Helena shared my mood. `Besides, there would be no point in Marcus hanging around the Circus when he still has no idea who or what he should be looking for.

That sounded like most of the surveillance work I ever did.

NINETEEN

Petronius Longus was in an organising mood. His session with the Tiber boatmen had been as useless as I had prophesied, and he declared that we should abandon the pointless effort of wondering who was polluting the water supply. Petronius was going to sort out our business. (He was going to sort out me.) He would impose order. He would attract new work; he would plan our caseload; he would show me just how to generate wealth through blistering efficiency.

He spent a lot of time composing charts, while I plodded around the city delivering, court summonses. I brought in the meagre denarii, then Petro wrote them up in elaborate accounts systems. I was pleased to see him keeping out, of trouble.

Petronius seemed to be happy, though I was beginning to suspect he was covering something up even before I happened to pass by the vigiles' patrol: house and was hailed by Fusculus. 'Here, Falco; can't you keep that chief of ours occupied? He keeps moping around here getting in the way.'

`I thought he was either in our office causing havoc among my clients or out flirting.'

`Oh, he does that too – he pops in to see his honeycake when he finally leaves us in peace.'

`You're depressing me, Fusculus. No hope that he's dropped Milvia?'

`Well, if he had, done,' Fusculus told me cheerfully, `your clients would be safe; we'd have him back here permanently.'

`Don't flatter yourselves. Petronius loves the freelance life.'

`Oh, sure!' Fusculus laughed at me. `That's why he's' constantly nagging; Rubella for a reprieve.' `He doesn't get it, though. So how does Rubella, know that.

An hour later I was rapping on the huge bronze antelope knocker that summoned the door porter at the lavish home of Milvia and Florius.

Milvia is still live bait?'

`How does Rubella know anything?' Fusculus had a theory, of course. He always did. `Our trusty tribune stays in his lair and information flows through the atmosphere straight to him. He's supernatural.'

`No, he's human,' I said despondently. I knew how Rubella worked, and it was strictly professional. He wanted to make his name as a vigiles officer then move up to the refined ranks of the Urban Cohorts, maybe even go on to serve in the Praetorian Guard. His priorities never changed; he was after the big, criminals, whose capture would cause a flutter and win him promotion. `I bet he's keeping a full-time watcher on Milvia, and her exciting husband in case they revive the old gangs. Every time Petronius goes to the house he'll be logged.' -

Fusculus agreed in his usual comfortable way: `You're right. It's no secret, though the surveillance is concentrating on the old hag. Rubella reckons if the gangs do get reconvened, it will be by Flaccida.'

Milvia's mother. Still, Petro was no better off, because Cornella Flaccida lived with her daughter and son-in-law. She had been forced to move in with them when Petronius convicted her gangster husband, whose property had then been confiscated. One more reason to avoid tangling with the dainty piece, if Petro had had any sense. Milvia's father had been a nasty piece of work, but her mother was even more dangerous.

`So when,' demanded Fusculus in his cheery way, `can we expect you to have, a quiet word with Balbina Milvia, pretty floret of the underworld, and persuade her to leave our cherished chief alone?'

I groaned: `Why; do I always have to do the dirty work?' `Why did you become an informer, Falco?'

`Petronius is my oldest friend. I couldn't possibly go behind his back.'

`Of course not.' Fusculus grinned.

If I ever acquire slaves of my own, they will definitely not include a door porter. Who wants a lazy, bristle-chinned, rat-arsed piece of insolence littering up the hall and insulting polite visitors – assuming he can bring himself to let them in at all? In the quest for suspects an informer spends more time than most people testing out that despicable race, and I had learned to expect to lose my temper before I was admitted to any house of status.

Milvia's establishment was worse than most in fact. She kept not merely the usual snide youth who only wanted to get back to the game of Soldiers he was playing against the underchef, but a midget ex-gangster called Little Icarus whom I had last seen being pulverised, by the vigiles in a battle royal in a notorious brothel, during which his close crony, the Miller had had both feet cut off at the ankles by a rampaging magistrate's lictor who, didn't care' what he did with his ceremonial axe. Little Icarus and the Miller were murderous thugs. If Milvia and Florius were pretending to be nice middle-class people they ought to employ different staff. Apparently they were no longer even pretending:

Little Icarus was rude to me before he remembered who I was. Afterwards he looked outraged, and as if he was planning to butt me in the privates (as far up as he could reach). When he was installed as Milvia's Janus someone had stripped him of his weapons; maybe that was her mother's notion of house-training. The fact that a gangster's enforcer was the doorstop here said everything about what kind of house this was. The place looked pretty. There were standard roses in stone tubs flanking the door and good copies of Greek statues dotted around the interior atrium. But every time I came here the skin on the back of my neck crawled. I wished I had told somebody – anybody – that I was coming. By then it was too late; I had barged my way inside.

Milvia seemed wildly excited to see me. It was, not because f my charm

Not for the first time I found myself wondering, whatever possessed Petro to involve himself with miniature puppets like this: all big trusting eyes and piping little voices, and probably just as deceitful under the heartfelt innocence as the bold, bad girls I once fell for myself. Balbina Milvia was a priceless specimen. She had a coronet of dark ringlets held up by indecent wreaths of gold, a tightly trussed bosom peeking from swathes of rich gauze, tiny feet in sparkly sandals – and an anklet, needless to say. Snake bracelets with real rubies for eyes gripped the pale skin of her delicate arms. Whole racks of filigree rings weighed down her minute fingers. Everything about her was so petite and glittery I felt like a blundering brute. But the truth was, the glitter covered dirt. Milvia could no longer: pretend not to know that her finery; was financed by theft, extortion, and organised gang violence. I knew it too. She gave me a bad,; metallic taste in the mouth.

The provocative bundle simpering so sweetly, had been spawned by parents from Hades, too. Her father had been Balbinus Pius, a widescale, wholesale villain who had terrorised the Aventine for years. I wondered if chittery chattery Milvia realised – as she ordered mint tea and honeyed dates that I was the man who had stabbed a sword into her father then left his dead body to be consumed in a raging house fire. Her mother must know Cornella Flaccida knew everything. That was how she had managed to take over the criminal empire her, husband hadd left behind. And don't suppose she wept too long after he vanished from society. The only surprise was that she never sent, me a huge reward, for killing him and putting her in charge.

`How is your darling mama?' I asked Milvia." `As well as can be expected. She has been widowed, you know.'

`That's, tragic.'`She's heartbroken. 'I tell her the best way to endure it is to keep herself occupied.'