He cut me off. ‘We acknowledge an inherited problem. Someone tried to dump it in the past—unsuccessfully. Slaves should be freed as a reward for good service—’ Just what my father’s band all kept reminding me. ‘It is clear this clan were disposed of because they were perennial pests.’ Laeta sniffed. Slaves and ex-slaves are riddled with snobbery. ‘None ever held a useful position or trained in a specialism. When they were freed, none took decent work or tried to set up businesses. Their imperial past makes them arrogant; it is thought—both by themselves and others—to give them protection from the law.’

‘Wrong of course?’ I asked.

‘They exploit the belief, and people are afraid of them.’

Petronius and I shared another glance. ‘So it will look bad,’ he suggested, ‘if moves are made against them on your orders, Laeta—but you find no evidence and can make no charges stick?’

‘Indeed.’

‘So what’s the plan? I assume you asked me here because there is one?’

Laeta powered into a summary: ‘Local initiatives have failed. Time and time again, in fact. I want to send expert examiners from Rome. Look at it with fresh eyes. We need a sophisticated approach, backed up by energetic action.’

The usual plan, apparently. The one that usually fails.

‘You want them evicted?’ A shift behind his eyes told me—and Laeta, if Laeta was observant—Petronius Longus thought this was asking for trouble.

‘Only,’ Laeta insisted, ‘if the accusations are true. If these people are causing a very serious nuisance.’

‘Murder would be defined as “very serious”?’

‘Yes, murder would justify intervention from Rome. More than one murder certainly.’

‘What action has been taken so far?’

‘Your dead man was reported missing, by relatives I understand. Regional forces did visit the Claudii, since they were implicated . . .’

‘And the regionals buggered it!’ Petronius was frank, but Laeta looked unfazed. Well, he started life as a slave. He had heard crudity in many languages. As an official in Rome, he shared Petro’s sneer at the regions too.

‘Perhaps they were under-experienced . . . They found nothing. It means any new investigation has to be conducted with extra sensitivity. It would be a bad day if imperial freedmen—which the Claudii are, and that must never be forgotten—came to accuse the Emperor of harassment.’

I asked, ‘Have they lawyered up?’

‘Not yet.’ Laeta clearly assumed they would. Social menaces are well versed in finding legal teams to defend them, and an imperial connection was attractive; it guaranteed the brief would attract notice.

‘Can they afford it?’

‘There are always lawyers, Petronius, who find it a challenge to take on the government.’

‘Pro bono? That really would be a glory of democracy,’ I scoffed.

‘It would be a pile-bursting pain in the arse!’ Laeta’s turn to be crude.

‘So you want the vigiles involved?’ Petronius Longus was torn between his yearning to pursue an intriguing case and his distaste for taking orders.