`What's the score?'

I came clean. He was a professional and I respected that too much to mess him about. Anyway, offering to share a confidence always bothered him, which was pleasing enough. `Flaccida has had a big fight with her son-in-law, dopey Florius. She's bunked off from home. Dim little Milvia thinks the aqueduct killer has nabbed her mama – nonsense of course. The aqueduct killer likes his victims juicier; that's the one thing about him we do know.'

`So how far have you, got?' asked Rubella. `Is' it true a severed head washed up in the Cloaca yesterday?'

`Not quite what the excellent Etruscan engineers originally allowed for – yes, it's true. And a torso in the Tiber the same morning. To tell the truth we seem to be getting nowhere – and that's with full co-operation from all cohorts of the vigiles, and two separate investigations under way. The one for the Curator of the Aqueducts appears to have run into the ground; completely; I'm not sorry to hear it, since it's being led by the Chief Spy.'

Rubella snorted,, quietly. `You don't, like him.'

`I just don't approve of his methods, his attitude, or the fact that he's, allowed to pollute the earth… The team I'm on -Tactfully, I omitted to specify that I was working with Petronius, whom Rubella himself had suspended from duty. `My team does have a few leads. I'm just off to Tibur with the ex-Consul in charge. Frontinus do you know him?' No; one up to me.’ `Some missing-sections of corpses have apparently turned up. Maybe you can tell me, Rubella – what's the. set-up for law enforcement out there?'

`In Labium?' The tribune spoke of the countryside with a townsman's disgust. He was scathing about its local administration too: `I suppose the better villages may have someone like a duovir who organises a posse if they happen to be beset by particularly virulent chicken-rustlers.'

`In foreign provinces the army does the job.'

'Not in sacred Italy, Falco. We are a nation of free men; can't have soldiers giving orders – people might ignore them, and how would the poor lads feel? There's a cohort of the Urban Guard out at Ostia, but that's an exception because of the port.'

`Protecting the newly arrived corn supply,' I added. `There are Urbans at Puteoli too, for the same reason.'

Rubella looked annoyed at my knowing so much. `You won't find much regular policing anywhere else.'

`It stinks.'

`They claim there's no crime in the country.'

`And all their goats have human heads, and their horses can swim under the sea!'

`The Campagna's wild – and the worst thing about it is the people who live there. That's why you and I inhabit the big city, Falco, where nice friendly fellows in red tunics ensure we can sleep safe at night.'

This was a romantic view of the vigiles and their effectiveness, but he knew that.

I could cope with Latium. Unknown to Rubella I had spent half my childhood there. I knew the right way up to plant garlic. I knew that mushrooms grow nicely in cowpats, but best not to mention it when you serve them. And he was right; I preferred Rome.

I went back to my original enquiry. `I doubt if Flaccida has been abducted by a killer. He would have to be brave – and sharp, too. Petronius Longus would probably say we should suspect Florius of wanting her dead. He has his fingers in the gangs now, so he could try to, organise it. And he has a motive a mile high'. My own cynical theory is that Milvia herself would like to see her nagging parent out of the way -'

`How about Petro?' joked Rubella. `I always thought he was big, and quiet – and deep!'

`He'd like to see the back of the old hag, but he'd rather catch her, out in felony and throw her to a judge. Milvia's story is that she wants Petronius to find out where her darling mother is. If I can tell her the old bitch is safe, it helps keep the young girl away from Petro.'

`Is it true that somebody put him on his back?' Rubella usually knew the score of any draughts game on his patch.

`Florius heard about the affair. Flaccida told him- that's why they had their bust-up. He decided to make his presence felt at last.'

`Rome can do without Florius thinking big.' The thought of Florius flexing; his muscles was sufficient to worry Rubella. `Will it affect, Petro's attitude to the woman?'

We can only hope so'

`You don't sound optimistic.'

I had known Petro a long time. `Well, I do believe he wants his job back.'

`Funny way of showing it. I gave him an ultimatum, which he seems to have ignored.'

`And you know, that,' I pointed out gently, `because Petronius has been seen going to Milvia's house – by your men. Ever since the Balbinus trial you have had a full-time set of peepers following every move made by Flaccida. But then presumably when she flew away, your man tightened his boot-thongs and followed her to her new roost?'

`I've had to call them off,' Rubella complained. `She's too clever to give us any leads. It's too expensive watching her -and without Petronius Longus I'm seriously, short of manpower.'

`So did you call off the surveillance before she did her flit. Or have the Fates finally smiled on me for once?'

He enjoyed keeping me waiting. Then; he grinned. `They pull out at the end of today's shift.'

I lifted my feet from his table, carefully avoiding, his inkpot and sand tray. To add emphasis, I leant forwards and adjusted their positions slightly, aligning them neatly. I don't; know whether the bastard felt any gratitude for my restraint. But he did give me an address for Cornella Flaccida. He had taken herself an, apartment in the Vicus Statae, – below the Esquiline, near the Servian Walls. To reach, it I had to walk down past the apsidal end of the Circus, through places which had featured so strongly in our hunt for the aqueduct killer: past the Temple of the Sun and Moon, through the Street of the Three Altars, around the Temple of the Divine Claudius. I detoured via the Street of Honour and Virtue and called in hoping to see Marina; she was out. Knowing Marina, I was not surprised.

Flaccida's new doss was a second-floor spread in a clean apartment block. When her husband was convicted and his wealth forfeited to the Treasury, she would have been allowed to keep any money that she could prove was her own – her dowry, for instance, or any purely personal inheritance. So although she was claiming to be destitute, she had already set herself up with slaves, beaten black and blue as her staff always were, and basic furniture. The whole show had been decorated with co-ordinating frescos and the kind of Greek-style vases that are turned out in sets in Southern Italy for householders who just want to fill up space aesthetically without the bother of hunting in flea-markets. It looked as if Flaccida had established her bolthole some time previously. I bet neither Milvia nor Florius had ever been told it was here.

She was in. I could tell that because her vigiles tail was lurking in a street food shop opposite. Pretending I didn't know his presence was supposed to be a secret, I called out and waved to him. Flaccida probably knew he was there. If the surveillance was about to be lifted, blowing his cover could do no harm in any case.

I was allowed in, if only to prevent me alarming the neighbours. It was not a home where one was offered sesame cakes and mint tea. Just as well. I would have felt unsafe accepting anything into which poison could have been stirred.

To celebrate her freedom from the younger generation, the doughty dame must just have had her hair touched up, in not quite the same blonde as its previous shade. She lay sprawled on an ivory couch, wearing garments in clashing purple and deep crimson whose purchase must have made a large number of fullers and dyers extremely happy. When she sent this outfit to the laundry there was going to be an outcry from other customers whose clothes came back