"Thanks for nothing."

"Pay me back later… He was going into the Shower of Gold, but there was no way I would join him in there. I didn't want the big fellow to know I had come after him."

"But it sounds as if the Briton may have had a prearrangement?"

She nodded. "He said somebody was waiting."

"What happened when Verovolcus went inside?"

"Not much, for some time. I couldn't see much anyway, the window was too small. I had decided to give up and leave. Then I overheard them all arguing."

"Listen-would you say that they knew each other prior to that?"

"It seemed so. I could see them all sitting at the same table. Your Briton had gone straight up to them; they were definitely the people he had arranged to meet."

"Could you tell what they were discussing?"

"No. But Verovolcus was getting the worst of it. There was a lot of talk, then it clearly got nasty. Looked as if Verovolcus was blustering but he was out of his league. Our mighty would-be manager was running it. He did nothing-just sat at the table-but I saw him give the nod."

"To Pyro and Splice?"

"Yes." She paused. Chloris lived at the crude end of society; she had seen much envy and anger in action. Even so, she shuddered when she talked about murder. "Pyro and Splice grabbed the Briton. It looked as if they had planned it. When their leader gave the signal they picked him straight up, turned him over, and dragged him off out the back. He must have known that he couldn't trust that group, but he stood no chance."

"Of course you couldn't see what went on out in the yard?"

"I didn't need to. They poked him in the well and left him there. Everyone heard about it the next day-anyway, I saw the way they laughed when they came back into the bar."

"Who took away the neck torque?"

"Pyro, I suppose. He is the swag-carrier."

"But you're not sure?"

"No, I didn't see for certain."

"Don't get clever, then," I warned. "Tell me only what you saw yourself. What happened next?"

"What do you think happened, darling? The bar emptied like magic. Everyone knows what reputation Pyro and Splice have. I lit out of there just ahead of the crowd. I wasn't going to be found spying on that lot. If I didn't know you, I'd be making sure I forgot about it. I know what's good for me!"

I sat quiet.

Chloris had absorbed my mood. "This is bad stuff."

"The whole of Londinium seems to be full of bad stuff. Chloris, I need to know about this man, your would-be manager-" "I knew you would ask."

"Sorry to be predictable."

"Ah, you don't change…" I had no idea what that meant. "He's a mystery" she said. "He turns up out of nowhere when he wants to have a go at us. We don't know where he's staying, though we know he came from Rome. He has Rome written all over him, and I don't mean the pretty parts. He never even says his name. He demands to take us over- and makes it very clear that he'll be very unpleasant if we keep saying no."

"Can you describe him?"

"He's a nonentity."

"That doesn't help, Chloris."

"No-could be any man! She giggled. "Don't ask me. I only look at men I might go to bed with, darling."

"Try, please."

"He's nothing, Falco. If you passed him in the Via Flaminia you wouldn't look twice at him."

"So how and why does this unobtrusive bastard get to worry you so much?"

"Silent threat. But I'll get him."

"Be careful. Leave this to the professionals. I'm here to go after these gangsters-and as a matter of fact, so is my old friend Petronius."

"Well, I'm chuffed to hear that," Chloris muttered derisively. "You remember Petro?"

"I remember the two of you, mucking about like idiots."

I smiled, but I was thinking hard. "Chloris, would you be prepared to make a statement about the killing?"

"Why not? For you, I can be a witness."

"I warn you, if you give us a formal deposition, it will be dangerous."

"Oh, you'll take care of me!" I would try.

"Is that it, darling?" she murmured. She sounded like a girl who had been let down by a man in bed.

"Unless you can think of anything else helpful?"

"No. So are you coming home with me now?"

"We've had our chat."

"When was chatting any fun?"

"Sorry. I have other things to do."

She stood up, not pushing it. "I won't intrude, then! Another time…"

Chloris could take a rebuff now, apparently. I remembered when my saying no would have been a challenge. But in those days she had known that I really wanted to be won over.

She marched off, swinging along the pavement with the easy stride of a trained athlete. I sat on for a moment.

Suddenly I had a witness. This was not all good news. I could arrest Pyro and Splice when I wanted, and interrogate the pair of them… That was all I could do. If they failed to crack, I was nowhere.

I had a witness, sure enough. At least she had described what happened that night. But I could never use her statement. Chloris was a gladiator-legally infamous. Information from her was even worse than information from a slave. If she made us a hundred statements, she could not appear in court. Any good lawyer, especially a crooked one, would have a fine time in his speech for the defense, if someone of her low calling-and female too-was our only source of evidence.

I stood up to leave. The proprietor must have sensed it; he had appeared behind his counter. I wondered how long he had been there, but he did not look like a man who had overheard the story Chloris told. "Anything else, sir?" he asked me deferentially.

"No thanks." I still had not touched my food. "The Cradle in the Tree," I said, looking up at his sign, where a yellow crib among a few spindly twigs made its faded point. "That's an unusual shop name!"

He just smiled and murmured, "It was called that when I took over."

Names given to foodshops were starting to be of some interest to me.

XXIX

Wanting to think, I sneaked back into the residence unobtrusively. Avoiding areas of the house where I might encounter people, I found my way to an upper reception room that had doors onto a long balcony over the formal garden. There I ensconced myself on a long, low sunbed in the shade. I could hear fountains below, and the occasional midday cheeps of hot little sparrows as they splashed in the half-evaporated fountain bowls. With a cool drink, this could have been a perfect way to pass the afternoon. Unfortunately, on my way up here I had not acquired a drink.

The day was so warm, I could have been in Rome. (If only!) You could feel the difference. Too much flower and tree pollen was thickening the air, the scent of August roses was rising from the garden below me, amid hints of the countryside close by-yet no scent of pines. Too much sense of a big river estuary, with seagulls sometimes calling as they scavenged around the moored ships. Anyone could tell that Londinium was a port. And it felt a foreign one.

The sunbed on which I was lying had dampness in its thin pallet. It had been left in storage until this heat wave was well established, as if people feared the good weather would be fleeting. Garden furniture needed to be mobile in Britain; when people moved out among the flowerbeds below, I could hear the legs of chairs scraping the gravel as they brought equipment and arranged themselves.

It was Maia and Aelia Camilla. I would have slipped indoors, but I could hear that they had been talking about how Maia found Petronius to tell him about his daughters' deaths. Perhaps that was what had improved their relationship; my sister and the procurator's wife were today gossiping more freely than before. Their voices rose clearly to where I was sitting. I refused to have a conscience about eavesdropping; they should have been more discreet.