Lindsey Davis - [Marcus Didius Falco 07] - Time to Depart.rtf

Time to Depart

by Lindsey Davis

Cov­er

Fal­co 07 - Time to De­part

Time to De­part

Mar­cus Did­ius Fal­co

A Nov­el

Lind­sey Davis

Fal­co 07 - Time to De­part

I

'I still can't be­lieve I've put the bas­tard away for good!' Petro­nius mut­tered.

'He's not on the boat yet,' Fus­cu­lus cor­rect­ed him. Clear­ly the Watch's op­ti­mist.

There were five us wait­ing on a quay­side. Mid-​Oc­to­ber. An hour be­fore dawn. A wak­en­ing breeze chilled our tense faces as we hud­dled in cloaks. The day was mak­ing it­self ready for ac­tion some­where on the oth­er side of Italy, but here in Por­tus, Rome's new har­bour, it was still ful­ly dark. We could see the huge bea­con on the light­house flaunt­ing it­self, with glimpses of tiny fig­ures tend­ing the fire; pale sheets of flame some­times lit the stat­ue of Nep­tune pre­sid­ing over the en­trance. The sea god's il­lu­mi­nat­ed tor­so stood out strange­ly in our sur­round­ings. On­ly the scents of old, hard­ened rope and rot­ting fish scales told us we were stand­ing on the grand har­bour bowl.

We were five hon­est, re­spectable cit­izens who had been wait­ing all night for a sixth. He had nev­er been hon­est, though like most crim­inals he had no dif­fi­cul­ty pass­ing him­self off as re­spectable. Ro­man so­ci­ety had al­ways been read­ily bam­boo­zled by brazen acts. But now, thanks to Petro­nius Longus, the man and his crimes had been pub­licly ex­posed.

We had been wait­ing too long. Al­though no­body said it, we were start­ing to dread that the big ris­sole would not show.

The lowlife was called Bal­bi­nus.

I had been hear­ing his name as long as I could re­mem­ber. It had cer­tain­ly been no­to­ri­ous when Petro­nius and I had come home from the army six years be­fore. At that time my old tent­mate Petro, be­ing a du­ti­ful type who fan­cied a good salary, had put him­self for­ward as a pub­lic of­fi­cer; I set up in busi­ness alone. He was chas­ing cab­bage thieves through the mar­kets while I was pick­ing through clerks' di­vorces and trac­ing stolen art. On the face of it we lived in dif­fer­ent worlds, yet we stum­bled across the same tragedies and heard the same wor­ry­ing sto­ries on the streets.

Bal­bi­nus was renowned through­out our dis­trict as one of the dirt­iest un­der­world or­gan­is­ers ev­er to gild im­pe­ri­al Rome. The area he ter­rorised in­clud­ed broth­els, wharf­side ware­hous­es, the back-​dou­bles on the Aven­tine slopes, the dark colon­nades around the Cir­cus Max­imus. He ran jostlers and con­fi­dence trick­sters; pros­ti­tutes and cut­purs­es; cat bur­glars and ma­raud­ing gangs of street beg­gars with fake blind eyes who could soon spot trou­ble com­ing. He kept a cou­ple of safe hous­es for re­ceiv­ing, set up un­der the cov­er of straight busi­ness­es. Petro­nius reck­oned that the flow of stolen goods in­to these dens of il­lic­it com­merce ri­valled the in­ter­na­tion­al trade at the Em­po­ri­um.

Petro had been try­ing to nail Bal­bi­nus for years. Now, some­how, he had man­aged to set up a cap­ital charge - and go on to se­cure a con­vic­tion de­spite all Bal­bi­nus' ef­forts to es­cape us­ing demo­crat­ic chan­nels (in­tim­ida­tion and bribes). I had yet to hear the full de­tails. Bare­ly back in Rome from what I liked to de­...