Lindsey Davis - JUPITER MYTH

Waterfronts have a special seediness. I buffed one shin against the other, trying to deter small, unbelievably persistent flies. A haze hung over the distant marshes. Here everything was desiccated by the heat wave, but the river had patches of rainbow oiliness, in which ancient rubbish floated among greasy bubbles. In what seemed to be dead water, a log end thumped against the piles. A slow tidal current was carrying debris upriver. If a bloated corpse had suddenly broken the surface, I would not have been surprised.

No such thoughts troubled the customs officer. In his time he had probably fished out floaters-drowned bodies-but he remained as perky as they come. He operated out of a customs house near one of the ferry landings, a porticoed stone building that would stand at the bridgehead once the bridge was built. His office was crammed with dockets and note tablets. Despite the chaotic appearances, whenever someone came to register a cargo and pay their import tax, they were dealt with calmly and speedily. The clutter was under control. A young cashier presided over boxes of different currencies, working out the tax percentage and taking the money with panache.

Lulled by unaccustomed sunshine, the officer had basked too much without his tunic. He was a big fellow, running to fat. His rolling flesh had originally been pallid, as though he was a northerner by birth; now it was striped with raw pink sunburn. He winced and moved stiffly, but took his punishment philosophically.

"You need to organize some shade," I warned.

"Oh, I like to enjoy the sun while I can." He eyed me up. He could tell I was not nautical. Well, I hoped he could. I do have standards.

"Name's Falco. I'm looking for my good friend Petronius Longus. Somebody said he was seen down here yesterday, talking to you." There was no reaction, so I carefully described Petro. Still nothing. "I'm disappointed then." The customs officer steadily blanked me. Nothing for it: "He's an elusive character. I bet he told you, 'If anyone comes asking for me, say nowt.'" I winked. The customs officer winked back, but this jolly fellow with the red shiny face may have reacted automatically.

I slipped him the proverbial coin that loosens tongues. Though a public official, he took it. They always do. "Well, if you do see the man who wasn't here, please tell him Falco needs to speak to him urgently."

He gave me a cheerful tilt of the head. I was not encouraged.

"What's your name?"

"Firmus." We were on moneyed terms. I thought it fair to ask. "Handy to know. I may want to list your sweetener in my accounts."

He opened his palm and looked at the coins. "This is business, then? Thought you said he was a friend."

"He is. The best. He can still go on expenses." I grinned. Conniving always makes new pals.

"So what business are you in, Falco?"

"Government food regulations," I lied, with yet another friendly wink. "In fact, I'll ask you, Firmus: some of the hotpot hawkers up back of the stores seem to be having trouble. Have you seen any evidence of the local bars being threatened?"

"Oh no, not me," Firmus assured me. "I never go to bars. It's home straight after work for Chicken Frontinian and an early night."

If his habits were so abstemious, I was surprised he had put on so much flab. "Frontinian has too much aniseed for me," I confided. "I like a good Vardarnus. Now Petro, he has disgusting taste. He's happy as a sandflea sitting down to braised beets or beans in the pod… What's the word on the docks about that Briton dead in the well?"

"He must have upset someone."

"Anybody suggesting who he upset?"

"Nobody's saying."

"But everybody knows, I bet!"

Firmus gave me a knowing head tilt, indicating assent. "Lot of questions about this stuff lately."

"Who's asking? Long-haired Britons from the south?"

"What?" Firmus looked surprised. The team King Togidubnus had sent out could not yet have worked this part of the wharves.

"Who, then?" I drew up short. "Surely not that old friend of mine, the one you haven't seen?" Firmus made no reply. Petronius must have given him a bigger sweetener than I did. "So what would you have told this invisible person, Firmus?"

"It's supposed to be out-of-towners," said Firmus, almost matter-of-factly, as if I should know it already. "I mean a long way out of town. There's some group taking an interest in the Londinium social scene."

"Where do they hail from? And who's the big meatball?"

"What?"

"The man in charge." But Firmus clammed up. Even though he had been enjoying the attention as he held forth as the expert on the local situation, something now proved too much for him.

He might know the answer to my question about who ran the rackets, but he wasn't going to tell me. I recognized the look in his previously friendly eyes. It was fear.

I walked back past the warehouses and into the unpromising interior streets where the racketeers seemed to operate. I had agreed with Hilaris: this happened everywhere. Yet that big-time frighteners would try taking over the commercial outlets in Britain still seemed unlikely.

There was so little here. Retail outlets selling staples: carrots, spoons, and firewood bundles, mostly in rather small quantities. Oil, wine, and fish-pickle sauce, all looking as if their crack-necked amphorae, with dusty bellies and half the labels missing, had been unloaded from the boat several seasons before. Dim eating houses, offering amateur snacks and piss-poor wine to people who hardly knew what to ask for. One obvious brothel that I saw yesterday; well, there must be more of those. A respectable husband and father-well, a husband with a scathing wife who missed nothing-had to be careful how he looked for them. What else? Oh, look! Between a sandal-seller and a shop full of herbal seeds (buy our exciting borage and caress away care with curative coriander!), here was a placard scrawled up on a house wall that advertised a gladiatorial show: Pex the Atlantic Thrasher (really?); the nineteen-times-unbeaten Argorus (clearly some old frowsty fox whose fights were fixed); a clash of bears; and Hidax the Hideous-apparently the retiarius with the niftiest trident this side of Epirus. There was even a furious female with a cliche name:

Amazonia (advertised in much smaller letters than her male counterparts, naturally).

I was too grown-up to be lured by nasty girls with swords, though they might be sensational for some. Instead, I was trying to remember the last time I had had any borage that was more than mildly interesting. Suddenly I became aware of excruciating pain. Somebody had jumped me.

I never saw him coming. He had slammed my face against a wall, pinioning me with such brutal force that he nearly broke the arm he had twisted up my back. I would have cursed, but it was impossible.

"Falco!" Hades, I knew that voice.

My fine Etruscan nose was squashed tightly against a wall that was so deeply rough-cast it would imprint me for a week with its hard pattern; the daub was bonded with cow dung, I could tell.

"Petro-"I gurgled.

"Stop drawing attention!" He might have been bullying some thief he had caught fingering women's bustbands off a laundry drying line. "You sapheaded blunderer! You interfering, imbecilic rat's bane-" There were more hissed insults, all meticulously spittable, some obscene, and one I had never heard before. (I worked out what it meant.) "Get this, you flakewit-leave it, or I'm a dead man!"

He released me abruptly. I nearly fell over. When I staggered around to tell the swine he had made himself quite clear enough, he had already gone.

I was having a frustrating time: when I retraced my steps to the Swan, Albia had disappeared too.

"Went off with a man," the proprietor enjoyed telling me.