`They knew how to get things done,' I agreed. `Maybe it is someone from the Balbinus organisation – maybe even Nonnius himself.'

`That's an interesting suggestion,' Rubella murmured, apparently taking no interest at all.

Suddenly I quite liked being given Nonnius to tackle. I said I would visit him at once; Fusculus offered to come with me and effect the introductions.

At the door I paused. Rubella was busy opening a new cone of sunflower seeds. `Tribune, a question. How much am I allowed to say to Nonnius?'

He looked back at me almost dreamily. `Anything you like.'

`He turned state evidence. Doesn't that mean he gets treated with circumspection?'

`He's a hardened criminal,' said Rubella. `He knows the numbers on the dice. Balbinus has been safely put away. Nonnius is no use to the state now, not unless he comes up with further evidence. If he helps you, you may feel it is appropriate to behave respectfully. If not, feel free to trample his toes.'

`Fine.' I could trample toes. I could even be respectful if the situation really warranted. I had one more question. It concerned another sensitive area. `Does Petronius know that I'm being given a wider brief than he suggested?'

`You can tell him when you see him,' said Marcus Rubella, like a man who really did not know he had just put the lid down on a very old friendship. He was still smiling benignly as I shut the door.

He could be one of those dark types who like to pretend they never lift a digit, while all the time they have a swift comprehension of events, a warm grasp of human relationships, and an incisive grip on their duties in public life. He could be loyal, trustworthy and intelligent.

On the other hand, he could be just as he appeared: a lazy carefree overpromoted swine.

XVII

NONNIUS LIVED IN the Twelfth region – about two streets from Helena Justina's father. Which proves that money can buy you respectable neighbours – or a house next door to criminals. It was no better than where I lived. The criminals in the Capena Gate sector just happened to be richer and more vicious than the ones in Fountain Court.

The senator was a millionaire; he had to be. This was the rough-and ready qualification for the job. Well, nobody needs exorbitant talents like judgement, or even a sense of honour, to vote in an assembly three times a month. But possessing a million is useful, I'm told, and the Camillus family lived comfortable lives. Helena's mother wore her semi-precious jasper necklace just to visit her manicurist.

Nonnius Albius had been chief rent-runner for a master criminal. The qualifications for his job were simple: persistence and a brutal temperament. For employing these over thirty years of violent activity he had earned the right to live in the Capena Gate area, just like a senator, and to own his own freehold, which in fact many a senator has mortgaged away. His house, which looked modest but was nothing of the kind, had a subdued portico, which carefully refrained from drawing attention to itself, where callers had to wait while a growling porter who had only peered at them through a fierce iron grille took news of their arrival indoors.

`It's like visiting a consul!' I marvelled.

Fusculus looked wry. `Except that Nonnius' bodyguards are better groomed and more polite than consuls' lictors tend to be.'

There were stone urns with well-watered laurel bushes just like those at Helena's father's abode. Clearly the topiary-tub supplier at the Capena Gate didn't care who his customers were.

`What did you make of Rubella?' queried Fusculus as we still tapped our boot heels in the unobtrusive portico while the porter went off to vet us. `A bit of a complicated character?'

`He has a secret sorrow.' `Oh! What's that, Falco?'

`How would I know? It's a secret.'

Petro's team had investigated too many inarticulate inadequates. None of his lads could spot a joke coming. `Oh, I thought you were in on something.'

`No,' I explained gently. `I just get a deep sexual thrill from speculating wildly about people I have only just met.' Fusculus gave me a nervous look.

Nonnius was, as everybody knew, a dying man. We could tell it was true because when we were let in we found him lying on a reading couch – but not reading – while he slowly ate a bowl of exquisite purple-bloomed plums. These were the hand-picked fruits, weeping unctuous amber, that are sent to console invalids by their deeply anxious friends. Perhaps thinking of your friends laying out silver by the purseload takes your mind off the pain.

The bowl they were in was a cracker too: a wide bronze comport two feet across, with three linked dolphins forming a handsome foot and with sea-horse handles. The bowl was far too heavy for a sick man to lift, so it was held for Nonnius by an even featured eight-year-old Mauretanian slave-boy in a very short, topless tunic with gold fringes all around the hem. The child had gilded nipples, and his eyes were elongated with kohl like a god on an Egyptian scarab. My mother wouldn't have taken him on even to scrub turnips.

Nonnius himself had a lean face with an aristocratically hooked nose, big ears and a scrawny neck. He could have modelled for a statue of a republican orator. In the old Roman manner he had features that could be called `full of character': pinched lips, and all the signs of a filthy temper if his dinner was late.

He was about sixty and pretty well bald. Despite being so poorly he had managed to shave; to make it more bearable his barber had aided the process with a precociously scented balsam. His tunic was plain white, but scrupulously clean. He wore no gems. His boots looked like old favourites. I mean, they looked as if they had already kicked in the kidneys of several hundred tardy payers, and were still greased daily in case they found a chance of kicking more. Everything about him said that if we annoyed him, the man would cheerfully kick us.

Fusculus introduced me. We had fixed a story: `Didius Falco has a roving commission, in a supervisory capacity, working alongside the public auditor.'

Nobody believed it, but that didn't matter.

`I'm sorry to learn you're off colour,' I mouthed sympathetically. `I may need to go through some figures eventually, but I'll try to limit the agony. I don't want to tire you -'

`You being funny?' Nonnius had a voice that sounded polite, until you noticed threads of a raw accent running through it. He had been brought up on the Tiber waterfront. Any semblance of culture was as inconguous as a butcher calmly discussing Heraclitus' theory of all things being in a state of eternal flux just as he cleavered the ribs of a dead ox. I knew one like that once; big ideas, but overprone to making up the weight with fat.

`I was told you had to take it easy…'

`Raiding Balbinus' accounts seems to have given me a new lease of life!' It could just have been the desperate jest of a genuine deathbed case. I was trying to decide if the bastard was really ill. Nonnius noticed, so he let out a pathetic cough. The exotic slave child rushed to wipe his brow for him. The tot was well trained in more than flirting his fringes, apparently.

`Is the Treasury man helping you?' I asked.

`Not a lot.' That sounded like most Treasury men. `Want to see him?' Nonnius appeared perfectly equable. 'I put him in a room of his own where he can play with the balls on his abacus to his heart's content.'

`No thanks. So what's the score so far?' I tossed at him unexpectedly.

He had it pat: `Two million, and still counting.'

I let out a low whistle. `That's a whole bunch of radishes!' He looked satisfied, but said nothing. `Very pleasant for you,' I prompted.

`If I can get at it. Balbinus tried to lock it in a cupboard out of reach.'