Cicurrus still refused to understand. `What can this have to do with Asinia?'

`We have to believe that this killer has abducted her. Asinia's ring was found in the terminal reservoir of the Aqua Claudia. I'm sorry to have to tell you, one of her hands was with it.'

`Only her hand? She could still be alive!' The man was desperate. He sprang at any shred of hope.

`You mustn't believe that!' Petro rasped. He was finding this almost unbearable. `Tell yourself she is dead, man. Tell yourself she died quickly, when she was first abducted three days ago. Believe she knew as little as possible. Tell yourself what was done to the corpse afterwards does not matter; because Asinia did not feel it. Then tell us anything you can

that will help us catch the man 'who killed your wife before he robs any other citizens of their womenfolk.'

Caius Cicurrus stared, at him. He could not go so fast. `Asinia is dead?'

`Yes, I'm afraid she must be.'

'But she was beautiful.' He was grappling, with the truth now. His voice rose'. 'Asinia was unlike other women – so sweet-natured, and our domestic life was so affectionate Oh, I cannot believe this. I feel she is going to come home any minute Tears began streaming down his face. He had accepted the truth at last. Now he had to learn to endure it: that might take him for ever. `Only her hand has been found? What will happen to the rest of her? What am I to do? How can I bury her?' He became wilder. `Where is her poor hand now?'

It was Frontinus who said, `Asinia's' hand is being embalmed. It will be returned to you in a locked casket. I beg of you, don't break the lock.'

We were all crushed by the thought that if other remains did appear, we would have to decide whether to return them to this devastated man piecemeal. Was he then to hold funerals for each limb separately, or collect them for one final burial? At what point was he supposed to decide that enough of his darling had been returned to him to justify a ceremony? When we found her torso, with her heart? Or her head What philosopher would tell him where the girl's sweet soul resided? When should his agony end?

There was no doubt his devotion to Asinia was, genuine. The next few weeks were likely to drive him into insanity. Nothing we could do would protect him from brooding over the horror of her last hours. We would say very little to him, but like us he would soon be imagining how the killer probably treated his victims.

Petronius left the room as if he were going to fetch the slave to attend to her master. First I could hear him speaking to her in a low voice. I knew he was discreetly checking the story of Asinia's last known movements, and probably taking the name and address of the female friend with whom she had stayed. He brought the girl in, and we took our leave.

Outside the apartment we paused for a moment in a group. The encounter had demoralised us all.

`A perfect housewife,' said Frontinus, grimly quoting the conventional memorials. `Modest, chaste and unquarrelsome. The best of women, she kept indoors and worked in wool.'

`Twenty years old, 'growled Petronius in despair.

`May the earth lie lightly upon her.' I completed the formula. Since we had yet to find what was left of Asinia, perhaps it never would.

TWENTY EIGHT

None of us could face doing any more that evening. Petro and I escorted the Consul to his house, where he returned my tunic after divesting himself on the doorstep. You could

tell he was upper class. A plebeian would shy off such eccentricity. I've known wrestlers who turned their backs to strip even in the suitable surroundings of the baths. Frontinus' own door porter looked alarmed, and he presumably was used to his master. We handed over the Consul into safe-keeping, and the porter winked to thank us for keeping straight faces.

Then Petro and I walked slowly back to Fountain Court. A few shops were reopening to catch the evening trade as the Circus emptied. All the streets seemed to contain men with sly

expressions, drunks, hustlers, slaves up to no good, and girls on the make. People talked too loudly. People barged us off the pavement, then when we took to the roadway others

knocked us into open drains. It was probably by accident, but anyway they didn't care. Instinctively we started shoving too.

This was the city at its worst. Maybe it was always like this, and I was just noticing it more tonight. Maybe the Games had brought out extra dross.

Upset by the interview with Cicurrus, we did not even pop into a winebar for a pre-dinner relaxer. Perhaps for once we should have done. We might have, missed a very unpleasant experience in Fountain Court. We were walking along glumly with our heads down, which gave us no time to make good our escape. Instead I laid a warning hand on Petro's arm, and he groaned loudly. The litter we had seen outside the laundry when we left earlier was still there. Its occupant had clearly been watching for our return.

She jumped out and publicly accosted us. However, this was not little light-footed, violet-clad Balbina Milvia. The litter must be a shared one, used by all the women of the Florius household. It had brought us a much more terrifying visitor than Petro's pert piece of dalliance: this was Milvia's mama.

Even before she flew at Petronius and started bawling, we could tell she was furious.

Cornella Flaccida had all the grace of a flying rhinoceros: big hands, fat feet, an irretrievably immodest mien. She was nicely decked, out, though. On the features of a bitter hag had been painted a mask of a fresh-faced maiden, newly risen from the foam of Paphos in a rainbow of scintillating spray. On a body that had indulged in long evenings of gorging wine-soaked heron wings were hung translucent silks from Cos and fabulous collars of granular gold filigree, all so light they fluttered and tinkled and assaulted the startled senses of tired men. The feet that stumped towards us wore pretty tinselled bootees. A devastating waft of balsam punched us in the throat.

Considering that when Balbinus Pius had been put away by Petronius all the gangster's property had been transferred to the state, it was amazing so much money could still be spent on his ferocious relict. On the other hand, Balbinus was a hard nut. He had made sure a good proportion of his worldly effects had been cunningly dumped out of official reach. Much of it had been placed in trust for Flaccida by calling it part of the dowry of her nifty offspring Milvia.

Mama was living with her daughter now: her own mansions had all been confiscated, so the two were thrust together in the far-from-dowdy abode of Milvia's husband Florius. All the vigiles cohorts were running books on how long the three could put up with each other. So far they were clasping hands as stickily as bee-keepers in the honeycomb season: it was the only way they could hang on to the cash. An accountant from the Treasury of Saturn checked the health of Milvia's marriage daily, because if she divorced Florius and her dowry reverted to her family, then the Emperor wanted it. This was one case where the encouragement-of-matrimony laws did not apply.

Since our new Emperor Vespasian had made a platform of supporting the quaint old-fashioned virtues of family life, it will be seen that if the amount of money he stood to grab ow. Milvia's divorce could persuade him to muffle his quaint old-fashioned conscience, then it must be very large indeed. Well, that's the joy of organised crime for you. It's astonishing more people, don't take it up.

No; actually, there was a reason why other people stayed honest: setting up as, a rival to Cornella Flaccida was just too frightening. Who wants to be parboiled, roasted, skewered through every orifice, and served up trussed in a three-cheese glaze with their internal organs lightly sauteed as a separate piquant relish?