TIME TO DEPART

`Put a blanket or something around him!' Petro's lip curled in distaste at the little black boy's fluttery skirt and bare, gilded chest. `Try and convince him we're not going to beat him up.'

`Growing soft, chief?'

`He's palpitating like a run-down leveret. We'll get nothing if he drops dead on us. Now let's do a regular search.'

We drew some conclusions from the search. No

We should probably only ever find out where they had taken him if somebody confessed. We might never know. What had happened to him in the hour or so that followed his abduction we could all imagine clearly. Most of us preferred not to think about it.

XXXI

AS WE WERE leaving the No

`May we look in the bag, sir?' The man handed it over to Fusculus with a rather dry expression. It was full of tweezers, spatulas and stoneware medicine jars. `What's your name?'

`Alexander. I am the householder's doctor.'

We relaxed, but our humour was harsh. `Well he won't need you now!'

`The patient has suffered a fatal dose of being beaten up.' `Terminal knife wounds.'

`Irreversible death.'

`I see,' commented the doctor, no doubt thinking of his lost fees.

Petronius, who had not spoken to him before this, said, `I respect your relationship with your patient, but you will understand my enquiries are very serious. Did No

`I don't believe he did.'

`Well you are free to go then.'

`Thank you.'

Something about the man's ma

`There was something peculiar there,' I suggested, as we all walked back to the patrol house.

`He's a doctor,' Petro assured me calmly. `They're always peculiar.'

If I had not known him better I might have thought something in Petro's own ma

At the station house Petro's young assistant, Porcius, was in deep trouble with a woman. Luckily for him she was extremely old and not worth creating a fuss about. It was another stolen-bedcover case; somebody was going around with a hook on a stick targeting ancient dames who were too bent to chase after a thief. Porcius was trying to write a report for this one; we could see he would be helpless for the rest of the morning. unless rescued.

`See the clerk,' Petro told her curtly.

`The clerk's a dozy mule!' She must have been here before. `This nice young man is looking after me.'

Porcius was a new recruit. He was desperate to arrest as many wrongdoers as possible, but had no idea of how to dodge time wasters. Petro was unimpressed. `This nice young man has more important things to do.'

`See the clerk, please,' muttered Porcius, looking embarrassed.

Indoors we found a nasty scene: a large boulder was lying in the centre of the floor, along with the broken shutter it had been thrown through last night and the wreckage of a stool. Petro sighed, and said to me, `As you see, sometimes the locals chuck worse things at us than cabbages.'

`They poked some brassica stalks through the cell air hole too,' Porcius told him. `People round here do seem to think we're short of greens.'

`Well next time forget charitable deeds for gra

`That's easy,' gri

He roared for the foot patrol to stop counting their esparto mats in the firefighting equipment store and come to remove the debris from indoors.

Trying to regain Petro's approval, Porcius a

Petronius, who had merely been frowning with a

Frowning, he turned into the small room he used for interrogations, only to find two of the foot patrol's most recent prisoners. One of them was shouting and throwing himself about, nearly throttling himself with the giant ring chained around his neck. The other stayed sullenly silent, a middle-class fire offender who was pretending this was all a nightmare from which a smart lawyer would extract him, probably with compensation for insult and slander. (I could tell from Petro's irritated expression the man was probably right.) With them, huddled on a bench, was the minute black slave from the No

Petro fumed at the chaos. `Shut up!' he bawled abruptly at the half-mad drunken man who was shouting; surprised, the fellow obeyed instantly. `Fusculus, start asking questions and see if we can let these prisoners go. Unless they're hard nuts, we need the space. Porcius, get Fusculus to tell you what we know happened to No

Since there was nowhere else private, Petro and I went out for a conference at the chophouse just across the street.

`So what do you think, Falco?'

I chewed a stuffed vine leaf, trying not to think about its consistency and taste. This job promised an endless parade of lukewarm, stand-up food taken squashed against the cracked counters of unhygienic foodshops. Petro did not come from a family that provided lunch baskets. When we were in the legions, he was always the one who never hid spare marching bread in his tunic, though he soon learned to pinch mine. I spat out a rough bit. `It looks as if the Emporium robbery may have been organised by No

We both considered that, eating gloomily.

`Alternatively -' I offered.

Petro groaned. `Knowing you, I might have known the easy answer wasn't enough. Alternatively?'

`No

`Bit stupid,' argued Petro. `So long as No

`If you ever find out who they are.'

.'I love a chirpy optimist.'

`Helena thinks we should be looking at Lalage for the Emporium.'