Time To Depart

XLVI

AT THE THIRTEENTH-SECTOR patrol house moods were as dour as mine. It had been a quiet night on the Aventine. A normal one, anyway. Apart from eighteen house fires, arson in a grain warehouse, a rash of burglaries, several street fights related to the festival of the Armilustrium, three suicides dragged from the Tiber, and two more angry women whose nicely airing counterpanes had been stolen from balcony parapets, nothing had disturbed the peace.

I told Petro what we had discovered about the kidnaps, and he told me what I could do with my news.

`Don't fob me off. Tertulla is an official case, Petro. Galla demands an enquiry.'

`She's on our daily list.'

`Damn the list. This needs a vigorous follow-up.'

`Give me a name or a suspect house and I'll send in men.'

`It's someone with good information. It's someone who knows enough to connect my ghastly sister's snotty truant with the fact that my girlfriend comes from a family with status.' Not enough information, however, to realise that the illustrious Camilli had no spare cash.

They could have heard it at any barber's or breadshop.'

Are you sure? Someone out on the streets knows more than Helena's father's secretary does. He sent the runner away!'

`I presume you've made sure next time he'll put a leg ring on the messenger and pass him to us.'

`She's a seven-year-old girl. She ought to be a priority.'

`My priority is set by Rubella. My priority is eliminating the gangs.'

His scowl told me different. Petro had fathered girls himself. He knew all the doubts and dreads when a female child went missing.

He quietened down, told me Helena had done splendidly over questioning the other families, and remarked that I didn't deserve her. With her help, and now the attempt to involve her father, at least we knew what was going on.

`That's no consolation to my sister, and you know it!'

Petro promised that as soon as he had time he would look into it. As things were, he would never have time. We both knew that.

There had been no more raids and no more murders. That was a relief yet it meant we had no more to go on. Petronius and the squad were back with the dire, depressing task of flogging once more through old evidence. Worrying at empty details. Trying to tease an extra ounce of significance from useless facts.

`Where's the black boy?' Petro demanded suddenly. `The Nonnius slave?'

`With Porcius.'

`Then where's Porcius?'

Porcius was summoned from fending off counterpane victims. He came into the interrogation room nervously. He must have known Petro was the calmest man on the Aventine, but he could sense short temper tingling in the air like the night before a blinding storm.

`I thought I told you to make friends with the squealer's attendant?'

`Yes, chief. I'm doing it.'

`Well?'

`He's very timid, chief.'

`I don't care if he wets himself every half-hour. Mop him dry and keep up the pressure. I want to know what he saw.' `He talks a lot of gibberish, chief.'

`We can find a translator if he lacks Latin – ' `It's not his Latin – '

`Don't nit-pick. Porcius, this is Rome. We can find a trustworthy translator for any language in the world.'

`Chief, he's just terrified.' Like himself, Porcius could have said.

`So he's no use? I don't accept it. Surely if he was hiding right under the couch where we found him he could have glimpsed a few feet. Did he hear anything said? Can he not suggest bow many abductors came to the house? Were they talking any foreign languages?'

Porcius blinked a bit, but pulled himself together. He must have.acquired some feeling of responsibility for the tiny slave who had been placed in his care. Now he tried standing up to Petro – not a good idea. `Chief, I'm working on him. I've got a plan to lure him into talking usefully. He was brave enough the night it happened, actually; he must have gone into shock afterwards. He loved his master. He was loyal. So far I've found out that when Nonnius was taken, the boy ran after the group who grabbed him -'

Listening from the sidelines, I felt myself wince. Petronius Longus leapt to his feet. Already under stress, he picked up the last sentence and broke into a froth. `What's this? I don't believe I heard you!'

Porcius realised his error and stopped.

Petronius had needed an outlet for his frustration. The well-meaning recruit made an easy target. Petro was beside himself. `How long have you been holding this information, Porcius? Are you looking for early retirement? We have dead men and stripped buildings all over Rome, and you're prancing about like a circus horse "working on" the only witness! Get this straight: if you serve in this cohort's investigation unit, you're in a team, a team headed by me. You don't bury yourself in private schemes, you report every detail – relevant or irrelevant – to your colleagues and to me!'

`You'll burst something,' I muttered.

`Stuff you, Falco!' The interruption had calmed him slightly. Even so he slammed his hand against the wall. It must have hurt. `Porcius, don't stand there buckling like a bale of felt. I want to hear exactly what the slave has told you – every detail – and you'd better be fast. After that I'm going to hang you from the Probus Bridge by your boot-thongs just low enough to drown you slowly when the tide comes in!'

He was still so angry he had to do something more vigorous. It was either hit Porcius or break the furniture. He seized a stool and flung it splintering against the door.

There was a long silence. The entire station house grew still. The normal ranting of victims pleading for urgent enquiries and the racket from last night's prisoners abruptly stopped. The prisoners thought some suspect was being hurled around a cell. They thought they might be next.

Porcius had his eyes closed. He knew if anyone got pounded it was going to be him.

Fusculus and Martinus, who were tough nuts, appeared in the doorway looking openly curious. I commented gently, `What with the seating that's broken by flying boulders thrown in by your neighbours and the bum-props you destroy yourselves, the Fourth's office equipment bill must be rocketing these days.' Petronius, red in the face and ashamed of the lapse, fought to calm down.

Porcius, to his credit, did not waver. He was white as ash. I could see his knuckles shining as he gripped his fists beside his tunic seams. He had just been bawled at and attacked by a man who was famous for never losing his temper. He knew Fusculus and Martinus were playing about behind him, pretending to give his achievement admiring looks.

He took a deep breath. `The slave boy saw Nonnius being dragged into a house.'

I watched my old friend forcibly restrain himself. `Tell me about it,' said Petronius, ominously quiet.

`He doesn't know whose dwelling it was. He was a house slave. Normally he hardly ever went out.'

`But we found him the next day in his master's place. If he had followed the abductors, how had he got home again?'

'He says he wandered about for hours then found his way back by accident. When we arrived to investigate he had only just reached home. The front door had been smashed to pieces, so he crept inside without anybody seeing him.'

`Right. So go back to the moment it first happened. He witnessed the abduction. What exactly did he see?'

`He was sleeping in a side-room and ran out when he heard the noise. He then saw Nonnius dragged from his bedroom by several men. At that point Nonnius was gagged with something like a scarf. He was rushed out of the house, and marched through the streets. He was taken into this other house. The lad hid outside for a long time, then saw a body dragged out backwards by the feet. That was when he panicked. He guessed it must be his master. He was so afraid that he ran away.'

`He didn't see the body dumped in the Forum Boarium?'

`He says not,' declared Porcius.

`Believe him?'

`Yes. My guess is that if he had known where the body ended up we'd have found him crying beside it instead of back at home.'

Petronius Longus folded his arms. He threw back his head, staring at the stained daub of the patrol house roof. Porcius managed to remain silent while his chief pondered. Martinus, Fusculus and I exchanged looks.

Petronius lowered his gaze and applied it to the stricken recruit.

`So you discovered all this in the course of your independent plan to "lure" the witness into telling more. Now we're all going to help you resolve things, Porcius. So tell us – what exactly was your plan?'

`I thought,' Porcius gulped miserably, `I could attempt to get the slave boy to identify the house where Nonnius was killed. I thought, so as not to confuse him by going through a lot of streets, I could put him in a closed carrying chair and take him to a selection of likely spots – show him the homes of specific suspects.'

`I see.'

As Petronius glared at their unhappy young colleague, Fusculus risked chirping, `So what's the plan now, chief?'

`Pretty obvious,' snapped Petro. `We put the black child in a carrying chair and show him suspects' homes! Our young colleague may be irresponsible, but his idea has a certain charm. Where's the boy, Porcius?'

`I'll fetch him -'

`No. Fusculus will fetch him. You'll tell Fusculus where he has to go.' This distrust of Porcius seemed hard. Petronius strode from the room before anyone could attempt to arbitrate.

Porcius appealed to me for sympathy: `I thought it was a good idea!'

I clapped him on the shoulder. `Don't worry about it. But on this case, protect your back, Porcius. Don't bother having big ideas.'

Fusculus started sauntering off; he turned back and beckoned slowly to Porcius, who scuttled after him. Martinus stayed grinning at me.

`Resignation time?' I asked, nodding after the anguished figure of the recruit.

`Who knows? Nice lad,' Martinus told me. `Sends all his pay home to his mother, doesn't play around with women, doesn't leer at the male scribes, doesn't have smelly feet or tell bad jokes, turns up for his shift on time. Seems absolutely nothing wrong with him.'

`Oh right!' I remarked, pretending to catch on at last. `I can see he was never going to fit in with this cohort!'

I was joking, but the angry scene had left a bad feeling. The pressure was on now. I would hate to think any part of the Fourth might be cracking up. Especially the part that Petronius Longus ran – and most of all Petronius himself.

The Nonnius slave was taken to see the houses of a couple of big gang leaders, which at least served to eliminate rivals to the Balbinus empire; he recognised none of them. He was shown Plato's Academy; still nothing. He was then asked to look at the lovely homes of Flaccida and Milvia. He saw Milvia's first, and wasn't sure. He made up his mind the minute we let him out of the chair at Flaccida's.

He was eight years old, still in shock, and incoherent with fright. There was no way we could have used his evidence in court, even if the law had allowed it. As it was, we could only quote him if we extracted his story under torture. Petro decided not to try. One glimpse of Sergius wielding the red-hot forceps and this fragile soul was likely to drop off his twig.

There were plenty of problems with the boy's story. A barrister would tear it to shreds. Nonnius had been taken away not by Flaccida herself, but by a group of men, none of whom we could yet identify. The slave boy could give no descriptions. Petronius was in no position to make arrests. But for our own purposes, although we could not prove Flaccida had been involved in anything, at least we knew: Nonnius Albius had been murdered at her house. Work on the case had begun to simplify at last.

`So what are you going to do?' I asked Petro as we walked back towards the patrol house. `Interview Flaccida?'

`You said you did that, Falco.'

`I wasn't able to make her sweat. It was before we had a lead on the Nonnius death. I couldn't frighten her with a witness.' `Neither can I.' Petronius was a realist.

`So you leave her bust up on its pedestal?'

He stopped on a street corner, stretching his neck. He rubbed one hand all around inside the neck of his tunic, as if the hem was causing a rash. What irritated Petro was something else. He hated to see criminals getting away with a crime.

`The bust can keep its station – but I'll chuck a few stones at it. Flaccida's the one to work on, though we need something indirect. Forget Nonnius. I'll nail Flaccida for him one day. And I'll nail her for Alexander too, though as yet don't ask me how.' I could see he had made up his mind. `We've made an advance on the murders. Let's go back to the Emporium and Saepta thefts, Falco. Let's see if we can trace your father's pretty Syrian glass.'

I had known him long enough to recognise which approach he was planning. `You reckon our brothel prank is now safely forgotten and you can drag me off on some new escapade.'

`Exactly. Comb your hair for once, Falco. You and I are going to spend the afternoon chatting like dangerous degenerates with lovely little Milvia!'