Nemesis

I grinned. 'I'll have to ask him myself then.'

'You do that, Falco.' Fusculus reapplied himself to searching tombs. I clucked up the donkey. As the cart jerked and moved off, Fusculus called after us without rancour, 'The big clue is – we found luggage!'

Interesting.

It was so interesting I was dying to ask Petronius about it. First, I returned the cart to the hire stables, took Albia home, and gave a good show of being safely back with my family. After about half an hour I nipped out to see Petro. Helena spotted me going. I winked and promised to share any gossip as soon as I came back. She sighed, but did not intervene.

Petronius, amazingly, was trying on his toga. This rare sight made me chortle – until I found out why. It was dusk, so the sweltering streets had cooled a fraction; not enough for loading pounds of heavy white wool on your shoulders, though. No option, it seemed: Petro had to stand in for his tribune, Rubella. The Fourth Cohort's senior officer had been summoned to a high-status conference on the Palatine.

Petronius would normally have been taken along too, in order to whisper corrections whenever Rubella got information wrong – - mishandling facts was any lazy tribune's prerogative. As it was July, Rubella was away. Since he had not bothered to inform the Prefect of Vigiles he had snatched a vacation, if Petro wanted, he could land Rubella in mule dung. However, he would be a fool to do so.

'Falco, you know what I think of Rubella – -'

I assured him I thought the same. Marcus Rubella was an over-promoted, super-ambitious, unreliable, self-seeking squit. However, I thought he was the best the cohort would get. 'Fill me in, Petro.'

'On Rubella?'

'On the case, idiot.'

'We found a hidden pack that must have belonged to that murder victim. Maybe he noticed he was being followed, so he tucked away his stuff just before he was grabbed.'

'What's the palace connection?'

'He was carrying a draft petition to the Emperor.'

'About?'

Petronius winced. 'Ghastly moans. Complaining about local crime. This public disgrace has been allowed to fester far too long; the authorities in our region simply will not address the issue… The Emperor should take the initiative and refuse to tolerate nuisances caused by criminals who boast they have special protection… Nobody will ever listen, of course. Still, I shoved it onwards to the top – gave the poor bastard his last chance of an audience. Least I could do, I thought.'

'You know who he is?'

'I said it's a draft, you noodle! Nobody signs their name on a private rough.'

'Silly me! So it was no help?'

'I'd have kept it, if it had been useful. Obviously I had to mention to the scroll-beetles that the writer was discovered ripped open from crotch to gullet, with his hands removed.'

The details were new. I pulled a face. 'Pluto! That would have made your report attract notice.'

'Seems so. What came over me? Now some schnoozle wants a brief.'

'Minding his back,' I said. 'You'll handle it. You know your stuff. And you've been there before.' Petronius had attended at the Palace with me. We once had a policy discussion with the Emperor and a full phalanx of flunkies. Vespasian took our measure. Even so, we ticed a moneymaking commission out of him that time. 'Who sent the summons?'

'Some grunt called Laeta.'

I pulled up short. 'Claudius Laeta? I'll come with you.'

'Keep out of it. I don't need a nursemaid, Falco.'

'Laeta is trouble. Appearing amenable is his speciality. Then he'll extract your balls and twist them up in an old knitted sock, swing it round his head and knock you down with your own magic machinery.'

'For a spare-time poet, your imagery stinks,' opined my old friend dourly. But he must have been nervous about the meeting, because he let me tag along.

Unlike him, I did not go togate. Laeta was head of the main secretariat. The man had sent me on so many dubious missions, he would receive no respect from me. The only good thing about Laeta was his constantly trying to double-cross Anacrites, the Chief Spy. I watched from the sidelines and tried to play them off against each other.

Petronius and I ambled gently from the patrol house. I was enjoying my return. I threw back my head and breathed in the last heat of a warm city day. I heard the low buzz of voices from families and groups of friends, eating, chatting, gathering to enjoy those quiet hours of the day before they resumed their usual habits of fornicating with each other's wives and cheating each other at business or dice. Strings of shrieking garland-girls were going home; nobody would buy dinner flowers now. Sounds of flutes and a drummer vied with the clatter of crockery from an alley, obviously the back door to several bars. Wafts of frying food, swum in oil and enlivened with thyme and rosemary, floated just above street level.

I had missed Rome. Petronius pointed out with a grin that I had only been away three days, during which I should have been happy, since at Pa's villa I had all those expensive new possessions to count. Always generous, Petro bore no grudge for my good fortune. Like me, perhaps he did not yet take it seriously.

On descending the Aventine, to cross to the Palatine we had a choice of passing around the Circus Maximus at the starting-gate end or hoofing down past the apse. The racetrack was absolutely in our way. Even if Petro could have used influence to get inside and cut straight across, there was no point because then we would have had the Palatine's vertical face ahead of us. Since we both grew up on the Aventine, we were used to this inconvenience. Sometimes we detoured one way, sometimes the other. Either by-pass was long and frustrating. As it was his meeting tonight, I let him choose; he opted for the starting-gates, then wending gently through the Forum Boarium. It stank of raw blood and butchery but gave us a clear run at the Palatine via regular approaches. Petronius was not in a mood to slide through a back door and get lost in the pernicious maze of corridors.

He presented himself to the Praetorian Guard, managing not to be rude to those braggarts. If I stood on my rights with the Guards when they threatened to push us around, Petronius would shrug and dump me. I followed my friend's lead meekly.

Neither of us had any idea at that moment, but we were beginning an adventure that would be as difficult and dangerous as any we had ever attempted. And its connection with the Palatine overlords would be much more than simple bureaucracy.

XII

The tall vaulted corridors of the old Palace had their usual evening hush. This was the time I liked to come here. The crowds of jabbering petitioners had given up and gone home, leaving residual odours of garlic sausage and sweat. People were about, but the daytime tension relaxed. The night shift was efficient, but unexcitable. They put anything important or awkward on hold for the day shift.

Slaves padded past us, setting out oil lamps. Under our frugal Emperor, there was never quite enough light. The slaves had mastered the art of implying they had too much work to break off and tell us whether the office we were looking for was down the right- or left-hand corridor, let alone to admit whether the imperial family was in residence or had all gone away to some summer villa…

Systems here had stayed the same since Tiberius organised this part of the Palatine. The imperial livery had changed and there was less open fornication; little else altered. Emperors came and went while bureaucracy continued, as rampant as mould. Vespasian and Titus lived in Nero's repulsively opulent Golden House on the other side of the Forum, while elite secretariats kept their old offices in this historic complex. The bigger the name, the grander the office. Laeta had a suite. Its doorknobs were gilded and a quiet slave constantly mopped the marble floor outside. She was probably there to eavesdrop on preadmission visitors.