Three Hands In The Fountain

Petro looked at me. If we let ourselves be as pessimistic as this cheap piece, we would give up, Perhaps we would never have started. Perhaps we never should have done – but we were in it now. Without his saying anything I guessed he intended to have Pia interviewed again by the vigiles in the hope they could put, the frighteners on her. Cyclops Street where she lived must be in the First or Second districts; I wasn't sure offhand, but the boundary ran somewhere near the Porta Metrovia at the end of the street: all this territory belonged to the Fifth Cohort. If they hadn't heard that Petro had been suspended by Rubella he could probably get away with making the request `officially'.

There was no incentive for us to carry on. The girl was painful to deal with.

Only as we were leaving did she become tearful and terrified. `You didn't mean it, what you said about Asinia being dead?'

Petronius leaned in the doorway, thumbs in his belt. `Unfortunately it's true. Want to tell us any more?'

`I don't know nothing else,' Pia retorted defiantly.

We went out, closing the door quietly. Petronius Longus walked steadily down half a flight of the stinking stairs. Then he stopped briefly. I looked at him. He chewed a finger reflectively.

`The silly bitch is lying,' he said.

THIRTY TWO

Outside Pia's tenement Petro and I parted company. As I had expected, he was off for a word with the Fifth Cohort. Their headquarters was right at the end of this street – and also pretty well adjacent to the reservoir in the Arch of Dolabella: I suggested he ask them to be particularly watchful every night after the Games ended, in case our maniac killer was polluting the water supply right under their noses.

`All right, I don't need you to write my speech for me.'

'Just a few rhetorical points, partner.'

`You're an interfering bastard.' He was looking thoughtful again. Then he said, even more defiantly, `Pia's lying about something, Falco, or I'm the Colossus of Rhodes.'

`You're just a colossal bighead,' I grinned, and since we were almost at the Fifth's station house I left him, so he could sustain the myth of representing his own cohort. Turning up with an informer would be a dead giveaway that he was freelancing.

'Cyclops Street is only two away from the Street of Honour and Virtue, another run-down and ineptly named sanctuary for drabs with appalling histories: including Marina, the flaky pastry who had been my late brother's girlfriend and brought my niece Marcia into the world. I took responsibility for Marina, since she had made it clear she had no intention of ever being responsible herself. Since I was so close that it seemed unavoidable, I forced myself to go to see her and the child.

Useless. I should have known it would be while the Games were on. Marina had gone to the Circus. Trust her to home in on a place that contained two hundred thousand men. She must have dumped Marcia somewhere. I could find hardly anyone to ask, and no one I' did roust out could tell me. I left a message to warn Marina there was a, bad character abducting females in her locality. She wouldn't care about that. But if she thought I was prowling about nearby on surveillance it might scare her into looking after my niece more carefully.

Marcia was nearly six now. She seemed a happy, well-adjusted, vibrant child. That was just as well. Helena and I were not in a position to rescue her.

A handful. My brother Festus had died in Judaea without, knowing he had fathered Marcia. For various reasons, a few of them noble, I tried to take his place.

The day had heated up to scorching, but a chill ran over me. I hoped the aqueduct killer was not tempted to turn to paedophilia. Marcia was too friendly with everyone. I dreaded the thought of my favourite little niece scampering around these streets with her innocent gregarious smile while a perverted butcher was roaming the same neighbourhood looking for unprotected female flesh.''

Nobody was safe. When we found the first badly decayed hand its anonymous owner had seemed so remote that Petro and I could stay neutral. We were never going to identify that one or the next. Now we were getting closer. This was where the nightmares started. I had learned enough about a victim to feel I knew her. I had seen how her death was affecting her family and friends. Asinia, wife of Caius Cicurrus, aged twenty, had a name and a personality. Soon it would be all too easy to wake in the night sweating in case the next person was somebody close to me.

I walked back again to the Fifth Cohort's billet Petronius had already left. Being so close I went to see Bolanus at his hut, but he was somewhere out on site. I wrote him' a message to say the snatched women might he disappearing in his immediate vicinity so I would like' to talk to him about it. I was wondering whether there was any feasible access to the Appia Claudia or any other water system nearby.