'What are you thinking, Falco?' Petro asked, with a mild smile that meant he knew.
'Silvius is one of us.'
'Honoured,' said Silvius. He had an easy-going baritone voice that had ordered up plenty of flagons in its time. He had spent long nights in smoky bars, talking. Either he was a lyric poet, a speculative saucepan-seller – - or he traded information.
The drinks came. Sides arrived simultaneously in pottery dishes. There would be no need for the waiter to trouble us again.
I saw Silvius eyeing the two young Camilli. Petro must have given him the rundown on us all. They had left their pristine togas in the clothes press and were turned out professionally: neutral tunics, serviceable belts, worn-in boots, no flash metal buckles or tags on their laces. Neither went in for jewellery, though Aulus had a rather wide new gold wedding ring; Quintus was not wearing his, but I thought he had had it on when he escorted his wife to the spy's party. You could just about take these two down an alley in the Subura without causing a rush of pickpockets, though they still had to learn how to pass along the streets completely unnoticed. At least they looked nowadays as though they might see trouble coming. As they thickened up in their middle-to-late twenties, each looked as if he might be handy when that trouble reached him. Their hair was too long and their chins too cleanshaven, but if we were soon to have action, I knew they would enjoy making themselves more scruffy.
'They will do; they are fit,' I said in an undertone. Silvius heard it without comment. Both Camilli noticed the exchange. Neither flared up. They had learned to accept how you edged towards acceptance in new professional relationships. When work was dangerous, each man had to make his own judgements about people he would be dealing with. Aulus leaned back on the bench and subjected Silvius in turn to scrutiny.
We raised a quiet toast, then set our beakers down again as Petronius prepared to speak.
'Is this about our Modestus case?' Having been to the marshes with us, Quintus was over-keen and jumped in. I laid a finger to my lips. Good-natured, Quintus shrugged an apology.
Petro began slowly. 'Marcus Rubella, my tribune, introduced Silvius to me, but officially, Rubella never met Silvius – and nor have I. Officially we surrendered the case into the safe hands of the honest Praetorians, together with their intellectual comrade, Anacrites the spy. There's a poor interface with his organisation. We all let Anacrites play by himself.'
Aulus asked, keeping his voice level, 'Who are "we all"? The vigiles, the Praetorians, and whoever Silvius' people are?'
Petro gave a satirical growl. 'Here is how co-operation works, boys.' He branched into a lecture I had heard him give before: 'The Praetorian Guard provide the Emperor's security – hence the link with the intelligence outfit. Titus Caesar commands them, to keep them under control – though who will control Titus? They spend a lot of time nowadays arresting people whose faces Titus does not like. Upset Anacrites, and that could be us. The Urban Prefect is Rome's city manager. Duties include investigating major crime – note that. Then come the vigiles. Duties: sniffing out fires, apprehending street thieves, rounding up runaway slaves. When we catch minor criminals, we give them on-the-spot chastisement – - otherwise we parcel them up for the Urban Prefect, who charges them formally. So another point to note, Aelianus: we have good lines of communication with the Urbans. Very good.'
I leaned on one elbow and pointed one forefinger at Silvius. Silvius nodded. He belonged to the Urban Cohorts.
The Camilli watched this interchange. Justinus asked pointedly, 'The Guards and the Urbans live in the same camp. Are they not natural allies?'
'You might think so,' admitted Silvius. 'Though not for long. Not once your keen eyes observed how the Praetorians behave like gods, looking down on the Urbans as their poor relations – - while also thinking that the vigiles are puny ex-slaves, commanded by has-been officers.' Petronius spat out an olive stone. 'Pity the pathetic Urban who has bought the myth that it is easy to pass from one section to the other, merely on talent and merit,' Silvius continued in complaint. I wondered if that was what he had tried to do, and failed. 'No vigiles officer, I suspect, would even waste his time thinking it could happen.' Ah. Tell that to Marcus Rubella, whose dream was to rise on snowy wings to wear the Praetorian uniform.
'So you work in Rome,' Aulus pressed Silvius.
'Personally, no.'
We all raised our eyebrows – except for Petronius who calmly supped his drink and waited for Silvius to explain.
'The Praetorians,' said Silvius, with sly satisfaction, 'have to remain with the Emperor. The Urban Cohorts are free to roam. Our remit covers major crime – not only in the city, but anywhere within a hundred miles. Because, you see, any horrible criminal activity in that area might affect the sacred capital.'
'Now it makes sense,' said Aelianus. Even in the shaky hands of Minas of Karystos he had absorbed enough legal training to care about jurisdictions. 'For instance, the Modestus case would fall to you?'
'Yes, but Anacrites wants it.'
'So?'
'There is a magistrate at Antium -'
Justinus laughed. 'The invisible man!'
It was Silvius' turn to raise an eyebrow.
'When Modestus and Primilla disappeared, a posse from Antium was sent to investigate. Before Anacrites waded in and stopped our activity, Falco, Petronius and I tried to liaise with the magistrate but he declined to meet us.'
'You assumed Antium dropped all interest?' suggested Silvius. 'No, there is more to the man than that, boys. When he found nothing in the soggy marshes, it's true he went home and seemed to keep his head down. You may suppose he just spends his life enjoying the sea breezes at Antium, but this togate beach bum has a sense of duty – for civic rectitude, he could be one of our clean-living, right-thinking, porridge-slurping ancestors. Nor does bureaucracy scare him. Amazingly, he went on digging. He looked through records. Then one fine day, he was entertaining the Urban Prefect – our beloved commander, who, it has to be admitted, had gone out to Antium using official expenses in order to scout for a cut-price villa, to keep his bitching wife quiet. Over the men's sophisticated luncheon, words were exchanged of a diligent nature. Feel free to marvel.'
Aulus leaned in, scooping seafood from a dish. 'What have they found?' He had no truck with fancy narratives. Minas probably thought Aulus was not a natural lawyer, but his plain gruffiiess satisfied me.
'The magistrate has been following up reports of missing people, people who had disappeared while travelling mainly, so unlikely to have caused real local outcry. A list was prepared. Footmen were sent out into the countryside, some carrying long probes. And they found,' said Silvius, enjoying the chill he laid on us, 'two double sets of bodies.'
Aulus dumped a chewed prawn head in an empty saucer. 'So far.'
Silvius looked at me with only a trace of sarcasm. 'He catches on!'
'Thanks. I saved him from ruination: army and the diplomatic – he was a slow slug until I took on his training…' While Aulus seethed mildly, I pressed Silvius, 'You work outside Rome – - so when the Antium big bug talked to the Urban commander, you were assigned to the case?'
'That's right. "Liaison officer". Keeping the locals on track – while letting them believe they have control.'
'Did you see the bodies yourself?'
He moved a little on his bench, disturbed by memories. 'Yes – one lot while still in situ. They were old bones. Nothing to identify. One pair much more recent than the other. Shallow graves, one trench to each body, each two of a pair lying close to each other – - no more than ten feet separate – - but the two pairs were half a mile apart. To find more, there will be a lot of ground to cover. The locals are still looking. And we've kept it secret.'
'People will soon know.'
'Sadly they will, Falco. So we need movement. I was sent to Rome to chivvy it up – only to learn the Modestus case has been passed over to the spy. I'm disgusted. This is no job for Anacrites. We Urbans won't cave in to him and the P
raetorians. So our Prefect talked to the Vigiles Prefect. I've now been sent to communicate with you boys – very, very quietly. It's imperative the Praetorians don't know until they have to -and, until we can make arrests, nor must the Claudii.'
We all breathed in, or whistled through our teeth.
Petronius pushed aside his beaker. 'I'd like to hear more about the circumstances of these other deaths. How, when, where, who?'
'The graves are a few miles out of Antium. The oldest, just skeletons, may date back decades. The others are maybe five years old. How can anyone tell? A gravedigger from a necropolis was brought in to confer, but he couldn't say anything more specific. Because of their condition, impossible to say what had been done to them, though there could be cut marks on bones. We can't attach names – - no clues to identity, though using the missing list, we may make guesses.'
'How were they laid out in the graves?' I asked.
'Arms at full stretch – like Modestus and that courier.'
'Any hands removed?' That was Petro.
'No. One corpse had an arm missing, but the grave had been disturbed, probably by animals. One had a foot off- maybe he kicked out and was given special punishment.'
'Any clothing or other items?'
'Nothing useful. Rags mostly. No money or valuables. It all looked careful, by the way. Marcus Rubella told me the courier's burial seemed rushed?'
'We're keeping an open mind on the courier,' I told Silvius. 'Even Anacrites thinks it could be a distraction, according to what he told me… Maybe it's him all along, trying to divert attention from the Pontine connection, to protect the Claudii.'
'Why would he want to look after those bastards?'
'Who knows? Have you met him? Do you know what he's like?'
Silvius spat contemptuously.
After a small pause Petro kept niggling. 'Did your four bodies give up any hints about the killer? Was there more than one, for instance? Did they stay on the scene afterwards, to commit further defilement?'
Silvius was pecking at snacks now, undeterred by the subject under discussion. 'The sites were too old. I wouldn't even say for sure that the deaths occurred where we found the graves. Two were in a lonely spot. It's a deep ravine, a place with a real sense of evil. We hated being there.'
'A ravine?'
'Water channel scoured out by a river at flood time. Dry in summer.'
Petro pushed back from the table, arms braced. 'So – this is the question: what makes you decide your very old corpses, discovered close to Antium, are linked to the Claudius family who live – insofar as we can call what they do living – away across the marshes.'
Silvius paused. He liked to milk a situation. We all waited.
'Petronius Longus, this is what I need your help for. There is a witness.'
'What?'
'Somewhere in Rome, we hope. Ten years ago, a young man fell into a street bar near Antium. He was hysterical and claimed he had been led off the road and nearly murdered by two villains. One man who seemed friendly and helpful had lured him, then suddenly jumped him and took him to an accomplice, an extremely sinister presence. He was obviously planning to commit terrible acts. The intended victim somehow escaped their clutches.'
Silvius himself shuddered, while the rest of us moved in our seats and variously reacted.
'Nobody took much notice at the time. If there was any kind of enquiry, it dwindled away fast. All the locals now think it was a couple of Claudii – Nobilis and one of his brothers. They were never interviewed, nor put in front of the victim for identification. They must reckon they got away with it. But we know the young man came from Rome – which of course wouldn't have helped him get attention in Latium. He is believed to have returned home after his ordeal. So, highly recommended Watch Captain with the interesting friends -' Silvius raised his beaker to the Camilli and me. 'You are requested to help me find him.'
XLVII
All they knew was that the young man with the narrow escape was called Volusius. He was thought to be a teacher. Silvius had no details of his address in Rome. Petro had already tried the teachers' guild. A pompous official, possibly detecting that Lucius Petronius despised formal education, said he would ask his members but it would probably take time.
Petronius had cursed him for a piece of offal – - but he managed to reserve this view until he was alone. Perhaps the guild master would come good. Wrong. It took him no time to 'consult his members' – in other words, he had not bothered. He said he had no member of that name on his current list and nobody had ever heard of Volusius. He declared the lad must have been an impostor. Petronius asked why would anyone ever lower themselves to claim fraudulently that they thrashed schoolchildren for a living? The guild master offered to demonstrate his big stick technique. Petro left, not hastily but without lingering.
The vigiles cohorts keep lists of certain undesirable professions (mine, for instance), though teachers are excluded. Impersonating a teacher, as the master had suggested, ought to be illegal but there were no lists for that either: probably because the pay was so low, fraud was in fact so unlikely.
Rubella still refused to allow Petronius to leave Rome. So by the time our meeting broke up, I had volunteered for another trip to Antium, to re-interview people at the bar where the escaped Volusius had turned up screaming for help ten years ago. If the bar was still there, which Petronius doubted, someone surely would remember a hysterical youth falling on the counter while screaming he had been abducted and scared witless. Even in the country, that must be more unusual than calves being run over by hay wagons.
The bar was there. It had been sold to a new owner who knew nothing about the incident. His clientele had changed. They knew nothing either.
Or so the bastards told me.
I pointed out quietly that if they left these killers on the loose, one of them could be a body in a shallow grave one day.
'Never!' a wall-eyed sheep-stealer assured me. 'All of us know better than to accept an invitation from Claudius Pius to go for a little walk down a marsh track to see his brother's spear collection.'
'Who mentioned Claudius Pius?' I asked in a level tone.
He rethought rapidly. 'You did!' he snapped. 'Didn't he?'
They all agreed that I had done so, despite it being obvious I had not. So against expectations I had discovered who lured away the victims – though this feeble conversation would not count as proof.
'Anyone seen Pius around here recently?'
Of course not.
'So tell me about "seeing the spear collection". How do you know that was the lure?'
'It's what the teacher said.'
'I thought you knew nothing about the teacher?'
'Oh no, but that's what people around here all reckon.'
'Anything else people around here know? Which brother's spears were on offer, for instance?'
'Oh Nobilis, bound to be. Probus has some, but nothing by comparison.'
'Any recent sightings of Nobilis?'
No. They said anyone who saw Claudius Nobilis would quickly look the other way.
'So what exactly are you scared of?'
They looked at me as though I was demented if I had to ask.
I was ready to give up. This bar might seem a safe haven to a young man escaping two murderers, but as a watering hole it was deadly. If this was the best place to buy a drink where I lived, I would emigrate to Chersonesis Taurica, die in exile like Ovid at the back of beyond, yet still think I had the best of it.
Preparing to leave, I glanced around the dismal place, then had one last try: 'I just can't work out what a teacher from Rome would have been doing on this road in the first place. None of them earn enough for a summer villa on the coast. I don't suppose "people around here" know why he came, do they?'
'He was coming to Antium to be interviewed for a holiday job.'
'Is that right!'
To my amazement, it turned out to be well known in those parts just which wealthy villa owner had s
ummoned him. Incredibly, the rich man still had the same villa.
I never met the prospective employer, but it was unnecessary. He was the type who, faced with a potential hire who had come to grief, insisted that full details of the man's experience must be written down; in case Volusius tried to sue for compensation, presumably. A transcript still existed. I was shown it. They would not let me take it off the premises, but a scribe sat down and copied out the ten-year-old statement for me.
Volusius described meeting the man everyone now thought was Claudius Pius, who made friends and lured him off the road to meet his brother. Despite having no interest in weapons, the naive young teacher found himself agreeing to accompany Pius. They went further than he expected, down extremely remote tracks, and he was already worried when they encountered the promised brother. This man was sinister. They met him in a clearing, as though he had been waiting. It made Volusius realise he had been deliberately stalked. He knew he had been brought here for evil reasons.
Volusius had made a terrible mistake. Although he felt he was about to be murdered, he managed not to show he understood his danger. Perhaps because there were two of them and they thought they could easily control him, the brothers were careless. Volusius broke away and managed to run off. Shaking with fear, he hid in a thicket for hours, overhearing a discussion about fetching a dog to track him down. As soon as he thought the men were out of earshot, he made a break for it, and ran until he reached the road and found the bar. The barkeeper at the time took him to safety at the villa where he had originally been heading.
The villa owner had clout. A search was conducted, though nobody was found. No one then made a link with the Claudii. Volusius gave a description of the two men, but it was too vague. If he had heard names, he could not remember them. He went into shock, too jittery to be of use as a witness. Some people even doubted his story. There was not a scratch on him. Nobody had seen him with the strangers. His fear might not be caused by trauma, but a pre-existing mental problem that made him imagine things. Enquiries petered out.
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