Three Hands in The Fountain

XXV

The engineer, Statius, almost certainly lorded it over a neat spacious office full of charts he never consulted, comfortable folding chairs for visitors, and wine-warming apparatus for reviving his circulation if ever he was forced to climb up an aqueduct on a slightly chilly day. I could guess how often that happened.

Bolanus had a hutch. It was close to the Temple of Claudius, hard to find because it was crammed in a corner, against the Aqua Claudia's terminal reservoir. There was a reason for that: Bolanus had to be near his work. Bolanus, of course, was the person who did the work. I was pleased I had spotted it. I would be saving us a lot of pain.

I knew he would talk. He had so much to do he couldn't afford to fluff about. We were going to be imposing extra tasks whatever he did, so it was best to respond practically.

His tiny lean-to site but was a haven from the summer heat. A rope on a couple of bollards protected the occupant from unofficial sightseers. A mere gesture: anyone could step over it. Outside, ladders, lamps and wind-breaks were piled up, looking well used. The inside was also crammed with equipment: those special levels called chorobates, sighting rods, dioptra, gromas, a hodometer, a portable sundial, plumb bobs, pre-stretched and waxed measuring cords, set squares, dividers, compasses. A half-eaten bread roll stuffed with sliced meat perched on an unfurled skin that I could see was one of the charts which the lofty Statius had suggested were too confidential for us. Bolanus kept his openly on his table, ready to be consulted.

When I turned up he must have just arrived back himself. Workmen who had been waiting for his return were queuing outside patiently to present him with chits and variation orders. He asked me to wait while he dealt swiftly with those he could, promising others a site visit shortly. They went away looking as if they knew he would follow up. The queue was cleared well before I grew bored.

He was a short, wide, solid, shaven-headed man with stubby fingers and no neck. He wore a dark cerise tunic, the shade that always grows streaky in the wash, under a twisted leather belt that he should have thrown out five years ago. When he sat down he hoiked himself on to the stool awkwardly, as if his back troubled him. One of his brown eyes looked misty, but both were intelligent.

'I'm Falco.'

'Yes.' He remembered me. I like to think I make an impression, but plenty of people can talk to you for an hour, then if they see you in a different context they can't recollect you.

'I don't want to be a nuisance, Bolanus.'

'We all have our jobs to do.'

'Mind if I try to take this morning's conversation further?' Bolanus shrugged. 'Pull up a seat.'

I squatted on a spare stool while he took advantage of the occasion to finish his half-eaten salami roll. First he dug out a basket from under the table, flipped open a pristine cloth, and offered me a bite from a substantial picnic. That worried me. People who are polite to informers are usually hiding something. However, the tastiness of his snack convinced me to stop being cynical.

'Look, you know what the problem is… I paused to signal that the welcome bite was top quality. 'We have to find a maniac. One thing that's puzzling us is how he gets his relics into the water in the first place? Aren't the conduits mostly underground?'

'They do have access shafts for maintenance.'

'Like the sewers.' I knew all about those. I had disposed of a body down there myself. Helena's Uncle Publius.

'The sewers at least have an exit to the river, Falco. Anything in the aqueducts is bound to end up startling the public in a bath-house or a fountain. Does he want the things to be discovered?'

'Maybe he doesn't put the remains there deliberately. Maybe they arrive in the aqueducts by accident?'

'Seems more likely.' Bolanus bit off a huge mouthful with a hearty appetite. I waited while he chewed it. I felt he was a man I did not need to push. 'I've been thinking about this, Falco.'

I knew he would have done. He was practical, a problem-solver. Mysteries of all kinds would prey on his mind. His solution, if he proposed one, was liable to work. He was the kind of fellow I could use as a brother-in-law, instead of the deadbeats my sisters had actually wed. A man you could build a sun terrace with. A man who would drop in and mend your broken shutter if you were away on holiday.

'The aqueducts that run up on arcades have vaulted roofs, or occasionally slabs. It's to stop evaporation mainly. So you can't just throw up rubbish and hope it lands inside, Falco. There are access shafts, at two-hundred-and-forty-foot intervals. Anyone can find them, certainly; they are marked by the cippi…'

'The "gravestones"?'

'Right. Augustus had the bright idea of numbering all the shafts. We don't use his system, actually; it's easier to go by the nearest milestone on the road. That's how a work gang will be approaching the site, after all.'

'I don't expect Caesar Augustus worked in many gangs.'

Bolanus grimaced. 'Things might run a bit more smoothly if a few weeks in a labour force was part of the Senate career ladder.'

'Agreed. Give me a man who's had to get his hands dirty.'

'Anyway, finding the access points isn't difficult – but they're all stoppered with mighty plugs of stone that only a crane can lift. We don't need access as often as the sewer gaugs – and we have a running battle trying to stop the public fixing their own pipes and stealing water. So getting in hardly seems a possibility for this maniac of yours.'

Actually this was good news. 'All right. What's the scenario? We're not talking about unpremeditated domestic murder. This is some bastard who regularly, over a long period of time, has taken women with the intention of abusing them both alive and dead. Then he has to get rid of the evidence, in some way that doesn't point straight back to him. So when he kills a woman he chops her up to make the corpse easier to dispose of '

'Or because he likes doing it.' Bolanus was a cheery soul.

'Both, probably. Men who repeatedly kill can detach their minds. He must be obsessive – and he's calculating. So why has he chosen to use the aqueduct channels, and if they are so inaccessible, how?'

Bolanus took a deep breath. 'Maybe they aren't inaccessible. Maybe he works in them. Maybe he is one of us.'

I had wondered about that, of course.

I gave Bolanus a sober stare. 'That's a possibility.' He seemed relieved to have it out in the open. Although he was being frank with me, it must feel like disloyalty to his colleagues. 'I don't much like it, Bolanus. As the public slaves all work in gangs, unless a whole gang knows about the murders and has been covering up for one of their members for years, just think of the problems. Could this killer really have disposed of numerous corpses without any of his mates ever noticing? And if he had been noticed, then by now something would have been said.'

Bolanus frowned. 'It's horrible to imagine someone going into a conduit with a human hand or foot in his pocket -' 'Foot?'

'One turned up here once.' I wondered how many other grim discoveries we were going to hear about. 'Then he would have to wait until he was certain none of his workmates was looking when he threw it in.'

'Stupidity. Would it be worth the risk?'

'Taking the risk might be part of the thrill,' Bolanus suggested.

I wondered whether he was revealing too much understanding of the killer's mind. After all, he worked on the aqueducts himself and as an engineer's assistant he could make inspections alone if he wanted to. He would also be well placed to hear about any enquiry, and attach himself to it so he could check what was going on.

Unlikely. Yes, he was a loner, because of his specialist knowledge. But this was a man who made things work, not one who destroyed and hacked up women out of some dark inhuman motive. Bolanus was one of the skilled world-movers who built the Empire and kept it in trim. Still, the killer too, with years of undetected crime behind him, must have his own efficiency. If we ever identified him, I knew clues to his madness would be there – and yet he would be somebody who had lived in society without arousing qualms in those he met. The real terror in such men is how closely they resemble the rest of us.

'You may be right,' I said, deciding to test Bolanus anyway. I didn't want to end up as the dumb informer who let himself be led all round the problem by some helpful volunteer, only to find after weeks of frustration that the volunteer was the real quarry. It's been done often enough. Too often. 'His main thrill will be in assuming power over his victims. When we find him, he'll be somebody who hates women.'

'The odd man out in the crowd!' Bolanus jeered.

'He finds them awkward to approach; when he tries it theyprobably laugh at him. The more he resents them for their rejection, the more they sense trouble and shrink from him.' 'Sounds like every boy's nightmare.'

'But it's out of all proportion, Bolanus. And unlike most of us, he never learns to take a chance. He's more than just an awkward character. He has an inbuilt flaw so he doesn't want to win anybody over, and they know it. This man is locked in his refusal to communicate properly, whereas the rest of us make a lot of mistakes along the way but if we're lucky we do manage a few winning throws too.'

Suddenly Bolanus grinned, looking nostalgic. 'And when we do, it's magic!'

That seemed all right.

Of course addictive killers are usually also cunning liars who can act well. This man could be one of those, a manipulating fraud who knew just what I wanted to hear. So pervertedly clever he could counterfeit normality and outwit me at every move.

'It could be me or you,' suggested Bolanus, as if he knew what I was thinking. He was still munching his snack. 'He's not going to stand out like some mad-eyed monster, or he would have been apprehended years ago.'

I nodded. 'Oh yes, he probably looks very ordinary.' Again, he gave me a narrow look, as if he read my mind.

We went back to discussing how the killer was disposing of the bodies.

'You know the water boatmen find torsos in the river as well?'

'Makes sense, Falco. He might have found a way to float the hands down the aqueducts, but the torsos are too large. They would stick. The killer is presumably trying to disperse the pieces over a wide area to avoid being traced, so he certainly doesn't want a regular blockage half a mile from where he lives.'

'Right.'

Bolanus offered me his picnic again, but I had gone off the idea. 'How long have you known about the finds in the aqueducts, Bolanus?'

'It goes back beyond my time.'

'How long's your career?'

'Fifteen years. I learned my stuff originally abroad in the legions, got invalided out, then came home just at the right time to work on the dams Nero built at his big villa at Sublaqueum. That's on the River Anio, you know – which is also the source of the four Sabine aqueducts.'

'Is this relevant?'

'I think it might be. As far as I know, the body parts only turn up in certain places in our system. I'm starting to have a little theory about this.' I perked up. A theory from Bolanus might be one to respect. 'I became something of a specialist in all the aqueducts that come from the Anio.'

'These are the long ones built by Caligula and Claudius?'

'And the old monster, the Anio Vetus.'

'I've seen them marching across the Campagna, of course.'

'A grand sight. That's when you know why Rome rules the world. They pick up good cold water from the river and the springs in the Sabine Hills, take a detour around the gracious homes at Tibur, and travel for miles to get here. It's a staggering engineering feat. But let me tell this my own way -'

'Sorry.' His theories might be sound, but I felt a sudden terror of his rhetoric. I had talked to engineers before. For hours and hours. Do go on, friend.'

'Let's jump back a bit. You had a spat this morning with Statius about the Aqua Alsietina.'

'He wanted us to ignore it. Have there been any grisly finds there?'

'No. In my opinion it can safely be ignored. It comes from Etruria – west of us – and I don't reckon the killer goes anywhere near it. Nor the Aqua Virgo either.'

'Isn't that the one Agrippa built specially for his baths near the Saepta Julia?' I knew the Saepta well. Apart from being a traditional haunt of informers, which I had to avoid to ensure I never encountered my low-class colleagues, the Saepta was full of antique dealers and jewellers – including my father, who had an office there. I liked to avoid Pa too.

'Yes. The Virgo is drawn from a marsh near the Via Collatina, and it's almost entirely underground. I'd also rule out the Aqua Julia and the Tepula.'

'Why them?' I asked.

'I've never heard of anything that relates to these killings being discovered in either. The Julia has its source in a reservoir only seven miles outside Rome on the Via Latina. The Tepula isn't far from it.'

'Near the Alban Lake?'

'Yes. The Julia and Tepula come into Rome carried on the same arcades as the old Aqua Marcia – and that's where my theory might creak a bit, because the Marcia has had finds in it.'

'Where does the Marcia come from?'

Bolanus opened his hand in a triumphant gesture. 'It's one of the big four from the Sabine Hills!'

I tried to look as if I understood the significance. 'Are all these various conduits linked at all? Can water be transferred between them?'

'They are indeed!' Bolanus seemed to think he was teaching me logic. 'There are places throughout the network where water from one aqueduct can be diverted into another if we need extra supplies, or if we want to close part of the system to work on it. The only constraint is that you have to divert downwards from a high aqueduct to a. lower one. You can't lift water up. Anyway, once they get here the Claudia, Julia and Tepula share one reservoir. That might be of interest. What could also be relevant is that the Marcia has a major link with the Claudia. The Claudia arrives in Rome with the Anio Novus; they are both carried on arcades which join on one set of arches near the city.'

'In one channel?'

'No, two. The Claudia was built first. It's coupled underneath.' He paused. 'Look, I don't want to confuse you with technicalities.'

'Now you're sounding like bloody Statius.' He was right though; I had had enough of this.

'All I mean to say is that I wouldn't be surprised if the human hands that turn up in Rome had been put into the water well outside the city.'

'You're saying they enter the system way back – before the channels are covered or go underground?'

'More than that,' said Bolanus. 'I bet they are slung in right at source.'

'At source? Up in the hills, you mean? Surely nothing as large as a hand could float down all the way to Rome?'

'We've done tests with gourds. The current would bring it. We extract mounds of pebbles that have escaped the settling tanks. They arrive perfectly round, from the friction.'

'Wouldn't that friction destroy a hand?'

'It might just bob along safely. Otherwise, there may still be pieces of body out there in the settling tanks – or more remains than we know about might have arrived in Rome so pulverised nobody realised what they were.'

'So if something floated, and if it survived, how long might the journey here take?'

'You'd be surprised. Even the Aqua Marcia, which is sixty miles long after it's meandered over the countryside to maintain a gradient, only takes a day to bring water to Rome. In the shorter ones it can be as little as a couple of hours before it arrives. Of course, friction would slow a floating object down slightly. Not much, I'd say.'

'So you're trying to convince me this maniac may be operating right out in the country at somewhere like Tibur?'

'I'll be specific. I bet he dumps the severed pieces into the River Anio.'

'I can't believe it.'

'Well, I'm just making the suggestion.'

I was talking to a man who was used to putting forward good ideas that incompetent superiors simply ignored. He had gone past caring. I could take it or leave it. The proposal sounded too far-fetched yet somehow ludicrously feasible.

I did not know what to think.