'Do you know how he finds his material?'

'Digging.'

'Do it himself?'

'Half and half, I think. With a senatorial family, he would never get direct access. He has a pal with contacts, who helps him out.'

'I thought you said Spindex has no friends? What pal?'

'Don't know. Spindex keeps to himself.'

'And you don't know the helper's name?'

'No. I tried to find out, but Spindex got stand-offish.'

'Why did you want to find out?'

'Just nosy!' Biltis admitted with a grin.

I sympathised with the clown. People like Biltis crowd in, finding out your weaknesses along with your dearest secrets. Then they turn against you, or poison your other relationships. In the army I had met men who worked the same way.

Still, Biltis had discovered the clown's home address. She even insisted on taking me on a route march to the road where he lived and pointing out his building. We set off under grey January skies, observed by a few chilly pigeons. Spindex had a billet which turned out to be a long walk from the Fifth, all the way back to the Twelfth District. He lived opposite the Aventine, in the shadow of the Servian Walls, close to the Aqua Marcia.

'See, I had to bring you,' Biltis crowed. 'This is a terrible hole. You'd never have found your way around.'

'You're talking about my birthplace, woman.' I cursed myself for giving away something personal.

If I had not insisted she leave, Biltis would have trodden on my heels all the way up to the clown's room, where she would have sat on my knee making saucy interventions while I asked him questions. I said bluntly that I didn't need anyone to hold my note-tablet and after the obvious lewd retort from the mourner, I managed to shed her.

Alone, I approached a narrow opening that provided dark stairs upwards from the street. As she waved goodbye from outside one of the shops that flanked this entrance, Biltis called after me that Spindex was a disorderly, filthy type. 'You'll find his room, easy -just follow the smell.'

I grunted and went up the cramped stone steps. This was not a tenement approach, but a narrow insert between commercial premises. I guessed Spindex had solitary attic lodgings on the third floor, beyond the living quarters that lay above owner-occupied shops, which would be accessed from within those shops. Only Spindex and his visitors ever came up this way.

Biltis was right, perhaps more right than she knew. The reek on the staircase was strong, growing worse every day no doubt. This smell was very particular; in my line of work, it was familiar. Filled with foreboding, I tramped up and found the apartment. I was sure before I even opened the door that Spindex would be there inside. And I knew he would be dead.

x.x.xI.

BEING A funeral clown must have all the glamour and high rewards of being an informer. There was hardly any light on the stairs. I crashed into empty wine containers on the landing. Then I entered a meagre apartment. Two dark rooms - one for being awake in misery and one for sleeping with nightmares. No cooking or washing facilities. A high-up filthy window let in a square of murky sunlight. Either the occupant had been habitually untidy, or I was looking at evidence of a struggle. It was hard to tell which. Even at my lowest ebb in my bachelor days, I had never kept my room like this. I liked to tidy up sometimes, in case a woman could be inveigled in.

This was the horrid abode of a loner; he had never visited a laundry nor bought proper meals. Nor would he have kept records of his work; I knew before I started, there would be nothing here for me. I saw not a scroll or tablet in the place; Spindex must have kept everything in his head. Easy enough. Funerals are short-term projects, of course.

I pa.s.sed a table, littered with the stale relics of a drinking session. Two dirty beakers lay on their sides; one of them had rolled to the floor. There were empty flagons everywhere, plus a half-filled one with its bung abandoned in a dish of dried-up olives. Their roughly chewed stones had been spat everywhere.

The clown's body was lying on a narrow bed in the second room. From the awkward posture, I thought he might have been dragged in and dumped there after death. It looked as though he had been strangled, but it was hard to be sure. Spindex had not been seen by the Tiasus crew for months; death must have occurred way back then. I did not linger. I called in the vigiles to deal with the remains. We were just within the boundary of the Fourth Cohort, as it happened.

Petronius Longus thanked me for the task with a growl of insincerity but promised to investigate as best he could. His men, braver than I was, came out from the apartment and confirmed that a tight ligature was buried in the fleshy neck of the corpse. Tough cord: cut and brought here for the purpose, probably. Our chances of learning who committed the crime were slim, given the time lapse.

Even while we still stood around cursing, the investigation team found out from local shopkeepers that their last awareness of the clown alive had been of him roaring back drunk from a bar, with somebody. They did not see the visitor. No one had heard the person leave.

Surprise!

The vigiles might or might not pursue this further. We had probably learned all we could hope for. The death of a low-grade entertainer, about whom n.o.body cares enough even to discover why he has gone missing from his work, carries little importance in Rome.

There was no point enquiring whether a funeral satirist had enemies. Petronius pointed out wryly that at least we knew most of the people Spindex brazenly mocked had predeceased him, so they were not suspects. Their relatives would be unlikely to complain, Petro believed. Everyone always knows already that the dead man was a serial seducer who lied to political colleagues, ran up hefty debts at a brothel, deliberately farted in the Basilica and was known by an obscene name behind his back. The fun is being at last free to enjoy it - with the stiffened dead lying there, unable to retaliate.

'Do you suppose, Falco, this clown was rubbed off the tablet because of something he knew?'

'Who can say? It could just have been a pointless row when he was sozzled.'

'So what do you think it was?'

'Oh - elimination due to something he knew.'

'Well thanks again! Do I stand any chance of learning what, or proving it?' wondered Petro.

'Do you ever, lad?'

That was too metaphysical, so we went for a drink. Long practice made this an essential part of enquiries. We asked the barkeeper if he had had Spindex among his customers. He said every barman this side of the Esquiline could boast that - until about three months ago. Could it be nearer four months? I asked, and he shrugged agreement. As I had thought, that would take us back to the time of the Metellus funeral. Of course a defence lawyer would call it mere coincidence.

Noticing the clown's absence from lolling on his bar counter, the barman had deduced that Spindex must be dead. He said it was nice to remember the old misery for a moment, and gave us a free beaker. 'I can just see him crouched here, scratching at his fleas...'

I tried not to feel itchy.

'Did Spindex have a regular boozing partner?' asked Petro. We had told no one yet that Spindex had been murdered.

'Not often. He sometimes had his head together with another fellow, plotting scandal they could use at funerals.'

'Would they buy wine and take it back to the clown's lodgings?'

'Oh Spindex bought a take-out flagon every night. However late he finished here, he'd get in a spare. Sometimes he emptied it before he got home, so he'd go in another bar and buy another one.'

'But did he ever go home with his friend, the plotter?'

The barman gazed at Petronius for a while. 'Was there a fight or something?'

'Do you have a reason to think that's likely?'

'I sell liquor - so I know life. So what happened to Spindex?'

'He had a fight or something,' confirmed Petronius tersely. The barman pulled a face, half surprised, half not surprised. Petro voiced the usual message: 'If you hear anything, contact me, will you? You know the main station house. I work in the Thirteenth -' The Fourth Cohort covered two regions, controlled here in the Twelfth, but Petronius based himself in the out-station. I won't say it was to avoid the tribune - but Rubella worked from the main building and Petronius loathed him. 'Any message gets pa.s.sed over to me.'

I stretched, dropping coins in the gratuities bowl. 'And we would dearly like to know who his fellow-plotter was. People may gossip.: 'Or they may not!' commented the barman.

Today had now turned unpleasant. Nothing new in that. As I walked home at dusk, I wondered if high-flyers like Silius and Paccius experienced such days. I doubted it. The reek of human putrefaction or the bleakness of a lonely man's sour existence played out in filthy rooms under the shadow of the dripping aqueducts were far removed from the 'civilised' Basilica. Silius and Paccius were men who never really knew the grim side of life - or the sight of sordid death.

I went to the baths, but fragrant oil and hot water failed to expel the odours. Their foulness had ingrained itself in my clothes and skin; it remained a taste on my tongue as persistent as regurgitated acid. Only nuzzling the soft sweet neck of our baby once I was back at home gradually helped to take away the horror.

Yes, I was tough. But today I had seen too much. I spent a long time that night considering whether I wanted to be connected with this case any more. I lay awake, gripped by distaste for the whole affair. It took Helena justina, warm, calm, perfumed with cinnamon, a girl full of honour and resolute before any injustice, to convince me I must carry on to show that our client was innocent.

I knew perfectly well that he would be sleeping well, comfortable and at ease.

x.x.xII.

RAIN HAD drizzled all night. The streets shone and would be slippery. Before I decided on my next course of action, I went up to my roof terrace. The sky was clear now. From the river came distant shouts of stevedores, with the unexplained crashes and shouts that emanate from wharves. We were out of sight of the Emporium, yet it somehow made its presence felt; I was conscious of all the commercial activity close by. Occasional mooing sounded from the other direction, the Cattle Market Forum.

It felt mild. Not warm enough to sit on the stone benches, but pleasant enough for a quick stroll among the browned roses and near dormant shrubs. At this time of year there was little to occupy a gardening man, but I picked off a few dead twigs and left them in a small soggy pile.

Something startled me. I thought it was a large bird, diving downwards in the wide-armed fig tree Pa had planted here and half trained. But the movement that had caught my eye was a stray leaf, desiccated and loose, suddenly falling from a cleft where it had lodged among high branches. Pallid and heavy with rain water, it had sought the ground in a sudden swoop.

Most of those leaves had dropped much earlier. When the great things had first carpeted the terrace and made it treacherous underfoot, we were sweeping up heaps of them all the time. Now I had for some time been able to see the tree's skeleton. I meant to prune the taller branches. They were carrying baby fruit over the winter, but some might yet be shed. They were too high up anyway. Even if the figlets stayed on to grow and ripen next year, blackbirds would devour them the very hour they turned purple. I would never manage to harvest the fruit unless I was up a ladder every day.

The side branches needed to be cut back too. Pa had neglected it. The fig's roots had been contained in an old round-bottomed amphora but the tree was prolific. It would need a really hard prune every spring and more tidying would be advisable each year in late summer. I made a note to acquire a billhook. Like the one in the Metellus store.

That made up my mind. I was off to see Calpurnia Cara.

The first disappointment somehow failed to surprise me. Yet again the door was guarded by a subst.i.tute. When I asked after Perseus, I was told he was no longer at the house.

'What - sold? Shoved off in disgrace to the slave market?'

'No. Sent to the farm in Lanuvium.' The subst.i.tute porter flushed. 'Oops - I'm not supposed to say that!'

Why not? I knew the family had connections near the coast. Lanuvium was where Justinus went to fetch that doc.u.ment Silius had requested, when we were involved in the original corruption trial.

So the door porter had been carted off at short notice. Was it convalescence or a punishment for him? Had Calpurnia finally lost patience with her slave's bad behaviour? Or was it a move to thwart me?

The steward was out, or he might have denied me admittance. The subst.i.tute porter innocently told me Calpurnia had gone outside to take the morning air. He escorted me as far as the first enclosed peristyle, but then pa.s.sed me into the care of a gardener.

I pa.s.sed a few polite remarks about burgeoning narcissi. The gardener was slow to respond, but by the time we reached the orchard area, I was able to ask if Metellus senior had been a plantsman. No. Or handy with a pruning knife? No, again. That failed to fit a theory I was mulling, but I made one last attempt, asking who looked after the fruit trees? The gardener did. d.a.m.n.

He spotted his mistress, so he beetled off and left me to face her wrath.

Calpurnia scowled, annoyed that I had been let in. She had been standing much where I found her on my first visit, near the store and also near the fig tree. Ashes of a bonfire smoked alongside. The store had its door wide open; slaves with cloaks over their heads were pulling down the roof panels and tackling the wasps' nest. Calpurnia, veiled, was supervising in an irritated voice. If insects buzzed her, she swept them aside with her bare hand.

I walked closer to the fig. It was professionally maintained, unlike Pa's s.h.a.ggy mess; I guessed here even the new fruits had been hand thinned for over-wintering. A wall ran behind the tree. Beyond, other properties stood close. I could smell lye, the distillation used for bleaching; one of the premises must be a laundry or a dyer's. Two unseen women were having a long, loud conversation that sounded like an argument, the kind of excited declamation over nothing that echoes around stairs, porticoes and light-wells all over Rome. We were in a small sanctum of nature up against the Embankment, but the city surrounded us.

On the wall was fastened a new-looking, inscribed limestone plaque. I did not remember seeing it before, though it may have been there yesterday when I was preoccupied with Birdy and Perseus. I walked closer. It was a memorial to Rubirius Metellus - in some ways quite standard. Ostensibly in the name of a loyal freedman, praising his master in conventional terms, it ran: To the shades of the departed, Gnaeus Rubirius Metellus, son of Tiberius, quaestor, legate, holder of three priesthoods, member of the centumviral court, aged fifty-seven: Julius Alexander, freedman, land agent, set this up to the kindest of patrons And Gnaeus Metellus Negrinus, to one who was well-beloved of him.

That last line was a mystery, squeezed in using much smaller letters, where the stone-carver ran out of s.p.a.ce. Being tagged on as an afterthought on a freedman's plaque was an odd position for the son - whose relationship and role was not even defined.

If Calpurnia Cara saw me looking, she made no mention. Nor did I. I wanted to consider this.

'I'm sorry to have missed you yesterday,' I teased.

'Oh you are full of schemes!' Calpurnia snorted. 'First you sneak in your wife, then you devise some luncheon invitation with my daughter to lure me from my house so you can creep in with Negrinus -'

'I know nothing of any lunch date; I happened to call when your son was already here -'

'Oh he's to blame!'

'This is his home still, surely?' I regretted that at once. The house would be a.s.signed to Paccius Africa.n.u.s as soon as the will was executed; he could throw out Calpurnia today, if he wanted to. 'Why do you hate your son, Calpurnia?'

'That is stupid.'

'You have denounced him as his father's killer.'

Perhaps she looked abashed. 'Negrinus has caused too much trouble.'

'He strikes me as inoffensive - even though he apparently upset his father. Why did your husband hate you?'

'Who told you that?'

'His will says so. Why did you hate him?'

'I only hated his cowardice.'

'He was brave enough to omit you from his bequests - in a will he wrote a full two years before his so-called suicide.' She did not react. 'I gather your husband had a pa.s.sion for your daughter-in-law Saffia?'

Calpurnia scoffed. 'I told you. Saffia is a troublemaker. My husband knew that better than anyone.'

'You mean he screwed her physically, then she screwed him financially?'

This time Calpurnia only stared at me. Did she simply blank it out?

'So is Paccius Africa.n.u.s being generous in letting you remain here, or are you sticking tight until he evicts you?'

'He won't inst.i.tute the will until the court case is over.'

That suited us; his reluctance to evict Calpurnia was one more instance we could cite to imply Paccius and she were co-conspirators.

She was growing restless. 'I do not have to talk to you, Falco.'

'But you may find it advisable. Tell me, why was Saffia's bedspread in your garden store?'