Poseidon s Gold

'Who?'

'Orontes Mediolanus.'

'The sculptor,' Varga contributed.

This was the part that did make sense.

I kept my voice as steady as possible. 'And where in Rome can I find this Orontes?'

'That's the point!' Manlius burst out, with relaxed and unvindictive triumph. 'Orontes has disappeared from Rome. In fact he vanished years ago.'

I had already guessed the sequel. 'He had vanished when Festus was after him?'

'Of course! That was why Festus came looking for us. Festus wanted to ask us where in Hades Orontes was.'

I went back a step. 'How did you know Festus?'

'He noticed models,' Varga said, convincingly. We all glanced at his Amazon and imagined Festus taking notice of Rubinia.

'And why did he think you could track down Orontes?'

'Orontes used to lodge with us,' Varga explained. 'In fact, earlier this evening, you were lying on his bed!'

I stared at it. The hard, lumpy mattress was covered with a thin blanket. Unwashed food bowls were piled underneath, and these two untidy idiots kept paint-kettles on one end, encrusted with copper oxides and enamels. Perhaps the bed had gone downhill since the sculptor lived here, but if not I could see why he might have left: maybe he was just fastidious.

'So what happened to Orontes?'

'Disappeared. One morning we went out and left him snoring; when we came back he had taken himself off. He never came back.'

'Wandering feet! Sounds like my father: Did you worry?'

'Why? He was grown up.'

'Were his things missing?'

I had asked the question casually. The painters half exchanged a glance before one said yes and the other no. 'We sold them,' Varga admitted. I could believe it. Their guilty expressions were right, since the property had not been theirs to sell. All the same, I sensed an atmosphere, which I noted. They could well be lying about this.

I went over all the ground a second time, confirming the facts. There was little to add. I learned only that the centurion Laurentius had gone away as dissatisfied as I was. Manlius had no information about where this soldier had been staying in Rome. Neither of them knew what Festus had wanted the sculptor for.

Or if they knew, they were not admitting it to me.

I poured what remained of the amphora into their winecups and formally saluted them.

'Farewell, boys! I'll leave you to contemplate how fine art can save the civilised world from its sterility.' From the doorway I grinned at the squalor they inhabited. 'Own up. This is just a sham, isn't it? Really, you're two hard-working citizens who love the Empire and live like lambs. I bet you say a prayer to the hearth goddess every morning and write home to your mothers twice a week?'

Manlius, who was probably the sharper one of the disreputable pair, gave me a shamefaced smile. 'Have a heart, Falco! My mother's eighty-one. I have to show devotion to such age.'

Varga, who lived among more private dreams, studied his Aphrodite mournfully, and pretended he had not heard.

XL

In Fountain Court everything lay still. That was worrying. Even in the dead of night there was usually some husband receiving brain damage from an iron pot, a pigeon being tortured by delinquent youths, or an old woman screaming that she had been robbed of her life savings (Metella, whose son regularly borrowed them; he would pay her back, if the string of prostitutes he ran worked double shifts for a fortnight). It must be nearly dawn. I was too old for this.

As I reached the laundry, the tired trudge of my feet brought more trouble: Lenia, the drab proprietress, flung open a half-shutter. Her head flopped out, all tangles of madly hennaed hair. Her face was white; her deportment unstable. She surveyed me with eyes that needed an oculist and screeched: 'Oi, Falco! What are you doing up so late?'

'Lenia! You put the scares on me. Is Smaractus there?'

Lenia let out a pathetic wail. She would wake the whole street, and they would blame me. 'I hope he's at the bottom of the Tiber. We had a terrible row!'

'Thank the gods for that. Now kindly close up your dentistry-' We were old friends; we could dispense with compliments. She knew I despised her fiance. It had something to do with him being my landlord-and more with the fact he was as savoury as a pile of hot mule-dung. 'Is this goodbye to the wedding?'

'Oh no.' She calmed down immediately. 'I'm not letting him off that! Come in, come in-'

Resisting was useless. When a woman who spends her life heaving around monstrous troughs of hot water grabs your arm, you fly in the direction she pulls or lose a limb. I was dragged into the sinister cubicle where Lenia fiddled her accounts and accosted her friends, then pushed on to a stool. A beaker of cheap red wine fixed itself in my fist.

Lenia had been drinking, like the whole of Rome this wintry night. She had been drinking on her own, so she was hopelessly miserable. With a cup banging against those awful teeth again, she cheered up, however. 'You look rough too, Falco!'

'Been boozing with painters. Never again!'

'Until the next time!' Lenia jibed raucously. She had known me a long while.

'So what's with Smaractus?' I tried her wine, regretting it as much as I had feared. 'Cold feet about the matrimonial benefits?'

I was joking, but of course she nodded mournfully. 'He's not sure he's ready to commit himself.'

'Poor soul! Pleading his tender youth, I suppose?' Whatever age Smaractus was, his notorious life had left him looking like some desiccated hermit half dead in a cave. 'Surely that miser can see that he'll make up for what he's losing as a bachelor by gaining a prosperous laundry?'

'And me!' Lenia retorted snootily.

'And you,' I smiled. She needed someone to be kind.

She gulped at her cup, then ground out vindictively, 'How are your own affairs moving along?'

'Perfectly, thanks.'

'I don't believe that, Falco!'

'My arrangements,' I stated pompously, 'are moving to their conclusion with efficiency and style.'

'I haven't heard about this.'

'Quite. I'm keeping clammed up. If you don't let people interfere, things don't go wrong.'

'What does Helena say?'

'Helena needn't be bothered with details.'

'Helena's your bride!'

'So she has enough worries.'

'Gods, you're a mad deviclass="underline" Helena's a nice girl!'

'Exactly. So why warn her she's doomed? This is where you went wrong, Lenia. If Smaractus had stayed blissfully ignorant of your approach with the sacrificial pig, you could have forged his name on a contract one night when he was sleeping off a flagon and he would never have felt the pain. Instead you've put the wind up him, and given him a thousand opportunities to wriggle free.'

'He'll be back,' Lenia cracked morbidly. 'The careless prick left his beryl signet-ring.'

I managed to steer the subject away from marriage and cheap jewellery. 'If you want to upset me, try my arrest by Marponius.'

'News spreads!' Lenia agreed. 'We all heard you stabbed a soldier and ended up in manacles at a judge's house.'

'I did not stab the soldier.'

'That's right, one or two crazy types do reckon you might be innocent.'

'People are wonderful!'

'So what's this fable, Falco?'

'Bloody Festus has landed me in it as usual.'

I told her the tale. Anything to stop her drinking. Anything to stop her pouring more for me.