Lindsey Davis: Shadows in Bronze

Back in the yard, squeezing in gulps of fresh air, we burned all we could; we even charred his shoes and belt. He wore finger rings. Frontinus screwed those off somehow; the gold band indicating middle rank, a giant emerald cameo, a signet ring, and two more, one with a woman's name. They could not be sold in case they reappeared; I would drop them into the Tiber later that day.

At last, looping a rope around the nearly naked corpse, we tugged it across a stretcher we had brought. I went to push him on with my toe, then had second thoughts.

The silent Praetorians kept the alley clear while Frontinus and I staggered along it to pitch our burden down a manhole into the Great Sewer. We listened; there was a splash at the bottom near the stone steps. The rats would come across him soon enough. When the next summer storm was draining from the Forum, anything that was left of him would be rolled into the river through the massive arch below the Aemilian Bridge, then either lodged up against the piles to frighten passing boatmen or carried on, to be nibbled clean by undiscerning fish in an unmarked, unknown resting place at sea.

The problem was disposed of – Rome would not give its missing citizen another thought.

We strode back; burned the stretcher; sluiced the warehouse floor; swabbed our hands, arms, legs and feet. I fetched a clean bucket of water, then we both washed again. I went out to empty the slops in the street.

Someone in a green cloak with the hood pulled up paused as he saw me alone by the gate. I nodded, avoiding his eyes.

He went on up the alley. A respectable citizen walking cheerfully, he continued about his business unaware of the grisly scene he had just missed.

In view of the weather, I did wonder why he was so heavily muffled; sometimes it seems as if everyone in Rome is sneaking up back alleys on some business that is best done in disguise.

I said I would lock up.

'We'll be off then!' Frontinus was taking his lads for a well-earned drink. He did not invite me to join them – and I was not surprised.

'Thanks for your help. I'll be seeing you, Julius-'

'Not if I see you first!'

Once they had gone I stood for a moment with a heavy heart. Now I was alone I had more time to notice things. In the yard my eye fell on an interesting stack which was buttressing the outer wall beneath a discreet covering of old hides. As an auctioneer's son I could never ignore any abandoned commodity which might be saleable; I strolled across.

Under the hides were a couple of sprightly spiders and numerous ingots of lead. The spiders were strangers but the ingots were old friends; the conspirators had intended using stolen silver to bribe their way into power. All the bars containing precious metal had been recovered by the Praetorians and carried off to the Temple of Saturn, but the thieves who smuggled the bullion out of the British mines had cheerfully cheated by sending the plotters large quantities of lead – useless for bribery. Evidently the lead had been left here for collection by an Imperial wagon train, all neatly stacked with military precision, each row at a perfect right angle to the one beneath. Lead ingots had some value to a man with the right contacts… I covered them up again, as an honest state servant should.

I left the gates open while I returned on my own to the manhole over the Great Sewer. Of all the foul corpses of failed entrepreneurs that must be littering Rome, this was the last I would have chosen to treat with such disrespect. Every traitor has a family, and I knew his. His nearest male relation, who should have conducted this funeral, was a senator whose daughter meant a very great deal to me. A typical Falco predicament: faced with a highly important family I was trying to impress, I had to demonstrate my good character by tipping their dead relative without ceremony down a public sewer…

Grumbling under my breath, I levered up the cover again, cast in a hasty handful of earth, then muttered the basic requiem: 'To the gods of the shades I send this soul…'

I flung down a copper for him to pay the ferryman, then hoped if Fortuna smiled on me that was the last I would hear of him.

No chance of that. The goddess of fortune only ever grimaces at me as if she had just shut her sacred finger in a door.

Back at the warehouse I kicked at our fire ashes, spreading them about the yard. I coiled the chains over one shoulder, ready to secure the gate. Just before leaving I strolled back inside one last time, my muscles braced under those heavy links.

Everywhere remained bathed in a murky miasma of cinnamon bark. Restless flies were continuing to wheel above the stain on the floor as if still in the presence of an undeparted soul. Motionless sacks of priceless oriental produce sagged in the shadows, filling the air with a dry sweet perfume that seemed to alter the very texture of my skin.

I turned to go. My eye caught a movement. A spasm of terror convulsed me, like a man who has seen a ghost. But I did not believe in ghosts. Out of the muted dimness a muffled figure tumbled straight at me.

He was real enough. He snatched up a barrel stave and swung at my head. He had his back to the light but I vaguely felt I knew him. There was no time to ask what his grievance was. I whirled round, slung the chains viciously against his ribs, then lost my footing and crashed to the floor on my right elbow and knee, dragged down by the weight I was carrying.

With luck I might have grabbed him. Luck has rarely been my ally. While I was flailing in armfuls of ironwork, the villain fled.

I had only been away at the manhole for a moment, but I should have been prepared. This was Rome; leave a treasure house unguarded for three seconds and some sneak thief was bound to clamber in.

I had not seen the man's face, though that sense of having recognized him dung persistently. The green hood pulled so securely round his head was unmistakable; the man I had seen while I was emptying the wash bucket. Cursing him, then myself, I limped out to the alley with blood trickling down my leg.

Scattered patches of sunlight threw up a piercing dazzle, while the dense shade was unnervingly cold. The passage at the back of the warehouse was barely three feet wide, with one entrance onto a filthy cut throat lane. The other way, a crook-shouldered curve hid its exit from view. Lining both sides were dank yards crammed with world-weary trolleys and piles of teetering kegs. Dirty ropes snaked into gaping doorways. Ferocious notices hung by a nail warned visitors away from gates that looked as if no one had opened them for ten years. Surveying this sour commercial hole it seemed impossible that a two-minute walk would bring you to the bright bustle of the Forum – this was Rome. As I said.

No one in sight. A pigeon fluttered on a roof then slipped in through a broken pantile. A gantry creaked once. Nothing else moved. Except my heart He could be anywhere. As I looked for him in one place, he would slip off another way. While I busied myself searching, he or some quite unconnected evildoer could jump out unexpectedly and bash in my curly head. If so, or if I fell through a rotting floor in one of these deserted stores, I might lie there undetected for days.

I hopped back. I used an old nail to spring back the teeth of the lock on the warehouse door. I checked the sun-baked yard. Using the military pincers Frontinus had brought, I reapplied the gate chains like a responsible person. Then I left.

The smell of the corpse had infiltrated my clothes. Unable to bear it any longer, I went home to change.

I lived in the Thirteenth Sector. In empty streets it took ten minutes, though at this time of day forcing myself through the crowds occupied three times that. The hubbub seemed worse than usual. I reached home feeling deafened and desperate.