Three Hands In The Fountain

Anything in the aqueducts is bound to end up startling the public in a bath-house or a fountain. Does he want the things to be discovered?'

`Maybe he doesn't put; the remains there deliberately: Maybe they arrive in the aqueducts by accident?'

`Seems more likely.' Bolanus bit off a huge mouthful with a hearty appetite. I waited while he chewed it. I felt he was a man I did not need to push. `I've been thinking about this, Falco.'

I knew he would have done. He was practical, a problem-solver. Mysteries of all kinds would prey on his mind. His solution, if he proposed one, was liable to work. He was the kind of fellow I could use as a brother-in-law, instead of the deadbeats my sisters had actually wed. A man you could build a sun terrace with. A man who would drop in and mend your broken shutter if you were away on holiday.

`The aqueducts that run up on arcades have vaulted roofs, or occasionally slabs. It's to stop evaporation mainly. So you can't just throw up rubbish and hope it lands inside, Falco. There are access shafts, at two-hundred-and-forty-foot intervals. Anyone can find them, certainly; they are marked by the cippi- '

`The "gravestones"?'

`Right. Augustus had the bright idea of numbering all the shafts. We don't use his system, actually; it's easier to go by the nearest milestone on the road. That's how a work gang will be approaching the site, after all.'

`I don't expect Caesar Augustus worked in many gangs.'

Bolanus grimaced. 'Things might run a bit more smoothly if a few weeks in a labour force was part of the Senate career ladder.'

`Agreed. Give me a man who's had to get his hands dirty.'

`Anyway, finding the access points isn't difficult – but they're all stoppered with mighty plugs of stone that only a crane can lift. We don't need access as often as the sewer gangs – and we have a running battle trying to stop the public fixing their own pipes and stealing water. So getting in hardly seems a possibility for this maniac of yours.'

Actually this was good news. `All right. What's the scenario? We're not talking about unpremeditated domestic murder. This is some bastard who regularly, over a long period of time, has taken women with the intention of abusing them both alive and dead. Then he has to get rid of the evidence, in some way that doesn't point straight back to him. So when he kills a woman he chops her up to make the corpse easier to dispose of.'

`Or because he likes doing it.' Bolanus was a cheery, soul.

`Both, probably. Men who repeatedly 'kill can detach their minds. He must be obsessive – and he's calculating. So why has he chosen to use the aqueduct channels, and if they are so inaccessible, how?'

Bolanus took a deep breath. `Maybe they aren't inaccessible. Maybe he works in them. Maybe he is one of us.'

I had wondered about that, of course.

I gave Bolanus a sober' stare. `That's a possibility.' He seemed relieved, to have it out in the open. Although he was being frank with me, it must- feel like disloyalty to his colleagues. `I don't much like it, Bolanus. As the public slaves all work in gangs, unless a whole gang knows about the murders and has been covering up for one of their members for years, just think of the problems. Could this killer really have disposed of numerous corpses without any of his mates ever noticing? And if he had been noticed, then by now something would have been said.'

Bolanus frowned. `It's horrible to imagine someone going into a conduit with a human hand or foot in his pocket-'

`Foot?'

`One turned up here once.' I wondered how many other grim discoveries we were going to hear about. `Then he would have to wait until he was certain none of his work mates was looking when he threw it in.'

`Stupidity. Would it be worth the risk?'

`Taking the risk might be part of the thrill,' Bolanus suggested. -

I wondered whether he was revealing too much understanding of the killer's mind. After all, he worked on the aqueducts himself and as an engineer's assistant he could make inspections alone if he wanted to. He would also be well placed to hear about any enquiry, and attach himself to it so he could check what was going on.

Unlikely. Yes, he was, a loner, because of his specialist knowledge. But this was a man who made things work, not one who destroyed and hacked up women out of some dark inhuman motive. Bolanus was one of the skilled world movers who built the Empire and kept it in trim. Still, the killer too, with years of undetected crime behind him, must have his own efficiency. If we ever identified him, I knew clues to his madness would be there – and yet he would be somebody who had lived in society without arousing qualms in those he met. The real terror in such men is how closely they resemble the rest of us.