Lindsey Davis - A dying light in Corduba

'Falco, everyone's talking about a body the Second Cohort found this morning.' Petro was in the Fourth Cohort of vigiles, lording it over the Aventine. The Second were his counterparts who covered the Esquiline district.

'Whose body's that?'

'Looked like a street attack; happened last night. Man had his head stove in, in a remarkably violent manner.' 'Rammed against a wall, perhaps?'

Petro appraised my suggestion. 'Sounds as if it could have been.'

'Know anybody friendly in the Second?'

'I thought you'd ask that,' Petro replied. We were already making headway on the long route back to the Esquiline.

The Second Cohort's guardhouse lies on the way out to the Tiburtina Gate, close to the old Embankment which carries the Julian Aqueduct. It is situated between the Gardens of Pallentian and the Gardens of Lamia and Maia. A bosky spot – much frequented by elderly grubby prostitutes and persons trying to sell love potions and fake spells. We burrowed in our cloaks, walked quickly, and discussed the races loudly to reassure ourselves.

The Second Cohort were in charge of the Third and Fifth regions: some routine squalor, but also several large mansions with tricky owners who thought that the vigiles existed solely to protect them while they annoyed everyone else. The Second patrolled steep hills, run-down gardens, a big chunk of palace (Nero's Golden House) and a prestigious public building site (Vespasian's huge new amphitheatre). They faced some headaches, but were bearing up like Stoics. Their enquiry team were a group of relaxed layabouts whom we found sitting on a bench working out their night-shift bonus pay. They had plenty of time to tell us about their interesting murder case, though perhaps less energy for actually solving it.

'Jo! He took a knock all right!'

'Bang on the knob?' Petro was doing the talking. 'Cracked open like a nut.'

'Know who he is?'

'Bit of a mystery man. Want a look at him?'

Lindsey Davis

A Dying Light in Corduba

'Maybe.' Petronius preferred not to be that kind of sightseer, until it was unavoidable. 'Can you show us the scene of the mugging?'

'Sure! Come and see the happy fellow first…' Neither of us wanted to. Blood is bad enough. Spilt brains we avoid.

Luckily the Second Cohort turned out to be an outfit with caring methods. While they waited for someone to come forward and claim the victim, they had slung his body in a sheet between two laundry poles, in the shed where they normally kept their fire engine. The pumping machine had been dragged out to the street where it was being admired by a large group of elderly men and small boys. Indoors, the corpse lay in a dim light. He had been neatly arranged and had his head in a bucket to contain leakage. The scene was one of respectful privacy.

I did not enjoy looking at the body. I hate becoming introspective. Life's bad enough without upsetting yourself drawing filthy parallels.

I had seen him before. I had met him briefly. I had talked to him – too briefly, perhaps. He was the cheerful lad at the dinner last night, the one in the oatmeal tunic who kept his own council in a diffident manner while watching the dancer Attractus had hired. He and I had later shared a joke, one I could not even now remember, as he helped me round up some slaves to shoulder my amphora of fish- pickle.

The victim was about my own age, build and body- weight. Before some thug split his skull apart he had been intelligent and pleasant; I had had the impression he lived in the same world as me. Although Anacrites had pretended not to know who he was, I wondered if that had been a lie. An uneasy feeling warned me the dead man's presence at the dinner would turn out to be relevant. He left the Palatine at the same time as me. He must have been killed very soon afterwards. Whoever attacked him may well have followed us both from the Palace. He went off alone; I had been escorted by two hefty slaves with my amphora.

A nagging premonition suggested that had I also been unaccompanied, the body in the firefighters' shed could well have been mine.

Petronius and I made a cursory survey of the corpse, trying to ignore the head damage. Once again we found no other significant wounds. But a stain on the sheet which was cradling the body made me lift his right leg. Behind the knee I discovered a torn flap of skin – little more than a scratch, though it had bled freely because of its location, and it must have stung when he acquired it.

'Petro, what do you make of that?'

'Snagged himself on something?'

'I don't know… Anacrites also had a cut leg for some reason.'

'You're scavenging, Falco. It's nothing.'

'You're the expert!' That always worried him.

The Second Cohort had ascertained that the dead man's name was Valentinus. It had only taken a few moments of asking around locally. He had rented lodgings on the Esquiline, just ten strides from where somebody had battered him to death.

The neighbour who identified the body had told the Second that Valentinus had lived alone. His occupation was unknown. He had gone out and about at different hours and quite often received callers of various kinds. He went to the baths, but avoided temples. He had never been any trouble to his neighbours. He gave no signs of enjoying himself much, nor had he ever been arrested by the vigiles. Until the night he died, he had always taken care of himself.

The Second led us to his apartment, which they had previously searched. It was a two-room fourth-floor lease in a dark tenement. Its furnishings were sparse but neat. The inner room held his bed, a couple of tunics dumped on a bench, his spare boots, and a few unrevealing personal items. The outer room contained a table, his smart red gloss food bowl, his winecup with a jocular message, his stylus and string-bound note tablet (clean of useful information), and a hook with his cloak and hat. Each room was lit by one high window, too far away to see out.

Petronius and I took a sombre look around while the Second Cohort members tried not to show that they resented us checking their work. We found nothing remarkable, nothing to identify the man or his occupation. Even so, to me the style of his living quarters was depressingly familiar.

Then, as we were all trooping out again, I stopped. Light from our lantern happened to fall on the doorpost outside the apartment. There, somebody some years ago had drawn a neat pictogram of a single human eye. I knew the faded symbol. It's a sign informers use.

Petro and I stared at each other. Looking more keenly for clues, I noticed that although the doorlock appeared innocuous its fine bronze lion-headed key, which the Second had taken from the body, showed that instead of the common pin-tumbler fastener that most people use, Valentinus had invested in a devious iron rotary lock, which would be difficult to pick or force without the proper key. Then, crouching near ground level, Petro spotted two tiny metal tacks, one knocked into the door itself, one in the frame. A classic tell-tale: tied between the tacks had been a human hair. It had been broken, presumably when the Second first entered.

'No offence, lads, but we'd better think about this again,' said Petro, looking virtuous.

He and I went back inside. Quietly and carefully we searched the room afresh, as if Valentinus had been a pal of ours. This time the Second watched us in fascination while we took the place apart.

Under the bed, lashed to its frame, we found a sword capable of quick release by pulling one end of a knot.

Although the windows looked out of reach, if you dragged the table to one, or climbed on the upended bench below the other, you could stretch outside and discover that somebody had banged in a couple of useful hooks. One had an amphora of good Setinum red wine hung up to warm in the sunlight; the other, through which a lithe man might just wriggle, had a stout rope neatly rolled up but long enough to reach a balcony roof on the storey below. Under most of the floorboards lurked nothing of interest, though we did find some letters from his family (parents and a cousin, who lived a few miles from Rome). We discovered no money. Like me, Valentinus probably kept a bankbox in the Forum, with its access number stored securely in his head.