The man dug his fist into the bucket he had brought with him, like a fisherman pulling out a crab. He came up with a blackened object which he held up by its single clawlike appendage so we could briefly inspect it: something old, and hard to identify, yet disturbingly familiar. He tossed it back in the bucket where it splash-landed surprisingly heavily. We both nearly ignored it. We would have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. Then Petro looked at me askance.
'Wait a moment!' I exclaimed.
The workman tried to reassure us. 'No panic, legate. Happens all the time.'
Petronius and I stepped closer and peered down into the filthy depths of the wooden pail. A nauseous smell rose to greet us. The cause of the blockage at the water tower now reposed in a bed of rubbish and mud.
It was a human hand.
II
None of my relatives had had the courtesy to leave. More had arrived, in fact. The only good news was, the newcomers did not include my father.
My sisters Allia and Galla made their excuses sniffily the moment I reappeared, though Verontius and bloody Lollius their husbands sat tight. Junia was squeezed into a corner with Gaius Baebius and their deaf son, as usual busy posing as a classic family group so they could avoid talking to anybody else. Mico, Victorina's widower, was grinning inanely and waiting in vain for somebody to tell him how well turned out his horrible offspring were. Famia, the drunk, was drunk. His wife Maia was somewhere in a back room helping Helena clear up. Various children were bored, but doing their best to entertain themselves by kicking dirty boots against my newly painted walls. All present cheered up as they watched me brace myself.
'Hello, Ma. Brought a footman, I see?' If I had been warned in advance I would have hired heavies just to eject this man. A couple of moonlighting gladiators with instructions to turn him away at the door, and break both his arms as an extra hint.
My mother scowled. She was a tiny, black-eyed old bundle who could rampage through a market like a barbarian army. She was holding my new baby daughter, who had begun to bawl her eyes out the moment I appeared. Julia's grief at beholding her father was not why Ma was scowling; I had insulted her favourite.
It was her lodger Anacrites. He looked smooth, but his habits were as savoury as a pigsty after months of neglect. He worked for the Emperor. He was the Chief Spy. He was also pale, silent, and reduced to a wraith after a serious head wound which unfortunately failed to finish him. My mother had saved his life. That meant she now felt obliged to treat him as some special demigod who was worth saving. He accepted the fuss smugly. I ground my teeth.
'Find a friendly greeting for Anacrites, Marcus.' Greet him? He was no friend of mine. He had once arranged to have me killed, though of course that had nothing to do with my loathing him. I could simply find no vacancy in my personal clique for a devious, dangerous manipulator with the morals of a slug.
I grabbed the screaming baby. She stopped crying. No one looked impressed. Against my ear she gurgled in a way I had learned meant she was soon going to be sick down the inside of my tunic. I laid her down in the fine cradle Petronius had made for her, hoping I could pretend any ensuing mess was a surprise to me. Ma began rocking the cradle, and the crisis seemed to pass.
'Hello, Falco.'
'Anacrites! You look terrible,' I told him cheerily. 'Turned back from the Underworld because you'd dirty Charon's punt?' I was determined to floor him before he had a chance to get at me. 'How's espionage these days? All the swallows over the Palatine are cheeping that Claudius Laeta has put a bid in for your job.'
'Oh no; Laeta's skulking in ditches.'
I grinned knowingly. Claudius Laeta was an ambitious administrator at the palace who hoped to incorporate Anacrites and the existing intelligence network in his own section; the two were locked in a struggle for power which I found highly amusing – so long as I could keep myself out of it.
'Poor Laeta!' I sneered. 'He should never have tangled with that Spanish business. I had to make a report to the Emperor which showed him in rather a bad light.'
Anacrites gave me a narrow look. He too had tangled with the Spanish business. He was wondering what I might have reported to Vespasian about him. Still convalescent, a film of sweat suddenly shone on his brow. He was worried. I liked that.
'Anacrites isn't fit to return to work yet.' Ma told us some details that had him crawling with embarrassment. I tutted with fake sympathy, letting him know that I was delighted he had terrible headaches and trouble with his bowels. I tried asking for further details, but my mother soon twigged what I was playing at. 'He has taken indefinite sick leave, approved by the Emperor.'
'Oho!' I scoffed, as if I thought that was the first step to enforced retirement. 'Some people who get hit very hard on the head have a personality change afterwards.' He seemed to have avoided that; it was a pity, because any change in Anacrites' personality would have been an improvement.
'I brought Anacrites so you and he can have a little chat.' I went cold. 'You'll have to sort out a decent business for yourself now you're a father,' my mother instructed me. You need a partner – someone to give you a few tips. Anacrites can help get you on your feet – on days when he feels fit enough.'
Now it was me who felt sick.
Lucius Petronius, my loyal friend, had been surreptitiously showing the dismembered hand from the water tower to my brothers-in-law in a corner. Those ghouls were always eager for anything sensational.
'Pooh!' I heard Lollius boasting. 'That's nothing. We fish worse out of the Tiber every week -'
Some of my sisters' children spotted the grisly item and crowded round to see it. Petro hastily wrapped up the hand in a piece of rag; I hoped it was not one of our new Spanish dinner napkins. It made an intriguing parcel, which caught the eye of Nux, a determined street mongrel who had adopted me. The dog leapt at the parcel. Everyone snatched to save it. The hand fell out of the rag. It landed on the floor, and was captured by Marius, the extremely serious elder son of my sister Maia who just happened to come into the room at that point. When she saw her normally wholesome eightyear-old sniffing at a badly decayed relic, apparently supervised approvingly by Lucius Petronius, my favourite sister used some language I never thought she knew. Much of it described Petronius, and the rest appertained to me.
Maia made sure she snatched up the flagon of fine olive oil which was her present from me from Baetica and then she, Famia, Marius, Ancus, Cloelia and little Rhea all went home.
Well, that cleared some space.
While everyone else was sniggering and looking shifty, Petro threw a heavy arm round my shoulders and greeted my mother with affection. 'Junilla Tacita! How right you are about Falco needing to buckle down. As a matter of fact, he and I have just been outside having a long discussion about that. You know, he seems feckless, but he does recognise his position. He needs to establish his office, take on some lucrative cases and build up a reputation so the work continues to flow in.' That sounded good. I wondered why I had never thought of it. Petronius had not finished his oration. 'We found the ideal solution. While I'm taking a break from the vigiles I'm going to move into his old apartment – and give him a hand as a partner myself.'
I beamed at Anacrites in a charitable way. 'You're just a fraction too late for the festival. Afraid the job is taken, old fellow. Bad luck!'
III
When we slapped the parcel on to the clerk's table, Fusculus reached for it eagerly. He had always had a hearty appetite and thought we had brought him in a snack. We let him open it.
For a second he did think it was an interesting new kind of cold sausage, then he recoiled with a yell.
'Urgh! Where have you two infantile beggars been playing? Who does this belong to?'
'Who knows?' Petronius had had time to get used to the dismembered hand. While jolly Fusculus still looked pale, Petro could appear blase. 'No seal ring with a lover's name, no handy Celtic woad tattoo – it's so swollen and misshapen you can't even tell whether it came from a woman or a man.'
'Woman,' guessed Fusculus. He prided himself on his professional expertise. The hand, which had four fingers missing, was so badly swollen from being in water that there were no real grounds for his guess.
'How's work?' Petronius asked him yearningly. I could tell that as a partner in my own business his commitment would be meagre.
'It was all right until you two came in.'
We were at the Fourth Cohort's guard house. Most of it was storage for fire-fighting equipment, reflecting the vigiles' main task. Ropes, ladders, buckets, huge grass mats, mattocks and axes, and the pumping engine, were all ready for action.- There was a small bare cell into which cat burglars and arsonists could be flung, and a utilitarian room where those on duty could either play dice or beat all Hades out of the burglars and fire-raisers if that seemed more fun. Both rooms were normally empty at this hour. The holding cell was used at night; in the morning its miserable contents were either released with a caution or marched off to the tribune's office for a formal interrogation. Since most offences occur under cover of darkness only a skeleton staff was on duty by day. They were out searching for suspects – or sitting on a bench in the sun.
Do not be fooled. The vigiles' life was harsh and dangerous. Most of them had been public slaves. They had signed up because eventually, if they survived, they earned honourable discharge as citizens. Their official term of duty was just six years. Soldiers in the legions serve at least twenty. There was a good reason for the short enlistment, and not many vigiles lasted the full term.
Tiberius Fusculus, the best of Petro's hand-picked officers and now standing in for his chief, gazed at us warily. He was a round, cheerful fellow, thin on top, extremely healthy, and sharp as a tenting needle. He was keenly interested in the theory of crime, but we could tell by the way he poked the swollen hand away from him he did not intend to pursue this if he could file it in the 'No Action' pigeonhole.
'So what do you want me to do with it?'
'Find the rest?' I suggested. Fusculus scoffed.
Petronius surveyed the object. 'It has obviously been in the water a long time.' His tone was apologetic. 'We've been told it was found blocking a pipe in a castellum on the Aqua Appia, but it could have got there from somewhere else.'
'Most people are cremated,' Fusculus said. 'You might get some dog digging up a human hand at the crossroads in a village in the provinces, but bodies don't get buried raw in Rome.'
'It smacks of dirty business,' Petro agreed. 'If someone, possibly a woman, has been done in, why hasn't there been an outcry?'
'Probably because women are always being done in,' Fusculus explained helpfully. 'It's their husbands or lovers who do it, and when they wake up sober the men either collapse in remorse and come straight here to confess, or else they find the peace and quiet so welcome that raising an outcry is the last thing they consider.'
'All women have nosy friends,' Petro pointed out. 'A lot have interfering mothers; some are caring for aged aunts who if left on their own would wander out into the highway and frighten the donkeys. And what about the neighbours?'
'The neighbours report it,' said Fusculus. 'So we go to the house and ask the husband; he tells us that the neighbours are poisonous bastards making malicious accusations, then he claims his wife has gone to visit relatives at Antium. We say, when she comes home will he ask her to drop in and confirm it; we file the details; she never comes, but we never have time to pursue it because by then twenty other things are happening. Anyway, the husband will have run off.' He did not add 'and good luck to him', but his tone was eloquent.
'Don't give me the brush-off; I'm not some member of the Public.' Petronius was discovering how the public felt when they ventured to his office. He sounded annoyed, probably at himself for not having been prepared for it.
Fusculus was faultlessly polite. He had been putting off the public for the past fifteen years. 'If there has been a crime it could have happened anywhere, sir, and the chances of us picking up the rest of the body are nil.'
'You're not keen on this,' I divined.
'Clever man.'
'The evidence turned up on the Aventine.'
'A lot of filth turns up on the Aventine,' snorted Fusculus sourly, almost as if he included us in that category. 'This isn't evidence, Falco. Evidence is a material object that casts useful light on a known incident, enabling a prosecution. We have no idea where this forlorn fist came from, and I bet we never will. If you ask me,' he went on, evidently thinking he had found an inspired solution, 'it must have been polluting the water supply, so tracing any other body parts is a problem for the water board. I'll report the find. It's up to the Curator of Aqueducts to take action.'
'Don't be stupid,' scoffed Petro. 'When did anyone in the water board ever show any initiative? They're all too busy working fiddles.'
'I'll threaten to expose a few. Any sign of you coming back to work, chief?'
'Ask Rubella,' growled Petro, though I knew the tribune had said my foolish pal was to ditch the gangster's daughter before showing his face around the cohort again. Unless I had missed something, that still left Petro with a goodbye speech to make to Milvia.
'I heard you were in business with Falco nowadays?' For a pleasant man, Fusculus seemed to be in a starchy mood. I was not surprised. Informers have a black name amongst most Romans, but we are particularly reviled by the vigiles. The cohorts keep lists with our names on so they can knock on our doors halfway through dinner and drag us off for questioning about nothing in particular. State servants always hate people who are paid by results.
'I'm just helping him out informally. Why – do you miss me?' Petro asked.
'No, I'm just wondering when I can apply for your post.' It was said in jest, but the fact was, unless Petronius Longus sorted out his private life rather quickly the joke would become fact. Warning him, though, would only make it worse. Petronius had a stubborn side. He had always had a tendency to rebel against authority. It was why we were friends.
The Fourth kept a gruesome museum which they showed to the populace for half a denarius a throw, in order to raise cash for the widows of cohort members. We left the hand for the museum, and told ourselves it was no longer our problem.
Petronius and I then walked via the Circus Maximus to the Forum, where we had an appointment with a wall.
IV
If I had had any sense, I would have ended the partnership while we were standing in front of the wall. I would have told Petro that although I was grateful for his offer, the best way for us to preserve our friendship would be if I just let him doss at my apartment. I would work with someone else. Even if that meant pairing up with Anacrites.
The omens were bad from the very start. My normal method of advertising my services was to march up to the foot of the Capitol, quickly clean off someone else's poster from the best position on the Tabularium, then scrawl up a few swift strokes of chalk, writing whatever jocular message came into my head. Petronius Longus approached life more seriously. He had written out a text. He had worked up several versions (I could see the evidence in his note tablets) and he intended to inscribe his favourite in meticulous lettering, surrounded by a sleek key border drawn in variously hatched patterns.
'No point making it pretty.'
'Don't be so casual, Falco.'
'The aediles will wash it off again.'
'We need to get it right.'
'No, we need to avoid getting spotted doing it.' Chalking graffiti on national monuments may not be a crime in the Twelve Tables, but it can lead to a right thrashing.
'I'll do this.'
'I can write my name and mention divorce and stolen art recovery.'
'We're not dabbling with art.'
'It's my speciality.'
'That's why you never earn anything.'
It could be true. People who had lost their treasures were slow to pay out more money. Besides, the ones who lost art were often the mean sort. That was why it had not been protected by decent locks an
d alert watchmen in the first place.
'All right, Pythagoras, what's your philosophy? What stunning list of services will you claim we perform?'
'I'm not quoting examples. We need to tantalise. We should hint we cover everything. When the clients come we can weed out the duds and pass them on to some hack at the Saepta Julia. We're going to be Didius Falco Partner -'
'Oh, you're staying anonymous?'
'I have to.'
'So you still want your job back?'
'There was never any suggestion of giving up my job.' 'Just checking. Don't work with me if you despise my life.'
'Shut up a minute. Falco Partner: a select service for discerning clients.'
'Sounds like a cheap brothel.'
'Have faith, lad.'
'Or an overpriced shoemaker. Falco Partner: try our triple-stitched calfskin slipperettes. As morn by all decadent layabouts, sheer luxury at the arena and the perfect lounging shoes for orgies -'
'You're a dog, Falco.'
'Subtlety is fine, but unless you give some delicate hint that we carry out enquiries, and that we rather like to be paid for it, we'll get no work.'
'Listen – Partners' personal attention may be possible in certain instances. That implies we are a sound organisation with a large staff who look after the riffraff; we can flatter each punter into believing he gets special terms – for which he naturally pays a premium.'
'You have an exotic view of the freelance world.' He was revelling in it. 'Listen, scribe, you still haven't said -'
'Yes I have. It's in my draft. Specialist enquiries. Then in small letters at the bottom I'll put: No charge for preliminary consultation. That lures them in, thinking they'll get something for nothing, but hints at our steep fee for the rest.'
'My fees have always been reasonable.'
'So who's the fool? Half the time you let yourself bebamboozled into doing the work for nothing. You're soft, Falco.'
'Not any longer, apparently.'
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