First Gaius softened up enough to try ingratiating himself. "How's the tooth, Falco?"

"It was all right until you just mentioned it."

"Sorry!"

"I tried to tweeze it out myself, but it's too deep. Have to ask Alexas to recommend a painiree puller."

"There's a new sign up showing a dogtooth, down by the Nemesis. It must be a barber-surgeon, Falco. Just what you want."

"Could you hear any screams?" I shuddered. "Is the Nemesis a drinking dive?"

"Owner with a sense of humour," Gaius grinned.

I had lost mine. "Informers are famous for their irony- but I don't want my gnasher wrenched out next door to a hovel called after the goddess of inescapable retribution!"

"Her wrath is averted by spitting," he assured me. "That should be easy during deep gum dentistry."

"Spare me, Gaius!"

I carried on scratching away with my stylus. I was using a tablet that had a rather thin wax sheet. I must remember that my words might show up on the backboard. However lucid and elegantly phrased, I did not want them being read by the wrong people; my discarded tablets must be burned after use, not tipped into a rubbish pit.

"About that other problem of yours, Falco," said Gaius after a while.

"Which of many?"

"The two men you want to find."

I looked up. "Gloccus and bloody Cotta?" I set down my stylus in a neat north-south line on the table. Gaius looked nervous. "Speak, oracle!"

"I just wondered about that uncle Alexas has." I stared. "Well, he might know them, Falco."

"Oh is that all. Know them? I thought you were about to say he was one of them! Anyway, Alexas has always said he's never heard of Gloccus and Cotta."

"Oh well, then!" There was a small silence. "He could be lying," offered Gaius.

"Now you sound as cynical as me."

"Must be contagious."

"His uncle is called Lobullus."

"Oh that's what Alexas says, is it, Falco?"

"He does. However," I said, with a wry smile, "Alexas could be lying about that too!"

"For instance-' Gaius made a great point of proffering the reasonable solution 'his uncle may be a citizen, with more than one name."

"If he builds bath houses, I bet his clients call him a few choice ones. Or he might be using an alias to avoid lawsuits…" I put down my stylus, considering the proposition. "Do you know Alexas? Apart from his own job, is he from a medical family?"

"No idea, Falco."

"And you don't know what part of the Empire he hails from?"

"No." Gaius looked crestfallen. It was temporary. "I know! I could ask my pal who keeps the personnel lists. Alexas should have filled in a next-of-kin record. That would give his home city."

"Yes and it will say who wants his funeral ashes, if I find out he has fibbed to me!"

By an odd quirk, in an earlier conversation with Alexas about deaths on site, I might even have nudged him into supplying these details myself.

Camillus Justinus stuck his head into the office at about midmorning. I introduced him to Gaius; they acknowledged each other suspiciously.

"Falco, I've just seen a man I recognise,"Justinus informed me. "I've come to tell you immediately this time. Larius says he is the King's project representative."

"Verovolcus? What about him?"

"Thought you might like to know I've seen him before he was drinking with Mandumerus," Justinus explained.

"Oh those two have always been thick as ticks," Gaius contributed. He looked smug until I tore into him for not mentioning their alliance earlier.

"Mandumerus and Verovolcus are best friends?"

"From the cradle, Falco."

"Is it a lead?" asked Justinus meekly.

"It is- but I'm not thanking you!"

I ran both hands through my hair, feeling the curls coarsened and sticky after exposure to the salty coastal air. I wanted a three-hour bath, with a full technical massage, in a first-class establishment in Rome. One with manicure girls who looked like haughty princesses, and three kinds of pastry-seller. I wanted to exit onto travertine marble steps, in early evening, when hot sun still ripped off the paving slabs. Then I wanted to go home for dinner: in my own house on the Aventine.

"Hades, Quintus. This is tricky. Suppose Verovolcus and Mandumerus murdered Pomponius."

"Why would they?"

"Well, because Verovolcus is loyal to his royal master. He knows all about the King's design rages with Pomponius. He probably thought the King preferred working with Marcellinus. It's even possible there was some exchange of benefits between Verovolcus and Marcellinus. Unaware that someone else was planning to kill Marcellinus, let's say Verovolcus decided to eliminate Pomponius remove the new incumbent so the old one can be brought back. His crony Mandumerus would be happy to help; he had just lost a lucrative post on site, and Pomponius had wanted to crucify him. No doubt about it, Mandumerus would be after revenge."

"Do you believe the King connived at this, Falco?" Justinus was shocked. For one thing, he could see it was a stupid thing for anyone to have done. For another, the whimsical boy liked to believe in the nobility of barbarians.

"Of course not!" I snarled. "My thoughts are strictly diplomatic."

Well, that could be true.

"So killing Pomponius was an unsophisticated manoeuvre by two misguided henchmen that was doomed to exposure?" Justinus demanded.

"Not quite," I told him sadly. "If the surmise is correct only idiots would go ahead and expose it."

A short time later I made a formal request for a private interview with the Great King.

ILLI

time for a professional statement. A problem arises when working with clients who demand confidentiality clauses: the investigator is required to keep silent for ever about his cases. Many a private informer could write titillating memoirs, full of slime and scandal, were this not the case. Many an imperial agent could produce a riveting autobiography, in which celebrated names would jiggle in shocking juxtaposition with those of vicious mobsters and persons with filthy morals of both sexes. We do not do it. Why? They do not let us.

I cannot say I ever heard of a sensitive client calling up a court injunction to protect his reputation. That's no surprise. Faced with public exposure by me, many of my own clients would take action privately. A father of young children cannot risk being found lying in an alley with his brains spread around his head. And working for the Emperor involved even more constraints. This subtlety was not spelled out in my contract because it did not need to be. Vespasian used me because I was known to be discreet. Anyway, I never managed to obtain a contract.

Want to hear about the Vestal, the hermaphrodite, and the Superintendent of Riverbanks? You won't get a sniff of it from me. Is a nasty rumour running around that horses' wet-weather shoes, all left-footed, were once ludicrously over-provisioned by the army at enormous cost? Sorry; I cannot comment. As for whether one of the imperial princes had a forbidden liaison with… No, no. Not even to be condemned as tasteless speculation! (But I do know which of the Caesars…) I myself will never reveal who really fathered the baker's twins, the current location of that girl with the massive bust, which cousin is due to inherit from your feeble uncle in Formiae, or the true size of your brother-in-law's gambling debts. Well, not unless you hire me and pay me: fee, plus costs, plus full indemnity against nuisance claims and libel suits.

I mention these points because if there were any scandals involving the building scheme, I was there specifically to suppress those scandals. One day the great palace at Noviomagus Regnensis would stand proud, every gracious wing of it fulfilling the vision of which Pomponius had dreamed. My role was not simply to get the monstrosity built, within a realistic margin of its completion date and budget, but to ensure it never became notorious. Magnus, Cyprianus, the craftsmen and labourers could all move on to other projects, where they might well curse the palace as an old bugbear, but their moans would soon be lost amid new troubles. Otherwise, its sorry design history would die, leaving only sheer scale and magnificence to excite admirers.