Falco: The Official Companion (A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery) Read online

  His one serious fault was avarice. Not content with restoring the duties remitted by Galba he levied new and heavier ones … and openly engaged in business dealings which would have disgraced even a private citizen – such as cornering the stocks of certain commodities and then putting them back on the market at inflated prices.

  SUETONIUS

  The plot involves two fascinations of mine: first, corruption, with its ally nepotism; second, high-level administrative power struggles. Olive oil was the equivalent of the oil/gas industry today, just as critical for every country that depended upon it. I had fun researching its production and its many uses. Better still, I could consider the moral and financial pressures when a dependent province was being eyed up by various factors in central government; when traditional landowners came under threat from mightier moguls and even faced the possibility of what we call nationalisation. As Falco unravels the complicated situation, he finds many ambiguities – not least how the Emperor will want to proceed, given the potential for huge personal profits. Falco’s mission will not simply be to prove the existence of an olive oil cartel; he has to decide whether his masters genuinely want him to bust it. He must pick his way, right from the first scenes where he finds himself with responsibility for the suddenly helpless Anacrites. The spy’s plight may have been engineered by Laeta; Laeta will definitely exploit his rival’s misadventure.

  Of course Falco takes the humane course. He knows he will regret saving Anacrites’ life – though even he can’t foresee just how much future trouble will result. I didn’t know myself!

  In selecting my killer I returned, like any crabby Roman satirist, to a hobby horse. I wanted to lambaste the kind of booby who sails into high positions without common sense or experience and probably without real talent. This member of the false élite, favoured by a fast-track management system, creates havoc but is moved on to a new office before the havoc becomes visible; he leaves hard-working underprivileged staff who do have common sense, experience and almost certainly talent, to pick up the pieces because their ethics demand that they should. Falco says of Quinctius Quadratus: This was the rotten side of government. Enormous power was placed at the disposal of an untried, over-confident young man … As I expected, he had been educated by the best tutors – and he knew nothing. He’d be a magistrate one day, laying down laws he had never heard of to people whose lives in the real world he would never understand. That’s Rome. City of glorious tradition – including the one that if the landed élite can bugger up the little man, they will. [DLC]

  I had a lot of fun with it.

  Then, unexpectedly, came neat revenge on Cornix – one of those little links back that suggests itself quite late in a story.

  This book is set in the home of Spanish dance, as famous in ancient times as it is today, so we have my tentative introduction of Perella, the unlikely middle-aged female assassin and spy – who will be developed further later.

  The Archimedes hodometer never fails to elicit curiosity. While it is not certain if these were really constructed in ancient times, the technology existed and there have certainly been modern reconstructions.

  Hodometer, or milometer

  The wheel-hub had been fitted with a single tooth gear. Every rotation of the carriage wheel caused this gear to engage with a flat disc set vertically at right angles above it, which was cut into numerous triangular teeth. Each wheel rotation moved the disc on by a notch, eventually operating a second gear, which in turn moved on a second disc. That one, which was horizontal, had been drilled with small holes, upon each of which was balanced a smooth pebble. Every operation of the top disc moved up a new hole, allowing a pebble to drop into a box below, which Stertius had secured with a huge padlock.

  ‘The top disc rotates one hole for every four hundred revolutions of the carriage wheel – which takes one Roman mile!’[DLC]

  The ‘Partners Trilogy’

  I decided to experiment: it has always been important to me to vary the approach and style of the novels, as well as their content and settings. I want regular readers to be comforted by familiar elements, but without the books becoming dismally formulaic. I cherish variety myself and I believe that will keep readers coming back.

  Now Falco will try to improve his social standing and add to his caseload with the help of partners. The Three …, Two …, One … trio was the only time I consciously planned ahead by more than one book – at least to the extent of announcing the general theme to my publisher in a one-page proposal for the three books. Even so, one of the intended partners subsequently changed.

  All I knew for sure in advance was that none of these partnerships would be easy. Falco’s true partner in life and work is Helena Justina. He makes a poor subordinate and is never happy supervising staff. He imagines it will be thrilling to work with his best friend Petronius Longus, but they are soon at loggerheads in a way that jeopardises their investigation; in an irritating contrast, great achievements come out of his loathed stint alongside his rival, Anacrites. To Falco’s annoyance, that is what wins him a social position and some wealth.

  Three Hands in the Fountain

  First published 1997

  Set against the background of Roman water supply, this was to be my ‘serial killer’ book. They were all the rage, fuelled by ‘offender profiling’ (which theoretically I couldn’t use as it was such a new science, though I fearlessly had a go). I felt that if I was to have credit as a modern crime-writer, I had to pack in a serial killer. I did not enjoy it. This book was my most gruesome, with the highest terror/suspense quotient. A killer who preys on women, abducting and torturing them before sexual deviance and death, was unpleasant to write about – and because he was a serial killer, it had to happen repeatedly. Also, by tradition, I was supposed to threaten one of my known characters …

  That said, I did enjoy the various ‘watery’ locations. I plundered one textbook much more than usual – Trevor Hodge’s Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply (fortunately Trevor is a really nice man, and a devotee of crime novels). There was other research, however. Sally Bowden, the fiction editor at Woman’s Realm who gave me my ‘first break’ as a published author, has a son, Dr William Bowden, who was then studying at the British School in Rome. Will had already helped me visit the Domus Aurea, Nero’s Golden House, before it was formally opened to the public. Now he came up trumps again. He obtained passes to look at an aqueduct, the Aqua Virgo which runs above street level; I wimped out, having no head for heights (or depths), so Richard went down inside to photograph the interior for me. When it came to the sewers, the Cloaca Maxima under the Forum of Nerva, Richard said no – having already suffered a serious eye infection after accompanying me down the sewers in Paris. So I had no choice.

  The Cloaca Maxima is still in use, at least for storm water. It is looked after by both a water board and a heritage agency; one would allow us access, but the other said it was too dangerous. Presumably they relented, because I was sorry to learn that permits had arrived. Will and I kitted ourselves out with wellingtons from a market stall and rubber washing-up gloves from a hardware store; we had written instructions to be covered head to foot, as a precaution against Weil’s disease. That is carried in rats’ pee and is frequently fatal … As a good Englishwoman I take rainwear even to Rome in July, so I had a decent plastic mac, with a hood, which Richard fastened firmly under my chin with a large safety pin.

  Ladders arrived, slung down from the Via dei Fori Imperiali, where curious Romans at street cafés paused in mid-cappuccino to look over at the strange goings-on. A manhole was thrown back. I could hear distant water rushing. Two ladders were tied together and put down, so steeply that a man had to be stationed at the top with a safety rope. One by one we launched ourselves on to the ladder and descended. I was squeaking with terror, though encouraged by Richard shouting, Whatever you do, darling, don’t let go! and Will urging, Lindsey, you are upholding the honour of British womanhood! You can tell his mum worked for Woman’s Realm.
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  A new length of ladder soon arrived, which was lashed on to the first with cords. The whole cockeyed artefact was dangled down the dark hole. It just reached the bottom, leaving no spare at the top. It looked almost vertical. Anyone who deals with ladders will tell you that’s fatal. A large man was posted on top to hang on with a piece of ragged rope. He seemed happy; he knew he had the best job. [THF]

  We walked up and down admiring the Etruscan brickwork. What it was like appears in the novel.

  Climbing out, with wet wellies, my legs were trembling so much, I almost stuck helplessly at the big gap where the ladders were tied together. And the most useful research? As Falco reports: When you have walked through a sewer, you have to pull off your own boots. [THF]

  On a bowing ladder, with narrow treads, in wet footwear, going up was even worse than coming down. [THF]

  Lindsey and Will in their wellies

  The story develops around the ill-fated partnership of Falco and Petro as they investigate a long series of murders which, in classic style, the authorities prefer to ignore. When body-parts emerging from the aqueducts cause public panic, they are given the job formally, under supervision of the real Julius Frontinus, who would later be the author of the seminal De aquaeductu; we can kid ourselves his interest was kindled by working with Falco. Anacrites, the Chief Spy, tries to snatch the kudos of solving the mystery, a new step in his slow-burning feud with Falco and a further incentive for the partners who want to beat him to it.

  Although Petronius is on suspension for his daft affair with Balbina Milvia, there is all the ‘police procedure’ I could devise, as the pals try to trace the villain in the dense crowds emerging from the Circus Maximus Games. I very much enjoyed reusing the hard-bitten vigiles.

  We all find grisly serial killings fascinating. Anxious to avoid voyeurism, I kept most of the victims anonymous and their deaths ‘off-stage’. Only one is identified deliberately: the young wife, Asinia. Through her, I wanted to stress the enormous private misery that results from such killings.

  The denouement involves a red herring I am proud of. It has a ghastly humour, yet it should be salutary because this victim – initially an unsympathetic character – is rescued, yet has been permanently traumatised and reduced to a shadow of herself. I remain ambivalent about using psychopathic death for entertainment. This is one way to remind us again of the terrible consequences.

  Two for the Lions

  First published 1998

  Winner of the Crime Writers’ Association Ellis Peters Historical Dagger 1999

  I sometimes define my role as a historical novelist as showing where people in the past were the same as us – and where they were very different. So, the Romans had democracy (for men) and central heating. The two main aspects in which their society differed from ours were slavery and the arena. In this book I gritted my teeth and took on another subject I viewed unsympathetically: gladiatorial combat. I would deal not just with humans fighting, but with the wide-scale killing of animals, to get the worst possible side of it out of the way.

  Raising wild beasts to the arena

  We start with the unexplained death of a lion. Falco is drawn in as if it was a standard murder investigation, looking for paw prints, investigating the locked cage, asking, Who saw him last? How did he spend his last evening? Who were his associates? What did he eat last? Whom did he eat, in fact? [TFL] For Falco (and me) the state executioner counts as a civil servant – a joke, but one which provides a reason to track down his killer.

  My take on gladiators was influenced by a TV documentary about young men in the East End of London who want to be boxers; it is something they can do, something that just may bring the fortunate few both money and fame. We know that Roman gladiators were adored like modern celebrities: Sergius, for whom the senator’s wife Eppia gave up everything, was pretty run-down, says Juvenal:

  Was I eccentric to care? Was my obsession with Leonidas unhealthy and pointless? Or was I right and the noble beast’s fate should be as significant to a civilised man as any unexplained killing of a fellow human being? [TFL]

  … no chicken, forty at least, with a dud arm that

  held promise

  Of early retirement. Besides, his face looked a

  proper mess –

  Helmet-scarred, a great wen on his nose, an

  unpleasant

  Discharge from one constantly weeping eye.

  What of it?

  He was a gladiator.

  While fighting clearly equated to modern football, its bloodshed was occasionally criticised; Seneca denounced the indiscriminate hacking of criminals and said: What is the point of armour? Or of skill? All that sort of thing just makes the death slower in coming. In the morning men are thrown to the lions and the bears: but it is the spectators they are thrown to in the lunch hour. The spectators insist that each on killing his man shall be thrown against another to be killed in his turn; and the eventual victor is reserved by them for some other form of butchery; the only exit for the contestants is death … ‘But he was a highway robber, he killed a man.’ And what of it? Granted that as a murderer he deserves this punishment, what have you done, you wretched fellow, to deserve to watch it?

  This was a minority view, however.

  In my story the Colosseum, not yet built, is already a catalyst for the suppliers whose greed and ambition form the main plot. I turned to Libya for arena action. Once again, my dauntless friend Helen lured me on a guided trip, led by the late John Dore – an archaeologist who not only gave us wonderful insights into the Latin and Greek remains, but stirred me to obtain Internet connectivity, which enabled my website. That’s another story – though from this point on my writing life was heightened and occasionally hampered, my horizons and contacts very much expanded.

  The structure of the book came about because Helen got married. David, her new husband, was teaching in Canada, so at Easter she went to visit him; this meant her passport was not available for obtaining a visa to Libya in the spring. It must be clear that my plot is heading to Lepcis Magna, Sabratha, Cyrene and Apollonia, but we could only travel in the last two weeks of September. So it takes Falco a long time to get on that Tripolitanean boat – and it took me a very short time to write the last half of the book: 50,000 words in October. Ever since, I have wished I never discovered such deadline-diddling was possible!

  By now, fired by sympathy for Helena, I had decided that Falco must at last obtain some funds. So, he works on Vespasian’s Census with his new partner Anacrites. I could find out very little about how a census worked in practice. However, I had been a designated ‘small business’ since I began writing; then I could not afford an accountant so I grapple with taxation myself. In Britain it is an offence to fiddle your income tax, though you are allowed to order your affairs so you pay as little as possible; when you register for VAT (Value Added Tax), the regime is much more rigorous. If HMRC decide you are lying, they can say what tax you ought to pay, and you must cough up, with no appeal. I gave Falco and Anacrites these draconian powers. There is no doubt that Vespasian, that tax collector’s son, raked in enough from his census to rebuild the Empire and Rome. His helpers must have been fierce.

  Lindsey and Helen in Libya (NB: feet haven’t changed since aged ten)

  So, at the end of this book, Marcus Didius Falco not only solves a series of deaths but earns a decent amount of money, is bumped up to the middle rank, and acquires a sinecure in public life. He does it by working as a tax official. This gave me simple pleasure – and is not inappropriate in the Roman world.

  He named himself and his elder son Titus as Censors, then called up the rest of us to give an account of ourselves and of everything we owned. Then we were swingeingly taxed on the latter, which was the real point of the exercise. Some heads of household found themselves excited by the challenge; foolish fellows tried to minimise the figures when declaring the value of their property … [TFL]

  Also important are events which affect the fortu
nes of other regular characters. Justinus and Claudia are committed to one another. The death of Famia cruelly frees up Maia for new plots; as she struggles as a widow and single parent, she will be available for romantic adventures of all types.

  Equally important is our study of Anacrites. We see he does have professional talent, which makes him a dangerous enemy. We watch his contorted relationship with Falco until he shows that his jealousy makes him actually want to be Falco. The hold Falco gains over him is both good and bad – bad, because posing a threat to Anacrites is not a good idea. It will be the bedrock of much fiercer rivalry, which builds to its fateful climax in Nemesis.

  He seemed to have brightened when he joined me in partnership; he gave the peculiar impression he was looking forward to his new active life … [TFL]

  One Virgin Too Many

  First published 1999

  I had realised tension between Falco and his opposite number was good, so in the third book of the ‘trilogy’ Helena’s ‘nice’ brother Justinus was ditched in order to exploit Falco’s scratchier relationship with Aelianus.

  A Flamen

  When I decided to tackle religion as a theme, I felt almost as squeamish as I had over gladiators. Luckily the Romans offered me a wide choice, and in my usual way I sought out the less familiar. Avoiding the Olympian pantheon, I explored aspects of Roman religious life that originated in rural Italy in the remote past: the Vestal Virgins and the Arval Brothers. The Arvals, one of the ancient priestly colleges, soon led me to the highly superior Flamen Dialis. My choice of theme brings us face to face with Roman social climbing and snobbery.

  A Vestal

  We start with an unusual twist on the ‘client seeking a private eye’ situation: Gaia Laelia is a frightened child, whose hidebound family – some crazy, perhaps due to inbreeding – form the circle of suspects. She is due to become a Vestal Virgin, if she ‘wins’ the coming lottery; I had no evidence that lottery fiddling happened, but I am as convinced of it as Falco. Dramatic suspense is provided when Gaia is trapped in a well; for this, I was inspired by several modern accidents involving infants. Falco has a desperate race to find her, battling against her family’s suspicion of his status, motives and methods.