Enemies at Home

18

‘I’m glad to know I haven’t lost my touch!’

Uncle Quintus, the handsome, likeable one of my Camillus uncles, surprised me by arriving at the Aviola apartment. I was just slinking out, with a stole wrapped around me to look like a respectable matron. He claimed he had guessed what I would be up to. I kept mum and glared.

‘You are going to tangle with the vigiles — then you’ll want to go after the robbers, don’t deny it, Albia. I checked progress with your client this morning and it’s obvious. Manlius Faustus is an idiot if he trusts you to obey orders.’

‘He’s not an idiot — but he is wrong, and so are you, to try and tie me down.’

Quintus tipped his head on one side. He had rather fine brown eyes which he deployed − perhaps unconsciously, though I thought not − to inveigle women who knew better to fall in with his wiles. Don’t ask me what wiles. I preferred not to know. ‘So what’s the story there?’ he asked.

‘Where?’

‘Devious Niece, you and the plebeian aedile?’

‘There is no story. Nosy Uncle, why don’t you trot into the apartment and inspect the scene of crime, while I nip out for an onion? There’s a slave called Myla who has been waiting all her life to be bewitched by you. Leave me alone and ask her some questions.’

‘Ooh, will she make wild relevations?’

‘You will doubtless get further with her than I did.’

‘She can wait,’ decided Quintus annoyingly. ‘I’ll plan my assault on the winsome Myla while I am escorting you.’

I gave in. To be honest I was glad. He must have come straight from the Curia, so was still togaed up. It never does any harm to take a senator, with his full purple banding, when you venture into the offices of armed men who despise women. Besides, despite his snooty rank and mild demeanour, my uncle kept in shape; he always made handy back-up.

He had a couple of bodyguards following him about discreetly too. Because of the case, I took more notice of them than usual. They were his usual lost lambs — ex-legionaries who had been invalided out of the army, one with a paralysed arm, one who hadn’t actually lost an eye but might as well have done, he was so short-sighted — and he really did have an ear torn off, probably not in battle. This was typical of Uncle Quintus. His career posting as a military tribune had left him feeling responsibility towards the Empire’s damaged soldiers. He had felt sorry for my late husband in the same way.

Would these two squaddies, with not a whole set of limbs between them, be good enough protection today? Quintus probably had innocent faith in them, but I would avoid anywhere we might be mugged.

I was not accompanied by Dromo. He had been asleep with his mouth wide open and I had tiptoed past him.

Good work — until I ran into my uncle.

As we set off walking, I admitted that ‘winsome’ Myla was a lazy, lactating lump on whom Uncle Quintus would not want to waste his skills.

I also admitted I was going to see Titianus. My uncle declared the Second Cohort were donkey dung (which I told him was normal for the vigiles), and corrupt (which we agreed we also expected), and even more undermanned than the other cohorts — which last point showed Quintus Camillus Justinus in his true light. He had carried out useful research before he turned up.

Of course he was good. My father trained him.

The station house of the Second Cohort had been built down the highway from the Esquiline Gate. It was most fragrantly situated between the large Pallantian Garden, created by a freedman of the Emperor Claudius, and the even more elaborate, statue-crammed, water-featured, gazeboed and porticoed Gardens of Lamia and Maiana, with the Gardens of Maecenas adjacent, containing a fancy auditorium where my father in a misguided moment once held a public poetry reading. This area was a topiary seller’s dream. Lopsided sea monsters and one-winged phoenixes, clipped in laurel and box, watched your every move. In June you couldn’t breathe for poplar fluff. The vigiles were beset by elegant recreational facilities — which I bet they never even noticed. More importantly for their work as firefighters, they had easy access to aqueducts.

On a good day, Titianus would have been off duty. I would have pressed his disloyal colleagues to give their opinion of his half-baked Aviola inquiry, and they might have dished dirt. It was not a good day. Instead of working at night, like any conscientious investigator who goes out on foot with the troops, this swine liked to take his ease on the day shift, playing with paperwork by himself. He was available in his snug.

I could see why the Second Cohort had made Titianus their inquiry officer. He would never meld in anywhere else. The average firefighter is built like a stone sarcophagus, with short wide legs and no neck: a wide-loom tunic man. They like ripping those tunics off in public, to amaze onlookers with their physique.

Sadly for him, Titianus had hair of an indiscriminate colour, pouchy eyes and a desolate expression, while his physique was far from fantastic. He did wear a tunic that was wider than it was long, but it hung off him in folds. It looked like the skin of an obese patient whose doctor has starved him into losing two hundred pounds, the week before he collapses and dies of malnutrition. (‘At least he was healthy when he passed away.’ ‘Well, thank you, doctor!’)

Unlike normal inquiry officers, we found Titianus sitting up straight at his desk. Evidently he had not been shown how to put up his boots on the table while he cleaned out his ear-wax. What was wrong with the Second Cohort’s training manual? Finding him not belching over a packet of cold bar snacks, Uncle Quintus looked disappointed. He is always hungry and was expecting to pinch nibbles.

After introductions, Quintus left me to it; he wandered back outside to the exercise yard, the hub of any vigiles barracks, where men on call were tidying equipment. I knew he would start asking questions about firefighting kit, then while he endeared himself to the troops by treating them as human, he would fish for any facts that Titianus might prefer to keep from us.

In the office, I started by asking the dolorous-eyed Titianus about the night of the robbery. There were no surprises. That in itself was no surprise.

‘Yes, it all fits!’ He probably thought my remark was a commendation. ‘One thing you can tell me, Titianus, is what the killers used to strangle the victims. Rope has been mentioned. Is it correct you took it away as evidence?’

This time Titianus squirmed unhappily. ‘There was a rope, left around the dead woman’s neck. That steward, Poly-wotsit, took it off her — act of respect to the dead. I didn’t collect it from the scene immediately as I was too busy, and later it had vanished. Thrown out when they tidied up? It wasn’t important.’

‘It might be. An aggressive lawyer may call this carelessness,’ I warned him frankly.

‘Bull’s balls. Let him. I don’t see it. What point is some nasty twine? We confiscate knives — to be honest, we find our own uses for those. But we haven’t enough space to store endless crates of rubbish, just because perps have used them as murder weapons. We’d be cluttered up with rusty pruning hooks and broken planks off building sites. We can’t do it.’

‘Not even in cases you haven’t solved yet, where these may turn out to be clues?’

‘Oh, face it, Flavia Albia — nobody’s ever going to solve this case!’

I was tempted to declare that I would solve it, but I was starting to agree with him. I made much of needing to file a report for the aedile: ‘He’s going to ask about the robbers, Titianus. What story can we give him there?’ Saying ‘we’ was deliberate. Even a vigiles inquiry officer who stayed in the office to play about with bureaucracy, or whatever Titianus played with, would avoid having his work checked by a magistrate.

‘I don’t reckon there were any robbers,’ Titianus claimed, his attitude now defensive. ‘It’s staring you in the face, woman: the slaves killed their masters, then they snaffled the silver and made up a story about the house being broken into, using that as cover.’

‘They didn’t fool you then … Still, I assume you do have villains around here who occasionally climb into apartments and remove important property?’

‘Plenty.’

‘Care to suggest names? I like to supply detail. Then my employer thinks I have been thorough.’ Actually, I like to be thorough in fact, so any details I supply to a client are correct.

Titianus listed some Esquiline ne’er-do-wells, each time asserting that these were small-fry no-hopers who would not touch serious bullion even if they came across it hanging on a washing line, let alone would they go out deliberately targeting fine drinksware. Nobody here wanted to steal anything that would be recognisable. According to Titianus, this was because the crafty vigiles would come calling while the thieves were still in possession of the goods.

According to me, that was cobnuts.

‘Somebody is in possession of the pierced silver wine strainers and the dinky goat-legged coaster set!’ Titianus looked puzzled that I could itemise the stolen goods. I almost expected him to start writing down what I said; I felt pretty sure he had never made a list himself. ‘So who is the big octopus on the Esquiline rocks?’ He shrugged. ‘Come on, Titianus, share your expertise. Which gangster has the fattest file of case notes in the scroll cupboard, yet no arrests are made − or if they ever do go to the praetor and onwards to court, somehow no prosecutions stick?’ Titianus remained boot-faced. ‘Who are all the other villains afraid of, Titianus? Who dares brazenly kill, in the process of another crime?’

‘Could be the Rabirii.’ He answered straightaway, now I spelled it out for him. He could have told me in the first place.

‘So have you pulled the Rabirii in for questioning?’

‘Of course not,’ snarled Titianus. ‘They would only deny it. Then their barristers would take my tribune for a drink and suddenly I would lose my job. The Rabirii would visit my old mother and make her cry. If they were particularly annoyed, they’d write foul messages about my sexual habits on a Forum wall.’

I smiled at him gently. ‘I understand. But I expect your ma would give them a seeing to … Mothers tend to be tough. So,’ I nagged, refusing to give up, ‘Titianus, if I want to have a word with the deadly Rabirii, where shall I find these exciting master crooks?’

Titianus spent the next few minutes telling me I was out of my mind, with colourful details of what led to his diagnosis. ‘Are you so bored with life you want to be found in pieces on a rubbish dump?’ Uncle Quintus put his head back around the door, looking interested.

Once the officer simmered down in senatorial company, Quintus spoke sympathetically. ‘It’s very good of you to care so much about Flavia Albia’s welfare, Titianus … Tell me, if you very sensibly wouldn’t go anywhere near these muckers, does the Second Cohort have a man who does? Someone who has annoyed your tribune so much the poor fellow has been deployed as your organised crime liaison officer? I know it’s usual to assign specialist oversight.’

‘That will be a new concept for the Second Cohort!’ I scoffed.

In his clean upper-class accent, Camillus Justinus tutted mild reproof at me, then greased up Titianus who turned out to be a sucker for charm, and soon had us in an office further down the barracks portico where a different vigiles layabout, with a hunted expression and his boots held together with string, told us it was too dangerous for us to know his name.

His name was Juventus. He had scratched it on his metal mess tin. Without actually winking, my uncle subtly let me know he could see it too.

The anonymous one sucked his teeth and confirmed that the Rabirii were the chief local professionals. If anything major happened, they would be behind it; no other gang would dare to invade their territory.

‘They are a family firm, long line of descent from other career criminals — bloody born to it. Embedded in the Esquiline. They rule by fear. It’s nothing to them to batter someone senseless. A lad of ours had his eye put out when he arrested one of their runners for nicking purses — he didn’t know it was a Rabirius associate. Old man Rabirius said he ought to make it his business to know, though in fairness the old bugger did give us a big donation afterwards for the widows and orphans fund.’

‘I expect your lad was happy with that,’ said Justinus, the sly beast. The half-blinded vigilis would have received no compensation, in fact. Widows and orphans were scarcely looked after either, well, not unless the widow was pretty. ‘So would this gang carry out violent house-breaking?’

‘Meat and drink to them. They always know who owns antiques or gilt goblets, who bought a new Greek statue last week, who gave an emerald necklace to his mistress who is careless about locking doors.’

‘Ever killed a householder before?’

‘Certainly not, legate. Why would they need to? Anyone who has heard about the jeweller being poked up the arse with a red hot fire-iron because he tried to stop them grabbing his oriental pearls, just quivers in a corner and lets them walk away with whatever they want. People who think they are about to be a target make sure they go out to dinner and stay away until dawn.’

‘Wouldn’t they go out to dinner and put their valuables in a safe place?’ asked my uncle.

‘No, if you’re targeted it’s better to give in and hand them over. I heard about one man who actually packed up his stuff all ready for them, with helpful labels, and left them a donkey to carry it. Including a driver!’

Justinus whistled quietly. ‘And what strategy are you using to tackle this gang?’

‘Strategy?’ asked Juventus.

‘Operation Bandit King. What’s your action plan?’

The so-called special liaison officer still looked blank.

I thought about my other uncle, Lucius Petronius of the Fourth Cohort, who spent decades trying to bring the hated Balbinus-Florius gang to justice; he had to give up on them, exhausted, when he retired. But he knew what an action plan was. He nagged tribune after tribune to commit funds for such initiatives. A Rome-wide crime-busting scheme, Operation Bandit King had been first set up by Uncle Petro.

Fortunately for Juventus, Camillus Justinus could hide his disapproval of incompetence. I myself pretended to believe Juventus must be diligently monitoring the Rabirius gang so I asked if he could advise us how to make contact.

He was not prepared to come along and introduce us, but in line with vigiles practice, he released one minimum fact: he gave us the name of a bar.