A Body In The Bath House

LVI

we were all on our feet, to go hunting for Perella. Justinus was already at the door. As the stricken statue lay in their path, Larius and Aelianus cautiously picked it up between them and placed it back on its table. Aelianus jokingly lined up the bow, so it aimed at me.

I had been about to leave with the lads, but I turned back. "Who owns your cheeky table-top art?" I asked Virginia.

"The builder- at the moment." Clearly she did not appreciate the off-balance cherub. His peeping buttocks and his leer were wasted on this worldly girl. "He gave us it as part of the decoration scheme for the new rooms upstairs."

"Appropriate." I confess I sneered. Upstairs rooms in places that sell drinks have only one purpose, everybody knows. I gazed at the girl. "Will you be working there yourself?"

She was too young to be insulted so meanly, but perhaps it would make her think. The bar owner was bound to be planning a career move for her. Sophistication had hit Britain; disease and low morals had arrived.

"Certainly not!" Her indignation sounded real. The bar owner had not told her his intentions yet.

"Oh you will find it hard squeaking that you're innocent, once the stairs are built. Stairs in bars go up to private rooms and customers think rooms above bars have only one purpose." In Rome waitresses are officially designated prostitutes. It is among the infamous professions.

"That's libel!" snapped Virginia. The law tutors had been here too. Strange how quickly barbarian peoples learn to use the basilica courts as a threat. "I am a respectable woman-'

I glanced at Larius and laughed. "No. You've slept with my nephew, darling. He's married. Well, I'm married. We are all married except for the snooty one."

The Cupid fell over again.

"Shove a stick under it!" muttered Aelianus. Larius broke a splinter off a table edge and began to comply. Aelianus was fussing. "It's playing up again. You have to get it absolutely level or the bloody thing tips up '

"Not the best invention of Heron of Alexandria?" I jibed. The Cupid was too top-heavy.

"Pure Sextius," Aelianus growled, giving it a sharp punch in the stomach. It reacted with an angry clang.

Delaying for art criticism had served a purpose. A man emerged from one of the side rooms looking to refill an empty beaker. He saw Larius trying to wedge the statue upright and at once tried to sell it to him.

"Nice bit of bronze- feel that; absolutely genuine. Look at the lovely patina takes years to acquire, you know."

Larius stepped back, alarmed. He had seen enough fly salesman to know his purse was at risk. Aelianus scowled and jammed the Cupid's table into a corner of the room, where he somehow propped the bronze beast uncertainly upright against the wall. Justinus was still holding open the outer door impatiently, waiting for the rest of us. "Name of the gods, Marcus- we have to go!"

But I was looking at the newcomer.

It had to be the building contractor. He was somewhere between forty and fifty; he had lost most of his hair. His manner was urbane enough to come from outside Britain. Like all builders he wore a scruffy oversized tunic, creased in the body and loose in the sleeves, \with a wide neck. They live in old garments that won't be harmed by dust and heavy work- despite the fact they never lift a finger on a contract. The tunic was bunched untidily over a scratched belt. Only his boots were worth much and even they had been repaired.

He needed a shave and a haircut. He was one of those men who looks as if he never settled, but wears an outsize wedding ring. A wife probably put it on his finger, but whether she had stayed around afterwards was a different matter. He was well built, at least around the midriff; he could be prosperous. He had a direct, friendly air. |

He had noticed me staring. "Do I know you, legate?"

"We've never met." I knew a great deal about him, though. I walked across, holding out my hand. He took it, producing a personable smile. He had a firm handshake. Not as firm as mine.

"Falcof urged Justinus from the doorway. At my name, I felt the builder's grip slacken. He was trying to back off. I held on grimly.

"That's me," I acknowledged with a smile. "Falco. And you must be Lobullus?"

Lobullus returned a sickly grin. I stopped smiling.

"You're the uncle of Alexas, the orderly on the palace site, aren't you? He has told me all about you." I don't mind lying. People tell me enough untruths; I deserve to even up the score. And Alexas was one who had lied to me. "So you're working here at the Rainbow Trout- and starting the Great King's bath-house update?" Lobullus nodded, still distracted by my fierce grasp of his hand. "You get around," I commented. "The last I heard, you were finishing a long contract on the Janiculan Hill in Rome… Are you using a false name, or is Gloccus just a cognomen you leave at home when you take off as a fugitive?"

Aelianus stepped away from the side table, so he could move in to support me. We pushed the builder onto a stool.

"Didius Falco," I spelled out. "Son of Didius Favonius. You also know my dear Papa as Geminus. He may be a rogue- but even he thinks that you stink, Gloccus. Helena Justina, who employed you for owrbath house, is my wife."

"A very nice woman," Gloccus assured me. That was decent. I knew that on several occasions Helena had let rip at him in her best style. With cause.

"She will be delighted that you remember her. Pity she's not here; I know she has a word still left to say to you. Camillus Aelianus that's him over there- had the pleasure of meeting your own wife in Rome. She is much looking forward to your return home, he tells me. Plenty to discuss."

Gloccus took it cheerily.

"So where is your partner this evening, Gloccus? What chance of meeting the infamous Cotta?"

"Not seen him for months, Falco."

"Alexas is your nephew- but I thought Cotta was the one with medical relatives?"

"He is. We're all related. Cotta is family."

"So where is he?"

"We parted company in Gaul-'

"I shall want to know," I growled, 'in which town, which district of the town and which bath house you were both destroying when you did him in!"

"Oh don't say that! You've got it all wrong, Falco. Cotta is not dead."

"I do hope not. I shall be very annoyed if you deprive me of the pleasure of killing him. So where did he go?"

"I've no idea."

"Back to Rome?"

"Could be."

"He was coming to Britain with you."

"He may have been."

"Why did you part? Surely not a falling out?"

"Oh no, not us."

"Of course not he's family! Don't you want to know," I asked, 'why I thought you might have finished him off?"

Gloccus knew that.

I told him anyway. "We found Stephanus."

"Who would that be?"

He was sitting on a stool with his feet tucked under it. I lashed out. I hooked my right foot under, kicking out his legs. Aelianus grabbed him by the shoulders lest he fall. I pointed to the builder's feet. Gloccus wore worn but well-kept boots, with hob-nailed soles. They had three broad thongs across the arch of the foot, crossed straps around the heel and a couple more wide straps going up the ankle. These thongs were black; the one that had been repaired was narrower, with tight new brown stitching.

"Stephanus," I announced clearly, 'was the last owner of these boots. He was well dead when I saw him. Word is, he went to work angry because he thought you had diddled his wages."

"Yes, he was a bit put out that day… But I never killed him," Gloccus insisted. "That was Cotta."

"And what will Cotta say? "jeered Aelianus. He leaned on the man's shoulder heavily. '"Gloccus did it!" I suppose?"

Gloccus returned the fearless gaze of a man who has had to face sticky questions many, many times before. We would not find it easy to break him. Too many furious householders had tackled him, all determined not to be put off again. Too many customers had screamed their frustration when his labourers failed to turn up yet again, or mould grew in the wall flues, or the plunge bath was lined finally after months of delay- but in the wrong colour.

Maybe he had even had to face interrogation by the vi giles

Nothing was new to him. He answered everything in that infuriating way denying nothing, promising all, yet never coming good. All my fury about the bath house returned. I hated him. I hated him for the weeks of bad feeling we had endured, for the waste of money, for Helena's disappointment and stress. That was even before I remembered the scene when Pa and I set to with picks and unearthed that hideous corpse.

I said I was arresting him. Gloccus would be tried. He would go to the arena beasts. There was an amphitheatre in Londinium; Hades, there was even an arena here. Lions and tigers were in short supply but Britain had wolves, bulls and Caledonian bears… First I would make him tell me where to find Cotta. If that required torture, I would personally set light to the tapers and tighten the screws.

Maybe I laid it on too thick. He jumped up suddenly. Justinus and Larius were blocking his escape route to the street. He turned to make a run for it through the back exit. He barged Aelianus. Aelianus knocked against the corner table. The Cupid statue clanged against the wall. There was a loud retort. The bow twanged. Gloccus was shot by the great iron nail, straight through the throat.