Once we made him safe, we took him into my house. He had not expected that. Neither had we, to be honest; it seemed to follow on naturally from the search process. In this way we took him off the street and out of sight very rapidly—and we saved Petronius the potential awkwardness of imprisoning one of the spy’s men at the station house. As soon as we stepped inside and the front door closed, everything became intensely serious.

We put him in a downstairs room. It was one of the damp ones I reserved for summer storage. In August he would not develop asthma or foot rot. The walls and door were thick. I pointed out that nobody would hear him call for help. Then we gagged him anyway. By this time, the black implications were growing. For him, there could now be no happy ending. For us, too, there was no going back.

We worked quietly. He endured it with resignation. This would not be a job for the vigiles punishment officer, Sergius and his metal-tanged whip; we would give it our personal treatment. The agent was an unimpressive specimen, but it was soon clear he would be professional. We bound his arms behind his back, tied his ankles together, then picked him up like a long parcel and roped him carefully to the top of a heavy bench, face up. We turned the bench on its end so he hung upside down, then left him to think about his situation while we went for refreshments and warned all my household that the room was out of bounds. Albia would probably have rushed straight in there, but she was out on one of her long solo walks.

Helena was apprehensive, though we tried to avoid her concern. She could tell Petro and I were beginning to feel raw. We had no regrets about our capture, but we had put ourselves in a grim deep hole. Helena drew herself up and said, ‘I live here with very young children. I want to know what you are intending to do to this man.’

‘Ask him questions.’ Ask him questions in a particular way, a way that would produce answers—eventually.

‘And if he refuses to answer?’

‘We’ll improvise.’

‘How long should it take?’

‘Perhaps a few days, love.’

‘Days! You are going to hurt him, aren’t you?’

‘No. There’s no point.’

‘Am I to provide food and drink for him?’

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘I wish you meant he won’t be here that long.’

‘No. We don’t mean that.’

‘You cannot starve him.’ We could. With this kind of man, we would have to. And that was just the start.

‘Well, maybe a bowl of delectable soup, with an aromatic scent,’ suggested Petronius with a smile. ‘After two or three days . . .’ To stand in the room and tantalise.

‘What about toilet facilities?’ Helena demanded angrily.