I took Sosia Camillina home in a sedan chair. There was room for two; she was a diminutive scrap and I could so rarely afford enough to eat that the bearers let us both ride. I stayed silent for a long time, so once she worked out I was no longer disgruntled with her, she chattered. I listened without listening. She was too young to sit in peace after a surprise.
I was beginning to be annoyed with the entire Camillus family. Nothing any of them ever said was true or complete, unless it turned into something I preferred not to hear. My open-ended contract had led me down a cul-de-sac.
“Why are you so quiet?” Sosia demanded suddenly. “Are you wishing you could steal the silver pig?” I said nothing. Naturally I was wondering how that might be arranged. “Do you ever have any money, Falco?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you do with it?”
I told her I paid the rent.
“I see!” she commented gravely. She was looking up at me with those great unsettling eyes. Her expression saddened into melting reproach for my aggressiveness. I wanted to suggest it was a bad idea to turn a look like that on men with whom she found herself alone, though I said nothing because I foresaw difficulties explaining why.
“Didius Falco, what do you really do with it?”
“I send it to my mother.” My tone of voice left her unsure whether I meant it, which was how I liked a woman to be left.
At that time I thought a man should never tell women what he does with his money. (Those days were the days, of course, before I was married and had this issue placed in true perspective by my wife.)
What I really did with my money in those days was that sometimes I paid the rent. (More often not.) Then, after deducting unavoidable expenses, I sent half to mama; I gave the rest to the young woman my brother never found the time to marry before he was killed in Judaea, and the child he never even discovered he had.
None of that was any business of a senator’s niece.
I dumped the girl on her relieved aunt.
Senators’ wives, in my scheme, fall into three types. The ones who sleep with senators, but not the senators who married them; the ones who sleep with gladiators; and a few who stay at home. Before Vespasian, the first two types were everywhere. There were even more afterwards, because when Vespasian became Emperor, while he and his elder son were out in the east, his young puppy Domitian lived in Rome. Domitian’s idea of becoming a Caesar was seducing senators’ wives.
The wife of Decimus Camillus fell into my third type: she stayed at home. I knew that already, otherwise I would have heard of her. She was what I expected: glossy, tense, perfect manners, jingling with gold jewellery—a well-treated woman with an even better-kept face. She glanced first at Sosia, then her shrewd black eyes flicked over me. She was just the sort of sensible matron a bachelor would be lucky to find when he was presented with an illegitimate child he felt unable to ignore. I could see why the nifty Publius parked his Sosia here.
Julia Justa, the senator’s wife, took back her lost niece without fuss. She would ask her questions later, once the household settled down. Just the sort of decent, deserving woman who has the unhappy luck to be married to a man who dabbles in illegal currency. A man so inept, he hires his own informer to expose him.
I made my way to the library and marched in on Decimus unannounced.
“Surprise! A senator who collects not grubby Greek antiques but ingots engraved artistically by the government. You’re in enough trouble, sir, why hire me as well?”
He had a shifty expression for a moment, then he seemed to straighten up. I suppose a politician gets used to people calling him a liar.
“Dangerous ground, Falco. When you calm down—”
I was perfectly calm. Furious, but lucid as glass.
“Senator, the silver pig must be stolen; I don’t rate you as a thief. For one thing,” I sneered, “if you had gone to the trouble of stealing British silver, you would take much more care of your loot. What’s your involvement?”
“Official,” he said, then had second thoughts. That was just as well, since I didn’t believe him. “Semi-official.”
I still didn’t believe him. I choked back a laugh. “And semi-corrupt?”
He brushed my bluntness aside: “Falco, this has to be in confidence.” The stale crust of this family’s confidence was the last thing I welcomed. “The ingot was found after a scuffle in the street and handed in to the magistrate’s office. I know the praetor for this Sector; he’s a man I dine with and his nephew gave a posting to my son. We discussed the ingot, naturally.”
“Ah, just among friends!”
Whatever he had done, to a man of his station I was being unacceptably rude. His patience surprised me. I watched him closely; he was just as intently observing me. I would suspect he wanted a favour, had he been a different class of man.
“My daughter Helena took a letter to Britain—we have relatives there. My brother-in-law is the British secretary of finance. I wrote to him—”
“All in the family; I see!” I scoffed again. I had forgotten how clannish these people can be: little pockets of reliable friends sewn into every province from Palestine to the Pillars of Hercules.
“Falco, please! Gaius—my brother-in-law—conducted a skeleton audit. He discovered there had been a steady wastage from the British mines at least since the Year of the Four Emperors. Theft on a grand scale, Falco! Once we heard that, we wanted our evidence secure; my friend the praetor asked my help. Using Sosia Camillina’s bank box was, I regret to say, my own bright idea.”
I told him our new hideout. He looked ill. Petro had taken the silver pig to Lenia’s laundry. We would be banking it in her vat of bleaching pee.
The senator made no comment on either our snaffling his exhibit or its pungent hiding place. What he offered me was much more dangerous.
“Are you busy at the moment?” I was never busy. As an informer I was not that good. “Look Falco, are you interested in helping us? We can’t trust the official machine. Someone must already have talked.”
“What about here?” I interrupted.
“I never mentioned the ingot here. I took Sosia to bank it without telling her why, then forbade her to talk.” He paused. “She’s a good child.” I gestured wry acknowledgement. “Falco, I admit we were careless before we grasped the implications, but if the praetor’s organization leaks we can’t take further risks. Your face seems to fit this job—semi-official and semi-corrupt—”
Sarcastic old beggar! I realized the man had a quietly wicked streak. He was shrewder than he liked to appear. He certainly knew what preoccupied me. He ran one hand over that upright bush of hair, then said awkwardly:
“I had a meeting today at the Palace. I can’t say more than that, but with the Empire to reconstruct after Nero and the civil war those ingots are sorely needed by the Treasury. In our talks your name came up. I understand you had a brother—” My face really set. “Excuse me!” he exclaimed abruptly in that concerned way the occasional aristocrat has, which I never entirely trust. It was an apology; one I ignored. I would not have these people discussing my brother. “Well, would you want the job? My principal will honour your usual rates; I gather you inflated them for me! If you find the missing silver, you can expect a substantial bonus.”
“I’d like to meet your principal!” I snapped. “My idea of a bonus may not be the same as his.”
Decimus Camillus snapped straight back: “My principal’s idea of a bonus is the best you will get!”
I knew it meant working for some snooty secretariat of jumped-up scribes who would slash my expenses given half a chance, but I took the job. I must have been mad. Still, he was Sosia’s uncle, and I felt sorry for his wife.
There was something odd about this case.
“By the way, sir, did you set a slick lynx called Atius Pertinax on my tail?”
He looked annoyed. “No!”
“Has he ties with your family?”
“No,” he chipped in impatiently, then checked. Nothing was simple here. “A slight connection,” he corrected himself, and by now his expression had deliberately cleared. “Business links with my brother.”
“Did you tell your brother that Sosia was with me?”
“I had no opportunity.”
“Someone did. He asked Pertinax to arrest me.”
The senator smiled. “I do apologize. My brother has been frantically worried about his daughter. He’ll be delighted you brought her home.”
Tidily cleared up. Petronius Longus had said my description was known, so an aedile might track me down. Pertinax and Publius assumed I was a villain. Big brother Decimus had omitted to mention to little brother Publius the fact that he hired me. I was not surprised. I come from a large family myself. There were lots of things Festus had never remembered to tell me.