"Oh."
"Just pump their associates for clues about where they have run off to and physical descriptions would help."
Aelianus looked less than impressed with his task. Tough.
Both brothers were beginning to feel that working with me was not' glamorous. For starters, we were gathered at my new house on the
ri riverbank eating a very rapid breakfast. A bread roll and a beaker of warm water each came as a shock. They had expected tour-hour dalliances in wine shops
"What can I do?" nagged Justinus plaintively.
"Plenty. Solve the identity of the corpse. Go to the contractors' yard with your brother. Hang about after he leaves and talk to the other workmen." I knew Aelianus would be rude to the men; then Justinus would be more friendly. "Make them list whoever was on site during Pa's bath house job. Again, obtain descriptions. If they cooperate-'
"Which you don't expect?"
"Oh I expect the goddess Iris to glide down in a rainbow and tell us everything! Seriously, find out who is missing. If you get a clue, visit wherever the missing man lived and take things on from there."
"If nobody tells us who he was," Justinus said, frowning, 'how can we proceed, Falco?"
"Well, you're big boys," I said unhelpfully.
"Oh go on!" scoffed Aelianus. "Don't throw us in and leave us to sink."
"All right. Try this: Gloccus and Cotta were the main contractors. But half the fancy fittings were supplied, and sometimes fixed, by other firms. See the marble-bowl supplier, the mosaicist, the plumber who laid the water-pipes. They don't want to be blamed. So they may be less inclined to conceal the truth. Ask Helena which importer sold her that monster splash basin in the tepidarium. Ask my father's slaves for names of men who tramped mud through the kitchen fetching water for their mortar mix."
"Were workmen allowed in the main house?"
"No."
"That wouldn't have stopped them?"
"Right. If you want a really irritating experience, try talking to Pa himself."
Then what?"
"Just do the jobs I have suggested. Then we'll reconvene and pool ideas."
They looked sulky. I kept them back a moment. "Get this straight. No one forced you to come in with me. No anxious parent begged me to find you a position. I could use someone street-smart instead of you two amateurs. Never forget, I have a queue of my own relatives who need the work." The Camillus brothers were naive; they had no idea how much my relations despised me and my work- nor how
crudely I loathed the feckless Didii. "You both wanted this. I'm allowing it as an idealist. When you bunk otl back to the high lite, I'll just know that two pampered patricians have acquired practical knowledge through me."
"Oh noble Roman!"Justinus said, smiling, though he had lost his rebellious attitude.
I ignored it. "Campaign orders: you accept that I am in charge. Then we work as a team. There is to be no showing off on solo escapades. We meet up every morning here, and each man turns in full details of what he has found out so far. We discuss the next course of action together- and in the case of disagreement, my plan takes precedence."
"And what," demanded Aelianus caustically, 'are you intending to do on this case, Falco?"
I assured him I would be hard at work. True. My new house had a wonderful roof terrace, where I could waste hours playing. When I grew tired of planning herb troughs and realigning rose trellises, then the kind of dalliance in a wine shop that I had denied to the boys would suit me fine. If they guessed, neither knew me well enough to complain.
Taking both into the business brought me the benefit of their competitiveness. Each was determined to better his brother. Come to that, both would have been happy to put me in the wrong.
They played at being diligent. I amused myself wondering what the hair-plastered labourers made of them. Eventually we summed up progress: "Quintus, shoot the first spear."
Justinus had learned in the legions how to give intelligence reports to brusque commanding officers. He was relaxed. Looking deceptively casual, he surprised me with some useful gen: "Gloccus and Cotta have been partners for a couple of decades. Everyone speaks of them as famously unreliable- yet they are somehow accepted and still given work."
"Custom of the trade," I said gloomily. "A standard building contract contains a clause that says it shall be the contractor's responsibility to destroy the Premises, abandon the agreed Drawings and delay the Works until at least three Festivals of Compitalia have passed."
He grinned. "They do cheap house extensions, incompetent remodelling, occasional contract work for professional landlords. Presumably the landlords' fees are larger, so the incentive to turn up on site is greater."
"And landlords employ project managers who flay slackers," Aelianus suggested. I said nothing.
"Halt their clients are in dispute with them for years afterwards," Justinus continued. "They seem to live with it. When it looks like becoming a court case, Gloccus and Cotta cave in; they will sometimes bodge repairs, or a favourite trick is to hand over a free statue plinth as supposed compensation."
"Offering a half-price rude statue that the client doesn't want?"
"And thus squeezing even more cash from him! How did you know, Falco?"
"Instinct, my dear Quintus. Aulus -contribute?"
Aelianus squared up slightly. He was slapdash by nature, but a generous superior would say he might repay the effort of training him. I was not sure I called him a worthwhile investment. "Gloccus lives by the Portico of Livia with a skinny drab who yelled at me. Her hysteria seemed genuine- she hasn't seen him for some weeks."
"He left without warning and without paying the rent?"
"Astute, Falco!" Could I bear this patronising swine? "She described him rather colour fully as a fat, half-bald slob spawned by a rat on a stormy night. Other people agreed he's paunchy and untidy, but he has a secret charm that no one could quite identify. They "can't see how he gets away with it", seems the consensus."
"Cotta?"
"Cotta lives- or lived alone in a third-floor set of rooms over a street-market. He's not there now. No one locally ever saw much of him, and no one knows where he's gone."
"What's he like?"
"Skinny and secretive. Regarded as a bit of an odd case. Never really wanted to be a builder who can blame him? and rarely seemed happy with his lot. A woman who sold him cheese sometimes on his way home in the evening, said his older brother is something in the medical line- an apothecary perhaps? Cotta grew up in his shadow and always envied him."
"Ah, a thwarted-ambition story!" That sort of tale always makes me sarcastic. "Doesn't your heart bleed? "My brother saves lives, so I'll smash in people's heads to show I'm a big rissole too…" How do their workmen view these princes?"
"The labourers were surprisingly slow to insult them," marvelled Justinus. Perhaps it was his first experience of the mindless loyalty of men in trade men who know they may have to work with the same bastards again.
"Subcontractors and suppliers?"
"Buttoned up." They, too, stick with their own.
"Nobody would even tell us who's missing," Aelianus said, scowling.
"Hmm." I gave them a mysterious half smile. "Try this: The dead man is a tile-grouter called Stephanus." Aelianus started to glance at Justinus, then remembered they were on bad terms. I paused, to show I had noticed the reaction. "He was thirty-four, bearded, no distinguishing features; had a two-year-old son by a waitress; was known for his hot temper. He thought Gloccus was a turd who had diddled his previous week's wages. On the day he disappeared, Stephanus had gone to work wearing a worn, but still respectable, pair of site boots which had black thongs, one with a newly stitched repair."