holidays. Bad luck days had their black marks. All the fixed festivals, and all the Games, were named. Decimus had sweetly added to the almanac his wife's and children's birthdays, his own, and those of his favourite sister and a couple of well-off ones (who might remember him in their wills if he kept in with them) The latest addition in the blackest ink, which Helena pointed out to me, was the day when Julia Junilla had been born.
Helena Justina read all the way through in silence. Then she looked up and surveyed me with a stern gaze. `You know why I'm doing this?'
I looked meek, but made sure I demonstrated I could think too. `You're wondering about what Lollius said.'
Naturally Claudia and Justinus wanted to know who Lollius was and what he had pronounced upon. I told them, keeping it as tasteful as possible. Then while Claudia shuddered and Justinus looked grave Helena gave her opinion. `There must be well over a hundred public holidays annually, and a good fifty formal festivals. But the festivals are spread throughout the year whereas your brother-in-law said there were special times for finding these women's remains. I think the connection is the Games. Lollius said they find bodies in April – well, there are the Megalensis Games for Cybele, the Games of Ceres, and then the Floral Games, all in that month. The next big concentration is in July -'
`Which he also mentioned.'
`Quite. That's when we have the Apolline Games starting the day before the Nones, and later the Games for the Victories of Caesar which last for a whole ten days.'
`It all fits. Lollius maintains there is another bad time in the autumn.'
`Well, September has the great Roman Games lasting fifteen, days, and then at the beginning of next month are the Games in memory of Augustus followed at the end of October by the Games for the Victories of Sulla
`And the Plebeian Games in November,' I reminded her. I had spotted them earlier when squinting over her shoulder.
'Trust a republican!'
`Trust a plebeian,' I said.
`But what does this mean?' demanded Claudia excitedly. She thought we had solved the whole case.'
Justinus threw back his neatly shorn head and regarded the smoke-stained moulded plaster of the ceiling.- 'It means that Marcus Didius has found himself an excellent excuse to spend much of the next two months enjoying himself in the sporting arenas of our great city all the while calling it work.' But I shook my head sadly. `I only work when somebody pays me, Quintus.'
Helena shared my mood. `Besides, there would be no point in Marcus hanging around the Circus when he still has no idea who or what he should be looking for.
That sounded like most of the surveillance work I ever did.
NINETEEN
Petronius Longus was in an organising mood. His session with the Tiber boatmen had been as useless as I had prophesied, and he declared that we should abandon the pointless effort of wondering who was polluting the water supply. Petronius was going to sort out our business. (He was going to sort out me.) He would impose order. He would attract new work; he would plan our caseload; he would show me just how to generate wealth through blistering efficiency.
He spent a lot of time composing charts, while I plodded around the city delivering, court summonses. I brought in the meagre denarii, then Petro wrote them up in elaborate accounts systems. I was pleased to see him keeping out, of trouble.
Petronius seemed to be happy, though I was beginning to suspect he was covering something up even before I happened to pass by the vigiles' patrol: house and was hailed by Fusculus. 'Here, Falco; can't you keep that chief of ours occupied? He keeps moping around here getting in the way.'
`I thought he was either in our office causing havoc among my clients or out flirting.'
`Oh, he does that too – he pops in to see his honeycake when he finally leaves us in peace.'
`You're depressing me, Fusculus. No hope that he's dropped Milvia?'
`Well, if he had, done,' Fusculus told me cheerfully, `your clients would be safe; we'd have him back here permanently.'
`Don't flatter yourselves. Petronius loves the freelance life.'
`Oh, sure!' Fusculus laughed at me. `That's why he's' constantly nagging; Rubella for a reprieve.' `He doesn't get it, though. So how does Rubella, know that.
An hour later I was rapping on the huge bronze antelope knocker that summoned the door porter at the lavish home of Milvia and Florius.
Milvia is still live bait?'
`How does Rubella know anything?' Fusculus had a theory, of course. He always did. `Our trusty tribune stays in his lair and information flows through the atmosphere straight to him. He's supernatural.'
`No, he's human,' I said despondently. I knew how Rubella worked, and it was strictly professional. He wanted to make his name as a vigiles officer then move up to the refined ranks of the Urban Cohorts, maybe even go on to serve in the Praetorian Guard. His priorities never changed; he was after the big, criminals, whose capture would cause a flutter and win him promotion. `I bet he's keeping a full-time watcher on Milvia, and her exciting husband in case they revive the old gangs. Every time Petronius goes to the house he'll be logged.' -
Fusculus agreed in his usual comfortable way: `You're right. It's no secret, though the surveillance is concentrating on the old hag. Rubella reckons if the gangs do get reconvened, it will be by Flaccida.'
Milvia's mother. Still, Petro was no better off, because Cornella Flaccida lived with her daughter and son-in- law. She had been forced to move in with them when Petronius convicted her gangster husband, whose property had then been confiscated. One more reason to avoid tangling with the dainty piece, if Petro had had any sense. Milvia's father had been a nasty piece of work, but her mother was even more dangerous.
`So when,' demanded Fusculus in his cheery way, `can we expect you to have, a quiet word with Balbina Milvia, pretty floret of the underworld, and persuade her to leave our cherished chief alone?'
I groaned: `Why; do I always have to do the dirty work?' `Why did you become an informer, Falco?'
`Petronius is my oldest friend. I couldn't possibly go behind his back.'
`Of course not.' Fusculus grinned.
If I ever acquire slaves of my own, they will definitely not include a door porter. Who wants a lazy, bristle- chinned, rat-arsed piece of insolence littering up the hall and insulting polite visitors – assuming he can bring himself to let them in at all? In the quest for suspects an informer spends more time than most people testing out that despicable race, and I had learned to expect to lose my temper before I was admitted to any house of status.
Milvia's establishment was worse than most in fact. She kept not merely the usual snide youth who only wanted to get back to the game of Soldiers he was playing against the underchef, but a midget ex-gangster called Little Icarus whom I had last seen being pulverised, by the vigiles in a battle royal in a notorious brothel, during which his close crony, the Miller had had both feet cut off at the ankles by a rampaging magistrate's lictor who, didn't care' what he did with his ceremonial axe. Little Icarus and the Miller were murderous thugs. If Milvia and Florius were pretending to be nice middle-class people they ought to employ different staff. Apparently they were no longer even pretending:
Little Icarus was rude to me before he remembered who I was. Afterwards he looked outraged, and as if he was planning to butt me in the privates (as far up as he could reach). When he was installed as Milvia's Janus someone had stripped him of his weapons; maybe that was her mother's notion of house-training. The fact that a gangster's enforcer was the doorstop here said everything about what kind of house this was. The place looked pretty. There were standard roses in stone tubs flanking the door and good copies of Greek statues dotted around the interior atrium. But every time I came here the skin on the back of my neck crawled. I wished I had told
