ALLOWING A WOMAN to sidetrack me was routine. Come the morning I was still resolute. Plenty of ineffectual clerks had hired me to chase after heartless females who were giving them the silly story; I was used to being offered sensual bribes to make me forget a mission.

Of course I never accepted the bribes. And of course Helena Justina, that upright, ethical character, would never try to influence me by shameless means. She went to bed with me that night for the same reason she had always done so: because she wanted to. And the next day, I carried on directly facing up to the situation because that was what I wanted.

Helena carried on dodging. I had made absolutely no progress in finding out how she felt. That was fine. Her motives defied prediction. That was why I was in love with her; I was tired of predictable women. I could be persistent. Maybe that was why she was in love with me.

Assuming she really was. A shiver as I remembered our lovemaking last night convinced me – at which point I stopped worrying.

I washed my face, rinsed my teeth, and bit my way into a hard bread roll. Yesterday's; we lived too far from the street to buy fresh loaves for breakfast. I gulped down some of the warm drink I was preparing for Helena. While she sleepily drank hers in bed, I put on a tunic that had spiced itself up with a gay shower of moth holes and renewed acquaintance with a wrinkled old belt that looked as if it had been tanned from the ox Romulus had used to measure Rome. I dragged a comb into my curls, hit a tangle, and decided to keep the relaxed coiffure that matched my casual clothes. I cleaned my boots and sharpened my knife. I counted my small change- a swift task – then transferred the purse to today's belt.

I kissed Helena, following up with a bit of fumbling under the bedsheet. She accepted the playfulness, laughing at me. `Oh go and flaunt your Eastern tan where the men show off…' Today she would readily surrender me to the Forum, the baths, even the' imperial offices. She knew that when I, had had my fill of the city I would come home to her.

After a short tussle with the outer door, which had taken to sticking, I limped downstairs. I had hurt my toe kicking the doorframe and was cursing gently: home again. Everything as I remembered it.

I was absorbing the familiar experience of the ramshackle apartment block: for five floors angry voices reached me from behind curtains and half-doors. Two apartments per storey; two or three rooms per apartment; two and a half families per dwelling and as many as five or six people to a room. Sometimes there were fewer occupants, but they ran a business, like the mirror-polisher and the tailor. Sometimes one room contained an old lady who had been the original tenant, now almost forgotten amidst the rumbustious invaders to whom Smaractus had sublet parts of her home `to help her with the rent'. He was a professional landlord. Nothing he did was to help anybody but himself.

I noticed a few more graffiti gladiators chalked on the poorly rendered walls. There was a smell like wet dog mingling with yesterday's steamed cabbage. Stepping down around one dark corner I had a narrow escape when I nearly trod on some child's lost pottery horse-on-wheels, which would have skated my foot from under me and probably left me with a broken back. I put the horse on a ledge, alongside a broken rattle and one tiny sandal that had been there when I left for Syria.

The stairs ended outside in a dim nook under two columns that had once made a portico. The rest of this row of columns had long ago fallen down, and vanished; it was best not to think about what was happening to the parts of the building they had been meant to support. Now most of the frontage was open, allowing free encroachment from Lenia's laundry. She had the whole ground floor, which according to her included what passed for a pavement and half the dusty road in Fountain Court. Just now her staff were doing the main morning wash, so warm, humid air hit me as I reached the street. Several rows of soaking togas and tunics hung nicely at face height, ready to slap at anyone who tried to leave the building on lawful business.

I went inside to be neighbourly. The sweet smell of urine, which was used for bleaching togas, met me like an old acquaintance I was trying to avoid. I had not seen Lenia yet, so when someone else shrieked my name she thrust herself out from the steamy hubbub like some disreputable sand beetle heaving its way above ground. She had armfuls of crumpled garments crushed against her flopping bosom, her chin balanced on top of the smelly pile. Her hair was still an unconvincing red; after the sophisticated henna treatments of the East, it looked hideously brash. The damp air had stuck her long tunic to parts of her body, producing an effect that did little for a man of the world like me.

She staggered towards me with an affectionate cry of, `Look!

Something nasty's blown in with the road dust!'

`Aphrodite rising from the washtub, sneezing at the wood ash!' `Falco, you rat's bum.'

`What's new, Lenia?' I answered breezily.

`Trade's bad and the weather's a menace.'

`That's hardly new. Have I missed the wedding?'

`Don't make me angry!' She was betrothed to Smaractus, a business arrangement. (Each craved the other's business.) Lenia's contempt for my landlord exceeded even mine, though she had a religious respect for his money. I knew she had carried out a meticulous audit before deciding Smaractus was the man of her dreams. Lenia's dreams were practical. She really intended to go through with it apparently, for after the conventional cursing she added, `The wedding's on the Kalends of November. You're invited so long as you promise to cause a fight with the nut boys and to throw up on his mother.' I've seen some sordid things, but the idea of my landlord having a mother set me back somewhat. Lenia saw my look and laughed harshly. `We're going to be desperate for entertainment at this party. The arrangements are driving me mad, Falco. I don't suppose you would read the omens for us?'

`Surely you need a priest?'

Lenia shrieked with outrage. `I wouldn't trust one of those sleazy buggers! Don't forget I've washed their underwear. I'm in enough trouble without having my omens mucked up

You're a citizen. You can do it if you're prepared to be a pal.'

`A man's duty is to honour the gods for his own household,' I intoned, suddenly becoming a master of informed piety.

`You're scared of the job.'

`I'm just trying to get out of it.' `Well, you live in the same building.'

`No one ever told me it meant peering into a sheep's liver for the damned landlord! That's not in my lease.'

`Do it for me, Falco!'

`I'm not some cranky Etruscan weather forecaster.' I was losing ground. Lenia, who was a superstitious article, looked genuinely anxious; my old friendship with her was about to take its toll. `Oh I'll think about it… I told you from the start, woman, you're

making a bit mistake.'

`I told you to mind your own,' quipped Lenia, in her brutal, rasping voice. `I heard you were back from your travels – though this is the first time you've bothered to call on me!'

'Having a lie-in.' I managed to beat her to a leering grin. `Scandalous bastard! Where've you been to this time, and was there profit in it?'

'The East. And of course not.'

'You mean you're too tight to tell me.'

`I mean I'm not giving Smaractus any excuse to bump my rent up!' That reminded me of something. `This deadly dump is getting too inconvenient, Lenia. I'll have to find somewhere more salubrious to live.'

`Oh Great Mother!' Lenia exclaimed immediately. `He's pregnant!'

Taken aback by the shrewdness of her guesswork, I blushed – losing any chance of disguising my plight. `Don't be ridiculous,' I lied as brazenly as possible. `I know how to look after myself.' `Didius Falco, I've seen you do a lot of stupid things.' That was