‘Don’t worry,’ murmured Faustus in a lazy tone. ‘I can look after Flavia Albia.’
Titianus could only amble off, while Faustus watched him go, rather narrow-eyed. When the aedile turned back to me, I thought he was going to be critical of me cosying up with someone else, but he merely looked delighted we had got rid of the man.
Faustus caught a server’s eye immediately. Titianus was still near enough to see how easily the aedile managed it.
We two had positioned ourselves side by side on a bench, both looking out at the street so we could watch for Roscius in two directions. The area was busy. I had a stole, which I pulled up over my hair; this was partly a professional move, so I looked different from when I was following Roscius. I rarely veiled up from modesty, but sometimes I liked the subtle extra level of privacy.
Faustus could sense a mood. ‘Feeling down?’
‘Polycarpus.’ I sipped my drink.
He nodded, then touched his cup against mine and slowly swallowed wine himself. The other tables were too close and crowded for us to talk about the case. At first we talked about nothing. We must have looked like a man and woman who knew each other, easy together as we enjoyed a small flagon of house wine (with a lot of water) in the warm sunlight.
Sometimes we exchanged a glance, confirming that some character in the street who had looked like our subject was not him. Once I acknowledged how much the latest murder had depressed me, my mind cleared, so I slipped more happily into sharing our task. We had a good working relationship and Tiberius seemed content to be here. ‘Could be worse,’ he commented.
I agreed quietly, ‘One of those times when you wish it wasn’t work.’
He smiled, raising his cup in a mild salute to me again.
Almost at once I saw him stiffen. He gestured slightly with one forefinger.
‘He’s coming! − Shit, we’ll lose him again, he’ll see us …’ It had to be presumed that when Roscius spotted Titianus tailing him earlier, he had noticed us as well.
As Tiberius nodded down the street, I moved. I swung round in front of him like a girl who cared nothing about her reputation. With a shameless lunge, I came in close and hid my companion from where Roscius must be. Tiberius gave a nervous start, then he went with the act, playing a tipsy opportunist as he grabbed hold of me. My stole began to slide off my hair, but he noticed and pegged it. His flattened palm felt strong against my head.
We held the pose, so close our breaths intermingled. I watched his grey eyes following the suspect. There was absolutely no need to embellish our charade, but suddenly he leaned in and kissed me.
As he did it, he was watching. Roscius must have gone in somewhere, but Tiberius continued. He was an unexpectedly good kisser. I liked his faint disconcertion because he was enjoying it more than he had been ready for … Classic male surprise.
When he released me, he flashed a quick gleam, all the recognition he would give or I would want; after all, we were play-acting for work. ‘He’s in the Three-tailed Dog.’
‘Looks a dump!’ I slid back into my seat, feeling warm. I could act suave, however. ‘We know him now. He’ll buy a drink, gulp it quickly, leave half in the beaker then go for a pee out the back. He’ll shunt down the alley and saunter out through one of the other bars.’
‘You’re good.’
‘You too!’ I remarked ambiguously.
I was watching as many bars opposite as I could. Tiberius spent a moment watching me, then he too reapplied himself to surveillance.
I glanced back at him. He steadily scrutinised the exit from the Victorious Soldier and the public counters of the Moon and Stars. I resumed my careful watch on the Ship, the Castor and Pollux, the Cow and the Dead Man’s Fingers.
Roscius emerged through the food counters of the Diana, a workaday thermopolium that seemed to be full of bricklayers. He had somebody with him, a bald man who looked Cappadocian, possibly the subordinate we had earlier seen him leave behind at the Galatea. They strolled together down from the Cispian Hill, with us gently following. We did not bother with the dodging technique, but merely paced ourselves to remain a good distance behind, where we might not be noticed.
They reached the Clivus Suburanus at the Porticus of Livia. They stayed together on the main road as far as the Esquiline Gate, where Roscius waved off the other man. He went on alone through the arch and into the Gardens of Maecenas.
Faustus gripped my elbow, then we quickened our pace and caught up with him.
35
‘Going somewhere? Mind if we tag along?’ Manlius Faustus must have learned this ghastly old line when he pulled in persons of interest for questioning. How many shopkeepers who encroached on pubic pavements had he arrested with that cliché? Perhaps he had first heard Morellus use it.
At least the familiar script made Roscius feel at ease. However, he lost his confidence when Faustus then took us into the Auditorium of Maecenas for our conversation.
We had walked on through the gardens, with the aedile and I either side of the young criminal, until this beautiful place appeared and Faustus moved swiftly to have a word with the curator. I saw money being passed over. Then we were let in.
‘I thought so!’ exclaimed Faustus, grinning at the crook. ‘Nice and big. No one else here. Nobody will overhear us.’
That may not have given Roscius any sense of security.
I knew the building. The Gardens of Maecenas had been built over an ancient graveyard, reclaiming an area that for years had been a famously unhealthy necropolis, full of burial pits of the poor.
My mother once read me a poem about witches haunting this sinister spot under a lonely moon, a terrifying piece of work where cruel hags murdered a young boy: Horace, in spooky mode; he did it gruesomely. I was going through a mystic period at the time, a teen myself, in love with the supernatural without seeing its true menace. Now I despised horrors. Forget plague-ridden burial grounds with bones sticking out of broken old pots. All I wanted were these tranquil and elegant new gardens that had finally resulted from a land-grab by entrepreneurs. The first time I went for a walk in a grand public space after Helena and Falco brought me to Rome, I was astounded. There was nothing like any of these public gardens in Londinium.
All right. There is nothing fancy at all in Londinium.
Some garden-creators were freedmen of the imperial court, those high-rollers with moneybags for eyes, who always know how to fix themselves up with gorgeous property. Maecenas had been different, born a fabulously rich Etruscan, friend of Augustus and great patron of the arts; he made his garden particularly fine, with libraries and pavilions. This became his retirement home, a setting so elegant that the Emperor Tiberius had lived there for a time.
To enter Maecenas’ Auditorium, as it was called, we passed down a long ramp with a herringbone floor. The monument was built substantially below ground, perhaps as a sunken dining room; when they turned on the water, the inner hall was cooled by a cascade that tumbled down at one end, where deep, white marble steps lined a semi-circular apse. Though never a great socialite, I had been here to a couple of events. The body of the hall can take dining couches, but generally it hosts stand-up soirées with drama, music or readings for well-dressed cultural snobs. Very small appetisers are handed round by blank-faced servers from Gaul in identical uniforms. Flute music nobody listens to wavers over the loud hum of pretentious chatter and rattling jewellery. The ticket price makes you wince.
Though originally a private building, the Auditorium could nowadays be hired, and my father once recklessly shared an evening there with a senator he knew slightly, who wrote epic poetry. Their joint recital was even graced briefly by Domitian, in the happy days when he was only Vespasian’s spare heir; back then he had big dreams but no real expectations of becoming emperor.