Three Hands In The Fountain

Petronius Longus stretched his tall frame. He hit the ceiling and swore; briefly. I warned him that if he had been in the bedroom he would have gone through the roof tiles, possibly dislodging some and killing people in the street, causing their relatives to sue him. Before he could start criticising my choice of apartment,. I said, `I can see one startling omission from the bijou housekeeping: no amphorae.'

A black look darkened Petro's face. I realised all his wine must be back at the house Silvia still occupied. She would know what depriving him of it meant too him. If their dispute remained acrimonious Petronius could have seen the last of his wonderful ten-year collection'. He looked sick.

Luckily there was still an old half-amphora of mine hidden under the floorboards. I pulled it out quickly and sat him out on the balcony in the evening sun to apply himself to forgetting his tragedy.

I was still intending to go home to dine with Helena, but somehow bolstering Petro took longer than I expected. He was deeply depressed. He was missing his children. He was missing the vigiles even more. He was furious with his wife, but unable to rant at her since she wouldn't speak to him. He already harboured suspicions about working with me Uncertainty about his future had started to gnaw at him, so instead of being full of anticipation about his new life he was beginning to grow truculent.

I let him take the lead with the wine, a role he assumed with panache.

Soon we had both drunk enough to start arguing once more about the dismembered hand. Then there' was nothing for it but to brood on the condition of society, the brutality of the city, the harshness of life, and the cruelty of women.

`How did the cruelty of women creep in there?' I pondered. `Fusculus says that hand is almost certainly a woman's so it was probably hacked off by an angry man.'

`Don't be pernickety.' Petro had plenty of theories about how brutal women were, and was liable to relate them for hours if I allowed it.

I sidetracked him with my abortive enquiries at the Atrium of Liberty. `So that's it, Petro. Some poor bitch is dead. Dead and unburied. Jointed like a roast, then flung into the water supply.'

`We ought to do something.' It was the violent declamation of a man who had forgotten to eat, although he remembered what a wine cup was for.

`What, for instance?'

`Find out more about this corpse – like where the rest of it is.'

`Oh, who knows?' My head was swimming more than my conscience liked. I felt none too keen on tripping down six flights of stairs then up a few more on the opposite side of the street to reach Helena and home.

`Somebody knows. Somebody did it. He's laughing. He thinks he's got away with it.'

`He has, too.'

`Falco, you're a miserable pessimist.'

`A realist.'

`We're going to find him.'

It was now clear we were going to get very drunk indeed. `You can find him.' I tried to rise. `I have to go and see my wife and baby.'

`Yes.' Petro was magnanimous, with all the despairing self-sacrifice of the newly bereaved and the heavily drunk. `Never mind me. Life has to go on. Go and see little Julia and Helena, my boy. Lovely baby. Lovely lady. You're a lucky man, a lovely man -'

I couldn't leave him. I sat down again.

Thoughts persisted in my old friend's head, spinning round and round like off-balance planets. `That hand was given to us because we are the lads who can sort this.'

'It was given to us because we stupidly asked what it was, Petro.'

`But that's it exactly. W e asked the question. That's what this is all about, Marcus Didius: being in the right place and asking the apt question. Wanting answers, too. Here are some more questions: how many more bits of body are there floating like shrimps in the city water supply?'

I joined in: `How many bodies?'

`How long have they been there?'

`Who will co-ordinate finding even the other parts of this one?''

`Nobody.'

'So we start from the opposite end of the puzzle. How do you, track down a missing person in a city that never devised a procedure for finding lost souls?'

'Where all the administrative units remain strictly pigeon-holed?'

`If the person was killed, and if it happened in a different part of the city from where the severed hand turned up, who ought to be responsible for investigating the crime?'

`Only us if we're stupid enough to take the job.' `Who will bother to ask us?' I demanded. `Only a friend or relative of the deceased.'

`They may not have any friends – or any who care where they are.'

`A prostitute.'

`Or a runaway slave.' `A gladiator?'

'No – they have trainers who want to protect their investment. Those bastards keep track of any missing men. An actor or actress, perhaps.'

`A foreigner visiting Rome.'

`There may be any number of people looking for lost relatives,' I said sadly. `But in a city of a million people, what are the chances they will hear we found an ancient mitt? And even if they do, how can we ever identify something like that?'