There were no lights here either, but I could feel the familiar presence of my furniture and possessions. I could hear the breathing of Helena, of the unwanted mongrel who had adopted us, and the skip baby. Nothing else. Nothing more sinister. Everyone within these two rooms was safe. They had lived through the day even without me to guard them, and now I was, home.
I said quietly, 'It's me.'
The dog thumped its tail, but stayed under the table. The babe said nothing, but he could not have heard. Helena half roused herself as I climbed into bed, then came into my arms, warm and drowsy. We would not talk tonight. I stroked her hair to put her back to sleep again, and within a short period I drifted into sleep myself.
Out in the streets the foot patrols would be marching, on the search for fires and loiterers. Somewhere Petronius Longus also kept watch, hearing in the sharp October air endless rustles and creaks of evil at work, but never the certain footfall of the man he sought. In the restless pulse of the city lone thieves crept over windowsills and balconies, conspirators plotted, off-duty gangs drank and swore, lechers grabbed and fumbled, hijackers held up delivery carts, organised robbers ransacked mansions while bleeding porters lay bound in corridors and frightened householders hid under beds.
Somewhere, in all probability, Balbinus Pius was dreaming peacefully.
LVII
ONE DAY MIGHT be enough. It could certainly be enough to make me look a fool. If we watched the brothel all day and there was no discernible criminal activity, my name would be bog weed. Whether I wanted to skulk around longer looking for a chance to apprehend Gaius and Phlosis for annoying me at Ostia would be up to me. Martinus would curse me and storm off to tell the entire cohort what incompetent, aggravating blocks of wood informers were, and how he had been taken in.
On the other hand, if there was enough toing and froing of known members of the Balbinus gangs to suggest a link with his empire, I would be justified. Not a hero, but entitled to swank at the bathhouse. It would be a pleasant change.
Martinus and I arrived at dawn. We began by sitting in a doorway like runaway slaves. Later a sad thermopolium was opened by a creaky woman who spent ages dabbling around the floor with a flat-headed broom and a bucket of grey water. We watched her desultory efforts at wiping down counters, then she fidgeted about with her three shelves of cups and flagons, emptied some blackened pots into her counter holes, and stood a few amphorae crookedly against a wall.
We ambled up. We told her we were foxing – watching the streets for `opportunities', illegal ones being understood. She seemed neither surprised nor shocked. by this notion. Martinus engaged in brief negotiations, coins chinked into her apron pocket, and we were encouraged to park ourselves indoors on tall stools. There we could look as if we were picking at olives while we watched Plato's. We bought a dish of something in cold dark gravy. I left most of mine.
Things were very quiet to begin with. Despite my good intentions I ended up staying in the same bar as my. assistant
(stalwartly ignoring the fact that he seemed to assume I was helping him). The only other food stall was the one where Petro and I had sat when we first eyed up the brothel before visiting Lalage, a place where we had shown ourselves to be law-and-order men. Today I wanted to pass for ordinary street grime.
I could just about trust Martinus to blend in. He must have been forty, so older than Petronius, the chief he was longing to elbow aside. As far as I knew he had remained unmarried, and though he talked about women his relationships were quiet incidents in a fairly ordered life. He had straight brown hair, cut neatly across the forehead, heavily shaded jowls and a dark mole on one cheek. He seemed too boring to arouse comment.
As the morning passed we started to see typical activity – locals visiting Plato's routinely. It seemed a long time since I had groaned over this with Petro, though when I bothered to work out the time scale (needing mental entertainment) I realised it was only five days ago. In those five days Rome had descended from a city where you were wise to keep your eyes open into one of complete lawlessness.
`Here we go!' Martinus had spotted suspects. From the brothel emerged three figures; a thin man in sky-blue tunic with an intelligent face and a scroll dangling from his waist, and two companions, one plump, one pockmarked, both inconspicuous. We had not seen them going in that morning; they must have been at Plato's overnight.
`Know them?' I asked quietly.
`The one in blue is a Cicero.' I lifted an eyebrow. `A talker, Falco. He engages the attention of men drinking in wine bars, then keeps them laughing at his stories and jokes while the other two rob them.'
Martinus drew out a tablet, and stylus, then began making notes in firm square Latin lettering. As the day progressed, his writing was to shrink as the tablet rapidly filled up. To make us more unobtrusive, he later produced a pocket set of draughts, glass counters in black and red that he kept in a small leather bag. We set out a board, drawn in gravy on the marble. To look authentic we had to play for real, worse luck. I hate draughts. Martinus was an intelligent player who enjoyed his game. In fact he was so keen it would have been insulting to fake it, so I had to join in properly and attempt to match his standard.
`You should practise, Falco. This is a game of skill. It has parallels with investigation.' Martinus was one of those pretentious board-game philosophers. `You need mental agility, strength of will, powers of bluff, concentration
`And little glass balls,' I remarked.
The morning continued without much incident, though we did see a limping man whom we reckoned must be on the `wounded soldier' racket and another whom Martinus had once arrested for hooking cups off drink stall shelves. He ignored the Oily jug, our perch. At lunch time a whole parade of men who appeared to be legitimate customers were crowding to the brothel when my companion stayed his hand just at the moment of capturing my last viable counter. `Falco! There go a real couple of gangland educators!'
I didn't need him to point out the enforcers. Emerging from Plato's for a midday stroll were the Miller and Little Icarus. `I know them. Those are the pair who tried acting as rough masseurs to me. They must be living there.'
`Seeing two from the old Balbinus set-up gives us enough to mount a raid, Falco.'
`You sure? We have to be certain we land the big one.' `If he's there.'
`If he isn't there all the time, I reckon he comes. visiting.' Before we did anything rash I wanted to watch for an evening and night at least. Martinus made no attempt to demur. He was not stupid – far from it. The bastard was a champion draughts player.
In the afternoon three more seedy characters caught our attention as they emerged. We decided they were low-life. There was a flash type in punched sandals and a niello belt, a broken-nosed hearty who kept kicking kerbstones, and a weed who came out scratching his head as if a whole herd of little lodgers were bothering him. I felt itchy just looking.
`Fancy stretching your legs?' I asked. Martinus swept up his glass counters in an instant and we set off to trail the trio. We both had to go. One man can't follow three.
For a nicely brought-up Aventine boy it was a real eye-opener. First two of them joined the squash in an elbow joint, pretending to buy a' stuffed-vine-leaf lunch while they worked through the customers with a skill that left me gasping. When someone went to pay for a flagon too early, found his purse gone and caught on to them, out they ran like eels. The third man was loafing on the doorstep as if unconnected; he misdirected the robbed man, who pelted down the wrong street while our friends met up together and mooched off the other way. We never saw them cleaning out the purses they had lifted, but we noticed the empty pouches flipped into a cart.