He regretted that Veleda had overheard details of her fate from a visitor. (Of course this indicated that visitors had been allowed to gawp at her.) If he or his staff could assist me in my investigation of her disappearance, they would do so, but on the whole, Labeo would prefer to forget the whole ghastly incident – insofar as that was possible. His wife would never get over it. The entire family would be forced to remember Veleda for the rest of their lives. There were some odd circumstances, Laeta had warned me. Ganna had said nothing, but I had sensed her keeping things back. I had a grim feeling. 'What happened, sir?'

Sometimes interviewees waffle; sometimes they conceal the truth. Sometimes they just don't know how to tell a story straightforwardly. Quadrumatus Labeo was an exception. He wasted neither my time nor his. His manner was restrained, but his voice was tight: 'When Veleda escaped, she murdered my brother-in-law. There is no doubt she was responsible. His decapitated body was lying in an enormous pool of blood; the slave who was first on the scene has had a mental breakdown. My wife then found her brother's severed head in the atrium pool.'

Well, that explained the funereal cypress trees. And I could see why Laeta and Ganna had omitted this detail.

VII

I had walked through the atrium when I arrived, but now I knew it was a crime scene I asked Quadrumatus Labeo to show me again. While we stood on the marble-clad edge of a twenty-foot basin of water, I took out my note-tablet and stylus. I sketched the scene and indicated with an arrow where the head was found. Behind me, the Lusitanian porter ogled from the narrow, curtained corridor that led in from the entrance door; seeing his master, the lanky creep busied himself looking officious. Ahead, beyond the pool and the square spacious hall with its scatter of plinths bearing pompous fat-faced busts, I could see an enclosed garden. Clipped box globes and a fountain in the form of a clam shell. Two stone doves drank from the shell. A real dove currently perched on one of the stone ones, cooing for crumbs. Classic.

Not many beauteous patrician atria have severed human heads staring up from their water features. The head was gone now, but I could not help imagining it. 'When did it happen?' 'Ten days ago.' 'Ten days?' Quadrumatus looked abashed momentarily, then became petulant. 'I was not willing to have strangers barging about my home, upsetting my family even further, until we had gone through the nine days of formal mourning. I am sure you understand that.'

I understood all right. Veleda had now been on the run for too long. The trail, if I could ever even find it, would be stone cold. This was why Laeta hadn't told me about the murder. I would have spurned the job. 'I'll be discreet.' My reply was curt. At my feet, clear water lapped almost imperceptibly against black and white marble. The atrium pool, peaceful beneath a classic square rain-hole up in the elegant roof, contained a small base upon which danced a floral female deity, in bronze, about a foot and a half high. She looked cute, but I knew my father would have said it was a bad statue. The drapery was too static to be interesting, and the flowers were badly moulded.

'We had to drain the cistern below completely, afterwards,' complained the senator, talking of a water storage basin that must be fed from the atrium pool. His voice was low. 'None of my staff wanted to volunteer… I had to supervise closely in person. I needed to be sure it was done thoroughly.'

I was still angry, so I said, 'You wouldn't want to end up drinking your brother-in-law's gore.' Quadrumatus shot me a swift look, but did not rebuke me. Perhaps he realised the position on the ten-day delay. With his rank, he must have been an army officer and he would have held civil posts where he needed to handle crises. Now he ran who knows what kind of property portfolio, with who knows how many interlinked commercial businesses. I could tell from his neat, calmly behaved slaves, he had basic efficiency. When you are dealing with an idiot, you see it in his staff's expressions. 'Was any weapon found?' 'No. We assume she took it with her.' 'Did Veleda come here with companions?' 'A girl- Ganna.' 'Yes, I know about her. No one else? And did the priestess have any visitors while she stayed here?'

'My orders forbade that.' Did he mean the orders he had issued, or orders that had been issued to him by the Palace? Both, I hoped. 'Her presence was, as I am sure you know, Falco, a state secret. I only agreed to give her houseroom on that basis; I could not have tolerated disruption and public curiosity. We are a very private family. But to my knowledge, nobody attempted to see her.' 'And tell me about your brother-in-law, please.' 'Sextus Gratianus Scaeva, my wife's brother. He lived here with us. He was a young man of exceptional promise -' Inevitably. I had yet to meet a senator who described his relatives in any but glowing terms especially ones who were safely dead. Given that most relatives of senators are talentless buffoons, a cynic might wonder. 'And before Gratianus Scaeva died so tragically, what were his connections with Veleda?'

'He barely met her. We held a couple of formal family dinners to which the woman was invited as a courtesy; she was introduced to him. That's all.' 'No infatuation on one side or the other, a flirtation that you might have been unaware of at the time?' 'Certainly not. Scaeva was a man of spirit, but we could always rely on him for proper behaviour.'

I wondered. The Veleda I remembered glowed with lustrous assurance. We had looked at her and gulped. It was more than a queenly figure and pale gold hair. To win the trust of suspicious, belligerent tribesmen took special qualities. Veleda made the Bructeri believe fighting Rome was their only destiny; moreover, she persuaded them they had chosen this for themselves. She used strength of mind and strength of purpose. She was cloaked in an aura that went way beyond the fake mystery of most fortune-tellers and charlatans. She was brilliant, enthralling – and, when I met her, she had been desperate for intelligent male conversation. If she had been a prisoner for months, she would have been desperate again.

Veleda had been quick to share her thoughts and dreams with a 'promising young man' when we provided one. The young man I saw vanish up her tower with her had cast aside 'proper behaviour' without thinking twice. I did warn him to watch himself, but he rushed at the chance to be close to her.

Afterwards, Justinus had carried the pain of leaving Veleda behind for five years, and I saw no reason to think he would ever be free of her. So had Scaeva been captured in the same subtle spider's web? Quadrumatus Labeo had finished with me, whether or not I had finished with him. His dream interpreter had arrived. 'Nightmares since the murder?' The senator looked at me as if I was cracked. 'Such consultations aid rational thinking. My man calls daily.'

So the dream therapist governed his every act. I kept my gaze neutral. 'And did you consult him about whether to allow Veleda to stay here?'

His expression sharpened. 'I assure you, Falco! I maintained scrupulous security.' I took that as an admission. The dream therapist had a cold. He was wiping his nose on the sleeve of his star-spattered knee-length tunic as he brushed past me, heading after his dignified client to the inner sanctum. We were not introduced. I would know him again, though. He looked straight from the Chaldees, right down to the long hooked nose, peculiar cloth head-dress and air of having caught a disease from over-friendly relations with his camel. As exotic enhancement, he wore soft felt slippers with curly toes that had foully moulded themselves to the shape of his feet; he was a martyr to bunions, by the look of it.