The room was nothing special, but I had once been proud of my face.

“I needed a new table,” I groaned wittily. “You can buy wonderful ones nowadays. Decent slice of maple six feet across, bolted on a simple marble stand, just right with my bronze candelabrum—” I used to light my room with a tallow-dipped rush.

“Fool! Your mother says—”

“Spare me,” I said.

“Suit yourself!” She flounced off with her I’m just the baggage who takes messages face.

Things were not going so well. Still, my brain was not completely pulverized. I was too keen on good health to ignore a message from my ma. No need to trouble Lenia; I knew what it would be. And regarding my lost moppet with the mellifluous brown eyes, I did have an idea where she was.

News travels fast in the Aventine. Petronius turned up, fussing and none too pleased, while I was still exclaiming in agony as I bathed my face.

“Falco! Keep your filthy-mannered civic friends off my patch—” He whistled. Then at once took the black pottery jug from my shaking hand and poured for me himself. It was like old times, after a bad night’s brawling outside the centurions’ dining club in Isca Dumnoniorum. At twenty-nine it hurt much more than when we were nineteen.

After a while he propped up what remained of my bench on two bricks from my stove, then sat me down.

“Who did this to you, Falco?”

I managed to tell him, using only the left half of my mouth. “An overexcited aedile called Atius Pertinax. I’d like to open him out like a spatchcock chicken, completely boned, on a very hot grill!”

Petronius growled. He hates aediles even more than I do. They get in his way, they upset local loyalties, they take all the credit, then leave him to tidy up their mess.

He prised up my loose floorboard and brought me some wine, but it stung me too much, so he drank it himself. We both hate waste.

“You all right?” I nodded, and let him do the talking. “I’ve been checking on the Camillus family. The senator’s daughter is away on travel leave. There are two sons, one doing his year in the army in Germany, one bashing a desk—wiping the governor’s nose in Baetican Spain. Your little girlfriend is some hushed up indiscretion of the senator’s brother. He’s not married—don’t ask me how he gets away with that! According to the Censor’s office Sosia was recorded as the child of one of his slaves, acknowledged then adopted by him. Could just be her father is a decent type. Or could be her mother was someone more important than he can say.”

“Met him,” I squeezed out like a sour pip. “Bit thin-lipped. Why not in the senate too?”