Three Hands in The Fountain

XVII

'We call them that,' he gloated. Slow to grasp a point himself, he assumed I was just as dim. 'Festival fancies… he repeated lovingly.

'What exactly are we talking about, Lollius?'

He drew two lines on his own body with his index fingers, one across his filthy neck and one at the top of his fat legs. 'You know -'

'Torsos? Limbless?'

I was no longer feeling chatty, but my brother-in-law looked eager. To forestall more horrible details I asked: 'I suppose the heads are missing too?'

'Of course. Anything that can be chopped off.' Lollius flashed what remained of his stumpy teeth in an evil grin. 'Including the melons.' He drew circles on his chest then sliced down with the flat of his hand as if cutting off breasts. At the same time he made a revolting squelching sound through his gums.

'I gather they are women?' His mime had been graphic, but I had learned to make sure of everything.

'Well, they were once. Slaves or flighty-girls presumably.' 'What makes you think that?'

'Nobody ever comes looking for them. Who else could they be? All right, slaves might be valuable. So they're all good-time girls – ones who had a really bad time.' He shrugged off-handedly. I deplored his attitude, though he was probably right.

'I've never heard anything about these limbless lasses.' 'You must move in the wrong circles, Falco.'

I made no plans to alter my social life. 'Have you fished any out?'

'No, but I know someone who did.' Again.

'You saw it yourself?'

'Right.' Remembering, even he went quiet.

'How many are we talking about?'

'Well, not so many,' Lollius conceded. 'Just enough for us to think 'He's still at it!" when one floats to the top or gets tangled in an oar. They all look pretty much the same,' he explained, as if I was too dumb to work out how the boatmen made the connection.

'With the same mutilations? You talk as if pulling these beauties out of the river is a traditional perk of your job. How long has it been going on?'

'Oh, years!' He sounded quite definite.

'Years? How many years?'

'As long as I've been a waterman. Well, most of the time anyway.' I should have known better than to hope Lollius would be definite, even about something as sensational as this.

'So we're looking for a mature murderer?'

'Or an inherited family business,' Lollius cackled.

'When was the last one discovered?'

'The last I heard about' – Lollius paused, letting me absorb the implication that he was at the centre of life on the river so bound to know everything important – 'would have been about last April. Sometimes we find them in July, though, and sometimes in the autumn.'

'And what did you call them?'

'Festival fancies.' Still proud of the definition, he didn't mind repeating it once more. 'Like those special Cretan cakes, you know -'

'Yes, yes, I get it. They turn up at public holidays.' 'Neat, eh? Somebody must have spotted that it's always when there's a big set of Games, or a Triumph.'

'The calendar's so crammed with public holidays I'm surprised anyone noticed.'

'The joke is, it's always when we roll back to work with a really vile headache and can't face anything too raw.' That happened frequently too; the water boatmen all had a notorious capacity for drink.

'When they get fished out, what do you do with the bodies?'

Lollius glared at me. 'What do you think we do? We shove in a spike to let the gas out, tow them downstream out of trouble, then sink them if we can.'

'Oh, the humane touch.'

His scorn was justifiable. 'We're certainly not daft enough to hand them in to the authorities!'

'Fair enough.' Public spirit is at best a waste of time, at worst positively asking for ten months rotting in the Lautumiae jail without a trial.

'So what are you suggesting?' Lollius jibed. 'That we should dig a dirty great hole in a public garden and bury the lumps when nobody's looking – or when we hope they're not? Or we could all club together and arrange something through our guild's funeral club, maybe? Oh, yes. You try arranging a polite cremation for someone you don't know who has had all their extremities hacked off by a pervert. Anyway, Falco, if I had found one of the fancies, and even if I was prepared to do something about it, can you imagine how I'd explain it to Galla?'

I smiled drily. 'I expect you'd tell my wonderful trusting big sister some complicated lies, Lollius – just as you normally do!'