Three Hands in the Fountain Read online

  These worthy old codgers clearly held seniority over the Curator. Luring just one of them into taking an interest in our story could have acted as a fulcrum under the Curator’s arse. Unfortunately for us, the three consular commissioners simultaneously held other interesting public posts, such as governorships of foreign provinces. The practice was feasible because the Commission only met formally to inspect the aqueducts for three months of the year – and August was not one of them.

  We were stuck. That was not unusual. I agreed that Petronius had been right all along. We consoled our injured feelings in the traditional way: having lunch in a bar.

  Reeling slightly, Petronius Longus later led me to the best place he knew for sleeping it off, his old patrol house. There was no sign of Fusculus today.

  ‘Time off to visit his auntie, chief,’ said Sergius.

  Sergius was the Fourth Cohort’s punishment officer – tall, perfectly built, permanently flexed for action, and stupendously handsome. Flicking the whip gently, he was sitting on the bench outside, killing ants. His aim was murderous. Muscles rippled aggressively through gaps in his brown tunic. A wide belt was buckled tightly on a flat stomach, emphasising his narrow waist and well-formed chest. Sergius looked after himself. He could look after trouble too. No neighbourhood troublemaker whom Sergius looked after bothered to repeat his crime. At least his long tanned face, dagger-straight nose and flashing teeth made an aesthetic memory for villains as they fainted under the caress of his whip. To be beaten up by Sergius was to partake in a high-class art form.

  ‘What auntie?’ scoffed Petro.

  ‘The one he goes to see when he needs a day off.’ The vigiles were all experts in acquiring a maddening toothache or having to attend the funeral of a close relative they had doted on. Their work was hard, ill paid and dangerous. Inventing excuses to bunk off was a necessary relief.

  ‘He’ll be sorry he was out.’ Unwrapping it with a flourish, I flipped the new hand on to the bench alongside Sergius. ‘We brought him another piece of black pudding.’

  ‘Urgh! Sliced a bit thick, isn’t it?’ Sergius didn’t move. My theory was that he lacked any emotion. Still, he understood what stirred the rest of us. ‘After the last treat you brought him, Fusculus took a religious vow never to touch meat; he only eats cabbage and rosehip custard now. What caupona served this up to you?’ Somehow Sergius could tell we had just been at lunch. ‘You ought to report the place to the aediles as a danger to health.’

  ‘A public slave pulled the hand out of the Aqua Marcia.’

  ‘Probably a ploy by the guild of wine producers,’ Sergius chortled. ‘Trying to convince everyone to stop drinking water.’

  ‘They’ve convinced us,’ I warbled.

  ‘That’s obvious, Falco.’

  ‘Where’s the last hand?’ demanded Petro. ‘We want to see if we’ve got a pair.’

  Sergius sent a clerk to fetch the hand from the museum, where it had apparently been a great attraction. When it came, he himself placed it on the bench side by side with the new one, as if laying out a pair of new cold-weather mittens. He had to fiddle with the loose thumb on the second one, making sure it was the correct way round. ‘Two rights.’

  ‘Hard to tell.’ Petronius kept well away. He was conscious that the new one was in a poor state. After all, he had spent a night in the same apartment with it; the experience was bothering him.

  ‘There’s a lot missing, but this is how the thumb goes, and they’re both palm up. I tell you, these are both rights.’ Sergius stuck by his point, but he never warmed up in an argument. Mostly he never needed to. People eyed up his whip and then gave him the benefit.

  Petronius accepted it gloomily. ‘So there are two different bodies.’

  ‘Same killer?’

  ‘Might be coincidence.’

  ‘Fleas might drop off before they bite,’ scoffed Sergius. He decided to shout in for Scythax to supply a professional opinion.

  Scythax, the troop’s doctor, was a dour Oriental freedman; his hair lay in a perfectly straight line on his eyebrows as if he had trimmed it himself using a cupping vessel on his head as a straight-edge. The previous year his brother had been murdered, since when he had become even more taciturn. When he did speak his manner was suspicious and his tone depressing. That didn’t rule out medical jokes. ‘I can’t do anything for this patient.’

  ‘Oh, give it a try, Hippocrates! He might be very rich. They’re always desperate to go on for ever, and they pay well for a hint of extra life.’

  ‘You’re a clown, Falco.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t expect you to sew these back on.’

  ‘Who lost them?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘What can you tell us about them?’ asked Petro.

  Sergius expounded his theory that the hands had come from different people. Scythax said nothing for long enough to cast doubt on the idea, but then confirmed it. He was a true medical man; he knew just how to aggravate people with his superior, scientific air.

  ‘Are they male corpses?’ Petro muttered.

  ‘Could be.’ The doctor was as definite as the route through a marsh in a thick mist. ‘Probably not. Too small. More likely women, children, or slaves.’

  ‘What about how they came to be separated from their arms?’ I enquired. ‘Could they have been dug up from a grave by dogs or foxes?’ Before it was made illegal to bury bodies within the city boundary there had been a graveyard on the Esquiline Hill. The area still gave out a stink. It had been turned into gardens, but I would not fancy double-digging an asparagus patch there.

  Scythax peered at the hands again, unwilling to touch them. Sergius picked one up fearlessly and held it so the doctor could inspect the wrist. Scythax jumped backwards. He pursed his lips fastidiously and said: ‘I can’t see any identifiable animal teeth-marks. It looks to me as if the wristbone has been severed with a blade.’

  ‘That’s murder, then!’ crowed Sergius. He brought the hand right up in front of his face and peered at it, like someone inspecting a small turtle.

  ‘What kind of blade?’ demanded Petro of Scythax.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Was it a neat job?’

  ‘The hand is too decomposed to tell.’

  ‘Look at the other one too,’ I commanded. Sergius dropped the first and eagerly offered the second relic to Scythax, who went even paler as its thumb finally dropped off.

  ‘Impossible to say what happened.’

  ‘There’s about the same amount of wrist attached.’

  ‘That’s true, Falco. There is some arm bone. This is not a natural separation at the joint, such as might occur through decay.’

  Sergius laid the second hand back on the bench again, carefully aligning the loose thumb in what he deemed to be its natural position.

  ‘Thanks, Scythax,’ said Petro gloomily.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ muttered the doctor. ‘If you find any more pieces of these people, consult another physician if you please.’ He glared at Sergius: ‘And you – wash your hands!’ Not much point, if all the available water came from contaminated aqueducts.

  ‘Take a headache powder and have a lie down for a while,’ Sergius advised humorously as the doctor fled. Scythax was notorious for his reluctance to prescribe this remedy to people who needed it; his normal routine was to tell badly wounded vigiles to get straight back on duty and take plenty of exercise. He was a hard man, with the living. Apparently we had found his weakness with our sad sections of the dead.

  Ours too, in fact.

  XIII

  BY NEXT DAY it was clear that the water board’s public slaves had been talking among themselves. They had devised a competition to see who could produce the most revolting ‘evidence’ and persuade us to let them hand it over. They trotted up Fountain Court looking meek and innocent, and furtively carrying parcels. They were bastards. Their offerings were useless. They smelt too. Sometimes we could tell what the ghastly item was; mostly we preferr
ed not to know. We had to go along with the joke in case one day they brought us something real.

  ‘Well, you asked for it,’ Helena said.

  ‘No, my darling. Lucius Petronius Longus, my wonderful new partner, was the idiot who made the request.’

  ‘And how are you getting on with Petro?’ she asked me demurely.

  ‘You know I’ve just answered that.’

  Once the public slaves inveigled their foremen into joining the game, Petro and I locked up the office and withdrew to my new apartment. Helena saw her chance. In two ticks she had dressed up in a smart red gown, glass beads chinking in her earlobes, and was tying on a sunhat. She was off to visit a school for orphans of which she was the patron. I made her take Nux for protection; Julia would take care of me.

  The baby caused some friction.

  ‘I don’t believe you’re allowing this!’ Petronius growled.

  ‘I tend not to use the word “allow” in connection with Helena.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Falco. How can you do your job while you’re acting as a children’s nurse?’

  ‘I’m used to it. Marina was always parking Marcia on me.’ Marina was my late brother’s girlfriend, a woman who knew how to leech. I was particularly fond of little Marcia, a fact Marina exploited with skill. After Festus died she had wrung me dry of sympathy, guilt and (her unashamed preference) cash.

  ‘There have to be rules,’ Petro continued darkly. He was sitting on my front porch with his big feet up on the rotted handrail, blocking the stairs. In the absence of action he was eating a bowl of damsons. ‘I’m not having us appear unprofessional.’

  I pointed out that the main reason we looked like stray dogs in a market was that we spent our time lounging around winebars because we had failed to acquire any paying clients. ‘Julia’s no bother. All she does is sleep.’

  ‘And cry! How can you impress visitors with a newborn bawling on a blanket on the table? How can you interrogate a suspect while you’re wiping her backside? In the name of the gods, Falco, how can you go out on discreet surveillance with a crib strapped on your back?’

  ‘I’ll cope.’

  ‘The first time you’re in a scrimmage and some thug grabs the babe as a hostage, it will be a different tale.’

  I said nothing. He had got me there.

  He had not yet finished, however. ‘How can you even enjoy a flagon and a quiet discussion at a caupona –’ When my old friend started devising a list of grievances, he made it a ten scroll encyclopaedia.

  To shut him up I suggested we went for lunch. This aspect of the freelance life cheered him up as usual and out we went, of necessity taking Julia. When it was nearly time for her to be fed we had to go home again, in order to hand her over to Helena, but a short meal – like taking water with our wine jug for once – could only be healthy, as I pointed out to Petro. He told me what I could do with my praise for the abstemious life.

  Helena was not home yet, so we settled back on the porch as if we had been there ever since she left. To reinforce the fraud, we resumed the same argument too.

  We could easily have continued wrangling for hours. It was like being eighteen-year-old legionaries again. On our posting to Britain we had wasted days debating pointless issues, our only entertainment in the compulsory periods of guard duty that intruded between drinking Celtic beer until we were sick and convincing ourselves tonight would be the night we gave up our virginities to one of the cheap camp prostitutes. (We could never afford it; our pay was always in hock for the beer.)

  But our doorstep symposium was to be disturbed. We watched the approaching trouble with interest.

  ‘Look at this bunch of idiots.’

  ‘Seem to be lost.’

  ‘Lost and daft.’

  ‘It must be you they want, then.’

  ‘No, I’d say it’s you.’

  There were three deadweights and a dozy lout who seemed to be their leader. They were dressed in worn tunics that even my frugal mother would have refused to use as floorcloths. Rope belts, bum-starver skirts, ragged necklines, unstitched seams, missing sleeves. When we first spotted them they were wandering around Fountain Court like stray sheep. They looked as if they had come here for something, but had forgotten what. Somebody must have sent them; this group didn’t have enough gumption to have devised a plan themselves. Whoever it was may have given full directions, but he had wasted his breath.

  After a time they converged on the laundry opposite. We watched them discussing whether to venture inside until Lenia bounced out; she must have thought they were bent on stealing clothes from her drying lines so she had emerged to help them pick out something good. Well, she could see that they needed it. Their present attire was deplorable.

  They all held a long conversation, after which the four dummies wandered off up the stone stairs that would lead – if they persisted – to my old apartment at the top. Lenia turned towards Petro and me with a rude mime that said it was us these inept persons were seeking. We also guessed she had told them that if they failed to find us up there they would not have missed much. Typically, she had made no attempt to point out that we were both lounging over here in full view.

  Much later the four dopey characters ambled aimlessly back down again. They all hung around in the street for a while. Vague discussions took place. Then one spotted Cassius, the baker whose shop had been burned down during Lenia’s ill-fated marriage rites. He now hired ovens somewhere else, but ran a stall here for his old regulars. The hungry dummy begged a roll, and must have asked after us at the same time. Cassius presumably owned up. The dummy wandered back to his companions and told them the story. They all turned round slowly and looked up at us.

  Petro and I did not move. He was still on a stool with his feet up; I was lodged against the frame of the front door filing my nails.

  Surprisingly, there was more talking. Then the four dimwits decided to come our way. We waited for them patiently.

  ‘You Falco and Petronius?’

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘We’re telling you to answer.’

  ‘Our answer is: who we are is our business.’

  A typical chat between strangers, the kind that happened frequently on the Aventine. For one of the parties the outcome was usually short, sharp, and painful.

  The four, none of whom had been taught by their mothers to keep their mouths closed properly or to stop scratching their privates, wondered what they could do now.

  ‘We’re looking for two bastards called Petronius and Falco.’ The leader thought that if he repeated himself often enough we would cave in and confess. Maybe nobody had told him we had been in the army once. We knew how to obey orders – and how to ignore them.

  ‘This is a good game.’ Petronius grinned at me.

  ‘I could play it all day.’

  There was a pause. Over the ranks of dark apartments rose the ferocious noonday sun. Shadows had shrunk to nothing. Balcony plants lay down fainting with hollow stems. Peace had descended on the dirty streets as everyone crept indoors and braced themselves for several hours of unbearable summer heat. It was time for sleep and unstrenuous fornication. Only the ants still laboured. The swallows still circled, sometimes letting out their faint high-pitched cries as they swooped endlessly over the Aventine and Capitol against the breathtaking blue of a Roman sky. Even the endless clack of an abacus from a high-up room where somebody’s landlord usually sat counting his money seemed to falter a little.

  It was too hot for causing trouble, and certainly too hot for receiving it. Even so, one of the dummies had the bright idea of grabbing me.

  XIV

  I HIT HIM hard in the stomach before he made contact. At the same time Petro swung to his feet in one easy movement. Neither of us wasted time shrieking, ‘Oh dear, what’s happening?’ We knew – and we knew what we would be doing about it.

  I grabbed the first man by the hair, since there was not enough cloth in his tunic to allow a grip. These fellows were stunted and
sleepy. None had any will to resist. With one arm round his waist I was soon using him as a sweeper to shoo the others back down the steps. Petro still thought he was seventeen; he had shown off by clambering over the handrail and dropping to the street. Wincing ruefully, he was then in position to field the crowd as they rushed down. Rounding them up in a pincer movement we were able to give them a thrashing without too much loss of breath. Then we piled them up in a heap.

  Holding them down with his boot on the top one, Petro shook my hand formally. He had hardly raised a sweat. ‘Two each: nice odds.’

  We looked at them. ‘Pitiful opposition,’ I decided regreatfully.

  We stood back and let them pull themselves upright. In a few seconds a surprising crowd had gathered to watch. Lenia must have warned everyone in the laundry; all her washer-girls and tub-boys had come out. Somebody cheered us. Fountain Court has its sophisticated side; I detected a hint of irony. Anyone would think Petronius and I were a pair of octogenarian gladiators who had jumped out of retirement to capture a group of six-year-old apple thieves.

  ‘Now you tell us,’ Petro commanded, in the voice of an officer of the vigiles, ‘who you are, who sent you, and what you want.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ dared the leader, so we grabbed him and threw him between us like a beanbag until he grasped our importance in these streets.

  ‘Hold off, the melon’s getting squashed!’

  ‘I’ll pulp him if he doesn’t stop acting up –’

  ‘Going to be a good boy now?’

  He was gasping too much to answer but we stood him up again anyway. Petronius, who was really enjoying himself, pointed to Lenia’s girls. They were sweethearts as singletons, but together they turned into a hooting, foul-mouthed, obscene little clutch. If you saw them coming you wouldn’t just cross to the other pavement, you’d dive into a different street. Even if it meant getting mugged and your money pinched. ‘Any more trouble and you’re all tossed to those lovelies. Believe me, you don’t want to be dragged off into their steam room. The last man the washtub Harpies got hold of was missing for three weeks. We found him hung up on a pole with his privates dangling and he’s been gibbering in a corner ever since.’