Nemesis

'Pius?'

The barman shook his head. 'Means nothing, sorry.' He was very apologetic. According to Petro, as we went upstairs, the man in the apron should have been apologising for his lousy drink.

Petronius shouldered in the door. He didn't care if the occupant learned we were after him. The landlord could claim compensation; from the state of his building, he wouldn't come around to notice the damage.

It was a one-room apartment, its interior kept with the squalid housekeeping we recognised as the Claudius trademark. Flies lived here as subtenants; they soared about with the lethargic flight of insects that had gorged on unpleasant decay, close nearby. The smell in the room was familiar: an unclean, earthy odour I recalled from the spy's house, in those mean corridor rooms where the Claudii were lodged.

There was no space for four healthy adults. I volunteered to search, with Justinus. Petronius reluctantly agreed to wait downstairs in the bar with Aelianus.

'It's a simple room-search, Lucius. Let me handle it. Back off; you're worse than Anacrites!'

'I don't want you to cock it up.'

'Thanks, friend. Any time Quintus and I can shaft you in return, assume we'll be available.'

The 'stuff' Virtus came back to check was minimal. Apart from the landlord's basic furniture – sagging bed, lopsided stool, a skinny old sack on the floor for a rug – - we found only a filthy foodbowl, empty wineskins, and a used loincloth which Aulus lifted up on the handle of a bald broom from the corridor then dropped in distaste.

We found no trophies from killings. However, hidden behind the inevitable loose wall panel, there were more knives. These were bigger and nastier than the ones we took off the agent.

After Quintus and I went downstairs again, Petronius insisted on going up to double-check.

'Jove, he's finicky!'

'Doesn't want to make a mistake with the Urban Cohorts watching.'

'Doesn't trust you, Falco!'

I asked more questions of the barman. This time he changed his story; he now remembered he had met the tenant's brother. His wife had appeared, curious about us. He was short and sparely built; she was shorter and enormous. She had met the brother too. The fond couple engaged in a hot marital argument; the barman maintained the brother was a scruff and a shambles, which the wife doggedly disputed. 'Kept himself nice. Good threads. Combed his hair.' They went on disputing, until it almost sounded as if they had seen two different brothers. Given the numbers of Claudii, this was possible.

'Fancied him?' asked Aulus, cracking the grimace he used for charm.

'Not likely – - he had funny eyes.'

It was the wife who knew the real reason Virtus came back so regularly. 'He's one of Alis' regulars. He comes every Thursday.'

'Is Alis the local prostitute?'

'Not her! Fortune-teller. Just around the corner. She does a bit of witchcraft when people want to pay for it. Thursday is her night for seances. Virtus always went.'

As Petronius could not tear himself away from the room upstairs, I left the Camilli to wait for him. I strolled past a veg stall, a pot shop and a sponge bar, tripped around a corner by a fountain that was so dry its stone had cracked in the sun, and parked myself in a peeling doorway in order to inspect the fortune-teller's. The place I had been told Alis lived in was anonymous. These women work by word of mouth, usually hoarse whispers passed on in the environs of unscrupulous temples. Anyone who has enough sixth sense to find a horoscope-hatcher, doesn't need her services.

After waiting a while, I went across and knocked. A frizzy baggage came to the door and admitted me. She was middle-aged and top heavy, wearing peculiar layers of clothes, over which were dried-flower wreaths with funny feathers sticking out of them. I expected a dead mouse to drop out any minute. The prevailing colour of her wardrobe was vermilion. It was amazing how many scarves and belts and under-tunics she had managed to acquire in that far-from-fashionable shade.

She moved with a shuffle and was slow getting around. Only her eyes had that sly, kindly glint you find in folk whose livelihood depends on befriending people with no personality, banking on the possibility that the vulnerable might part with their life savings and have no relatives to ask questions.

'My name's Falco.'

'What do you want, Falco?'

'You can tell it's not a love potion or a curse, then?'

'I can tell what you are, sonny! You won't fool me into drawing up a lifeline for the Emperor. I practise my ancient arts fully within the law, son. I pay my dues to the vigiles to leave me alone. And I don't do poisons. Who sent you?'

I sighed gently. 'No fooling you, grandma! I work for the government; I want information.'

'What will you pay?'

'The going rate.'

'What's that?'

I looked in my purse and showed her a few coins. She sniffed. I doubled it. She asked for treble; we settled on two and half.

She toddled into a corner to brew herself some nettle tea before we started. I gazed around, impressed that one elderly woman could have collected so many doilies and corn dollies, so many horrible old curtains, so many amulets with evil eyes or hieroglyphs or stars. The air was thick with dust, every surface was crammed with eccentric objects, the high window was veiled. I bet every superstitious old woman from a two-mile radius came here for her special Thursdays. I bet half of them left her something in their wills.

Nothing that smacked obviously of witchcraft was out on view. The desiccated claws and vials of toad's blood must be behind the musty swathes of curtain.

Eventually she settled down with her tea bowl and I learned Claudius Virtus was a regular at the seances. 'He was interested in the Dark Side. Always full of questions – - I don't know where he got his theories. From his own strange brain, if you ask me.'

'Are you going to tell me what you do at your meetings?'

'We try to contact the spirits of the dead. I have the gift to call them up from the Underworld.'

'Really? And did Virtus ask about anyone in particular?'

'Usually he watched the rest. He tried to talk to his mother once.'

'Did she answer?'

'No.'

'Why would that be?'

Abruptly, Alis turned confiding: 'I got the creeps, Falco. I don't know why. I just felt I didn't want to be in the middle of that conversation.'

'You have some control then?' I asked with a smile.

The seer sipped her nettle tea, with the manners of a lady.

She told me Virtus had never missed a meeting until a few weeks ago. His mother – Casta – had died a couple of years before, he told Alis; he claimed to be close to her and said all the family adored the woman.

'My information is she was vicious,' I said. 'She had twenty children and was reputed to treat them all very coldly.'

'That's your answer,' replied Alis comfortably. 'It explains Virtus. He tells himself she was wonderful; he wants to believe it, doesn't he? In his poor mind, his ma is a darling who loved him. He misses her now, because he wants her to have been someone he should miss. If you were to say to him what you just said to me about his mother, he'd deny it furiously – - and probably attack you.' I believed that.

Alis had winkled out of him that his father died before his mother, and that he had other relatives, some in Rome. 'More than one?'

'I gained that impression. He spoke of "the boys".'

'There are sisters too.'

Alis shrugged. She knew about the twin, believed he lived not far away, but had never set eyes on him. Plotia, the wife, had never been mentioned. When I commented that I was not surprised, Alis pulled a face and nodded as if she knew what I meant. Of course I despised this woman and her arcane dealings – yet in her frumpy, frowsty way, she was a good judge of character; she had to be.

'Did you think him capable of great violence?'

'Aren't all men?'