`Put a blanket or something around him!' Petro's lip curled in distaste at the little black boy's fluttery skirt and bare, gilded chest. `Try and convince him we're not going to beat him up.'

`Growing soft, chief?'

`He's palpitating like a run-down leveret. We'll get nothing if he drops dead on us. Now let's do a regular search.'

We drew some conclusions from the search. Nonnius had been in bed. Boots were in the bedroom, thrown in different directions, and tunics lay on a stool. The bed stood askew, as if it had been jerked violently; its coverlet had fallen half on the floor. We reckoned he had been surprised and snatched while asleep, or at least only partly awake. Whether he was alive or dead when they took him from the house was debatable, though Petronius decided on him being still alive. There was only a small amount of blood on the bedclothes and the floor – not enough to have been caused by the mass of wounds we had seen on the body.

We should probably only ever find out where they had taken him if somebody confessed. We might never know. What had happened to him in the hour or so that followed his abduction we could all imagine clearly. Most of us preferred not to think about it.

XXXI

AS WE WERE leaving the Nonnius mansion someone else made the mistake of trying to arrive. We were keyed up in investigating mode, and surrounded him. He was a lean fellow in a smart white tunic, carrying a leather satchel.

`May we look in the bag, sir?' The man handed it over to Fusculus with a rather dry expression. It was full of tweezers, spatulas and stoneware medicine jars. `What's your name?'

`Alexander. I am the householder's doctor.'

We relaxed, but our humour was harsh. `Well he won't need you now!'

`The patient has suffered a fatal dose of being beaten up.' `Terminal knife wounds.'

`Irreversible death.'

`I see,' commented the doctor, no doubt thinking of his lost fees.

Petronius, who had not spoken to him before this, said, `I respect your relationship with your patient, but you will understand my enquiries are very serious. Did Nonnius say anything to you in confidence that might tell us who may have done this?' To judge from his careful phrasing, Petro had had trouble extracting information from doctors.

`I don't believe he did.'

`Well you are free to go then.'

`Thank you.'

Something about the man's manner was oddly restrained. He seemed hardly surprised to have lost his patient in this appalling way. Perhaps that was because he knew what line of business Nonnius had been in. Or perhaps there was another cause.

`There was something peculiar there,' I suggested, as we all walked back to the patrol house.

`He's a doctor,' Petro assured me calmly. `They're always peculiar.'

If I had not known him better I might have thought something in Petro's own manner seemed oddly restrained too. In view of my special investigation for Titus, I wanted Petronius to behave in ways I understood.

At the station house Petro's young assistant, Porcius, was in deep trouble with a woman. Luckily for him she was extremely old and not worth creating a fuss about. It was another stolen-bedcover case; somebody was going around with a hook on a stick targeting ancient dames who were too bent to chase after a thief. Porcius was trying to write a report for this one; we could see he would be helpless for the rest of the morning. unless rescued.

`See the clerk,' Petro told her curtly.

`The clerk's a dozy mule!' She must have been here before. `This nice young man is looking after me.'

Porcius was a new recruit. He was desperate to arrest as many wrongdoers as possible, but had no idea of how to dodge time wasters. Petro was unimpressed. `This nice young man has more important things to do.'

`See the clerk, please,' muttered Porcius, looking embarrassed.

Indoors we found a nasty scene: a large boulder was lying in the centre of the floor, along with the broken shutter it had been thrown through last night and the wreckage of a stool. Petro sighed, and said to me, `As you see, sometimes the locals chuck worse things at us than cabbages.'

`They poked some brassica stalks through the cell air hole too,' Porcius told him. `People round here do seem to think we're short of greens.'

`Well next time forget charitable deeds for grannies, and try to find out who hates the vigiles!'

`That's easy,' grinned Fusculus, rolling the boulder towards the door. `Everyone does.'

He roared for the foot patrol to stop counting their esparto mats in the firefighting equipment store and come to remove the debris from indoors.

Trying to regain Petro's approval, Porcius announced nervously, `One of the centurions had been sitting just where it landed, but luckily he'd just gone for a pee. It would have killed him otherwise.'

Petronius, who had merely been frowning with annoyance, checked slightly. `Right. This looks bad. Fusculus, put the word around the whole cohort: keep alert. We could be in for a dangerous time.'

Frowning, he turned into the small room he used for interrogations, only to find two of the foot patrol's most recent prisoners. One of them was shouting and throwing himself about, nearly throttling himself with the giant ring chained around his neck. The other stayed sullenly silent, a middle-class fire offender who was pretending this was all a nightmare from which a smart lawyer would extract him, probably with compensation for insult and slander. (I could tell from Petro's irritated expression the man was probably right.) With them, huddled on a bench, was the minute black slave from the Nonnius house.

Petro fumed at the chaos. `Shut up!' he bawled abruptly at the half-mad drunken man who was shouting; surprised, the fellow obeyed instantly. `Fusculus, start asking questions and see if we can let these prisoners go. Unless they're hard nuts, we need the space. Porcius, get Fusculus to tell you what we know happened to Nonnius Albius, then I want you to take this little lad somewhere quiet and make friends with him. If you can deal with indignant grannies, you can handle terrified tots. Win his confidence, then find out what he saw when his master was attacked. He's not arrested, but if he witnessed anything useful I'll want him put him somewhere very safe after he's talked.'

Since there was nowhere else private, Petro and I went out for a conference at the chophouse just across the street.

`So what do you think, Falco?'

I chewed a stuffed vine leaf, trying not to think about its consistency and taste. This job promised an endless parade of lukewarm, stand-up food taken squashed against the cracked counters of unhygienic foodshops. Petro did not come from a family that provided lunch baskets. When we were in the legions, he was always the one who never hid spare marching bread in his tunic, though he soon learned to pinch mine. I spat out a rough bit. `It looks as if the Emporium robbery may have been organised by Nonnius – and that somebody else has punished him rather publically for daring to think big.'

We both considered that, eating gloomily.

`Alternatively -' I offered.

Petro groaned. `Knowing you, I might have known the easy answer wasn't enough. Alternatively?'

`Nonnius had nothing to do with the raid. Some swine just thinks it would be convenient if the Emporium do was blamed on him to take the heat off them.'

`Bit stupid,' argued Petro. `So long as Nonnius was alive he was a suspect. Now when these others do a raid, they've no cover and I'll be sure it's them.'

`If you ever find out who they are.'

.'I love a chirpy optimist.'

`Helena thinks we should be looking at Lalage for the Emporium.'