Lindsey Davis - Three Hands in The Fountain

'I understood they were assumed only to be slaves,' Statius, still resisting, said feebly.

There was a pause.

'They probably are,' agreed Petronius. His tone was dry. 'So this is all a waste of resources as well as a risk to public health.'

The engineer wisely made no reply. We could hear echoing in his silence all the mockery and obscenity that must have greeted each new ghastly discovery by the aqueduct workers over the years, and the groans of their superiors as they planned how to cover it up. Helena had been right: these deaths were seen as an inconvenience. Even the formal commission that might stop them was an irritation imposed unfairly from above.

Julius Frontinus glanced at Petro and me. 'Any further questions?' He was making it no secret that he had had enough of Statius and his noncommittal verbiage. We shook our heads.

As the engineer's party was leaving, I collared the assistant's chubby clerk. I had brought out a note-tablet and a stylus, and asked him for his name as if I had been deputed to take minutes of the meeting and needed to concoct the normal list of persons present to fill up my scroll. He confided his cognomen as if it were a state secret. 'And who's the assistant?'

'Bolanus.'

'Just in case I need to check that I've got his statistics correctly, where can I find Bolanus?'

The clerk reluctantly gave me directions. He must have been warned to be unhelpful, but clearly thought that if I did approach the assistant, Bolanus would put me off. Well, that was fine.

I went back and told Frontinus that I reckoned Bolanus might be a goer. I would seek him out in private and request his help. Petronius meanwhile would visit the City Prefect's oflice and our own contacts in the vigiles, to see if anything new had turned up on the latest dead girl. Looking rueful because neither of us seemed to need him, Frontinus could only spend his day busying himself with whatever ex-consuls do at home.

Presumably they potter about the same as the rest of us. But with more slaves to tidy up their half-eaten apple cores and to look for the tools and scrolls they put down somewhere and then can't find again.

The engineer, Statius, almost certainly lorded it over a neat spacious office full of charts he never consulted, comfortable folding chairs for visitors, and wine-warming apparatus for reviving his circulation if ever he was forced to climb up an aqueduct on a slightly chilly day. I could guess how often that happened.

Bolanus had a hutch. It was close to the Temple of Claudius, hard to find because it was crammed in a corner, against the Aqua Claudia's terminal reservoir. There was a reason for that: Bolanus had to be near his work. Bolanus, of course, was the person who did the work. I was pleased I had spotted it. I would be saving us a lot of pain.

I knew he would talk. He had so much to do he couldn't afford to fluff about. We were going to be imposing extra tasks whatever he did, so it was best to respond practically.

His tiny lean-to site but was a haven from the summer heat. A rope on a couple of bollards protected the occupant from unofficial sightseers. A mere gesture: anyone could step over it. Outside, ladders, lamps and wind-breaks were piled up, looking well used. The inside was also crammed with equipment: those special levels called chorobates, sighting rods, dioptra, gromas, a hodometer, a portable sundial, plumb bobs, pre-stretched and waxed measuring cords, set squares, dividers, compasses. A half-eaten bread roll stuffed with sliced meat perched on an unfurled skin that I could see was one of the charts which the lofty Statius had suggested were too confidential for us. Bolanus kept his openly on his table, ready to be consulted.

When I turned up he must have just arrived back himself. Workmen who had been waiting for his return were queuing outside patiently to present him with chits and variation orders. He asked me to wait while he dealt swiftly with those he could, promising others a site visit shortly. They went away looking as if they knew he would follow up. The queue was cleared well before I grew bored.

He was a short, wide, solid, shaven-headed man with stubby fingers and no neck. He wore a dark cerise tunic, the shade that always grows streaky in the wash, under a twisted leather belt that he should have thrown out five years ago. When he sat down he hoiked himself on to the stool awkwardly, as if his back troubled him. One of his brown eyes looked misty, but both were intelligent.

'I'm Falco.'

'Yes.' He remembered me. I like to think I make an impression, but plenty of people can talk to you for an hour, then if they see you in a different context they can't recollect you.

'I don't want to be a nuisance, Bolanus.'

'We all have our jobs to do.'

'Mind if I try to take this morning's conversation further?' Bolanus shrugged. 'Pull up a seat.'

I squatted on a spare stool while he took advantage of the occasion to finish his half-eaten salami roll. First he dug out a basket from under the table, flipped open a pristine cloth, and offered me a bite from a substantial picnic. That worried me. People who are polite to informers are usually hiding something. However, the tastiness of his snack convinced me to stop being cynical.

'Look, you know what the problem is… I paused to signal that the welcome bite was top quality. 'We have to find a maniac. One thing that's puzzling us is how he gets his relics into the water in the first place? Aren't the conduits mostly underground?'

'They do have access shafts for maintenance.'

'Like the sewers.' I knew all about those. I had disposed of a body down there myself. Helena's Uncle Publius.

'The sewers at least have an exit to the river, Falco. Anything in the aqueducts is bound to end up startling the public in a bath-house or a fountain. Does he want the things to be discovered?'

'Maybe he doesn't put the remains there deliberately. Maybe they arrive in the aqueducts by accident?'

'Seems more likely.' Bolanus bit off a huge mouthful with a hearty appetite. I waited while he chewed it. I felt he was a man I did not need to push. 'I've been thinking about this, Falco.'

I knew he would have done. He was practical, a problem-solver. Mysteries of all kinds would prey on his mind. His solution, if he proposed one, was liable to work. He was the kind of fellow I could use as a brother-in-law, instead of the deadbeats my sisters had actually wed. A man you could build a sun terrace with. A man who would drop in and mend your broken shutter if you were away on holiday.

'The aqueducts that run up on arcades have vaulted roofs, or occasionally slabs. It's to stop evaporation mainly. So you can't just throw up rubbish and hope it lands inside, Falco. There are access shafts, at two-hundred-and-forty-foot intervals. Anyone can find them, certainly; they are marked by the cippi…'

'The "gravestones"?'

'Right. Augustus had the bright idea of numbering all the shafts. We don't use his system, actually; it's easier to go by the nearest milestone on the road. That's how a work gang will be approaching the site, after all.'

'I don't expect Caesar Augustus worked in many gangs.'

Bolanus grimaced. 'Things might run a bit more smoothly if a few weeks in a labour force was part of the Senate career ladder.'

'Agreed. Give me a man who's had to get his hands dirty.'

'Anyway, finding the access points isn't difficult – but they're all stoppered with mighty plugs of stone that only a crane can lift. We don't need access as often as the sewer gaugs – and we have a running battle trying to stop the public fixing their own pipes and stealing water. So getting in hardly seems a possibility for this maniac of yours.'

Actually this was good news. 'All right. What's the scenario? We're not talking about unpremeditated domestic murder. This is some bastard who regularly, over a long period of time, has taken women with the intention of abusing them both alive and dead. Then he has to get rid of the evidence, in some way that doesn't point straight back to him. So when he kills a woman he chops her up to make the corpse easier to dispose of '