While the donkey bared its teeth against my grip on its bridle, the enforcer leaned forward and glared at me between its pointed ears. 'You'll know me again,' I said quietly. 'And I'll know you! The name's Falco; anyone in the Aventine will tell you I can't bear to see a bully damage an old man's livelihood.'

His rheumy eyes darted to the fruitseller, who had been standing cowed among his massacred pears. 'Accidents happen...' the old man muttered, not looking at me. Interference was probably unwelcome, but blatant intimidation makes me furious.

'Accidents can be prevented!' I snarled, addressing the bully. I hauled on the bridle to pull the donkey further from the stall. It looked as mean as a wild colt that had just been caught in a thicket in Thrace-but if it bit me I was angry enough to bite the brute straight back. 'Take off your four-hoofed wrecker to some other morning market-and don't come here again!'

Then I gave the beast a whack on the rump that set him wheezing in protest and cantering off. The rider looked back from the end of the street; I let him see me planted in the middle of the road, still watching him.

A small crowd had been standing by in silence. Most of them now remembered appointments and dispersed hurriedly. One or two helped me pick up the old man's fruit. He shoved the produce back anyhow, bundling the broken pieces into a bucket at the back of his lock-up, and trying to make the rest look as if nothing had happened.

Once the stall was more tidy he seemed to relax. 'You knew that oaf,' I said. 'What's his hold on you?'

'Landlord's runner.' I might have guessed. 'They want to increase the rent for all the frontage tenancies. Some of us with seasonal trade can't afford any more. I paid at the old rate in July but asked for time... That was my answer.'

'Anything I can do to help?'

He shook his head, looking frightened. We both knew I had caused him more trouble with the enforcer by defending him today.

Severina was still standing outside the entry to her house.

She made no comment, though her expression was strangely still.

'Sorry for dashing off-' As we turned down the entry I was still boiling with indignation. 'Do you have the same landlord as the people with the lock-ups?' She shook her head. 'Who owns the title to the shops?'

'It's a consortium. There has been a lot of trouble recently.'

'Violence?'

'I believe so...'

I had done the fruitseller no favour. It was preying on my mind. At least if I was hanging about this area while I tracked Severina I would be able to keep an eye on him.

Chapter XXIV

After her morning ride out of doors Severina had called for a recuperative beverage; I was invited to join her. While it was served she sat frowning; like me, preoccupied with the attack on the fruitseller.

'Falco, did you know that old man was in trouble with his landlord?'

'Once I saw him being bullied it was the obvious thing to suspect.'

She was wearing blue today, a deep sulphur-glass shade with a duller girdle into which she had woven strands of the vivid orange she favoured to add flecks of contrast. The blue brought unexpected colour to her eyes. Even that wiry red hair seemed a more luxuriant shade.

'So your better nature triumphed!' She seemed to admire me for doing my bit. I stirred the spoon round my drink. 'How long have you hated landlords, Falco?'

'Ever since the first one started dunning me.' Severina watched me over the rim of her cup, which was a ceramic redware beaker, inexpensive yet comfortable in the hand. 'Leaseholding is a foul infection. A great-uncle of mine-' I stopped. She knew how to listen; I had already let myself be drawn in. 'My uncle, who was a market gardener, used to let his neighbour keep a pig in a shack on his land. For twenty years they shared it harmoniously, until the neighbour prospered and offered an annual fee. My great-uncle accepted-then found his immediate thought was whether he could insist that his old friend ought to pay for reroofing the shack! He was so horrified he returned the rent money. Great-uncle Scaro told me this when I was about seven, as if it was just a story; but he was warning me.'

'Against becoming a man of property?' Severina flicked a glance over me. I wore my normal patched tunic, workaday belt and uncombed hair. 'Not much danger of that, is there?'

'Fortune-hunters don't hold a monopoly in ambition!'

She took it with good temper. 'I had better confess, the reason I do not share a landlord with the shops-' I had guessed. 'Your apartment is freehold?'

'I happen to control all the domestic leases in the block; but the shops are separate-nothing to do with me.' She spoke meekly, since this admission took us straight back to the issue of her swiftly acquired legacies. I had learned from the Subura lapidary that at least some of Severina's tenants were content. But I was more interested in the way she first acquired her loot than how she had invested it.

I stood up. We were in a bright, yellow-ochre room which had folding doors. I pushed them back further, hoping for greenery, but only found a paved and treeless yard.

'You have a garden here?' Severina shook her head. I tutted, turning back from the sad little patch of outdoor shade. 'Of course you always move on too quickly; planting is for people who stay put!... Never mind, with Novus you are acquiring half the Pincian-'

'Yes; plenty of scope to amuse myself with topiary... What sort of home do you have?'

'Just four rooms-one an office. It's a new lease I've taken out.'

'Pleased?'

'Not sure; the neighbours are behaving snootily and I miss having a balcony. But I like the space.'

'Are you married?'

'No.'

'Girlfriends?' She spotted me hesitating. 'Oh let me guess-just one? Is she giving you trouble?'

'Why should you think that?'

'You seem like a man who might overreach himself!' I scoffed but with five sisters, I had learned to ignore nosiness. Severina, who was brighter than my sisters, changed the subject. 'When you are being an informer do you have an accomplice?'

'No. I work alone.' At that she laughed; for some reason I still felt as if she was baiting me. A long time afterwards I discovered why.

'You look uneasy, Falco. Do you object to discussing your private life?'

'I'm human.'

'Oh yes. Under the firm-jawed cliche lurks a fascinating man.'

It was a line: straight professional flattery. I felt my spine stiffen. 'Cut it, Zotica! If you're practising winsome dialogue, I shall have to excuse myself.'

'Relax, Falco!'

I was still fighting back: 'Flattery's not what I go for. That's big brown eyes and smart repartee-'

'Sophisticated!'

'Besides, I hate redheads.'

She flashed me a sharp look. 'What have redheads done to you?'

I smiled faintly. A redhead ran off with my father once. But I could hardly blame the whole flame-haired tribe for that; I knew my father, and I knew it was his fault. My opinion was purely a matter of taste: redheads never appealed to me.

'Perhaps we should talk about business,' I suggested, without letting her question get to me.

Severina leaned across to a side table and refilled her beaker, then took mine and topped that up. Since I believed she was responsible for killing her three husbands and that one of them, the apothecary, might well have been poisoned, I experienced a qualm. Knowing Severina's history, a sensible man ought to have turned down hospitality from those graceful white hands. Yet in her comfortable house, lulled by the skilful turn of her conversation, when offered polite refreshments it seemed bad manners to refuse. Was I being disarmed by the same trickery with which new victims were lined up to be despatched?