The usual thoughts passed through my head - that she was being unreasonable (though I knew she had tolerated what was going on longer than I could have expected) and that this was some overreaction in the grief she was still feeling after the baby's death; I had the sense not to say that.

I seated myself opposite, wearily. I held my head in my hands. 'Tell me the worst.'

'I have sent the girls away and now that I have spoken to you, I will be joining them.'

'Where? How long for?'

'What do you care?'

Flaring up like that against me was so rare, it shocked me. A terrible moment passed between us as I held back the urge to retaliate with equal anger. Perhaps fortunately, I was too tired. Then perhaps because I was so exhausted, Helena was able to see me as vulnerable and to relent slightly.

'I care,' I said. After a moment I forced out the question: 'Are you leaving me?'

Her chin went up. 'Are you still the same man?'

The truth was, I no longer knew. 'I hope so.'

Helena let me suffer, but briefly. Staring at the floor, she said, 'We will go to your father's villa on the Janiculan.'

She started to rise. I went across to her; taking her hands in mine I forced her to look at me. 'When I have finished, I will come and fetch you all.'

Helena tugged her hands free.

'Helena, I love you.'

'I loved you too, Marcus.'

Then I laughed at her gently. 'You still do, sweetheart.'

'Cobnuts!' she snapped, as she swept from the room. But the put-down she had used was a habitual one of mine, so I knew that I had not lost her.

I had to bring this to a finish.

Petronius and I had told the man we would not kill him. We could never give him back, however. Capturing one of the spy's agents was irreversible. So what happened to him next would involve more terror, cruel treatment and - soon, probably, though not soon enough for him - his death, even if it was not at our hands.

Petro and I had talked about a solution. We abandoned our efforts to extract information and made final arrangements. I had thought of a way to do this, so there would be no comeback.

I left the house, the first time I had been out for days. I went to see Momus. For an eye-watering sum, Momus fixed it up for me. I did not say who we wanted to put away so discreetly, or why; with his sharp grasp of a filthy situation, Momus knew better than to request details. When he wrote out a docket he just asked, 'Are you telling me his real name - - or shall I give him a new one?'

We still did not know who he was. He was so hard, he consistently refused to tell us. 'Anonymity would be ideal.'

'I'll make him a Marcus!' Momus jeered, always one for a joke in bad taste.

I was startled how easy it was to make somebody disappear. Anacrites' man would be taken away from my house that night. The overseer who worked for the Urban Prefect was now expecting an extra body; when we delivered the Melitan, he would be infiltrated among a batch of convicts who were going for hard labour in the mines. This punishment was intended to be a death sentence, an alternative to crucifixion or mauling by the arena beasts. Protest would be pointless. Convicted criminals always claimed to be the victims of mistakes. Nobody would listen. No one in Rome would ever see him again. Chained with an iron neck-collar in a slave gang in a remote part of some overseas province, stripped and starved, he would be worked until it killed him.

We told him. I had once worked as a slave in a lead mine, so I knew all the horrors.

We gave him a last chance. And he still said nothing.

LXV.

Soon after I returned home alone after removing the agent, Anacrites came to the house.

I had bathed and eaten. I had devoted time to making sure all trace of recent events had been removed. I was in my study, reading a scroll of affable Horace to cleanse my sullied brain. It was late. I was missing my family.

A slave announced the spy was downstairs. Would I see him? This was how things worked now; I would probably get used to it. Helena must have stiffened the staff, teaching them not to let visitors get past them. It gave a prosperous householder a few moments to prepare himself - much better than the days when any intruder walked right into my shabby apartment, saw exactly what I had been doing (and with whom), then forced me to listen to his story whether I cared or not.

I paused to wonder at the spy's timing - did he know know we had shed our prisoner? Then I went in my house slippers to greet him. we had shed our prisoner? Then I went in my house slippers to greet him.

He had no Praetorians. The other 'Melitan' was not with him either. He had brought a couple of low-grade men, though when I invited him up he left them below in the entrance hall. Taking no chances, I put slaves to watch them. I had known him when he only had available a legman with enormous feet and a dwarf; later he hired a professional informer, though he was killed on duty. A woman worked with him sometimes. This pair today -were a grade up from basic, ex-soldiers I guessed, though pitiful; in a peaceful province they would have been relegated to rampart turf-cutting or in war they would have been expendable, mere spear fodder.

'I called in to wish you good fortune, Falco, on the Feast of the Rustic Vinalia,' Anacrites bluffed. I rarely honoured feast days, whether mystic or agricultural; nor did he, in my experience. I had sat with him in our Census office, yearning in vain for him to leave early to go sardine-munching at the Fishermen's Games in the Transtiberina or to pay his respects to Invincible Hercules.

'Thanks; how civil' I refrained from bringing out a rock-crystal flagon of rotgut nouveau. rotgut nouveau.

Anacrites favoured guarded sobriety while he was working - so different from Petronius and me, abandoning care at every opportunity and living on the edge. He made no attempt to cadge a festival drink. Significantly, as was also his tendency, he straightway lost his nerve. Despite having probably spent hours perfecting an excuse, he came right out with it: 'I have mislaid an agent.'

'Careless. What's it to me?'

'He was last seen outside your house. You won't object if I take a look around here, will you, Falco?'

'This is hardly an amicable gesture - and after we all had such a rollicking time at your hog-roast too! Still, help yourself. I dare say there is no point objecting. If you find him squatting on my property, I'll want compensation for his upkeep.'

This terse banter was interrupted by new arrivals. For an instant I thought the spy had brought the Guards after all. Someone banged the front door knocker in a military manner, though then a key scratched in the lock angrily: Albia. She had been roaming on her own again. I knew Helena had been unable to find her when the others left for the Janiculan; I was supposed to send the girl on. She looked disgruntled and, curiously, was accompanied by Lentullus.

'Thanks, jailor, you can go now!' she ordered him crossly. She stalked across the vestibule. From choice I would have ordered Lentullus to wait, so he could explain out of the spy's hearing. Albia turned back from the stairs and made furious signals for him to clear off.

Lentullus stood to attention and announced, 'Camillus Justinus asked me to return your young lady, Falco. He saw her outside our house, staring - it's a habit she's prone to recently.'

'Oh Albia!' I dreaded having to play the heavy-handed father.

'Looking is not a crime,' she snarled.

'You have been harassing a senator,' I disagreed, all too conscious of Anacrites listening in. 'If I know you, girl, you do your best to make your glare upsetting. Lentullus, please apologise to the senator. Thank Justinus for his kindly intervention, and assure them all this will not be repeated.'

'It's just that the Greek lady was getting spooked,' said Lentullus. 'The tribune said we'd better whip your girlie back home today and have a word with you about it.' He beamed at Albia, showing his admiration. 'She's a bit of a one, isn't she?'

'One and a half,' I grumbled. 'Anacrites, would you just excuse me for a moment while I sort out a reward for Lentullus - -'

Anacrites waved me away, since he was then able to approach Albia. I heard the bastard offer that if she ever needed a refuge from family troubles, she knew where his house was . . . This evening had become a disaster.

Behind the spy's back I quickly passed to Lentullus the cameo jewel, pressing it against his palm the way Aulus had given it to me. Being Lentullus, he needed a really big wink to help him get the point. 'Remember the time we hid the tribune in that old apartment of mine? Can you find it again - - above the Eagle Laundry in that little street? Could you possibly take a detour up there on your way back home?' I muttered -where there was a hiding-place in my old doss, and Lentullus promised to conceal the jewel.

Albia had broken away from Anacrites and barged up, thinking I was talking about her. She sensed me making arrangements with Lentullus. 'I'll take Nux for a walk - - if I'm allowed out?'

'You've just been out - - but you are not a prisoner. Just stop stalking Camillus Aelianus - - and keep away from other men as -well.' I meant the spy. Lentullus was too much of a clown to count.

I returned to Anacrites and his planned search of my house. 'Who are you looking for?' Better to ask, rather than admit I knew. 'Does your lost lamb have a name?'

'State secret,' Anacrites mumbled, pretending to make a joke of it.

'Oh, one of your precious bodyguards, would that be?' This was like trying to squeeze a dry sponge, one that had been desiccated in the sun on a harbour wall for three weeks. He nodded reluctantly, so I added, 'Aren't there two? Where's the other one? Doesn't he know what his brother's been up to?'

Anacrites shot me a suspicious glance. 'How do you know they are brothers?'

'They look like brothers - - and in some passing conversation, they told me, you idiot. I don't waste my time trying to find out sordid details about your useless staff.'

Anacrites then set about peering into all our upstairs rooms, while I ambled along with him to ensure he saw nothing too private. I encouraged him to look under beds, if I knew there were chamber pots; I wished we had put snappy rat traps just inside cupboards. A toy donkey fell down a step and nearly made the spy take a tumble, but the beds were neatly made, shutters closed, lamps trimmed and filled. We had staff; order had seeped into my domestic life like a leaking drain. None of the slaves were discovered rifling papers or money chests, none were screwing one another in the guest rooms or playing with themselves alone in linen cupboards. Something about Anacrites made them all scuttle for cover even though I, their reassuring master, was escorting him, with my half-read scroll of Horace still tucked under my elbow and an expression of pained tolerance at his damned intrusion.

We glanced in every room, then went out on to the roof terrace. 'If he's up here, I'll throw him off.' By now I was curt. 'This has gone far enough. What's going on?'

'I told you - - my agent has gone missing; I have to find him. He has family, for one thing; if something's happened, they will want to know.'

'Married?' I felt a strange need to know. I had shared three crucial days in that man's life. His worthwhile existence reached its end in my home. Petronius and I were his last civilised contacts. Remembering Helena's furious comparison, I wondered if psychopathic killers developed this warped sense of relationship with their victims.

'Yes, there is a wife - - or so I believe.'

'Parents living?'

'No.'

'And he has a brother who looks like a twin.'

'They are not identical'

'Oh you know something about them then, Anacrites?'

'I take care of my men. Give me credit for being professional.'

'An impeccable employer! He's probably fallen victim to a street mugger, or been knocked down by a wagon and hauled off to a healing sanctuary. Try the Temple of Aesculapius. Maybe he ran away because he couldn't stand his working environment - or couldn't stand his superior.'

'He wouldn't run away from me,' Anacrites said, with an odd expression.

We returned downstairs. On reaching the lower hall, Anacrites decided to search the ground-floor rooms. 'We don't use them,' I said. 'Too damp.'

He insisted. He looked ready for a fight with me, but I did not quibble.

When he looked in the room where we had kept our captive, Anacrites sniffed slightly. No trace of his missing man remained, though like a bloodhound, the spy seemed to harbour doubts. If I had believed in supernatural powers, I would have thought he was picking up the aura of a soul in torment. The room stood empty, apart from a well-scrubbed bench against one wall. The floor and walls looked spotless.

The air was clean, pervaded only by a faint smell of beeswax where the boards had been given a buffing very recently.

'I used this as a holding cell,' I told Anacrites gently. 'For my late father's slaves - -' Mentioning my bereavement made the bastard look humble. I -wanted to kick him. 'While I was assessing which were for the slave market. And if, in your role as an interfering state auditor, you intend to ask - yes, I paid the four per cent tax on every one I sold.'

'I would not dream of implying otherwise, Marcus.' Every time Anacrites called me Marcus it just reminded me how impossible it would be ever to call him 'Tiberius'.

He left eventually. I wondered if the unpredictable swine -would come back for another attempt. Anacrites often did a job, then half an hour later thought of three things he had missed.

His 'search' was just a surface skim. He could be inept - yet he could also be more thorough when the mood took him. Tonight he just gave my house a casual walk-through. I even wondered if he had left his visit until now because he'd known all along where the agent was, and actually wanted to lose him from his payroll. After all, he knew I always spotted surveillance and would take against it. He had just claimed to be a concerned superior. When the Melitan went missing, it should not have taken him three days to act.

Luckily, at heart Anacrites was so obsessed with outsmarting me that once we engaged in mental tussle, he noticed little else. He seemed unaware that, while I walked him around, my heart was beating fast. When Albia left with Lentullus and called Nux for a walk, the madcap mongrel had raced downstairs eagerly. Our dog was carrying her latest toy. It was a short piece of rope; she liked to fight people for it, gripping on like fury, shaking it from side to side and growling with excitement. Nux would have offered to play the tugging game with Anacrites, had he shown the slightest interest. Instead, wagging her tail crazily, she scampered away after Albia.

As far as I could tell, the spy failed to spot that my dog's prized new toy had once been his agent's strangling rope.

XLVI.

Anacrites did not dare search Maia's apartment in person, though he sent his two ex-soldiers. They were very polite, especially when they found that only Marius (aged thirteen) and Ancus (ten) were in. They must have been warned to expect a termagant and possibly a large angry vigiles officer, so finding a scholarly boy and his very shy little brother caught them wrong-footed. My elder nephew wanted to be a rhetoric teacher; so, Marius practised legal disputation on them (the rights of a Roman householder) while they quickly peered about, found nothing, and fled.

Petronius heard about it later. He would have been furious, but by then something big had blown up. Something so big, that since no harm had been done at the apartment, he left the issue alone. He had noted it, though. He was adding it to the long list of outrages for which Anacrites would one day pay.

I was setting off to Helena at the villa when I received an intriguing invitation. I was to meet Petronius at a bar called the Leopard, one we never frequented. He suggested I bring my Camillus assistants. A cryptic note on his message warned us Play by Isca rules. Play by Isca rules. Only I knew what that meant: it referred to a secret court-martial we once took part in. So, this was a meeting of high importance, to be kept from the authorities. Nothing that was said today at the Leopard would ever be acknowledged afterwards. No one could break faith. And for me, there was a subtle indication that somebody of status - - Anacrites? - - was about to be formally shafted. Only I knew what that meant: it referred to a secret court-martial we once took part in. So, this was a meeting of high importance, to be kept from the authorities. Nothing that was said today at the Leopard would ever be acknowledged afterwards. No one could break faith. And for me, there was a subtle indication that somebody of status - - Anacrites? - - was about to be formally shafted.

Aelianus and Justinus were agog and turned up willingly at my house. We had a brief moment of tension when Albia stalked down to the hall while we were assembling. I overheard Aelianus plead with her, 'Won't you at least speak to me?'

To which Albia coldly answered, 'No!' She stormed out of the house, giving me a filthy look for my contact with Aulus. At least I knew this time she was not rushing to the Capena Gate to stalk him.

'You're an idiot!' said Quintus to his brother - who did not deny it.

When we arrived at the bar, Petronius was already there. He had a man with him. It was a large place. They were in a room at the back, which they had managed to keep to themselves. Money probably changed hands for that.

Brief introductions ensued. 'This is Silvius. He'll tell you himself what he does - insofar as he can say.'

The draughtboard and counters had been allocated to our room, a cover for us being there; we seemed like an illegal gambling consortium. While drinks were ordered, I sized up Silvius. He was lean, scornful, capable. Maybe early fifties. A semi-shaved grey head. One finger missing. Been around the houses - on good terms with the householders, maybe even better terms with their wives. I would not like him staying in my my house. That did not mean I could not work with him - far from it. house. That did not mean I could not work with him - far from it.

'What are you thinking, Falco?' Petro asked, with a mild smile that meant he knew.

'Silvius is one of us.'

'Honoured,' said Silvius. He had an easy-going baritone voice that had ordered up plenty of flagons in its time. He had spent long nights in smoky bars, talking. Either he was a lyric poet, a speculative saucepan-seller - - or he traded information.

The drinks came. Sides arrived simultaneously in pottery dishes. There would be no need for the waiter to trouble us again.

I saw Silvius eyeing the two young Camilli. Petro must have given him the rundown on us all. They had left their pristine togas in the clothes press and were turned out professionally: neutral tunics, serviceable belts, worn-in boots, no flash metal buckles or tags on their laces. Neither went in for jewellery, though Aulus had a rather wide new gold wedding ring; Quintus was not wearing his, but I thought he had had it on when he escorted his wife to the spy's party. You could just about take these two down an alley in the Subura without causing a rush of pickpockets, though they still had to learn how to pass along the streets completely unnoticed. At least they looked nowadays as though they might see trouble coming. As they thickened up in their middle-to-late twenties, each looked as if he might be handy when that trouble reached him. Their hair was too long and their chins too cleanshaven, but if we were soon to have action, I knew they would enjoy making themselves more scruffy.

'They will do; they are fit,' I said in an undertone. Silvius heard it without comment. Both Camilli noticed the exchange. Neither flared up. They had learned to accept how you edged towards acceptance in new professional relationships. When work was dangerous, each man had to make his own judgements about people he would be dealing with. Aulus leaned back on the bench and subjected Silvius in turn to scrutiny.

We raised a quiet toast, then set our beakers down again as Petronius prepared to speak.

'Is this about our Modestus case?' Having been to the marshes with us, Quintus was over-keen and jumped in. I laid a finger to my lips. Good-natured, Quintus shrugged an apology.

Petro began slowly. 'Marcus Rubella, my tribune, introduced Silvius to me, but officially, Rubella never met Silvius - and nor have I. Officially Officially we surrendered the case into the safe hands of the honest Praetorians, together with their intellectual comrade, Anacrites the spy. There's a poor interface with his organisation. We all let Anacrites play by himself.' we surrendered the case into the safe hands of the honest Praetorians, together with their intellectual comrade, Anacrites the spy. There's a poor interface with his organisation. We all let Anacrites play by himself.'