‘Parents living?’

‘No.’

‘And he has a brother who looks like a twin.’

‘They are not identical.’

‘Oh you know something about them then, Anacrites?’

‘I take care of my men. Give me credit for being professional.’

‘An impeccable employer! He’s probably fallen victim to a street mugger, or been knocked down by a wagon and hauled off to a healing sanctuary. Try the Temple of Aesculapius. Maybe he ran away because he couldn’t stand his working environment—or couldn’t stand his superior.’

‘He wouldn’t run away from me,’ Anacrites said, with an odd expression.

We returned downstairs. On reaching the lower hall, Anacrites decided to search the ground-floor rooms. ‘We don’t use them,’ I said. ‘Too damp.’

He insisted. He looked ready for a fight with me, but I did not quibble.

When he looked in the room where we had kept our captive, Anacrites sniffed slightly. No trace of his missing man remained, though like a bloodhound, the spy seemed to harbour doubts. If I had believed in supernatural powers, I would have thought he was picking up the aura of a soul in torment. The room stood empty, apart from a well-scrubbed bench against one wall. The floor and walls looked spotless. The air was clean, pervaded only by a faint smell of beeswax where the boards had been given a buffing very recently.

‘I used this as a holding cell,’ I told Anacrites gently. ‘For my late father’s slaves—’ Mentioning my bereavement made the bastard look humble. I wanted to kick him. ‘While I was assessing which were for the slave market. And if, in your role as an interfering state auditor, you intend to ask—yes, I paid the four per cent tax on every one I sold.’

‘I would not dream of implying otherwise, Marcus.’

Every time Anacrites called me Marcus it just reminded me how impossible it would be ever to call him ‘Tiberius’.

He left eventually. I wondered if the unpredictable swine would come back for another attempt. Anacrites often did a job, then half an hour later thought of three things he had missed.

His ‘search’ was just a surface skim. He could be inept—yet he could also be more thorough when the mood took him. Tonight he just gave my house a casual walk-through. I even wondered if he had left his visit until now because he’d known all along where the agent was, and actually wanted to lose him from his payroll. After all, he knew I always spotted surveillance and would take against it. He had just claimed to be a concerned superior. When the Melitan went missing, it should not have taken him three days to act.