Time To Depart

XXXVII

PORCIUS WENT OFF to fetch Scythax and report to Petronius the bad developments.

Porcius and I had exchanged a few thoughts: `If you're right, and I have every confidence in your judgement, Porcius -' he blushed happily – 'we now know that some of the Balbinus men are back in Rome. That probably means they all are.'

`That makes them suspects for the Emporium raid,' offered the young recruit. A fast thinker. Good material. Even in the aftermath of a fight he was piecing together the evidence.

I was thinking myself. Interviewing Lalage, I was with Petro as a member of the cohort. She has no reason to single me out for special treatment. Apart from Nonnius – who's out of it the Balbinus females are the only people I've visited on my own. The fact that it's the Miller and Little Icarus who were sent to put me off does point to this being in the family.' I was convinced this had happened because I had asked too many questions of Flaccida and Milvia. The speed with which they had tracked me down was worrying. I kept that to myself. `Maybe we can forget the other gangs. Maybe Petro cut the head off the Balbinus organisation but the body's still active. We'll have to find out who's running it now, Porcius.' For the safety of my household, we needed to find out fast.

`Do you really think it could be the wife or the daughter, Falco?' `Or the son-in-law. I haven't met him yet.'

`Or Lalage,' Helena put in, refusing to give up her theory. `She could easily have taken over the services of the Miller and company.'

Porcius and I exchanged a surreptitious glance. Face it: it was easier for us to accept that the Balbinus organisation had been hijacked by his deadbeat thugs themselves than that it was masterminded by women. Even women as hard-baked as Flaccida and Lalage.

Neither Porcius nor I were intending to say this to Helena Justina. She came from the same stern mould that had produced the warrior-queen Tanaquil, Cornelia, Volumnia, Livia, and other tough matrons who had never had it mentioned to them that they were supposed to be inferior to men. Personally I like women with ideas. But you have to be genteel when you're teaching a recruit about life on the streets.

`The Miller and Little Icarus can't be very bright,' Helena said. `They were frightening, but if they have sneaked back to Rome to run the show they ought to lie low, not draw attention to themselves. Flaccida struck me as clever enough to realise that.'

`Right! So we're back with Lalage as the queen of intelligent activity!' I smiled at her.

Or with somebody we had not thought of yet.

Scythax came quickly. Porcius had made it to the station house in one piece. I had warned him to keep his eyes peeled when he hit street level. He must have told his story with some urgency, for the physician was with us by return. Porcius came back with him, to show him the right house. Petro had sent two members of the foot patrol as guards too. He had recognised the danger I was in.

Scythax was a brusque Oriental freedman who seemed to suspect malingering. This was understandable. The vigiles patrolmen were always trying to dodge off sick; given the dangers of their work, no one could blame them. Scythax expected people to cry ouch as soon he entered a room; he viewed `headaches', `bad backs' and `old knee trouble' with little patience. He had heard it all before. To get sympathy from Scythax you had to produce a bright red rash or a hernia: something visible or proddable.

He did concede that my shoulder and arm were genuinely out of action. He was delighted to inform me the shoulder joint was merely dislocated. His treatment would be to manipulate it back into place.

He did this. `Manipulate' had sounded a gentle enough word. In fact the manoeuvre involved working on me with a brute force that the Miller would have been proud of. I should have realised that when Scythax told Helena and Ma to grip my feet so I couldn't kick out, while Porcius was to throw himself on my chest with all his weight. Scythax immediately attacked me, bracing his foot against the wall as he leaned back and pulled.

It worked. It hurt. It hurt a lot. Even Ma had to sit down fanning herself, and Helena was openly in tears.

`There's no fee,' Scythax condescended amiably.

My mother and my girlfriend both made comments that seemed to surprise him.

To smooth over the angry atmosphere (since he really had mended my shoulder), I managed to gasp, `Did you see the body the patrol brought in this morning?'

`Nonnius Albius?'

`You know of him?'

Scythax peered at me rather wryly, packing away his equipment. `I keep abreast of the cohort's work.' `So what did you think?'

`What Petronius. Longus suggested: the man had been tormented, mostly while he was still alive. Many of the wounds were not fatal in themselves. Somebody had inflicted them to cause pain – it looked like punishment. That fits his position as a squealer who had betrayed his chief.'

And it called for the same list of suspects as the people who might have taken over afterwards: the Balbinus women, the other gang members, and Lalage.

`He was very ill,' I mentioned, as the doctor reached the door.

`Were you able to tell what might have been wrong with him?' Scythax reacted oddly. An expression that could almost have been amusement crossed his face, then he said, `Nothing much.' `He was supposed to be dying!' Helena exclaimed in surprise.

`That was the whole reason Petronius was able to persuade him to give evidence.'

`Really?' The freedman was dry. `His doctor must have been mistaken.'

`His doctor's called Alexander.' I was already growing suspicious. `I met him at the house. He seemed as competent as any other Aesculapius.'

`Oh Alexander is an excellent doctor,' Scythax assured me gravely.

`Do you know him, Scythax?'

I was prepared for rivalry, or professional solidarity, but not for what I learned instead: `He is my brother,' said Scythax.

Then he smiled at us like a man who was far too long in the tooth to comment, and left.

I caught the eye of Petro's impressionable recruit. His mouth had dropped open as he worked out, slightly slower than I did, the implication of the cohort doctor's last remark. I said softly, `That's a lesson to you, Porcius. You're working for a man who is not what he seems. I'm talking about Petronius Longus. He has a mild-mannered reputation – behind which lurks the most devious, evil-minded investigation officer anywhere in Rome!'