THE FORUM ROMANORUM. September. Not as hot as it could be in midsummer. The shade was cooler than the open sunlight, but compared with northern Europe still intensely warm. I had thought of bringing my toga, unsure of protocol, but could not face even carrying the heavy woollen folds over an arm. There was no way I would have worn the garment. Even without, patches of sweat made my tunic feel damp across my shoulders. Brilliant light pounded on the ancient cobbles of the Sacred Way, throbbed off the marble statues and cladding, heated the slow fountains and the shrinking pools in the shrines. On temples and plinths that lined the roadways, motionless pigeons lurked with their heads pulled in, trying not to faint. Old ladies, made of sterner stuff, battled across the space in front of the Rostra, cursing the trains of effete slaves, uniformed retinues of fat old men in litters who thought too much of themselves.
A mile of stately buildings lined the Forum valley. The Golden City’s marble monuments towered above me. Arms folded, I took in the spectacle. I was home. Intimidation and awe are how our rulers keep us respectful. In my case the grandiose effects failed. I grinned at the glorious vista defiantly.
This was the business end of the historic area. I was standing on the steps of the Temple of Castor, with the Temple of Divine Julius to the right—both places of nostalgia for me. To my far left, the hundred-foot-high Tabularium blocked off the foot of the Capitol. The Basilica Julia was next door, my current destination; opposite and across the worn stone piazza lay the Senate House—the Curia—and the Basilica built by Aemilius Paullus, with its grand two-storied galleries of shops and commercial premises. I could see the prison in a far corner; immediately below me, the office of weights and measures lurked under the podium of the Temple of Castor; near the Rostra was the building that housed the secretaries of the curule aediles, where the corrupt young Metellus had worked. The piazza was awash with priests; crammed with bankers and commodity brokers; flush with would-be pickpockets and the loitering sidekicks to whom they would swiftly pass whatever they stole. I looked in vain for the vigiles. (I was not intending to point out the pickpockets, only to demand loudly that the officers of the law should arrest the brokers for usury and the priests for telling lies. I felt satirical; setting the vigiles a task even they would shrink from would be an amusing way to rejoin public life.)
The messenger had left no directions. Silius Italicus was a grand type who expected everyone to know where he lived and what his daily habits were. He was not in court. Hardly surprising. He had had one case this year. If the convicted Metellus had paid up, Silius could have avoided work for another decade. I frustrated myself for a long time at the Basilica Julia, discovering that he was also the type whose home address was closely guarded, to stop lowly bastards from bothering the great bird in his own nest. Unlike me, he did not allow clients to call around at his apartment while he was dining with his friends, screwing his wife, or sleeping off either of those activities. Eventually I was informed that in daylight hours Silius could generally be found taking refreshments in one of the porticoes of the Basilica Paulli.
Cursing, I barged through the crowds, hopped down the steps, and marched across the roasting travertine. At the twelve-sided well called the Pool of Curtius, I deliberately refrained from chucking in a copper for good luck. Amid the multicolored marbles of the Porticus of Gaius and Lucius on the opposite basilica I expected a long search, but I soon spotted Silius, a lump who looked as if he made greedy use of the money he earned from his high-profile cases. As I approached, he was talking to another man whose identity I also knew: about the same age but neater of build and more diffident in manner (I knew from recent experience how that was deceptive!). When they noticed me, the second man stood up from the wine-shop table. He may have been leaving anyway, though my arrival seemed to cause it. I felt they should have kept their distance, yet they had been chatting like any old friends who worked in the same district, meeting regularly for a midmorning roll and spiced Campanian wine at this streetside eatery. The crony was Paccius Africanus, last seen as opposition counsel in the Metellus case.
Curious.
Silius Italicus made no reference to Africanus. I preferred not to show I had recognized my interrogator.
Silius himself had ignored me on the day I attended court, but I had seen him at a distance, pretending he was too lofty to take notice of mere witnesses. He had a heavy build, not grossly fat but fleshy all over as a result of rich living. It had left him dangerously red in the face too. His eyes were sunk in folds of skin as if he constantly lacked sleep, though his clean-shaven chin and neck looked youthful. I put him in his forties, but he had the constitution of a man a decade older. His expression was that of someone who had just dropped a massive stone plinth on his foot. As he talked to me, he looked as if it was still there, trapping him painfully.
“Didius Falco.” I kept it formal. He did not bother to return the courtesies.
“Ah yes, I sent for you.” His voice was assertive, loud, and arrogant. Taken with his morose demeanor, it seemed as if he hated life, work, flavored wine, and me.
“No one sends for me.” I was not his slave, nor did I have a commission. It was my free choice whether to accept, even if he offered one. “You sent word that you would appreciate a discussion, and I have agreed to come. A home or office address would have helped, if I may say so. You’re none too easy to find.”
He modified his confident manner. “Still, you managed to root me out!” he replied, full of fake friendliness. Even when he was making an effort, he remained dour.
“Finding people is my job.”
“Ah yes.”
I sensed that internally he sneered at the type of trade I carried out. I didn’t waste a truculent reaction on him. I wanted to get this over with. “Down at the rough end of informing we have skills you never require at the Basilica. So,” I pressed him, “which of my skills do you want to use?”
The big man answered, still with his offhand manner and loud voice: “You heard what happened to Metellus?”
“He died. I heard it was suicide.”
“Did you believe it?”
“No reason to doubt,” I said—at once starting to do so. “It makes sense as an inheritance device. He freed his heirs from the burden of the compensation he owed you.”
“Apparently! And what’s your view?”
I formed one quickly: “You want to challenge the cause of death?”
“Being paid would be more convenient than letting them off.” Silius leaned back, his hands folded. I noticed a cabochon beryllium seal ring on one hand, a cameo on a thumb, a thick gold band marked like a belt buckle on the other hand. His actual belt was four inches wide, heavy leather, wrapped around a very clean fine wool tunic in plain white with the senatorial trim. The tunic had been carefully laundered; the purple dye had not yet leached into the white. “I won the case, so I don’t personally lose—” he began.
“Except in time and expenses.” At the rough end, we were rarely paid time and expenses, and never at the glorious rates this man must command.
Silius snorted. “Oh, I can wave good-bye to the time charges. It’s the million and a quarter winnings I prefer not to lose!”
A million and a quarter? I managed to keep my expression blank. “I was unaware of the compensation limit.” He had paid us four hundred, which included a mule allowance for the ride Justinus took; we had bumped up the travel costs in accordance with the customs of our trade, but compared with his great windfall, our return wouldn’t buy us a piss in a public lavatory.
“Of course I share it with my junior,” Silius grumbled.
“Quite.” I hid my bad feelings. His junior was a sniveling scrivener called Honorius. It was Honorius who had dealt with me. He looked about eighteen and gave the impression he had never seen a woman naked. How much of the million and a quarter sesterces would Honorius take home to his mother? Too much. The dozy incompetent had been convinced that our witness lived in Lavinium, not Lanuvium; he tried to avoid paying us; and when he did write out a docket for their banker, he misspelled my name three times.
The banker, by contrast, had coughed up quickly, and was polite. Bankers stay alert. He could tell that by that stage anyone else who upset me would have been sodomized with a very sharp spear.
I sensed further stress coming at me over the horizon on a fast Spanish pony.
“So why did you want to see me, Silius?”
“Obvious, surely?” It was, but I refused to help him. “You work in this field.” He tried to make it sound like a compliment. “You already have a connection with the case.”
My connection was remote. I should have kept it that way. Perhaps my next question was naïve. “So what do you want me for?”
“I want you to prove that it was not suicide.”
“What am I going for? Accident or foul play?”
“Whatever you like,” said Silius. “I am not fussy, Falco. Just find me suitable evidence to take the remaining Metelli to court and wring them dry.”
I had been slumped on a stool at his table. He had not offered me refreshments (no doubt sensing I would refuse them lest we be trapped in a guest/host relationship). But on arrival, I had assumed equal terms and seated myself. Now I sat up. “I never manufacture proofs!”
“I never asked you to.”
I stared at him.
“Rubirius Metellus did not take his own life, Falco,” Silius told me impatiently. “He enjoyed being a bastard—he enjoyed it far too much to give it up. He had been riding high, at the top of his talent, dubious though it was. And he was a coward, anyway. Proof of something that will suit me is there to be had, and I shall pay you well to look for it.”
I stood up and gave him a nod of acknowledgment. “This type of investigation has a special rate. I’ll send along my scale of charges—”
He shrugged. He was not at all afraid of being stung. He had the confidence that only comes with the backing of huge collateral. “We use investigators all the time. Pass your fees to Honorius.”
“Very well.” There would be an on-cost for having the awful Honorius as our liaison point. “So let us start right here. What leads do you have? Why did you become suspicious?”
“I have a suspicious nature,” boasted Silius bluntly. He was not intending to tell me any more. “Finding the leads is your job.”
To look professional, I asked for the Metellus address and went to get on with it.
I knew then that I was being taken for a sucker. I decided I could outwit him. I forgot all the times that manipulating swine like Silius Italicus had outplayed me on the draughtboard of connivery.
I wondered why, if he used his own tame investigators normally, he selected me for this. I knew it was not because he thought I had a friendly, honest face.