The informant looked at him, then back at Marcus.
‘I have no choice, I see. Very well.’ He sighed, raising his eyes to the room’s ceiling at being forced to disclose his secrets. ‘I discovered, by means of tailing the man when he left the senator’s estate on the private business that Pilinius allows him, that he has children by a slave in another senatorial household. It seems that their owner gave him to Pilinius in repayment of a debt when the senator decided that he needed a rather more capable secretary. They live with their mother, whose owner is a relatively soft man and has not yet sold them on. It seemed likely to me that this man would want to purchase not only his own freedom, but that of his woman and the children, and so I realised that I had two means of controlling him.’
‘Money and the risk of betrayal?’
Excingus smiled at Marcus, nodding his head.
‘You know, Centurion, I think you’d make a very capable grain officer. Yes, money to swell the funds with which he hopes to buy their freedom, and the threat that Pilinius might come by the information that his secretary has children. The senator’s more than clever enough to realise that his man is compromised by their existence, were he ever to discover them, and quite sadistic enough to claim them from his colleague as the secretary’s blood and therefore his property as the man’s master. And what he might do with them once he had power over them … well, that’s enough to give any man pause for thought.’
The tribune thought for a moment.
‘So these tokens …’ He shot a look of disgust at the metal square resting on his palm. ‘Will gain us entry to Pilinius’s villa?’
Excingus nodded.
‘Not just into the house, there’ll be plenty of people there who are only invited to attend the party that’s the front for the real event. After all, there are only a very few men who gain access to the senator’s real entertainment, the rest are just invited to provide the cover of an innocent night of debauchery for those select few.’
‘I see. That explains the rather explicit imagery on this …’
He held up the shining piece of silver, and Excingus shook his head.
‘Don’t let that rather simple picture fool you. The reality of what the senator and his friends get up to is a good deal worse.’
‘Worse?’
Excingus shook his head, his stare withering.
‘Either you’ve been away from Rome for too long or you’ve been lucky enough in the past to avoid the sort of people that Pilinius associates with. If you’re going to do this thing then you’d better be prepared to witness some sights that you might have preferred never to have seen.’
Marcus shook his head, his teeth bared.
‘I’ve walked battlefields after the fighting’s done with. I’ve disembowelled, decapitated, crippled and maimed. I’ve left barbarian warriors to die in agony, crying for their mothers. The men who killed my father not only destroyed my family’s honour, they condemned me to a life of marching from the scene of one massacre to the next, listening to my soldiers weeping and thrashing about in their sleep at the horrors they have seen and done to other men, and those inflicted on their comrades. Trust me, nothing you could show me in this city comes anywhere close to the spectacular displays of massed slaughter in which I’ve played my part.’
The informant shrugged equivocally.
‘We’ll see. And now gentlemen, perhaps I ought to talk you through the domus’s layout?’
The first gang members arrived an hour or so before dusk, strolling down the street with bemused stares at the queue outside the barber’s shop. They stood for a moment taking in the scene, then walked in past the queuing customers, none of whom, Morban noted, cared to protest about them jumping the line of waiting men.
‘There’s a queue I’m afraid, gentlemen, you’ll have to wait your turn with the men outside.’
The taller of the two bent to address Morban with a condescending smile, the happy expression somewhat marred by his empty left eye socket. Putting his heavily scarred knuckles on the desk behind the standard bearer’s desk, he sneered into his face.
‘If we wanted a haircut, Fatty, then we wouldn’t be queuing for it, and there ain’t one of your customers would have the balls to stand in our way. But, as it happens, we ain’t come for a haircut, we’re here to give you one.’ He looked around at his comrade with a smirk of pride at the joke. ‘Ten per cent of your day’s take, in return for our constant vigilance against any threat to your business. You’d be amazed what sorts of nastiness can happen when a shopkeeper chooses not to purchase our services.’
Morban nodded quickly.
‘Sounds fair to me.’ He reached into the desk’s drawer, dropping a generous handful of coins into the gangster’s outstretched hand. ‘We’ve done alright today, so here’s your share. Might I know who we’re doing business with, just in case anyone else comes round trying to extort the money from us that we’ll need to make payment to you?’
The big man grinned.
‘We’re the Hilltop Boys, old man, and there’s no bastard going to dare put their feet on our turf. My turf! One Eyed Maximus rules this part of the Aventine, and everyone round here knows it!’ He leaned closer, bending down to whisper in Morban’s ear. ‘I like to cut things, Fatty. More particularly I like to cut people. And when anyone … anyone … denies me something I want, well, I cut them, don’t I? I give them a simple choice, see, I tell ’em that I can either blind ’em, or cut out their tongues, or just make the unkindest cut of them all.’
He grinned at Morban, challenging the other man to ask the question.
‘You don’t mean …?’
‘Oh yes. If they want to keep on seeing and talking then I just take the end off their cock. Just an inch or so, unless they really upset me, in which case I leave ’em just enough to piss with. Something to remember me by, and to make sure they never deny me anything ever again. So, want to stay on the right side of me, do you, Fatty?’
The standard bearer nodded slowly.
‘Seems I do.’
‘Once again it appears that an opportunity for my revenge has passed me by, Informant.’
Excingus looked impassively across the gardens, ignoring the senator’s bodyguards.
‘I take it, Senator, that you’re referring to the news of the death of a certain well-known gang leader?’
Albinus slapped the arm of his seat, drawing glances from the nearest of the people walking through the gardens. Excingus shifted uneasily, lowering his head in apparent close examination of the tablet in his hand.
‘Of course I’m referring to the murder of yet another of the Knives! Brutus was found dead in the river this morning, his death having apparently been caused by a wooden pole rammed right through his body! Are you telling me that wasn’t Aquila’s work!?’
The informant shook his head.
‘I can’t tell you anything of the kind, although I’ll point out to you that Brutus is reputed to have been at war with another gang leader, some nasty piece of work who seems to be more than capable of such an act. I should also tell you that Brutus had a reputation, I’ve since discovered, for going into hiding whenever that sort of inevitable turf war started, and not coming out until the matter was resolved. Since none of my contacts had the faintest idea where he might have taken refuge, it does cross my mind that he might simply have been discovered by his rival? Sometimes the most obvious answer is the most obvious for a reason …’