Lindsey Davis - Time to Depart

'Past history?' I asked, giving nothing away. If a client paid I would look up birth certificates or wills, but it was not my favourite activity.

'You have skills we should be using.' I noticed his dismissive tone. I had plenty of skills available. Informing needs rugged persistence, intelligence, intuition and hard feet. 'Attention to detail,' Rubella selected.

'Oh dear. I feel like a rather plain barmaid when offered as a chat-up line, "I like you, you're different from the other girls…" '

Rubella stared at me. Apparently he had as much sense of humour as a centipede. He couldn't take an interruption either. 'Petro doesn't agree, but I think we should send you to meet Nonnius.'

'The nark who used to work with Balbinus? The rent-collector whose testimony put the big rissole away?'

'We have an excuse to intervene. The man is involved with tracing Balbinus' assets – '

'Oh I'm thrilled!' I was annoyed. I let it show. 'So while there's juicy work on the streets, I'm to be sitting with an abacus playing at audits!'

'No. There already is an auditor.' He had failed to notice I was ready to explode. 'A priest from the Temple of Saturn is representing the state's interest.'

He could represent the Establishment on this enquiry too, if blinking at profit-and-loss columns was supposed to be my fate. 'I can contribute something more useful than spotting a few dodgy figures on a balance sheet!'

'I hope so! You were assigned to us with a reputation, Falco. You'll want to sustain the myth.' Rubella was kniling now. He could. All he had to do was munch endless seeds in his oflicial throne of office while minions scurried in the dust. He knew he had riled me; he was openly enjoying it. 'Do I detect a problem with rank? I bet when you were in the army you hated your centurion!'

'I don't expect he liked me much either.' Aware of the goad, I came under control at once. Maybe he was trying to pack me back to the Palace with a complaint that I was uncooperative. If he imagined he could shed me before we had started, tough. I wasn't intending to play.

Rubella walked away from the fight. Barely pausing, he reiterated, 'Past history, yes. If we believe that the gangsters who robbed the Emporium have dropped into a hole that formed after Balbinus was removed, maybe we should have a look at what existed before the hole.'

The man made sense. My mind leapt, and I threw in quickly: 'Whoever ploughed the Emporium was lined up and waiting to go. Balbinus had only taken ship the night before. Someone could hardly wait to announce there was a new criminal regime.'

'They were effective,' Rubella commented. His manner was restrained. He looked like a cook who hopes the pudding will get stirred if he just stands gazing at the bowl.

'They knew how to get things done,' I agreed. 'Maybe it is someone from the Balbinus organisation – maybe even Nonnius himself.'

'That's an interesting suggestion,' Rubella murmured, apparently taking no interest at all.

Suddenly I quite liked being given Nonnius to tackle. I said I would visit him at once; Fusculus offered to come with me and effect the introductions.

At the door I paused. Rubella was busy opening a new cone of sunflower seeds. 'Tribune, a question. How much am I allowed to say to Nonnius?'

He looked back at me almost dreamily. 'Anything you like.'

'He turned state evidence. Doesn't that mean he gets treated with circumspection?'

'He's a hardened criminal,' said Rubella. 'He knows the numbers on the dice. Balbinus has been safely put away. Nonnius is no use to the state now, not unless he comes up with further evidence. If he helps you, you may feel it is appropriate to behave respectfully. If not, feel free to trample his toes.'

'Fine.' I could trample toes. I could even be respectful if the situation really warranted. I had one more question. It concerned mother sensitive area. 'Does Petronius know that I'm being given a wider brief than he suggested?'

'You can tell him when you see him,' said Marcus Rubella, like a man who really did not know he had just put the lid down on a very old friendship. He was still smiling benignly as I shut the door.

He could be one of those dark types who like to pretend they never lift a digit, while all the time they have a swift comprehension of events, a warm grasp of human relationships, and an incisive grip on their duties in public life. He could be loyal, trustwotthy and intelligent.

On the other hand, he could be just as he appeared: a lazy, carefree, overpromoted swine.

Nonnius lived in the Twelfth region – about two streets from Helena Justina's father. Which proves that money can buy you respectable neighbours – or a house next door to criminals. It was no better than where I lived. The criminals in the Capena Gate sector just happened to be richer and more vicious than the ones in Fountain Court.

The senator was a millionaire; he had to be. This was the rough-and-ready qualification for the job. Well, nobody needs exorbitant talents like judgement, or even a sense of honour, to vote in an assembly three times a month. But possessing a million is useful, I'm told, and the Camillus family lived comfortable lives. Helena's mother wore her semiprecious jasper necklace just to visit her manicurist.

Nonnius Albius had been chief rent-runner for a master criminal. The qualifications for his job were simple: persistence and a brutal temperament. For employing these over thirty years of violent activity he had earned the right to live in the Capena Gate area, just like a senator, and to own his own freehold, which in fact many a senator has mortgaged away. His house, which looked modest but was nothing of the kind, had a subdued portico, which carefully refrained from drawing attention to itself, where callers had to wait while a growling porter who had only peered at them through a fierce iron grille took news of their arrival indoors.

'It's like visiting a consul!' I marvelled.

Fusculus looked wry. 'Except that Nonnius' bodyguards are better groomed and more polite than consuls' lictors tend to be.'

There were stone urns with well-watered laurel bushes just like those at Helena's father's abode. Clearly the topiary-tub supplier at the Capena Gate didn't care who his customers were.

'What did you make of Rubella?' queried Fusculus as we still tapped our boot heels in the unobtrusive portico while the porter went off to vet us. 'A bit of a complicated character?'

'He has a secret sorrow.'

'Oh! What's that, Falco?'

'How would I know? It's a secret.'

Petro's team had investigated too many inarticulate inadequates. None of his lads could spot a joke coming. 'Oh, I thought you were in on something.'

'No,' I explained gently. 'I just get a deep sexual thrill from speculating wildly about people I have only just met.' Fusculus gave me a nervous look.

Nonnius was, as everybody knew, a dying man. We could tell it was true because when we were let in we found him lying on a reading couch -but not reading- while he slowly ate a bowl of exquisite purple-bloomed plums. These were the handpicked fruits, weeping unctuous amber, that are sent to console invalids by their deeply anxious friends. Perhaps thinking of your friends laying out silver by the purseload takes your mind off the pain.

The bowl they were in was a cracker too: a wide bronze comport two feet across, with three linked dolphins forming a handsome foot and with sea-horse handles. The bowl was far too heavy for a sick man to lift, so it was held for Nonnius by an even-featured eight-year-old Mauretanian slave-boy in a very short, topless tunic with gold fringes all around the hem. The child had gilded nipples, and his eyes were elongated with kohl like a god on an Egyptian scarab. My mother wouldn't have taken him on even to strut turnips.