Lindsey Davis: Shadows in Bronze

What I hated most about working here was finding myself excluded from whatever was really going on. Scowling, I scuffed my boot heel on the fine Alexandrian floor; then I decided to make my presence felt. 'We may have a problem, sir.'

I mentioned to the Emperor how I had been attacked in the warehouse, how I tailed Barnabas, and that I thought this link with the Pertinax household could be significant.

The Chief Spy shifted. 'You never mentioned this, Falco!'

‘Sorry; slipped my mind.'

I enjoyed watching Anacrites torn between his irritation at me taking the initiative, and wanting to appear the kind of spy who was bound to have found out anyway. 'Just some crack-brained freedman thinking he owes his dead patron a gesture,' was his opinion, dismissing it.

'Could be,' I agreed. 'Bit I'd like to know whether anything in the Pertinax documentation has pointed to a gambit involving corn chandlery.'

'No,' Anacrites said crisply. 'And I won't commit expensive Palace resources on the word of a Transtiberina barmaid!'

'You have your methods, I'll have mine.'

'Which are?'

'Knowing that riverbank watering holes and Transtiberina wineshops can be the first places to catch the news!'

'Both of your methods are valid,' Vespasian broke in. 'That's why I'm employing you both!'

During our quarrel, the Emperor's brown eyes had grown very still. Anacrites looked embarrassed, but I was angry. Here we stood, discussing treason like trade figures from Cilicia or the price of Celtic beer, but Vespasian knew what I thought. He knew why. Six hours after I fumbled with that sagging corpse, I still had the stench of the dead man's body fat curdling my lungs. My hands seemed to reek still from handling his finger rings. His cadaverous face swam into my memory whenever I let myself relax. Today I had done the Empire no small favour, yet apparently I was only fit for disposals – work that was too sticky for manicured hands.

'If you're spending your time in wineshops, watch your liver!' warned Vespasian with his sardonic grin.

'No point,' I snapped. 'I mean, sir, there's no point me risking my health and innocence in cut-throat bars, collecting information no one will ever act upon!'

'What innocence? Patience, Falco. I'm reconciling the senate as my priority – and you're no diplomat!' I glared, but held my peace. Vespasian relaxed slightly. 'Can we lay hands on this fellow Barnabas?'

'I've arranged for him to see me at the Pertinax house, but I'm beginning to suspect he may not come. He's holed up near a tavern called the Setting Sun south of the Via Aurelia-'

A chamberlain broke into the room like a man who has had a good breakfast trotting out to the penny latrines.

‘Caesar! The Temple of Hercules Gaditanus is on fire!'

Anacrites began to move; Vespasian stopped him. ‘No. You get yourself down to the Transtiberina and apprehend this freedman. Put it to him plainly that the conspiracy has been broken up. Find out whether he knew anything, then let him go if you can – but make sure he grasps that stirring up any more sludge in the duckpond will not be well received.' I was suppressing a satirical vision of Vespasian as a great frog on a lily pad when he turned to me. ‘Falco can go fire watching.'

Arson's a dirty business; it does not require diplomacy.

I reached the Temple alone. Activity and solitude came like a breath of fresh air.

Whatever the crisis, I had to go alone-and on foot. I wore out my boots, but I was keeping my professional integrity intact.

Every time I paid my shoemender, integrity bothered me less.

The Little Temple of Hercules stood in the Aventine Sector, which was where I lived, so I was able to turn up like any local gawker who had spotted the flames on his way home from a bawdy-house and greeted this spectacle as his second treat of the night. It was a pitiful shrine. It had been poked in between a Syrian bakery and a knife-grinder's lockup booth. There were two worn steps where pigeons stopped to gossip, four front pillars, a warped wooden pediment, and a cranky red roof which bore abundant evidence that it was where the pigeons reassembled when they flew up off the steps.

Temples always seem to be burning down. Their building regulations must omit safety buckets and fire-fighting platforms, as if dedication to the gods brings its own insurance. But evidently the gods get bored guarding altars with unattended perpetual flames.

The fire was well away. There was a lively crowd. I pushed through to the front.

The Aventine vigilantes were leaning in neighbouring porticos while the blaze lit their faces with lurid red. They were a scarred-looking crew, though most had affectionate mothers and one or two could even tell you who their fathers were. Among them my old friend Petronius Longus, a broad, calm, square-browed officer with a baton through his belt, stood thoughtfully cradling his chin. He looked like a man you could drag into a corner for a chatter about women, life, and where to buy a hock of Spanish ham. He was captain of the watch, but we never let that interfere with being friends.

I squeezed in alongside. The heat felt strong enough to melt the marrow in our bones. We scanned the crowd in case there was a mad-eyed arsonist still lurking at the scene.

‘Didius Falco,' Petronius murmured, 'always first back into barracks, hogging the fire?' We had both done army service in the bitter north: five years in the Second Augustan Legion in Britain. We had spent half our time on the frontier, and the rest on forced marches or camped out in the field. When we came home we had both sworn we would never feel warm again. Petronius married; he decided it helped. Various eager young ladies had tried to assist me the same way, but I had fended them off.

'Been visiting your girlfriend?'

'Which?' I grinned. I knew which. For at least the past fortnight there had only been one. I set aside my vivid recollection of offending her this evening. 'What highly avoidable accident happened here, Petro?

'Usual fiasco. Temple acolytes off playing dice in a bar down the street; an incense burner left smouldering.'

'Casualties?'

'Doubt it; the doors are locked -' Petronius Longus glanced at me, saw from my face there was a reason for the question, then turned back to the temple with a heavy groan.

We were helpless. Even if his men butt those studded double doors with a battering ram, the interior would explode into a fireball. Flames were already flickering high on the roof. Black smoke with a worrying smell was gusting half-way to the river. Out here in the alley the heat was making our faces shine like glass. No one could survive inside.

The doors were still standing, and still locked, when the roof-timbers caved in.

Someone finally rooted out the fire brigade from a chophouse to douse the shell of the building with buckets. They had to find a working fountain first, and it was the usual ham-fisted effort when they did. Petronius had dispersed most of the crowd, though a few characters with fierce wives waiting at home hung on here for the peace. We hooked grappling irons onto one of the doors and dragged its scorched timbers outwards with an ear-splitting screech; a solidified torso, presumably human, lay huddled just inside. A professional priest who had just arrived told us the molten amulet stuck to the breastbone looked not unlike one Curtius Longinus, the conspirator recalled by Vespasian, always wore.

Longinus had been his house guest. The priest had dined with the man that evening; he turned away looking sick.

Petronius Longus yanked a leather curtain over the charred nugget of flesh. I let him start the questioning while I went on looking round. ‘Do you normally lock the doors at night?' he challenged, coughing in the smoke.