"Try and find the torque, Falco."

"You want it back?"

"I gave it to him." The King's expression showed nostalgia and regret at the loss of his long-term friend. "Will you recognize it?"

"I remember." It was unusual: fine strands of twisted gold, almost like knitted skeins, and heavy end pieces.

"Do your best. I know the killers will have vanished."

"You are right to feel cautious, but it's not entirely hopeless, sir. They may one day be exposed, even perhaps when arrested for some other crime. Or some small-time criminal may turn them in, hoping for a reward."

"They tell me it is a bad area, yet murders are infrequent." I felt the King was working up to something. "Frontinus and Hilaris know the town," I commented.

"And I knew Verovolcus," said the King.

A slave entered, bringing us refreshments. The interruption was annoying, even though I for one had not had breakfast. Togidubnus and I waited patiently in silence. Maybe we both knew Flavius Hilaris might have sent the slave to observe our meeting for him.

The King made sure of privacy and dismissed the slave. The boy looked nervous, but left the offerings on a carved granite side table.

After he went out, I myself sawed off slices of cold meat and gave us each a dish of olives. While the King stayed on his silver-backed couch, I went to a stool. We munched the soft white breakfast rolls and sipped water, no longer speaking. I pasted my ham to my roll with chickpea dip. He wrapped a slice of meat around a hard-boiled hen's egg.

"So what did Frontinus and Hilaris tell you I would want?" asked the King eventually.

"I've had no opportunity to receive instructions, sir."

"What-no briefing?" He looked amused.

"I was out walking this morning." This was true. I had gone to the forum early, where I chalked up graffiti on a wall saying "LPL, contact MDF: urgent." I had no great hopes. Petronius was unlikely to hang around that dreary spot. I risked murmuring frankly, "I expect our two great men are sweating shit!" The King chuckled even more. "But you and I, sir, don't need a briefing before we communicate."

Togidubnus finished his egg and wiped his scrawny old fingers on a napkin. "So what do you really think, Marcus Didius?"

I noted the more informal nomenclature. I chewed up an olive, dumped it's stone in a dish, and told him. "I am still puzzled why Verovolcus went to that place. I have noticed an organized racket in the vicinity, though I have not been able to show any link, I admit."

"Are you saying that officials deny that this 'racket' exists?" demanded the King.

"No." They had managed to avoid admitting it, but they were diplomats. "Civilization brings much good, but you know it brings bad as well. I have no idea what criminal activities occurred when the tribes ran Britain from hillforts, but every society has its bandits. We bring you the city and we bring city vices. More complicated, perhaps, but all based on fear and greed." Togidubnus made no comment. If he really had been brought up in Rome and had ever walked the Golden City's teeming streets, he had seen at first hand the worst of organized grief and extortion. "Did Verovolcus hate Rome?" I asked.

"Not particularly."

"But you said you 'knew' him. You meant something by that."

"He liked to be in the thick of any action, Falco. Being my liaison officer never quite suited him, but nor was he the type to sit on a farm watching cattle graze."

"Meaning?"

"He would not go into exile meekly."

The King rose, went to the side table, inspected a flat bowl of cold fishes, tried one, decided against, and took another roll with some ready-sliced venison. That kept him busy, chewing bravely, for some time. I sat and waited.

"So what do you want to tell me, sir?" I asked, when I was fairly sure he could get his words out again.

He screwed up his lips, his tongue struggling with a shred of trapped venison in his back teeth. I pecked at breadcrumbs on my tunic. "He was not going to Gaul, Falco."

Togidubnus had spoken in a low tone, which I matched: "He meant to stay here in Londinium? Did he have friends here?"

"No."

"Any means to live?"

"I gave him some money." That came out fast: conscience money. Whatever Verovolcus had done, his regal master had felt responsible for him.

"Did he say anything, sir, about coming here?"

"Enough." The King set aside his empty watercup. "He spoke to you?"

"No, he knew I would have had to stop him."

I filled in the story myself: "Verovolcus told his friends he was sneaking off to Londinium, not going to Gaul. He knew there was an expanding crime scene and he boasted that he would be part of it?" The King went so far as to nod. The rest was inevitable: "If there are rackets, and he tried to muscle in-then whoever runs the show here must have refused him an entry ticket."

They had done it in the classic style too: a striking death, which would attract public notice. A death that would serve as a warning to any other hopefuls who might consider invading the racketeers' turf.

XVIII

Seeing Hilaris at one end of the corridor as I emerged, I bunked off the other way. I wanted space; I had to reach decisions. Did I take this further in person, or hand the whole packet over to the authorities?

I knew what was making me hesitate. Acknowledging there were rackets, and in a province where the Emperor had once served with distinction, was politically inconvenient. I thought they were likely to drop the case.

Music and the sound of voices drew me to a salon. The womenfolk were listening politely to a blind harpist. He was ill-shaven and expressionless, with a sullen, even pugnacious, young boy crouched at his feet, presumably to lead him around. He could play. I wouldn't have walked far to hear him, but his technique passed. It was background music. Bland, melodious pattering that allowed people to talk over it. After a while you could forget the harpist was there. Maybe that was the point.

I nudged up against Helena on a couch. "What's this? Are we auditioning him for an orgy tonight, or taking culture a bit far?"

"Hush! Norbanus Murena has sent him on loan to Maia. Such a kind thought."

"What prompted that?" I sounded like an ungracious brute. "I remember us talking to him last night about music."

"Maia was?" I managed not to laugh.

Helena biffed me gently with the back of her wrist. "No, I think it was me, but you can't expect a man to remember things properly."

I frowned. "Did you like Norbanus?" I trusted her instincts with people.

Helena paused, almost undetectably. She may not even have known that she did so. "He seemed straight, decent, and ordinary. A nice man."

I sucked my teeth. "You don't care for nice men."

Helena suddenly smiled at me, her eyes soft. I swallowed. One of the things I had always loved about her was her brutal self-awareness. She was eccentric; she knew it; she did not want to change. Nor did I want her to be a conventional matron with narrow vision and appalling friends. "No," she agreed. "But I'm a grouse, aren't I?"

The harpist twiddled to the end of a tune. We clapped demurely. "How long have we got him for?"

"I think as long as Maia likes."

"Olympus! That's a cheat. Making up to a women by giving her a necklace, at least she gets to keep the jewels. This way, Norbanus takes his harpist back at the end of his flirtation, and meanwhile Hilaris has to feed the swine. I don't suppose Maia suggested she must ask her head of household for permission?" I saw myself as Maia's head of household-not that she ever did.

"No, Marcus." Helena looked pained, though not at the joke about my status; she thought my suggestion was rude. "Are you insisting she send him straight back? That would be an unkind rebuff. It's just a loan. No one but you would see any harm in it."