Lindsey Davis - Nemesis

Everyone who might buy such junk had gone to their summer villas at Neapolis. There, many would be gazing at horrible statues my father had sold them on previous occasions, and thinking never again.

'It will work out,' Gornia assured me. 'Geminus said to hold off a bit…' He looked embarrassed. 'We ought to pay for them.'

Now I saw it. This was neither unexpected nor insurmountable: 'Daylight! No ready funds?'

Odd, that. There were plenty of funds, as I knew well. In fact I was looking for outgoings, to set against the inheritance tax.

'We had the collateral. We just couldn't pass it to the vendors. I went. I went down there with the cash myself. Geminus always sent me, because I look so ordinary,' Gornia told me endearingly. 'Nobody ever robs me on the road. But I couldn't find them.'

'His suppliers?'

'They vanished.' Gornia looked relieved to squeeze it out. 'Bit of a novelty, isn't it?'

My father had been in many scrapes. Sometimes debt featured, but he covered it eventually. His cash flow only faltered temporarily. He was good at what he did.

It was rare for anyone in Rome, and never Geminus, to try to pay a creditor but to fail. I was used to the other system: those with claims came forward at a run. Their invoices were immaculate. They brought their own strongboxes to take away their cash. I coughed up. They were happy. End of story.

I decided I had better look at these statues myself. Then I would seek out the suppliers. I was an informer; I should be able to track them down.

I knew many good reasons why people who owe money vanish. But when people who are owed payment disappear, it tends. to be because either they have grown old and confused – or they have quietly died. If Livia Primilla and Julius Modestus (those were their names) had passed away, fellow feeling made me want to help whatever poor heir needed to collect in this debt.

I just wanted to be a good citizen. But this was when the situation gently began tipping from straightforward into the kind of dark enquiry I was used to.

Modestus and Primilla lived at Antium, nearly thirty miles away. I dreaded announcing to Helena that I was going on a trip. The baby's death still gnawed. It was the wrong time to leave home. However, some god was on my side. Some deity with time on their hands in Olympus decided Falco needed help.

I entered my house with a cautious step. After working the key gently, I let the door swing to with care, glad no one was acting as door porter. I had the classic bearing of a guilty bastard slinking in and hoping to avoid notice. It was the ninth hour, evening, the period when busy men return, freshly bathed and ready for a good dinner. In houses all through Rome such men were about to have ructions with tired wives, layabout sons or indecent daughters.

Drawing upon six hundred years of a Roman's right to behave crassly, I flexed my shoulders. This house was where Pa had lived for twenty years but quite unlike the Janiculan spread. Crammed against the Aventine cliff on the Tiber's bank, our town house lacked the depth to allow a classic atrium with an open roof and vistas across peristyle gardens. Here, we lived vertically. I felt easy with that because I had grown up in the tall apartment blocks where the poor fester. We lived mainly upstairs because sometimes the river flooded in. Plain rooms off the corridors on the ground floor were non-domestic and silent at this hour. I walked across the empty entrance hall and went up.

Albia, my foster daughter, rushed down towards me. She was trying not to trip over the hem of a blue gown she thought particularly suited her. Her dark hair looked more fancifully arranged than usual, though with a lopsided tilt as if she had pinned it hastily herself. She burst out excitedly, 'Aulus has come home to Rome!'

Well, that could be good. Or not. He was a promising fellow. Still, she was too happy about his arrival. Something would have to be done. Helena was not up to it; this would be my problem.

Aulus Camillus Aelianus was Helena's brother, the elder of two. Though neither was a disaster, as pillars of the community this pair wobbled. Aulus once loathed me because I was an informer, but later saw sense. He was maturing; I liked to think he benefited from my patronage. Like his brother Quintus, he worked with me sometimes, when I felt strong enough for in-depth training of the hare-brained. Lately Aulus had been away studying law, first in Athens then Alexandria. This could either make him more useful to me, or give him a separate new career.

I was aware Albia and he had struck up a friendship. As a father who expected the worst, it made me glad Aulus was spending time abroad, since he was a senator's son and Albia was a foundling from Britain with a bleak history; they had no scope for romance, and anything else was unthinkable. On our recent family travels to Greece and to Egypt I had noticed Helena try to keep them apart, with limited success. Albia saw no problem. Aulus was something of a loner, and taking his time getting suitably married, so he liked having Albia to giggle with. He must know it could never go further. They were chums. It would pass. It had to.

'Aulus is here?'

'Come and see him!' Eyes bright, my innocent fosterling rushed ahead of me into the salon where we received visitors.

I detected a strained atmosphere at once.

Helena was sitting in a basket chair, her feet very neatly together on a footstool. She looked pale and weary. Our small daughters, Julia and Favonia, were lolling against her knees. Those scamps had been subdued since we lost the baby. Even at four and two, they had a good sense of trouble. Now Father was home but for once they did not hurl themselves upon me, shrieking. Their dark eyes came to me, with the open curiosity of children who recognised a crisis; my intelligent tots were watching closely what would happen now.

'Aulus!' Albia had cried out with joy too readily. He grinned, but it was sheepish. He was a poor actor. Albia's chum had come home looking indefinably hunted.

Albia tensed. She was very bright. I moved alongside and took her hand, like any fond father in company. But Albia was not like other people's daughters. She had come from the rowdy streets of Londinium, a harsh, remote city. Her Roman sophistication was a cloak she soon hurled off, immediately anyone upset her.

Seated on a couch, Aulus was a couple of years short of thirty, with a flop of dark hair, athletically built. Right beside him – when there were various other seats available, some more comfortable – perched a silent young woman. If there was trouble in the room, she was it. I kept tight hold of Albia.

Of foreign appearance, the young woman wore layers of expensive drapery in dark silk-shot linen. Her gold necklaces and ear-rings were rather formal for an unannounced visit to friends. Aulus must have brought her from Athens, but if she was Greek, she was not bearing gifts.

'Marcus!' Family gatherings were Helena Justina's strong point; she could direct bad-tempered relatives like a theatre producer getting an uncoordinated chorus into line. 'And Albia, my dear – here's a surprise.' Over our children's heads, her dark eyes sent me complicated messages. Without appearing to hurry, she began unhappily: 'Aulus has come back to Italy to settle down. He thinks he has learned enough; he wants to use his knowledge.' That, and his talent for upsetting everyone, I reckoned.

'So who's your new friend?' I asked him bluntly.

He cleared his throat. 'This is Hosidia.' He looked hopelessly at Albia.

'Hello, Hosidia.' I don't discriminate. I use the same brisk tone for tipsy barmaids showing their bosoms, hard-hearted females who have knifed their mothers, and Athenian dames who are looking down their nose as if they think I am the slave who cleans the silver. This Hosidia appeared to be costing up our metalware – the comport with the honey-glazed nutty titbits and the small but exquisite drinks tray. (Thanks to my father's perfect taste, our best service was small, but second to none.) If she had been under investigation, I would have put her on the suspects list. I really did not like the way she was assessing my pierce-patterned wine strainer.