‘So were you a contemporary of an obnoxious bunch of imperial freedmen called the Claudii? Most live in the Pontine Marshes, though I’m told they have connections with Rome.’

Momus took a long time rubbing his bleary eyes, then surprisingly he said no.

I said quietly, ‘I thought you were famous for knowing the entire familia?’

He pulled a face. He was not intending to help me. That was unusual. Normally our loathing of Anacrites and our distrust of Laeta made us allies.

‘Somebody knows them,’ I said. ‘Somebody is rumoured to protect them.’

‘Not me, Falco.’

‘No, I never saw you as the patron type!’ Even just talking to Momus always made me feel I had let down my own moral standards. I may be an informer but I do have some.

Momus laughed, but no ice was broken in his reception of my joke.

‘Half the towns in Latium are shit-scared of treading on their nasty toes,’ I told him. ‘And you claim you don’t know them? Leaving me no choice, old crony, but to suppose you must be shit-scared of this somebody who watches over them.’

Momus did not move a muscle.

I blew out my cheeks slowly, as if impressed by the scale of the problem. That was easy. I was genuinely marvelling. Momus liked to be outspoken. His silence was not part of his routine sea-anemone lolling. If he had had tentacles, he would have stopped waving them as soon as I mentioned the Claudii. Momus was taking a lot of trouble to show no reaction, but his grime-engrained skin acquired extra sheen. I could have wiped his greasy, sweating face and then oiled a wheel-axle with the rag.

Eventually he growled, ‘Don’t mess with this, Falco. You’re too young and sweet.’

He was being ironic, but the warning had a note of real concern. I thanked him for the advice and took myself to see Laeta.

I knew he would be there. In the first place, he enjoyed pretending his burden of work was terrible—and in the second, he really was the most important scroll-bug in the imperial bureaux. At this time in the summer, the betting was that all three of his masters, Vespasian and both his sons, were taking their ease at some family villa, perhaps out in the Sabine hills where they originated. When that happened, Claudius Laeta was left at the Palatine to run the Empire smoothly. Few people ever noticed that power was temporarily in his hands.