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Chapters (65)
  1. COVER
  2. NEMESIS
  3. ROME AND LATIUM: SUMMER, AD 77
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‘I want to help your daughter.’

‘Leave my daughter alone. She’s not here and she’s had enough trouble.’

‘Can I see her?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t blame you—but my enquiry won’t harm her. Maybe I can get the Claudii off her back.’

‘I’d like to see that!’ Vexus implied I wasn’t up to it.

‘Will you at least tell me about Nobilis?’

‘Mind your own business.’

‘I’d like to—but those wastrels on the marsh have become the Emperor’s business. I’m stuck with investigating. So let me guess: your girl married Nobilis when she was too young to know what she was doing—against your advice, no doubt? It went sour. He beat her.’ I wondered if the father was violent too. He looked strong, but controlled. Still, men from boot-menders up to the consulship have been known to conceal their domestic brutality. ‘Did they have any children?’

‘No, thank Jove!’

‘So Demetria decided to leave, but Nobilis would not let her go. She came home; he hated it. She found someone else, and he put a stop to that . . . Right?’

‘Nothing to say.’

‘Is she still with her new man?’

‘No.’

‘Nobilis put the scares on?’

‘Half killed him.’

‘In front of her?’

‘That was the point, Falco!’

‘So the new man caved in?’

‘He got rid of her,’ agreed her father bitterly.

A ghastly thought struck me. ‘Don’t say she went back to Nobilis?’

Vexus pressed his lips together in a thin line. ‘Thankfully, I put a stop to that.’

‘But she was so frightened, doing what Nobilis said became a possibility?’

‘No,’ said the baker, with heavy emphasis. ‘She was so frightened it was never a possibility.’

That was all he would tell me. I left details for Demetria to contact me, if she would. No chance. I heard the tablet with my name on it thump into a trash bucket before I got back outside to the street.

I asked about Demetria around the neighbourhood. I met nothing but hostility. The atmosphere felt dangerous. I left before a riot could start.

28

I had another lead to follow: Petronius and I had been told by the waitress at Satricum that Claudius Nobilis worked for a corn dealer called Thamyris. He lived outside town. I took Nux and Helena and drove out to his place, a scattered set of barns and workshops off the coast road that went south.