Laeta flexed his fingers. He summed up the position in a careful intellectual way: ‘The Praetorians would look heavy-handed. The army is never used against Roman citizens in Italy. Yes, it seems right to use the vigiles. And since you have prior knowledge, Petronius Longus, you should lead the mission.’

‘Going out of Rome?’

‘Going to Latium.’

‘My tribune will need a docket.’

‘Your tribune will be comforted with all the honeyed instructions he requires.’

‘This is Marcus Rubella,’ Petronius warned, on the verge of smiling.

‘Ah, the wondrous Rubella!’ Laeta had met him. ‘Then I shall use my most impressive seal when I write to him.’

‘Better bump up his budget,’ I advised. ‘To help him calm down.’

Laeta tinkled with laughter. ‘Oh Falco, there are limits!’

Foreseeing a long summer away from his family, Petronius became grumpy. He could not refuse when the Palace commanded. If this had been his own idea, he would have been gagging for it; orders from a scroll-beetle were much less welcome. He tapped the dead man’s tablet with a heavy index finger. ‘So does the petition-writer have a name, Laeta?’ Claudius Laeta made a show of ruffling through other documents to check.

I leaned towards him and offered helpfully, ‘He is called Julius Modestus—am I right?’ When Laeta confirmed it, I was not surprised.

13

Petronius shot me a dark look. He thought I had known all along. In fact, I had only just decided for sure the coincidences added up.

To Laeta I breezed, ‘Lucius Petronius and I are already on this. We have been working together; I am just back from reconnaissance.’ Now it was Laeta’s turn to look annoyed with me; he thought I was angling for payment. He was right too. ‘If you are sending in headquarters assessors it makes sense to include me. I’ll do it for my usual rates.’

‘You’re too expensive, Falco.’

‘You can’t afford to peel manpower off the Fourth Cohort. Petronius and I have history as a team; he can’t tackle this alone—and if Vespasian wants to distance himself from these freedmen, he knows I’m his man.’

To my surprise, Laeta reluctantly nodded. Probably he thought if this went wrong, he now had someone else to blame.

‘It’s more than neighbourhood annoyance,’ said Petronius, impatient with our negotiations. ‘The tomb death was not a singleton, an accident of tempers flaring; Modestus had been stalked, all the way to Rome. He was mutilated—the killer returned to the body for more of that after death.’

I saw Laeta moisten dry lips. ‘I need to demonstrate we are dealing with more than one random murder.’ He was still worrying over the bureaucracy.

‘Modestus’ wife is also missing, most certainly dead too. Not even a body,’ said Petro. ‘The killer may have kept her corpse for—’

‘I see!’ Laeta must be squeamish.