Petro will want to join in. Maybe I won't give him the chance. I could keep all the glory me and whoever shares my trouble…'
Martinus did not fail me. He was overjoyed at being asked to help. Well I knew why: he thought it was his great chance to do Petro down.
I told him what I had seen at Plato's, and what I reckoned we might see if we watched the place. `Does Rubella know about this, Falco?'
`I'm not at liberty -'
`Don't get pious! I know what that means.'
I considered for a moment. `He doesn't know, but we shall have to tell him. You can't go missing from the official team.'
`I'll see Rubella,' Martinus suggested. `If he goes along with this, he can fix it. He can say he's sending me to some other cohort. The chief won't be the least surprised. It's more or less traditional that as soon as you're stretched beyond endurance on a really major case, your best man gets filched to look for brooch thieves in some disgusting bath-house in another watch's patch.'
I had no doubt that the axiomatic secondment would be easy to arrange. Whether Martinus was the Fourth Cohort's `best man' could brook more argument. That didn't matter. The pompous self-satisfied article was good enough for what I wanted. Martinus would love to spend all day just sitting in a food stall waiting for nothing much to happen. As long as I could be in a different food stall at the opposite end of the alley, I didn't care how tedious he was.
When I finally made it back there for the second time that night, Fountain Court lay in complete darkness. No one there wasted lamp oil providing light for muggers and porch-crawlers to go about their dirty work. I steeled myself and trod quietly, keeping to the centre of the lane. As I walked past the bakery I thought I heard a shutter creak above my head. I looked up, but could see nothing. The apartment above the bakery, the one with half its floor missing, could hardly have been let and all the storeys above it were supposed to be even more derelict. Once beside the laundry I looked back again to make certain, but nothing moved.
Climbing the endless steps to my apartment I should have felt more confident. I was now on my own territory. That situation can be deadly dangerous. You relax. You assume the problems of night-time in Rome are over. You know too much to be really observant. Your ears stop listening for unnatural sounds. You can easily be rushed by some unexpected watcher who is lurking in the pitch dark halfway up the stairs.
But nobody attacked me. If anyone lay in hiding, I never noticed. I reached my own door, opened it stealthily, and soon stood indoors.
There were no lights here either, but I could feel the familiar presence of my furniture and possessions. I could hear the breathing of Helena, of the unwanted mongrel who had adopted us, and the skip baby. Nothing else. Nothing more sinister. Everyone within these two rooms was safe. They had lived through the day even without me to guard them, and now I was, home.
I said quietly, 'It's me.'
The dog thumped its tail, but stayed under the table. The babe said nothing, but he could not have heard. Helena half roused herself as I climbed into bed, then came into my arms, warm and drowsy. We would not talk tonight. I stroked her hair to put her back to sleep again, and within a short period I drifted into sleep myself.
Out in the streets the foot patrols would be marching, on the search for fires and loiterers. Somewhere Petronius Longus also kept watch, hearing in the sharp October air endless rustles and creaks of evil at work, but never the certain footfall of the man he sought. In the restless pulse of the city lone thieves crept over windowsills and balconies, conspirators plotted, off-duty gangs drank and swore, lechers grabbed and fumbled, hijackers held up delivery carts, organised robbers ransacked mansions while bleeding porters lay bound in corridors and frightened householders hid under beds.
Somewhere, in all probability, Balbinus Pius was dreaming peacefully.
LVII
ONE DAY MIGHT be enough. It could certainly be enough to make me look a fool. If we watched the brothel all day and there was no discernible criminal activity, my name would be bog weed. Whether I wanted to skulk around longer looking for a chance to apprehend Gaius and Phlosis for annoying me at Ostia would be up to me. Martinus would curse me and storm off to tell the entire cohort what incompetent, aggravating blocks of wood informers were, and how he had been taken in.
On the other hand, if there was enough toing and froing of known members of the Balbinus gangs to suggest a link with his empire, I would be justified. Not a hero, but entitled to swank at the bathhouse. It would be a pleasant change.
Martinus and I arrived at dawn. We began by sitting in a doorway like runaway slaves. Later a sad thermopolium was opened by a creaky woman who spent ages dabbling around the floor with a flat-headed broom and a bucket of grey water. We watched her desultory efforts at wiping down counters, then she fidgeted about with her three shelves of cups and flagons, emptied some blackened pots into her counter holes, and stood a few amphorae crookedly against a wall.
We ambled up. We told her we were foxing – watching the streets for `opportunities', illegal ones being understood. She seemed neither surprised nor shocked. by this notion. Martinus engaged in brief negotiations, coins chinked into her apron pocket, and we were encouraged to park ourselves indoors on tall stools. There we could look as if we were picking at olives while we watched Plato's. We bought a dish of something in cold dark gravy. I left most of mine.
Things were very quiet to begin with. Despite my good intentions I ended up staying in the same bar as my. assistant
(stalwartly ignoring the fact that he seemed to assume I was helping him). The only other food stall was the one where Petro and I had sat when we first eyed up the brothel before visiting Lalage, a place where we had shown ourselves to be law-and-order men. Today I wanted to pass for ordinary street grime.
I could just about trust Martinus to blend in. He must have been forty, so older than Petronius, the chief he was longing to elbow aside. As far as I knew he had remained unmarried, and though he talked about women his relationships were quiet incidents in a fairly ordered life. He had straight brown hair, cut neatly across the forehead, heavily shaded jowls and a dark mole on one cheek. He seemed too boring to arouse comment.
As the morning passed we started to see typical activity – locals visiting Plato's routinely. It seemed a long time since I had groaned over this with Petro, though when I bothered to work out the time scale (needing mental entertainment) I realised it was only five days ago. In those five days Rome had descended from a city where you were wise to keep your eyes open into one of complete lawlessness.
`Here we go!' Martinus had spotted suspects. From the brothel emerged three figures; a thin man in sky-blue tunic with an intelligent face and a scroll dangling from his waist, and two companions, one plump, one pockmarked, both inconspicuous. We had not seen them going in that morning; they must have been at Plato's overnight.
`Know them?' I asked quietly.
`The one in blue is a Cicero.' I lifted an eyebrow. `A talker, Falco. He engages the attention of men drinking in wine bars, then keeps them laughing at his stories and jokes while the other two rob them.'
Martinus drew out a tablet, and stylus, then began making notes in firm square Latin lettering. As the day progressed, his writing was to shrink as the tablet rapidly filled up. To make us more unobtrusive, he later produced a pocket set of draughts, glass counters in black and red that he kept in a small leather bag. We set out a board, drawn in gravy on the marble. To look authentic we had to play for real, worse luck. I hate draughts. Martinus was an intelligent player who enjoyed his game. In fact he was so keen it would have been insulting to fake it, so I had to join in properly and attempt to match his standard.
`You should practise, Falco. This is a game of skill. It has parallels with investigation.' Martinus was one of those pretentious board-game philosophers. `You need mental agility, strength of will, powers of bluff, concentration
