‘Bull’s balls. Let him. I don’t see it. What point is some nasty twine? We confiscate knives – to be honest, we find our own uses for those. But we haven’t enough space to store endless crates of rubbish, just because perps have used them as murder weapons. We’d be cluttered up with rusty pruning hooks and broken planks off building sites. We can’t do it.’

‘Not even in cases you haven’t solved yet, where these may turn out to be clues?’

‘Oh, face it, Flavia Albia – nobody’s ever going to solve this case!’

I was tempted to declare that I would solve it, but I was starting to agree with him. I made much of needing to file a report for the aedile: ‘He’s going to ask about the robbers, Titianus. What story can we give him there?’ Saying ‘we’ was deliberate. Even a vigiles inquiry officer who stayed in the office to play about with bureaucracy, or whatever Titianus played with, would avoid having his work checked by a magistrate.

‘I don’t reckon there were any robbers,’ Titianus claimed, his attitude now defensive. ‘It’s staring you in the face, woman: the slaves killed their masters, then they snaffled the silver and made up a story about the house being broken into, using that as cover.’

‘They didn’t fool you then … Still, I assume you do have villains around here who occasionally climb into apartments and remove important property?’

‘Plenty.’

‘Care to suggest names? I like to supply detail. Then my employer thinks I have been thorough.’ Actually, I like to be thorough in fact, so any details I supply to a client are correct.

Titianus listed some Esquiline ne’er-do-wells, each time asserting that these were small-fry no-hopers who would not touch serious bullion even if they came across it hanging on a washing line, let alone would they go out deliberately targeting fine drinksware. Nobody here wanted to steal anything that would be recognisable. According to Titianus, this was because the crafty vigiles would come calling while the thieves were still in possession of the goods.

According to me, that was cobnuts.

‘Somebody is in possession of the pierced silver wine strainers and the dinky goat-legged coaster set!’ Titianus looked puzzled that I could itemise the stolen goods. I almost expected him to start writing down what I said; I felt pretty sure he had never made a list himself. ‘So who is the big octopus on the Esquiline rocks?’ He shrugged. ‘Come on, Titianus, share your expertise. Which gangster has the fattest file of case notes in the scroll cupboard, yet no arrests are made − or if they ever do go to the praetor and onwards to court, somehow no prosecutions stick?’ Titianus remained boot-faced. ‘Who are all the other villains afraid of, Titianus? Who dares brazenly kill, in the process of another crime?’