Justinus might be my mother’s favourite brother, but Helena Justina would thwack him with excoriating rhetoric if she knew he had let me come on this mission. Neither he nor I mentioned that, but it made us both nervous.

The Galatea (its proper name) stood in a quiet side street. You probably think thieves lurk down a dangerous alley, something with a sinister atmosphere; in fact they are just like the rest of us and prefer to drink at a respectable bar with nice tubs of laurels that actually get watered. Calling it the Galatea didn’t mean the owners were interested in myths about statues coming to life, it was an excuse for a sign showing a nude woman.

She was rather pale and skinny, but the painter had given meticulous attention to her bosom. Sign artists are so predictable.

What did single out the Galatea as a rats’ nest was that it was large enough to contain an interior courtyard where illegal transactions could take place out of sight of the public and the authorities. Justinus and I sauntered up to one of the counters like innocent tourists just off the boat from Tarentum. This was clearly not the case, since he still had his toga. It was scrunched up and carried over one arm, but anyone could see what it was and with his tunic broadly banded in purple even the dumbest waiter had to twig he was a senator.

Leaving the two bodyguards streetside at the counter, Quintus and I went in and pretended to study the wall sign with a list of drinks. With expressions of delight we ‘discovered’ the inner garden. We sat down there at a wooden table and spent time trying to decide whether to have fried anchovies or stick with olives. We didn’t make a lot of noise, nothing too obvious.

No doubt some bars that act as gangs’ headquarters show unfriendliness to casuals but at the Galatea they were more relaxed. The waiter ambled up and took our order without blinking. He even recommended the anchovies, though he did not push it. A man at the other table gave us a friendly nod in greeting. The waiter took his time coming back – but only as much time as hopeless waiters anywhere. He was gossiping with a local at a counter, not sending a message to tell some clan chief in the crime community that we were here.

So far, if we hadn’t been told this was a dangerous place, we would not have realised.

‘Must be his first day,’ said Justinus to the other man, winking after the waiter. The otherwise pleasant customer had enormous biceps and a broken nose. But if he was a villain, he was one who had work to go back to. He mopped his chin daintily with a napkin, called for the reckoning, left coppers for the waiter, nodded a goodbye like a man whose mother had taught him manners, and left.