`Don't knock any more.' Florius looked surprised by my sharp tone. `Wait here. I'll fetch someone.'
Back at the wedding Maia had arrived. Her sons Marius and Ancus and Galla's son Gaius sat lined up on a bench, ready to act as the three escorts when the bride went in procession to her new husband's house. Marius was looking cross; he probably knew the torchlight procession would be an occasion of rude songs and obscene jokes: not his style. Gaius was pretty sullen too, but that was just because Maia had insisted the young scruff should be clean. Ancus, who was only. five, just sat there with his ears sticking out and wished he could go home.
I waved to them, then found Petro. `Sober up!'
Without a word, and without revealing that he was sloping off, he slid out with me. We walked back down the street to the jumble shop. My heart was knocking. I began to wish I had drunk less. When we reached Florius he straightened up slightly at the sight of Petro; Petro gave him a polite official nod.
I explained to Petro what the problem was. He listened like a man whose concentration needed help. I recounted my visit to the shop when it was open, describing the kinds of items I had seen. His initial disinterest gradually faded. `Are you suggesting what I'm thinking, Falco?'
`Well, booths of old clutter are everywhere, and some of them probably contain the odd thing that was bought in a legitimate sale, but they are ideal cover for receiving. One reason I'm suspicious is that I saw Gaius and Phlosis, those two boat thieves, in our street not long ago. I now think they may have been up here to hand in swag they'd pinched. And there's something else, Petro: the man who ran this joint was called Castus.'
Petronius made the link far quicker than I' had done: `Same as the weasel who stabbed the Lycian at Plato's.' He was no longer as drunk as he seemed.
`Exactly. That Castus was a Balbinus man. He had been booted out by Lalage but he was still-helping the girls who ran the kidnap scheme. My niece Tertulla was snatched very near here. And I found the baby in my skip just along the street.'
`Castus was one of the men we arrested at the brothel,' said Petro. `In view of his past history the Prefect has kept him in close custody. Which explains why there is no one here.' He screwed up his mouth. 'Of course,' he went on reflectively, `I'm spending my time checking over all the places we know that had links to Balbinus. I haven't finished the dowry properties. I'm kicking myself.'
I said quietly, `I told you what Lalage reckoned: Balbinus was living "somewhere on the Aventine".'
Petronius took a deep breath, flexing his wide shoulders. Then he shook his head like an athlete trying to concentrate before a big race. `Jupiter, I should have been sober for this!' He signalled to Martinus and ordered him to fetch Fusculus from the wedding. At that moment my helpers came back from the fountain, so they were summoned too. They set down their buckets carefully and began to size up the shop. Florius asked us what was happening. Petro looked grave. `Let's say that as a concerned landlord whose tenant may have done a bunk, I assume you would like us to break in?'
`Try not to do any damage,' protested Florius at once. As a landlord he was learning fast. Then he paled. `What are you expecting to discover?'
`Loot,' I said. `Stolen goods. Everything from luxuries robbed at the Saepta Julia and flagons pinched from food shops right down to all the bedcovers old ladies have been losing from their balconies recently. And if I'm right about how the premises have been used, I think we'll find a foundry at the back where precious metal has been melted down.'
`And your father's glass?' enquired Petro dryly.
`Oh Lucius Petronius, I have to tell you honestly I fear not!'
`Do I need to be here?' Florius was feeling nervous.
`Better slide off home.' Petronius gave him a kindly pat on the shoulder. `I don't like to see trouble in a family; you'd best not be involved. One of the items I'm now hoping to recover is your missing father-in-law.'
Florius looked more interested. `Can I help?' Clearly the worm had turned. From being a passive victim of Milvia's parents, he was now eager to see Balbinus recaptured. In view of the situation, with Balbinus under a death sentence if he was found on Roman soil, that meant mild-mannered Florius was longing for rather more than a mere arrest. The keen glint in his eye said he knew very well what recapture meant.
We broke in at a rush. The vigiles are trained to smash their way into buildings during fires. Even without their heavy equipment they can go through a door without raising a sweat. Making Florius wait outside, Petronius, Martinus, Fusculus and I followed the patrol straight in. We marched through the premises without stopping to investigate. It was evident, once you viewed the place as a possible receiving shop, that it was packed with items of interest – and I don't just mean potential Saturnalia gifts. As I had suspected, beyond the curtain at the back lay a cold furnace and plenty of encrusted crucibles.
`A melting pot – and they've been painting the Emperor's picture for him too!' Fusculus held up a mould for counterfeit coins.
We searched the shop, and the attached living quarters. Then we left a guard and searched every apartment upstairs, breaking into any where nobody replied when we knocked.
We disturbed a lot of people doing things they would have preferred to keep private, but we did not discover any trace of Balbinus Pius.
'Ah well. Just have to keep looking.' Petronius managed to sound neutral. But I knew his true feelings. Hope had been raised for a moment. The disappointment that followed was twice as acute as our gloom before. `I'll get him,' said Petro quietly.
`Oh yes.' I thumped him on the shoulder. `You'd better. Old friend, there's still a nasty chance that he's hoping to get you!'
We walked down to the street. We gave Florius the news that his wife's father was still at large, told him to report anything suspicious, and watched him leave. Martinus sauntered after him, still pretending to be unobtrusive.
I had a dark sensation as Florius loped off with his scrolls and stylus. The thought of him so carefully researching his father-in-law's property made me wonder if one day he might want to research other aspects of the Balbinus empire too. Clearly he meant to expand his business interests. He had told me he wanted to start a racing stable, and I already knew from Famia that the partner Florius had chosen had an off-colour reputation. Why stop there? His wife came from a notorious criminal family. Florius had never seen any need to abandon her once he realised this. Maybe I had just witnessed the beginning of another depressing cycle in the endless rise and fall of villains in the underworld.
Well, it should take him a few years yet to establish himself.
LXVI I
I WAS IN disgrace. Back at the wedding Lenia had called for her augury to be taken. This was the ceremony I had promised to supervise. Nobody could find me. Nobody knew where I was. It was, of course, considered untenable to proceed without the inspection of a sheep's liver. Respectable people would be shocked. Luckily the imperturbable Gaius Baebius had seized upon my absence and stepped into the breach.
`Oh I'm sure you did it better than I would have done, Gaius!'
And at least the head veil fitted him.
`He gave me some very nice promises,' said, Lenia sniffily.
`I had never realised that Gaius Baebius was such a liar!' Helena whispered. Gaius explained to me very soberly that as part of his preparations for trying to join the priestly college of the Augustales, he had been taking lessons on sheep-skinning.
The bride was by now ensconced on her neatly hacked-off sheepskin, side by side with the slumped form of her husband, newly removed from the laundry basket. She was gripping his hand, not so much to symbolise union as to stop him falling onto the floor. A friend of Smaractus was going around trying to get up ten witnesses for the contractual tablets, but most of the guests tried to wriggle out of this duty and privilege with weak excuses such as they had inadvertently left their seals at home. Nobody wanted to be blamed if the marriage failed, or be called upon to help sort out the dowry afterwards.