Today's events brought me up sharp. Snooping round that warehouse displayed an unhealthy interest in events any sensible freedman would want to pretend he knew nothing about, and attacking me was a fool's game. I knew I could still not get on with my work with a clear mind, so I bestirred myself to make some more enquiries among the waifs we had not yet sent to the slave market.

'Who knows Barnabas?'

'What's in it for us?'

'Give me something else to think about and I may forget to beat you-'

Screwing facts out of these noodles was hard work. I gave up and hunted down Chrysosto, a Levantine secretary who would sell for a high price once we released him for auction, though at present I was using him to make up inventories.

Chrysosto was a limp bladder with seedy skin and a bleary-eyed look from poking his nose into crannies where a nose is best not applied. He was displaying a white tunic, much too short in the hem, though the legs he was so proud of were just the usual pale shanks that lurk in offices, finished off with hairy knobs for knees and crumpled sandals. You could knock in tent pegs with his hammertoes.

'Stop scribing a moment-what was special about Barnabas?'

'Oh, his honour and Barnabas grew up on the same farm.'

Under my gimlet gaze Chrysosto edged his skinny pins behind a table. He had probably started out with talent, but writing letters for a man with a slow brain and a short temper soon taught him to disguise his initiative.

'What's he like?'

'A Calabrian scruff.'

'Did you like him?'

'Not much.'

'Do you reckon he knew what your master was up to?'

'Barnabas reckoned he knew everything.'

This well-informed Calabrian had been made a free citizen, so in theory if he wanted to moonlight that was up to him. Since his patron was a traitor, I had originally sympathized if he thought skipping from home was a sensible move. Now I wondered if he had taken himself off because he was up to something slippery.

'Any idea why he should run away, Chrysosto? Was he very cut up about your master's death?'

'Probably, but no one saw him afterwards. He stayed in his room with the door bolted; he had his food left outside. None of us had ever got on with him, so no one tried to interfere. Even when he went to jail to ask for the body no one here knew. I only discovered he had organized the funeral when the undertaker brought a bill.'

'Did no one at all attend the cremation?'

'No one knew. But the ashes are there in the family mausoleum; I went to pay my respects yesterday. There's a new urn; alabaster-'

So being an aristocrat had protected the young Senator from being tumbled into a sewer. After he had died in prison his body had been released for expensive funeral rites, even though they were conducted by his freedman, alone and in secrecy.

'One more thing. When your master gave Barnabas his freedom, did he set him up in business-anything to do with importing grain, for instance?'

'Not as far as I know. All those two ever talked about were horses.'

By now Barnabas was causing me considerable alarm. My message through Tullia about his legacy might draw him back here if he wanted the cash. To reinforce it even if he stayed away I sent out a runner to scrawl up a bill in the Forum promising a modest reward for news of his whereabouts. That might entice some friendly citizen to hand him over to a member of the watch.

'What reward shall I put, Falco?'

'Try three sesterces; if someone's not very thirsty, that may buy his evening drink…'

Which reminded me, I was ready for one myself.

VI

There was no need to leave the house in search of refreshment. The man who had once lived here was called Gnaeus Atius Pertinax, and he had left behind everything for a comfortable life: there was plenty to drink, and I had ready access.

Because Pertinax was a traitor, his property was forfeit: snapped up by our jovial new Emperor. Some poor-quality farms in Calabria (like the one where he and Barnabas grew up) had already been seized. A few items that still belonged to his aged father were grudgingly returned: some lucrative tenement leases and a pair of handsome racehorses. There were a couple of ships too, though the Emperor was still debating whether to keep those for the state. Meanwhile we had confiscated this mansion in Rome, stuffed with highly desirable contents which Pertinax had grubbed together as such playboys do: through personal legacies, sharp efforts in trade, gifts from his friends, bribes from business colleagues, and successes at the racetrack where his judgement was excellent. The mansion of the Quirinal was being turned over by three imperial agents: Momus, Anacrites and me.

It had taken us nearly a fortnight. We were doing our best to enjoy this drudgery. Every night we recovered, lying in a banqueting room still faintly perfumed with sandalwood, on huge carved ivory couches with mattresses of fine-combed wool, working our way through what was left of the late owner's fifteen-year-old Alban wine. On one of his tripod tables we controlled a silver wine warmer, with a chamber for burning charcoal, a tray for ash, and a little tap for letting off our drink when it was perfectly mulled. Slim lampstands with triple lions' feet burned fine scented oil for us as we all tried to convince ourselves we should hate to live in luxury like this.

The mansion's summer dining room had been decorated by a talented fresco artist; spectacular views across a garden showed the Fall of Troy, but even the garden turned out to be minutely painted stucco on the indoor wall, complete with realistic peacocks being stalked by a tabby cat.

'Our late host's wines,' Anacrites declared, pretending to be a bumptious connoisseur (the sort who makes a lot of noise, but doesn't really know), 'are almost as tasty as his domestic scenery!'

Anacrites called himself a secretary; he was a spy. He had a tense, compact frame and a bland face, with unusual grey eyes and eyebrows so faint they were nearly invisible.

'Drink up then!' Momus chivvied rudely.

Momus was a typical slave overseer: shorn head to deter lice, wine gut, greasy belt, grubby chin, croaky voice from the diseases of his trade, and tough as an old nail stuck in wood. He was clearing out the personnel. He had evicted all the freedmen with little cash gifts to make them grateful, and was now batching up the slaves we had found crammed into barracks at the back of the building complex. The Senator had collected his own manicurists and hair-curlers, pastry chefs and saucemakers, bath slaves and bedroom slaves, dog-walkers and bird-tamers, a librarian, three accountants, harpists and singers, even a squadron of nippy young lads whose sole job was running out to place his racing bets. For a youngish man, with no family responsibilities, he had equipped himself splendidly.

'Making progress, Falco?' Momus asked, using a gilt perfume bowl as a spittoon. I got on well with Momus; he was crooked, filthy, slapdash and devious-a pleasantly clear-cut type.

'Cataloguing a consul's son's homely chattels is an education for a simple Aventine lad!' I saw Anacrites smile. Friends of mine had warned me that he had been poking into my background until he must have known what floor of which crumbling tenement I came from, and whether the room I was born in thirty years ago faced into the courtyard or over the street. He had certainly discovered whether I was as simple as I looked.

'I ask myself,' groaned Momus, 'why anyone with all this loot needed to risk it offending the Emperor?'

'Is that what he did?' I asked, innocently. We three spent more time watching each other than looking for conspirators. Momus, who was a dedicated eavesdropper, went unconvincingly to sleep. His splaytoed feet turned up at a perfect right angle in his black boots, which were rigid, the better to kick slaves.