Each time his cries were audible. Of course Dromo had already heard me calling his name in the other direction … Still, a good informer double-checks.

I had not replicated the effects of drink or sleeping medicine, which some suspects claimed to have taken, but the kind of lawyers who might be defending the slaves (assuming slaves are given lawyers, which I doubted) were unlikely to query that. Drink or drugs put them at fault anyway.

While I went through this probably pointless exercise, I noticed someone looking down from a small window in one of the upper apartments. A woman poked her head out wondering at the shouting. I called up and made contact, then once I had finished my checks I found the way via the stairs from the outside street and interviewed this neighbour.

Her name was Fauna. She was a worn-looking party of thirty or forty, wife of a vegetable porter at the nearby Market of Livia. ‘That’s where he is now, of course – unless the bum has given them the slip and slunk off somewhere.’

Fauna had a wrinkled tunic and bare feet, at least at home, with a whole armful of tacky bangles that implied her husband brought one for her out of guilt every time he visited a brothel. Or perhaps he just had little money and appalling taste. Surely if he did frequent brothels, he must have seen better jewellery even on the worst whores?

I hate this aspect of my work − glimpsing other people’s lives and becoming angry about it. I have never managed to teach myself that if people choose to be stupid, it’s their affair. I wanted to yell at Fauna to sort her bastard husband out.

As soon as she let me in I realised there was not much chance this couple upstairs had seen anything below on the night of the attack. They rented a cramped two-room apartment lit only by small high windows, so when she heard me experimenting Fauna had had to stand on a stool and crane out. For the tenants at ground level this was good, because it meant their courtyard was not really overlooked. For me it was a disappointment.

Fauna said the dinner party itself had been sedate, but later on they had been bothered by a lot of noise, until Lusius, her husband, actually got out of bed to look. Lusius peered out first, then Fauna shoved him off the stool and took a turn. In the dark, they could not really see what was going on.

‘I glimpsed figures running to and fro with lamps. About the time we had a peek, it all quietened down anyway.’

‘Could that have been when the steward turned up?’ I wondered. ‘Polycarpus – he would have sorted out the chaos … Do you know him, Fauna?’

‘They live on this level, but the other side of the building, above the street. I know her slightly.’

‘His wife?’