ODE TO A BANKER

THE CONVERSATION I had held earlier with Pa about keeping daybooks had stayed with me. I decided I would call in the records of the Aurelian Bank.

Big ideas! I then decided it might be asking for trouble. That did not stop me. Since I was working for the vigiles and they would be held accountable for my excesses of enthusiasm, I reckoned it could be done officially.

In July and August in Rome when you have a major project on, you must accomplish all you can in the evening. Daytime is too hot for work like mine. Even if I decided to endure the sun, nobody else would be available. So that evening, although I had every excuse to toddle home to Helena, I put in one more effort and went to see Petronius at the vigiles' patrol-house, to discuss banking.

It happened that Petro was there. When I arrived he and Sergius, the punishment man, were teasing a statement out of a recalcitrant victim by the subtle technique of bawling fast questions while flicking him insistently with the end of a hard whip. I winced, and sat out on a bench in the warm evening sun until they tired and shoved their victim into the holding-cell.

`What's he done?'

`He doesn't want to tell us.' That had been obvious.

`What do you think he's done?'

Run a tunic-stealing racket at the Baths of Calliope.'

`Surely that's too routine to justify the heavy hand?'

`And he poisoned the dog Calliope had brought in to stand guard over the clothes pegs in the changing room.'

`Killed a doggie? Now that's wicked.'

`She bought the dog from my sister,' Sergius broke in angrily. `My sister took a lot of back-chat for supplying a sick animal.' He went back inside to shout insults through the cell door. I told Petro I still thought they were being too rough on the suspect.

`No, he's lucky,' Petronius assured me. `Being beaten by Sergius is nothing. The alternative was letting Sergius' sister get to him. She is twice as big' – that must be quite a size, I thought – `and she's horrible.'

`Oh, fair enough.'

I discussed a plan I had for demanding sight of the banker's records, or at least the most recent. Petro raised objections initially, then his natural impulse to be awkward with financiers took charge. He agreed to make available a couple of lads in red tunics, to be my official escort, and with the provision of a suitable docket from his clerk I could approach the bank and see what happened. The vigiles clerk was a creative type. He devised a grand document, written in peculiar and extravagant language, which served as a warrant to impound the goods.

We took this to the Forum, to the Aurelian change-table. Petronius in fact came along with us. Eager for a field trip, so did the clerk. Impressed by our own bravado, we carried the day: the cashier reluctantly agreed to show us where the freedman Lucrio lived. Lucrio possessed all the relevant records, apparently. At his apartment, a discreet but obviously spacious ground-floor spread, we were told he had gone out to dinner. We could sense resistance but without their master to give orders, the household staff caved in. A slave reluctantly showed us where the records were kept, and we carried off in a handcart the tablets and sewn-together codices that looked the most up to date. We left a nice note to say we had removed them, naturally.

We towed the material back to the patrol-house. It had to be kept secure, for all sorts of reasons. Since Rubella, the tribune, was still on leave in Campania, we dumped everything in his office. Then I went out and thanked the escort. They shambled off, grinning. Ex-slaves, each doing a six-year stint in fire-fighting as a route to respectability, they were glad of some fun, especially if they could achieve it without any headbutts, bruises or burns.

`I'll have a quick squint now, then I'll be along tomorrow to start scrutiny in detail,' I said to Petro, who was himself preparing for a night out on the streets of the Thirteenth District (the patrol-house was in the Twelfth).

Having glanced quickly at the unfathomable tablets, Petronius now looked at me as though I were mad. `Are you sure about this?' `A doddle,' I assured him breezily.

`Whatever you say, Falco.'

`No option.' I decided on honesty: `We're getting stuck.' `You mean, you are.'

I ignored that. `Once the alarm was raised after the murder, the vigiles were on the spot within minutes. We checked everyone in the household for bloodstains. His relations all have alibis. The scriptorium manager is exonerated by absence. There are no links to the literary visitors. I won't yet say for certain that the bank holds the motive, but it looks increasingly likely. I needed to swoop. We did not want chests to be cleared or items destroyed.'

`You know what you're doing,' Petronius said dryly.