‘No, no,’ I reassured her. He had hung about, morosely stalking her, until the fateful day he had her home destroyed. I could see my sister growing tense as she tried to avoid those memories. ‘Just tell me, what happened today, Maia?’

  ‘For some reason, I opened the door – I don’t know why. He hadn’t knocked. There he was – standing in the passage, right outside. I was completely shocked. How long had he been out there? He got inside before I caught my breath.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘He kept pretending everything was normal. It was just a social call.’

  ‘Was he unpleasant?’

  ‘No. Marcus, I hadn’t seen him, not to talk to, since I gave him his marching orders.’

  ‘Were you scared?’

  ‘I was worried Lucius would come home. There would have been a horrendous row. Anyway, I pretended he was there, asleep indoors, so I shooed the spy away. You know Anacrites – I thought he probably realised I was lying.’

  ‘So what did he say?’

  ‘That was the funny thing.’ Maia frowned. ‘He tried small talk – not that he knows how to do it. His conversation is zero. That was one reason I couldn’t continue with him. After Famia, I needed a man who would respond if I talked to him.’

  I laughed. ‘Oh, you get banter from Lucius Petronius?’

  ‘He has his hidden side; don’t all of you!’ scoffed Maia. ‘I was about to mention the incident, when Anacrites actually brought the subject up himself. Apologised. According to him it was “an administrative mistake”. Then he pleaded his injury, said he couldn’t remember properly. He tried to make me sorry for him by telling me how tired he had been, how he had to cover that up so he didn’t lose his job, how he had lost years of his life through being bludgeoned … Anyway – and this is what I wanted to tell you, Marcus – Anacrites seemed mainly interested in that case he’s taken off you,’ said Maia. ‘The warty melon kept trying to extract from me just what you and Lucius have found out.’

  ‘And you said …?’

  ‘I had nothing to tell him. You know Lucius.’

  Petronius never believed in discussing his work with his womenfolk. Anacrites should have approached Helena instead – she knew everything; not that she would break my confidence. He was too scared of her to attempt it, of course.

  Anacrites had upset my sister for nothing. He had angered me too – and if Petro heard about this, he would be livid.

  Maia and I agreed that Petronius had better not be told.

  XXVII

  With Petronius stuck in Rome, grounded by his tribune, I made another trip to the coast.

  This time Helena came with me. I took her to see Pa’s maritime villa. I brought Nux as well, since my household was completely ruled by the dog. Luckily tearing through the pinewoods and racing along the beach suited her just fine. Nux was prepared to allow us to keep this wonderful place.

  Helena also approved, so we spent several days discussing how to arrange things to suit us, turning the house into a seaside family home rather than a businessman’s retreat. While we were working, some of the slaves reported a man hanging around in the woods. He was a stranger to them, but from their description, I wondered if it was one of Anacrites’ agents.

  We knew a woman who lived with the priestesses at a temple in Ardea. Driving off with a deal of commotion, Helena went to visit her. I stayed at the villa; I made myself visible shifting furniture and artwork to outbuildings, then spent time loafing on a daybed on the shore while the dog brought driftwood to me. The mysterious sightings stopped. I hoped the agent had gone back to Rome to report that I was at the coast for domestic reasons.

  It would be typical of Anacrites to waste time and resources. He should have been pursuing the Claudii. Instead he was obsessed with Petro and me. He knew us well; he knew we would try to pip him on the case. But that cut both ways. We understood him too.

  *

  On Helena’s return we went down to Antium. We were enjoying our break from the children, and we did love to be out and about on enquiries. She was right: I must never stop doing this work – and when it was feasible I must always let her join in.

  Helena was charmed by Antium, with its shabby, outdated grandeur. As always happens, there was nothing we wanted to see at the theatre, though old posters told us annoyingly that the week before Davos, our old contact who was Thalia’s lover, had presented a play here. I would really have liked the chance for a chat with Davos!

  Exploring more successfully than I had had time to do with Albia, Helena and I managed to find decent local baths then a cluster of fish restaurants. We lingered over a fine meal, eaten out of doors with grand sea views from the lofty precipice where Antium stood. This was always an hour when we liked to come together, to relax, review the day and reassert our partnership. With just the two of us tonight, it was like old times – that elusive condition married people should seek more often.

  As we savoured the last of our wine, I took her hand and said, ‘Everything will be all right.’

  ‘The case, Marcus?’

  ‘No, not that.’

  Helena knew what I meant.

  We enjoyed the evening a little longer, then I went to pay the bill and ask the restaurant-keeper where he bought his bread. His baker was not Vexus, Demetria’s father; still, the man gave me suggestions where to start looking next day.

  I went on my own, leaving Helena to take Nux around the forum.

  It took me some tramping of narrow streets. Vexus worked at the edge of the city, with one small oven and not even his own grindstone. It was a rough, depressed quarter with dusty streets where half-starved dogs lay on doorsteps like corpses. There were better shops, with a better clientele, in the smarter areas. This man, a short, thickset ugly-faced fellow, baked heavy dark ryebread for the poor. He looked as if he had been miserable for the past thirty years. I began to understand how his daughter, growing up here without a future, might have settled for one of the Claudii. Even so, there seemed nothing basically wrong with the home she came from. Unless she had only one eye in the middle of her forehead yet failed to attract men with her novelty value, there was no reason for Claudius Nobilis to assume she was so desperate he could treat her badly.

  I bought a bread roll to start the conversation; it never works. As soon as I said what I wanted, Vexus turned unhelpful. He had not overflowed with customer care to start with. I introduced myself and I might have been trying to sell him a silver-boxed ten-scroll set of Greek encyclopaedias. Used ones.

  ‘Get lost.’

  ‘I want to help your daughter.’

  ‘Leave my daughter alone. She’s not here and she’s had enough trouble.’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t blame you – but my enquiry won’t harm her. Maybe I can get the Claudii off her back.’

  ‘I’d like to see that!’ Vexus implied I wasn’t up to it.

  ‘Will you at least tell me about Nobilis?’

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  ‘I’d like to – but those wastrels on the marsh have become the Emperor’s business. I’m stuck with investigating. So let me guess: your girl married Nobilis when she was too young to know what she was doing – against your advice, no doubt? It went sour. He beat her.’ I wondered if the father was violent too. He looked strong, but controlled. Still, men from boot-menders up to the consulship have been known to conceal their domestic brutality. ‘Did they have any children?’

  ‘No, thank Jove!’

  ‘So Demetria decided to leave, but Nobilis would not let her go. She came home; he hated it. She found someone else, and he put a stop to that … Right?’

  ‘Nothing to say.’

  ‘Is she still with her new man?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nobilis put the scares on?’

  ‘Half killed him.’

  ‘In front of her?’

  ‘That was the point, Falco!’

  ‘So the new man caved in?’

  ‘He got rid of her,’ agreed her father bitterly.

  A ghastly thought struck me. ‘Don’t say she went back to Nobilis?’

  Vexus pressed his lips together in a thin line. ‘Thankfully, I put a stop to that.’

  ‘But she was so frightened, doing what Nobilis said became a possibility?’

  ‘No,’ said the baker, with heavy emphasis. ‘She was so frightened it was never a possibility.’

  That was all he would tell me. I left details for Demetria to contact me, if she would. No chance. I heard the tablet with my name on it thump into a trash bucket before I got back outside to the street.

  I asked about Demetria around the neighbourhood. I met nothing but hostility. The atmosphere felt dangerous. I left before a riot could start.

  XXVIII

  I had another lead to follow: Petronius and I had been told by the waitress at Satricum that Claudius Nobilis worked for a corn dealer called Thamyris. He lived outside town. I took Nux and Helena and drove out to his place, a scattered set of barns and workshops off the coast road that went south.

  Thamyris was a wide, squat, shabby typical countryman, in his sixties, wearing the usual rough tunic and a battered hat which he kept on even though when we arrived it was the lunch break. He and his men were gathered on benches, a peaceful group. They had mastered the art of making their working day revolve around the time they took off. Some were eating, some whittling. There was easy-going chat. Nux jumped from our cart and went to sit with them. She guessed correctly they would pet her and feed her titbits.

  Nobody showed any curiosity about us. If we had wanted to buy grain we would have had to wait. The men stayed where they were and carried on enjoying their break; Thamyris stayed put and talked to us. Helena was allowed to sit on one of the benches, which a lad willingly swept of straw first, using the back of a fairly clean hand.

  I explained what I wanted. Thamyris replied slowly and thoughtfully, as if he had answered these questions before. I asked him; he said he was always being consulted these days about Claudius Nobilis. For years the man had worked in this labour gang unremarked, but now the local authorities had a definite eye on him. It might have been awkward, had he not already taken himself off somewhere.

  ‘Do you know where he’s gone?’

  ‘He said something about the family. Knowing what they are like, I kept my nose out of that.’

  ‘So who else has been asking about him?’

  ‘Men from Antium. A man from Rome.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be the man from Rome – who was the other bastard?’

  ‘Someone like you!’ The grain dealer enjoyed the joke. I pressed him for details and came to the conclusion he had been visited by one of Anacrites’ runners.

  While I brooded on that, Helena changed the subject pleasantly: ‘What was your impression of Nobilis when he worked for you?’

  Thamyris summed up like an employer who noticed things: ‘He did the work, though he didn’t push himself.’

  ‘Did he fit in? Was he one of the lads?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes and no. He never said much. If we were all sitting around like this, he would be with us. If we went out for a drink together in the evening, he would tag along. But he always tended to move off a little distance from the group.’

  ‘Did he strike you as at all odd?’ Helena then wondered.

  ‘He had his obsessions. He liked talking about weapons. He collected spears and knives – nasty big ones. He seemed a bit too interested, if you understand me.’

  I nodded. ‘Trouble?’

  ‘He never gave me any.’

  ‘But he came with a reputation?’

  ‘That I don’t deny. People said he had been accused of thieving as a child, and I did hear that years ago a woman said he had raped her.’ Thamyris seemed unconcerned. On the scale of country crime, rape tended to rank with shouting boo at chickens.

  ‘So why do you think he left?’ asked Helena. ‘We heard he was “going to see his grandmother”, whatever that means. What’s the mystery?’

  ‘A classic excuse.’ Thamyris gave a laugh. It was the irritating kind that suggests someone knows a lot more than you do and intends to take a very long while revealing it. ‘When people want time off.’

  Helena asked, ‘So what was up with him? Was he upset? Did he have a quarrel?’

  ‘Better ask Costus.’ Hearing his name, a corn cockle on another bench looked over. ‘Nobilis!’ called his boss in explanation.

  ‘Oh him!’ The younger man exclaimed dismissively; then he just went back to whittling.

  I raised my eyebrows. Thamyris dropped his voice. ‘Had a fling.’ I showed that I still didn’t get it. ‘Costus.’ The voice lowered even further. ‘With Demetria!’

  I left Helena to draw out anything else she could from the dealer, and strolled across to Costus. He was a handsome chunk, who looked none too bright – in fact, if he had moved in on the wife of the violent Nobilis, he couldn’t be. ‘You’re brave!’

  ‘Stupid,’ he conceded.

  ‘I’m looking for your war wounds.’ I could see no recent bruises, though his nose and one ear had a squashed look. Without a word, he pulled up the lower edge of his tunic to reveal a ferocious, fairly new knife scar running from below his hip to his belly-button. It was healed, but he must have been laid up and in some danger for a long time. I whistled through my teeth. ‘Very brave – and no wonder you seem subdued.’ The Claudius women had told me it was three years since Demetria had left Nobilis. She must have already known Costus, through his working with her husband; were they lovers before, or was it only after she left that this young man had provided a consoling shoulder? ‘Did Nobilis stop working here because his wife left him for you?’

  Costus shook his head. ‘She just left him. Then he went to pieces. He couldn’t accept it.’

  ‘You took her over afterwards?’ A couple of his workmates were now watching us quietly. ‘Do you know where she is now?’

  ‘Nope.’

  I bet he did.

  Costus lied to me, and his comrades impassively watched him do it. They were all in the cover-up. But I had seen that his lunch consisted of a variety of items, which had been folded up for him in a very clean napkin. The package was not bought from a food-seller. Unless Costus was living with his doting old mother, he had other female company. He was a duffer, in my view, but a woman might find him good-looking.

  I thumped him on the back in a rueful gesture. Just as I had with the baker, I wrote my name and other details on the back of an old bill from my pocket, which I placed on the wooden table. ‘Better be off. We’re heading back to Rome tonight. Probably stop over at Satricum to admire the scenery …’

  Helena and I thanked everyone for their helpfulness, then we left. We took the road that went across the marshes, stopping at the inn for a night in Satricum as I had mentioned.

  We hired a room, and took our time settling in. Easier said than done; the rooms here might be tolerable to men on tough missions where each needed to show the others he was hard. As a husband and wife we would need to hug together very tightly, to keep the bedbugs out. We stuck it in the room as long as possible then went to find a meal.

  I hid a smile when Helena told Januaria, ‘I hear you made friends with Camillus Justinus!’

  ‘He’s a bit of all right!’ agreed the waitress admiringly.

  ‘My brother.’

  Januaria was taken aback, but briefly. ‘Is he married?’

  ‘Oh yes. He has two little boys.’

  The girl sniggered. ‘I bet his wife curses him!’

  How true.

  *

  We ate, then sat behind empty bowls regretting it. Night fell. We had almost given up when the gods smiled. Nux growled a warning in the back of her throat. Costus with the straight nose and biceps from the corn-supplies place sidled up out of nowhere. After shy negotiations, promises of confidentiality, and a small inducement in coinage, he wriggled back into the darkness, then reappeared, leading by the hand a woman we knew would be Demetria.

  The baker’s daughter was bolder than I expected. That probably meant her relationship with Nobilis had been tempestuous. Sometimes it works that way. Demetria had an ugly air of defiance, probably not caused by her past history. She came with it from the egg; her truculence was a symptom of social ineptitude. Had she ever gone to school, which I doubted, she would have been the awkward one on the back bench.

  She was in her twenties, plain-faced with a snub nose, loose, flyaway hair and a faint sour smell as if somebody spilled milk on her several days ago. She wore a drab brown dress with one sleeve rolled and one to the cuff. It wasn’t a fashion statement. She was too lazy to notice it. Her girdle was a rope that would have doubled as a bullock halter. She wore no jewellery. I guessed she had never worked, so had no money herself, and the men she chose were never generous.

  It was all a waste of time, of course. Demetria admitted she still lived with Costus, pretty well in hiding. He had dragged her along tonight to see us hoping there would be money in it. She might have had enough spirit to run away from Nobilis, but on the whole Demetria’s instincts were to do as she was told.

  She would not talk about her marriage to Nobilis. She did not accuse him of violence against her, nor of battering her lover. Whatever pressures to keep quiet had been embedded in her by Claudius Nobilis, they were still firmly in place.

  She had no idea what Nobilis got up to nowadays or where he had gone off to; she had no contact with the family – though when I said I had spoken to the other two women, she asked after Plotia and Byrta. She swore she knew nothing about what happened with Modestus and Primilla and since she hadn’t lived with Nobilis then, it seemed reasonable. When I asked if she had ever had reason to suspect visitors were vanishing at the compound, she denied it.

  ‘So why did you come to find me?’ I demanded in exasperation.