Most painters would have spun about ready to thump me. This one only grunted. He kept going. The glass bowl acquired a thread of painted light to indicate a handle.

"The project team plotters have decided who eliminated Pomponius," I said. "They've settled on the smart arse from Stabiae. A stippling brush with some incriminating initials has been dumped on the body-just where I was bound to find it and shriek Ooh, look at this! So tell me, smart arse did you kill him?"

"No I bloody well did not." The artist stopped painting and turned around to face me. I was screwing a girl from a bar in Noviomagus -she wasn't as good as I hoped she would be, but at least I can tell Justinus that I got there first!"

I gave him a long cold stare. "The only good thing about that story is that you were screwing the floosie, not my brother-in-law."

"Plus another good thing." He scowled, as unabashed as he had always been. "You know the story's true, Falco."

I knew him, so I did believe it. He was my nephew Larius.

XL

I tossed him the brush from the bath house. He caught it one handed, the other hand still holding the finer one he had been working with, plus his thumb palette. "That's your pig's bristle?"

"LL. That's me. Larius Lollius."

"Thank Juno you were not born under a laurel tree," I scoffed. "A third L would have been obscene."

"Two names are sufficient for me and Mark Antony."

"Listen, bigshot, when you've finished aligning yourself with the famous, you are to get yourself to Novio and ensure that your luscious Virginia is not bribed to forget your romantic alibi."

Larius looked coy. "She'll remember. I said she was a disappointment. I didn't mention my own performance."

I reined in my reaction and merely answered quietly, "Ask somebody sophisticated to explain about two-way pleasure. Incidentally, how is dear Ollia?" Ollia was his wife.

"Fine when we parted company," Larius said tersely.

"You parted? Is this a permanent phase? Had the union of you two fresh hopefuls produced offspring?"

"Not as far as I know."

"Still, I hate to see young love waning."

"Skip the family talk," he chided me. He did not ask after Helena, though they had met. While he and Ollia had been assuring the world they shared eternal devotion, the world had prophesied that the teenagers were doomed then also decreed that I was a philandering louse, destined to abandon my woman. Assuming I could manage it before Helena ditched me first… Larius cut through my wandering thoughts. "We need to know why people want to frame me for Pomponius."

"They are not framing you," I told him. "They are implicating me."

He brightened up. "How's that?"

"I bring my nephew on site and he kills the top man? That's bound to diminish my status as the Emperor's troubleshooter!"

"Status bollocks!" Since I List saw him when he was fourteen Larius had coarsened up. Tin not connected with your work. Blandus brought me here. I've come to do miniatures- and I do not want to be dragged into any of your slimy political stews."

"You are already neck deep in fish-pickle sauce. Have you told people you are my nephew?"

"Why not?"

"You should have told me first!"

"You were never there to tell."

"All right. Larius, how did anyone else acquire this paintbrush?"

"From the hut while I was out, I suppose. I leave everything here."

"Any chance Pomponius himself might have borrowed it?"

"What, to tickle his balls at the baths?" mocked Larius. "Or cleaning his ears out. I hear it's a new fashion among the arty fraternity- better than a plebeian scoop."

"Answer the question."

"As for pinching a brush, I don't suppose that snooty beggar ever knew where our site huts were."

"What happened when you wanted to show him a proposed design?"

"We carried sketches to the great man's audience chamber and waited in a queue for two hours."

"You did not like Pomponius?"

"Architects? I never do," scoffed Larius offhandedly. "Loathing self important people is a churlish habit I picked up from you."

"And why are you so ripe for incrimination, happy nephew? Whom have you upset?"

"What, me?"

"Is Camillus Justinus the only man you've beaten up recently?"

"Oh yes."

"Have you slept with anybody other than Virginia?"

"Certainly not!" He was a real rogue. A total hypocrite.

"Has Virginia another lover?"

"Famous for it, I should say."

"So is she attached to anyone who bears grudges?"

"She's a girl who gets herself attached. No one regular, if that's any help."

"And what about you, Larius? Everyone knows you? Everyone knows what you're like nowadays?"

"What do you mean- what I'm like?"

"Start with layabout," I suggested cruelly. "Try a wine-swigging, fornicating, quarrelsome byword for trouble."

"You're thinking of my uncle," said Larius, as ever surprising me with sudden caustic repartee.

"True."

"I get around," confessed the lad. I remembered him as a shy, poetry-loving dreamer the single-minded romantic who had once spurned my dirty profession in favour of high ideals and art. Now he had learned to hold his own in rough company- and to despise me.

"You'd better come along to my quarters," I said quietly. "On reflection, I'm taking you into custody until this is sorted out. Let's get this clear- I have young children and polite nursing mothers in my party, not to mention the noble Aelianus withering away from his doggie bite, so we'll have no drinking and no riots."

"I see you've gone staid," sneered Larius.

"Another thing," I ordered him. "Keep your damn hands off my children's nurse!"

"Who's that?" he asked, full of rosebud ignorance. He knew who I meant. He did not fool me. He was born on the Aventine, into the feckless Didii.

To be honest, his attitude gave me a nostalgic pang.

XLI

I was worse than staid. I was suffering like any householder whose domestic life had filled up with crying infants, sex-crazed nephews, disobedient freed women unfinished business tasks and jealous rivals who wanted him dismissed or dead. I was like the harassed foolish father in a Greek play. This was no milieu for a city informer. Next thing I would find myself buying pornographic oil lamps to leer at in the office and giving myself flatulence as I worried about inheritance tax.

Helena shot me an odd look when I deposited Larius in her care. He seemed startled to see her. He had once adored her. This was awkward for the new man who trifled with women for a bet then breezed off, callous and untouched.

Helena greeted him with an affectionate kiss on the cheek, a refined gesture that upset his equilibrium further. "Oh this is splendid! Come and meet your little cousins, Larius…"

Horrified, Larius shot me a baleful glance. I returned an annoying grin, then left to investigate who really killed Pomponius.

Magnus was still supervising his assistants near the old palace. They had extended the lines for foundations where the two huge new wings would meet the existing buildings. When the dug trenches currently petered out, strings on pegs now showed the planned links. Magnus himself was scribbling down calculations for the levels, his instrument satchel lying open on the ground.

"This yours?" I asked casually, holding something out to him as if I had found it lying around on site. Absorbed in his work, he was fooled by my indifferent tone.

"I've been searching for that!" His eyes came up from the long string that I was proffering and I saw him freeze.

I had deliberately asked the question so his student helpers would hear. Having witnesses put pressure on. "That's a five-four-three," one of them informed me helpfully. Magnus said nothing. "It's used to form a hypotenuse triangle when we set out a right angle."