FORTY ONE
When they flung, open the access hole we could hear water in the darkness some distance below. There was no ladder. There were not enough wading boots and, torches either. We had to wait for these to be fetched from a depot, while curious crowds gathered. People could tell something was happening.
`Whv aren't these bastards ever around when the killer comes to dump remains? Why don't they ever catch him at it?'
Swearing, Martinus got his men to organise a cordon. It failed to stop the ghouls from clogging up the west end of the Forum.
We were still waiting for our hoots when to my disgust Anacrites appeared. The Curator's office was near here. Some clown had been to notify him.
`Sod off, Anacrites. Your, chief is only responsible for aqueducts. Mine has a total remit.'
`I'm coming with you, Falco."
`You'll terrify the rats.'
`Rats, Falco?' Martinus became eager to stand back and let Anacrites represent him in this unpleasant enterprise.
I glanced at the sky, aware that if it rained the Cloaca would become a raging torrent and impossibly dangerous. 'Cloudless blue reassured me, just.
`Why didn't they just bring the remains to the surface? Martinus really did not want to go down there. Where I merely lacked enthusiasm, he was openly panicking.
`Julius Frontinus has given instructions that anything found in the system must be left in situ for us to inspect. I'll go. If there are any clues I'll bring, them back. You can take my, description of the layout. I'm a, good witness in court.
`I reckon I'll send for Petronius.'
`There's too many of you already,'' put in the gang leader of the sewer men. `I don't like taking strangers down."
'Don't worry me,' I muttered. If he was nervous, what chance for the rest of us:? `Listen, when Marcus Agrippa was in charge of the waterways, I thought he toured the entire sewer system by boat?'
`Bloody madman!' scoffed the gang leader. Well, that cheered me up.
Leather waders had arrived: thick clumsy soles and flapping thigh-high tops. A wooden ladder was produced but when they slung it over the edge, we could see it reached only halfway to the water; how deep that was at this point even the sewer men seemed not to know. We were being taken in near where the head was found, they themselves must have approached originally by some underground route, one that was reckoned too difficult for soft stylus-pushers like us.
A new length of ladder soon arrived, which was lashed on to the first with cords. The whole cockeyed artefact was dangled down the dark hole. It just reached the bottom, leaving no spare at the top. It-looked almost vertical. Anyone who deals with ladders will tell you that's fatal. A large man was posted up top to hang-on with a piece of ragged rope. He seemed happy; he knew he had the best job.
It was settled that I would go down, with Anacrites and one of Martinus lads who was keen for anything. There was no point forcing Martinus to venture into the burrow if he was nervous; we told him he was our watchman. If we were too long below he was to fetch help. The gang leader accepted this rather too readily, as if he thought something might well go wrong. He told us to cover our heads with hoods. We wrapped our faces in pieces of cloth; muffled hearing and heavy feet made everything worse.
We went one at a time. We had to launch ourselves into thin air above the manhole to find treads on the ladder. Once on, the whole thing bowed disturbingly and looked completely unsafe. The gang leader had gone first; as he was descending we saw the top part swing away from where it was lodged and he had to be pulled back by main force applied to the rope. He went a bit white, as he looked up anxiously from the dark shaft, but the fellow on the rope called out something encouraging and he carried on.
`You don't want to fall in,' Martinus counselled.
`Thanks,' I said.
It was my turn next. I managed not, to disgrace myself, though the treads were tiny rungs, too far apart to be comfortable. As soon as I started I could feel my thigh muscles protesting. With every step the whole flimsy ladder moved.
Anacrites hopped down after me, looking as if he had spent half his life on a wobbly ladder. A knock on the head had robbed him of both sensitivity and sense. Martinus' lad followed, and we stood carefully, in the pitch dark, waiting for the torches to be lowered down to us. I suppose I could have shoved Anacrites in the water. I was too preoccupied to think of it.
The air was chilly. Water – or water and other substances – rushed past our feet and ankles, feeling cold and giving a false sensation that our boots leaked. There was a tolerable, yet distinct, smell of sewage. We asked the gang leader whether bare-flamed pitch torches were safe if there might be gas down here; he replied cheerfully that there were not often accidents. Then he told us about one the week before.
When the torches came down we could see we were in a long, vaulted tunnel, over twice as high. as us. It was lined with cement and at the point where we had entered it the water out in the channel was easily shin-deep. In the centre the current raced, a fine tribute to gradient. In the shallows along the edges we. could see brown weed, wavering all in one direction as it was pulled by slower currents. Underfoot was, paved with slabs like a road but there was a great deal of detritus, sometimes rubble and rocks, sometimes sandy areas. The torchlight was not strong enough to let us see our feet properly. The gang leader told us to be careful how we trod. Immediately afterwards I stepped into a hole.
We waded along towards a bend in the tunnel. The water grew deeper and more worrying. We passed an inlet from a feeder channel, dry at present. We were deep under the Forum of the Romans. All this area had once been marsh, and was still natural wetland. The fine monuments above us raised their pediments to baking sun but had damp basements. Mosquitoes plagued the Senate, foreign visitors, lacking immunity, succumbed – to virulent fevers. Seven hundred years ago Etruscan engineers had shown our primitive ancestors how to drain the swamp between the Capitol and the Palatine – and here their work still stood. The Cloaca Maxima and its brother under the Circus kept the centre of Rome habitable and its institutions working. The Great Drain sucked down standing and surface water, the overflow from fountains and aqueducts, sewage and rainwater.'
Then last night some bastard had dragged up an access cover and chucked down a human head.
It was probably Asinia. Her skull had lodged on a sandbank, where a low beach of fine brown silt jutted into the shallow current.
The condition was too poor for even somebody who had known her to be certain, though some hair and facial flesh survived. Rats had been here in the night. I was prepared to make an identification despite that. There were other black women in Rome, but as far as I knew only one had disappeared a couple of weeks ago.
We could be fairly accurate about the timing: this skull was put into the Cloaca last night. We were told the public slaves with their baskets had worked their way downstream cleaning out the channel yesterday, and they saw nothing then. She must have been dumped just before or just after her torso was disposed of There was not enough depth of water in the Cloaca to have carried the torso down this way to the Tiber. Anyway, I remembered that it was found upstream of the outlet. It must have been thrown into the river direct, off the embankment or over the parapet of a bridge, the Aemilian probably:
So the head and body had been dumped separately. A distinct pattern was emerging the killer disposed of body parts in several different locations, even though it meant there was more chance of his being spotted doing it. He had wheels; last night he started out carrying at least the head and the body, plus maybe limbs we had not found yet. He could drop a parcel and run. On to another location, then quickly heave the next piece down a manhole or over a parapet. For year after year he had been doing this, learning to look so casual that any chance witnesses, thought nothing of it.