Helena was still ticking off candidates: ‘Domitian’s more questionable.’ I had a feud with Domitian. He didn’t scare me, but if he was in on this it was best to know. ‘Of the great and powerful at the Palace,’ Helena concluded, ‘there would only be Claudius Laeta. He would not have invited you and Petro to investigate Modestus, if his interests lay in a cover-up.’

‘Give the man credit—he knows we’re too good!’ I grinned at her.

‘Laeta does not take stupid risks,’ she corrected me coolly. Helena had a wonderful sense of humour, though little tolerance for silly beggars’ backchat. ‘He doesn’t play with knives for a cheap thrill. He sees his role as protecting the administration, so the Empire can run smoothly.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘It could be some consul or ex-consul who has never crossed our path.’

‘Most of them!’ We kept out of general politics.

‘I can ask my father. Not that he tends to know strong-arm thugs. His friends in the Curia are benign. Men who read Plato over their lunch, philanthropists who think a commission should look into health issues among the urban poor.’

I said the Claudii were a health threat in Latium.

Helena was still considering the argument. While I ducked out if there were too many alternatives, she liked to be thorough, with no feeble ‘decide that later’ topics; she worked through every point. She would say I was a typical man; I thought her a highly unusual woman.

‘We ought to consider, Marcus, not just who this person of influence is, but why he supports the freedmen. It’s been a long while since mighty men in Rome aligned themselves with criminal gangs.’

‘People like Clodius and his terrorists? He provided himself with brutal enforcers; everyone was scared of them and together with his very patrician name, it gave him enormous power . . . Nothing like that happens in the city now.’

‘It cannot be about anything the Claudii offer to their protector,’ Helena said. ‘He may be ambitious, but he must be able to manage his career without their help. So why does he bother? What hold do they have over him?’

She was right and I agreed: ‘What’s he scared of? A bunch of second-rate ex-slaves, living out in a marsh, miles from civilisation, selling scrap and beating up their wives? I can’t see how they have any influence with anyone who carries serious weight in Rome. And he must have weight. It takes a real someone to make Anacrites jump.’

‘Could it be simpler?’ Helena suggested. ‘Could they be under the protection of Anacrites himself?’

We both laughed and agreed that was totally unlikely.

Back in Rome, it emerged that the visitor who had threatened Thamyris could not have been Anacrites. The man who went to Antium must have been an agent. Petronius confirmed that the spy had been in Rome. The vigiles had seen him.