He's a bloody Cilician," retorted my father. What more do you need to know?"

You regard all Cilicians as pirates?"

It's the only life Cilicians know." And why should they abandon it, so long as crooked auctioneers in Rome would fence their plunder? I resented all my father stood for, but if he had information, I wanted it. I regret to say I need your help, Pa. Might Damagoras or his close associates be connected to a kidnapping racket that seems to be centred on Portus?"

Oh that!" exclaimed Pa. He might be bluffing, but my father always had an ear to the ground. He now said he had heard of people being held to ransom, though he was unable to link these kidnaps to Damagoras. He swore he knew the old villa-owner only as the seller of a particularly fine Aphrodite Surprised', a couple of years back. Beautifully modelled drapery!"

Wearing a wet chiton, you mean?"

Not wearing much of it!" Pa smacked his lips. When I produced my list of the kidnap victims, the first result was depressing. Pa knew for sure that one man called Isidorus, an olive oil merchant, had left Rome about a month ago. The other names were strangers to him, apart from a certain Posidonius, whom Pa said he could probably find for me. He already knew Posidonius had been a victim; the man had been moaning all around the Emporium about having to ransom his daughter, and my father added the detail that Posidonius believed one of her captors had interfered with the girl. Forewarned about this, Helena Justina came with me next day, after Pa did provide contact details and I went to interview the victims. Posidonius was a timber merchant who specialised in exotic woods from the eastern end of the Mediterranean. He shipped in the baulks for manufacture in Rome, where they were used to make enormous tables for millionaire show-offs with palatial homes. There was a high returns rate, owing to the fact that eager purchasers forgot that the heavyweight tables had to be delivered and installed. Fine art mosaic floors had crumbled under the massive display pieces, and slaves in two different households had suffered heart attacks while trying to lift table tops through doorways. One had died. Posidonius was now trapped in Rome, awaiting the outcome of a compensation claim against him. But it had done him good. The publicity had brought in new business. His daughter, called Rhodope, was about seventeen. She travelled around with her father, who was a widower. He had brought up Rhodope single-handed since her birth. He seemed intelligent and cosmopolitan, much annoyed with himself for being caught out by an old routine. She looked quiet; not that that meant much. Helena took the girl aside while I discussed the abduction with her father. Pa had described him talking freely to Emporium colleagues, but with us he clammed up. Perhaps he had now realised the risks. He would only confirm to me that what had happened fitted the case notes Brunnus had drawn up. Mention of the Illyrian, the sinister go between, made Posidonius shudder. He was reluctant to discuss his fears for Rhodope, perhaps because if she had been seduced it might affect her marriageability. Besides, he complained that she refused to talk to him. Helena had more luck. She told me afterwards that in her view, the girl had definitely lost her heart and all that traditionally goes with it. Helena had found her extremely naive. My glimpse of Rhodope had been of a wide-eyed teenager with that guileless look that usually means a young girl is hiding dangerous secrets from her worried parents. I should know; I had been the secret sometimes, in my younger days. While Rhodope pretended to be preoccupied with eye paint, she was probably hoarding her dress allowance for a flight from home. Helena had discovered that the girl, completely infatuated, believed that the captor who had paid her attention was coming back' to find her, so they could elope.

His name is Theopompus. Apparently he is virile, dashing, and very exciting to know." I said, I bet his breath stinks and he already has three wives."

If you point that out," replied Helena sadly, Rhodope won't hear you."

So how did you persuade the loopy lummock to talk?"

Oh…" An uncharacteristic vagueness afflicted my beloved. She's sweet, and perhaps rather lonely." It could have been Helena herself when I met her, though in her case I would add. furious with men, ferocious with me, and extremely bright. Among the girls I knew at the time, she shone. If I had had any wives, I would have socked them all with divorce notes. That was what made her vulnerable, I suppose, Marcus. She may have opened up to me because I confessed I had once fallen in love with a handsome brigand myself I gazed at her benignly. Helena Justina, what brigand would that be?" Helena smiled. Retailers of fashionable household goods are not my favourite citizens, but as a father of girls, a deep chasm of sympathy for Posidonius opened in my heart. I left him a note of how he could contact Camillus Justinus in Rome if he needed professional help; I did not say, if Rhodope ran away. With luck she would just mope, and by the time she realised Theopompus was never coming, some other appalling fellow might be hanging around to take her mind off it. Rhodope had been ransomed some weeks before, during the period when Diocles was still staying at his lodgings in Ostia. I checked and no approach for information had been made by the scribe to this family, either at the time or since. Diocles could have been in Ostia for some completely different purpose, or else he knew about the kidnaps but had been prevented from following up the story. The way the mysterious Illyrian" always stressed that the kidnappers were violent worried me. If Diocles had dabbled in this, I started to feel anxious about the missing scribe's fate.

All the other names on my list were dud throws of the dice. Pa introduced me to people who knew some of them, but the men I needed to talk to, the husbands who had paid up ransom money, had all left town. Most originated overseas, and had gone back there. Perhaps now they would never return. To the kidnappers these victims were just faces in the throng, but if traders were rich enough to fleece, they had had something to offer Rome. The city was losing valuable commerce. I was more angry about the human cost, though. People at the Emporium all spoke of pleasant, knowledgeable commodity traders, good family men, which was why they travelled with their wives. When Helena and I chased up addresses, we felt the victims had left a strong aura of distress and fear behind them. After some thought and discussion with Helena, I walked over the Aventine to the Twelfth District to the vigiles headquarters of the Fourth Cohort. I went alone. Petronius Longus would not thank me. I was going to see Marcus Rubella. Rubella was the cohort tribune, Petro's loathed superior. I generally found him not so bad, if you could ignore a few flaws. he was an ill-qualified, over-fastidious, self serving rule-stickler who tidied his desk and ate raisins all day. Rubella was a fellow Petro and I never wanted to go for a drink with, which was just as well, because he never asked us. I was better-known among the rankers from the other half of the cohort, those who patrolled the Thirteenth, my home district, but even in the Twelfth my face was familiar. Barracking met me; I returned the banter, then I was allowed in to see the tribune at once. Rubella never had much going on in his office and he knew I only went to see him if there was some big event I could not handle by myself. He was aware that if Petro had been here in Rome I would have consulted him instead.

Marcus Rubella, I have been working in Ostia. I believe the Fourth is off there soon."

On the Ides. So what can't wait, Falco?"

I've stumbled on a scam. It must have been going on for some time; the other cohorts have failed to get a grip Rubella bared his teeth, shark-like, as if he saw through my flattery. He enjoyed thinking his lads had an opening to show up their rivals. I outlined the kidnappings, never suggesting they went back in time too far. Pardon me for sounding like a schoolboy's arithmetic problem, but if seven cohorts are working four-month shifts in rotation, then they must each return to the out-station every two years and four months. I happened to know that Rubella had joined the Fourth, as a new appointment by Vespasian, three or four years ago, so I had to create a pretty panorama where all members of the glorious Fourth had kept their ugly noses blown the last time they served at Ostia and no hint of these kidnaps could have reached their tribune then. The whole point of me being here in Rubella's office was to stir him to action now. It worked. After I described the situation, Rubella decided to implement the officers" answer to everything. a special exercise. In order to lend it gravitas and impetus [and in order to escape the burning heat of Rome in August] Rubella would head up this exercise himself. Hades. Rubella was coming to Ostia. Now Lucius Petronius would really hate me. I carried out one last task during my flying visit to the city. I was supposed to meet Helena at our house, but after I left Rubella, I took a long detour and made my way down to the Forum. I checked the Daily Gazette column; of course it told me Infamia was still on holiday. Then I went to see Holconius and Mutatus in the Gazette office. Neither was there of course. Most of the Gazette's readers are away in July and August. Nothing of note happens. Everyone is at the coast. Everyone with any money goes into the hills for cooler air, or south to the sea.