A Body in the Bathhouse by Lindsey Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

harshly. “This man is excellent to start with. Why? Now you learn about clients. As informers, you must always out-maneuver the devious crook who commissions you: weigh him up
first
! My father, whom you know as Didius Geminus, is really called Didius Favonius—so right from scratch, you’re facing a fake name. With a client, this is typical. He has led a double life; he runs a shady business; you can’t believe a word he says; and he’ll try to duck out of paying you.”
    My two runners gazed at me. They were in their mid-twenties. Both had dark hair, which like aristocrats they left to flop annoyingly. Once a few derisive barmaids had pulled it, they would learn. Aelianus was thicker set, a little more untidy, a lot more truculent. Justinus, finer featured and better mannered, had more of a look of Helena. They were entitled to wear white tunics with purple bands to show their rank, but they came to work, as I had instructed, in subdued clothes and nothing fancier than signet rings. They still sounded so well-spoken I winced, yet Justinus at least had an ear for languages, so we could work on that. Unobtrusive behavior would help. If ever they got in deep trouble, they had both been through army training; even as junior staff officers, they knew how to put in the boot. I was now sending them to Glaucus, the trainer at my gym; I had told him to slaughter them.
    “So,” Aelianus condescended to address his younger brother, “we have learned today that our mentor, Marcus Didius, holds his papa in traditional respect!”
    “It sounds,” Justinus said to me, grinning, “as if we should look at your father as the most likely killer.”
    Even I had never thought of that. But with Pa, yes: it was a possibility.

VII
    “A ULUS ,” I instructed, addressing Aelianus by his personal name in an attempt to make him feel inferior. Pointless. If one thing had qualified that blighter for the senate, it was his inborn sense of divinity. “Your job is to root out background on our suspects. We have a couple of leads: Pa gave me an address for the yard out of which they are supposed to operate, also a name for the winery where they were regulars. That’s where he used to meet up to commission them for work—work being a euphemism with these fellows. Then here’s a possible home address for Cotta. It’s an apartment by a food shop called the Aquarius at the side of Livia’s Portico.”
    “Where’s that?” asked Aulus.
    “On the Clivus Suburanus.”
    A silence.
    “That runs into town from the Esquiline Gate,” I said calmly. Senators’ sons were bound to be ignorant. This pair would have to start drawing themselves street maps. “If the apartment location is right, someone there should be able to send you on to Gloccus.”
    “So if I find them—”
    “Not likely. Unless they are very stupid”—which was a possibility—“they will have fled as soon as their man died. That’s whether they topped him personally, or merely had the killer on their payroll.”
    “What would they be afraid of if they are innocent?”
Innocent
, that was a sweet word. Was our thickset, sullen Aulus a closet romantic?
    “They would fear being tortured by the vigiles,” I corrected him. “The dead man had been deliberately hidden under their floor—so they are at least accessories.”
    “Oh.”
    “Just pump their associates for clues about where they have run off to—and physical descriptions would help.”
    Aelianus looked less than impressed with his task. Tough.
    Both brothers were beginning to feel that working with me was not glamorous. For starters, we were gathered at my new house on the river-bank, eating a very rapid breakfast. A bread roll and a beaker of warm water each came as a shock. They had expected four-hour dalliances in wine shops.
    “What can I do?” nagged Justinus plaintively.
    “Plenty. Solve the identity of the corpse. Go to the contractors’ yard with your brother. Hang about after he leaves and talk