the one I shoved in the sewer later), and at the time even Julia Justa would have found the match hard to oppose. Helena herself had tolerated Pertinax as long as she could, then without consultation had issued a notice of divorce. The husband’s family tried to arrange a reconciliation. By then she had met me. That was the end of it.

  ‘Before her grandparents arrive, we’d better talk to Claudia,’ I said. Since we had brought the girl here, we were both feeling responsible.

  ‘I had a few words while you were hiding with my father in his study. And by the way,’ demanded Helena warmly, ‘what exactly were you two up to?’

  ‘Nothing, my darling. I was just letting him complain some more about the Census.’

  In fact, I had been testing an idea on Camillus Verus. His mentioning the Census had suggested a way that I might earn some money. I won’t say I was exerting my authority by not telling Helena about it, but it would amuse me to see how long it took her to winkle out the details from her father or me. Helena and I had no secrets. But some schemes are men’s work. Or so we like to tell ourselves.

  X

  GLAUCUS, MY TRAINER, was as sharp as a kitten’s claw. A short, wide-shouldered Cilician freedman, he ran a bath-house two streets behind the Temple of Castor. It had a select gymnasium attached for people like me who had life-and-death reasons for keeping their bodies in trim. A library and pastry shop amused other clients – the discreet middle class who could afford to pay for his overheads and whose moderate habits never disrupted the hushed atmosphere. Glaucus only offered membership by personal introduction.

  He knew his regulars better than they knew themselves. Probably none of us were at all close to him. After twenty years of listening to other people revealing their secrets while he worked on their muscle tone, he knew how to avoid that trap. But he could tease out embarrassing information as smoothly as a thrush emptying a snail shell.

  I had his measure. When he started the extraction process, I grinned and told him, ‘Just stick with asking if I’m planning any holidays this year.’

  ‘You’re overweight and ridiculously tanned; you’re so relaxed I’m surprised you don’t fall over; I can tell you’ve been lying around on a farm somewhere, Falco.’

  ‘Yes, it was hideously rural. All work, I assure you.’

  ‘I hear you’re a father now.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘I gather you’ve finally been forced to rethink your slack attitude to work. You’ve taken a big leap forward and you’re in business with Petronius Longus.’

  ‘You do keep your ears open.’

  ‘I stay in touch. And before you ask,’ Glaucus told me crisply, ‘the water in this bath-house is drawn from the Aqua Marcia. It has the best reputation for coldness and quality – I don’t want to hear any ugly rumours that you two schemers might be looking into nasty things in the reservoir!’

  ‘Just a hobby. I’m surprised even you knew anything about it. Petro and I are advertising for divorce and inheritance jobs.’

  ‘Don’t try to bluff me, Falco. I’m the man who knows your left leg’s weak from when you broke it three years ago. Your old fractured ribs still ache if the wind is northwesterly, you like to fight with a dagger but your wrestling’s adequate, your feet are good, your right shoulder’s vulnerable, you can throw a punch but you aim too low and you have absolutely no conscience about kicking your opponent in the balls –’

  ‘I sound a complete wreck. Any other tantalising personal details?’

  ‘You eat too many street-caupona rissoles and you hate redheads.’

  ‘Spare me the canny Cilician peasant act.’

  ‘Just let’s say, I know what you and Petronius are up to.’

  ‘Petro and I are merely harmless eccentrics. Are you suspicious of us?’

  ‘Does a donkey shit? I’ve heard exactly what you’re advertising,’ Glaucus informed me sourly. ‘Every client today has been full of it: Falco & Partner are offering a fat reward for any information relating to dismembered body parts found in the aqueducts.’

  The word ‘reward’ acted on me faster than a laxative. Weak left leg or not, I was out of his discreet establishment in the time it took to fling on my clothes. But when I raced up to the apartment in Fountain Court intent on ordering Petronius to retract his dangerous new poster, it was too late. Somebody was there before me, proffering another corpse’s hand.

  XI

  ‘LISTEN, YOU IDIOT, – if you’re doling out rewards in the name of my business, you’d better put up your own collateral!’

  ‘Settle down, Falco.’

  ‘Show me the colour of your denarii.’

  ‘Just shut up, will you? I’m interviewing a visitor.’

  His visitor was exactly the kind of unprepossessing lowlife I would expect to come crawling up here looking for a bribe. Petronius had no idea. For a man who had spent seven years apprehending villains he remained curiously innocent. Unless I stopped him, he would ruin me.

  ‘What’s this then?’ demanded the interviewee. ‘What’s gone wrong about the money?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Petro.

  ‘Everything,’ said I.

  ‘I heard you was giving rewards,’ he complained accusingly.

  ‘Depends what for.’ I was hopping mad, yet experience had taught me to stand by any promise that had lured a hopeful here. Nobody climbs six flights of stairs to see an informer unless they are either in desperate trouble or believe that what they know is worth hard cash.

  I glared at Petro’s catch. He was a foot shorter
than average, malnourished and filthy. His tunic was threadbare, a mucky brown garment that hung on his shoulders by a few rags of wool. His eyebrows met in the middle. Wiry black stubble ran from his jutting chin right up his cheekbones to the bags under his eyes. His ancestors may have been high kings of Cappadocia, but without doubt this man was a public slave.

  On his feet, which looked as flat as bread-shovels, he was wearing rough clogs. They had thick soles but they had not kept him dry; his felt leggings were black and had oozed water everywhere. A trail of puddles marked his path through our door, and a dark little pond was slowly gathering around the spot where he had come to rest.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Petronius haughtily, trying to reassert his authority. I leant on the table with my thumbs in my belt. I was annoyed. The informant didn’t need to be told about it, but Petronius would pick it up from my stance.

  ‘I said, what’s your name?’

  ‘Why do you need to know?’

  Petro scowled. ‘Why do you need to keep it a secret?’

  ‘I’ve nothing to hide.’

  ‘That’s commendable! I’m Petronius Longus; he’s Falco.’

  ‘Cordus,’ admitted the applicant grudgingly.

  ‘And you’re a public slave, working for the Curator of Aqueducts?’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  I saw Petro control himself. ‘Given what you brought me, it fits.’ We all looked at the new hand. We looked away again rapidly. ‘What family do you work in?’ asked Petro, to avoid discussing the relic.

  ‘The state.’ The water board used two groups of public slaves, one derived from the original organisation set up by Agrippa and now in full state control, the other established by Claudius and still part of the household of the Emperor. There was no rationale in perpetuating these two ‘families’. They ought to be part of the same workforce. It was a classic bureaucratic mess with the usual openings for corruption. The inefficiency was worsened by the fact that nowadays major work programmes were carried out by private contractors instead of direct slave labour anyway. No wonder the Aqua Appia always leaked.

  ‘What’s your job, Cordus?’

  ‘Masonry. Vennus is my foreman. He doesn’t know I found that . . .’

  We all reluctantly looked at the hand again.

  This one was a dark, pungent, rotted nightmare, recognisable only because we were in the mood to see what it was. It was in desperate condition, only half there. Like the first, the fingers were missing but the thumb remained, attached by a thread of leathery skin though its main joint had parted. Maybe the fingers had been gnawed off by rats. Maybe something even worse had happened to them.

  The relic now lay on a dish – my old supper dish, I was annoyed to notice – which had been placed on a stool between Petronius and his interviewee, as far as possible from both of them. In the small room that was still too close. I edged further along the table, in the opposite direction. A fly buzzed in to have a look, then flew off fast in alarm. Gazing at this object changed the atmosphere for all of us.

  ‘Where did you find it?’ Petronius enquired in a low voice.

  ‘In the Aqua Marcia.’ Tough luck, Glaucus. So much for crystal-clear bathing. ‘I went in through a top hatch with a surveyor to check if we needed to scrape the walls.’

  ‘Scrape them?’

  ‘Full-time job. They get coated with lime, legate. Thick as your leg, if we leave it. We have to keep chipping it away or the whole works would clog up.’

  ‘So was there water in the aqueduct at the time?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Shutting the Marcia’s next to impossible. So much depends on it, and if we send inferior water because we’re running a diversion, nobs start jumping up and down.’

  ‘How did you find the hand then?’

  ‘It just came floating along and said hello.’

  Petronius stopped asking questions. He looked as if he would be happy for once if I interrupted him, but there was nothing I was burning to interject. Like him, I felt slightly ill.

  ‘When it knocked my knee I jumped a mile, I can tell you. Do you know who it belongs to?’ asked the water board slave curiously. He seemed to think we had answers to the impossible.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I expect you’ll find out.’ The slave was consoling himself. He wanted to believe something proper would come out of this.

  ‘We’ll try.’ Petro sounded depressed. He and I both knew it was hopeless.

  ‘So what’s this about the money then?’ Cordus was looking embarrassed. No doubt if we did produce any payment, he would overcome his reserve. ‘To tell you the truth, it wasn’t for the reward that I come here, you know.’ Petronius and I listened with an air of decent concern. ‘I heard you was asking questions so I thought you ought to have it . . . but I wouldn’t want the bosses to hear –’

  Petronius surveyed the slave with his friendly look. ‘I suppose,’ he suggested, ‘if you find anything of this nature, the rule is you have to keep it quiet to avoid upsetting public confidence?’

  ‘That’s it!’ agreed Cordus excitedly.

  ‘How many castoff bits of corpse have you found before?’ I asked. Now a second person was starting to take an interest he cheered up. Maybe we liked his offering after all. It might increase what we paid him.

  ‘Well, not me myself, legate. But you’d be surprised. All sorts of things turn up in the water, and I’ve heard of plenty.’

  ‘Any handless bodies?’

  ‘Arms and legs, legate.’ It was hearsay, I reckoned. I could tell Petro agreed.

  ‘Ever seen any of them?’

  ‘No, but a mate of mine has.’ Everyone in Rome has a mate whose life is much more interesting than his own. Funny; you never get to meet the mate.

  ‘The hand is your own first big discovery?’ I made it sound like something to be proud of.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I glanced openly at Petronius. He folded his arms. So did I. We pretended to be holding a silent conference. Really we were both as gloomy as sin.

  ‘Cordus,’ I ventured, ‘do you know if the waters of the Aqua Appia and the Aqua Marcia originate in the same place?’

  ‘Not me, legate. Don’t ask me nothing about the aqueducts. I’m just a mutt who works in the wet, chipping off clink. I don’t know nothing technical.’

  I grinned at him. ‘That’s a pity! I was hoping you could spare us having to talk to some long-winded hydraulic surveyor.’

  He looked crestfallen.

  He was probably a villain but he had convinced us he meant well. We knew how hard life was for public slaves so Petro and I both dug in our pockets and arm-purses. Between us we managed to find him three quarters of a denarius, all in smalls. Cordus seemed delighted. Half an hour in our den above Fountain Court had warned him that the best he could expect from a pair of duds like us might be a kick on the backside and an empty-handed trudge downstairs. A few coppers was better than that, and he could see he had cleaned us out.

  After he had gone, Petronius pulled on his outdoor boots and vanished: running off to remove his reward poster. I carefully lifted the stool with the hand on it on to the balcony, but a pigeon flew down for a nibble almost straight away. I brought it back in and used Petro’s smart mess tin upside-down over the hand as a lid.

  He would curse me, but by then I would be across the road peacefully closeted with Helena. The good thing about having a work partner was that I could leave him to fret all night over any new evidence. As senior executive I could forget it then stroll in tomorrow, refreshed and full of unworkable ideas, to ask in an annoying tone what solutions my minion had come up with.

  Some of us are born to be managers.

  XII

  THE CURATOR OF Aqueducts was an imperial freedman. He was probably a slick and cultured Greek. He probably carried out his work with dedicated efficiency. I say ‘probably’ because Petro and I never actually saw him. This exalted official was too busy being slick and cultured to find time for an in
terview with us.

  Petronius and I wasted a morning at his office in the Forum. We watched a long procession of foremen from the gangs of public slaves march in to receive their orders for the day, then march out again without a word for us. We tackled various members of an ever-changing secretariat, who all handled us with diplomacy, and some were even polite. It became clear that members of the public were not likely to be granted an audience with the lord of the waters – not even when they wanted to suggest how he might keep the flow free of mouldering bits of dead people. The fact we had said we were informers did not help. Probably.

  We were allowed to write a petition stating our concern, though a frank scribe who had glanced at it told us the Curator would not want to know. That at least was not just probable but definite.

  The only way around this would be pulling rank on the Curator. I disapproved of such low tactics; well, I rarely knew anyone important enough to pull rank for me. So that was out.

  Still, I did consider possibilities. Petro started getting angry and treated the whole business as if it smelt; he just wanted to go for a drink. But I always like to take the historical view: the water supply was a vital state concern, and had been for centuries. Its bureaucracy was an elaborate mycellum whose black tentacles crept right to the top. As with everything else in Rome that he could possibly stick his nose into, the Emperor Augustus had devised extra procedures – ostensibly to provide clear supervision, but mainly to keep him informed.

  I knew there was a Board of Commission for the aqueducts which comprised three senators of consular rank. While carrying out his duties each was entitled to be preceded by two lictors. Each was also accompanied by an impressive train containing three slaves to carry his handkerchief, a secretary, and an architect, plus a large staff of more nebulous officials. Rations and pay for the staff were provided from public funds, and the commissioners could draw stationery and other useful supplies, a proportion of which they no doubt took home for their private use in the traditional manner.