Utter frustration gripped me. "And what was it? What could Milo have told me? Was he the real killer? If not, did he know who was?'

Helena and I were now certain of one thing. Milo of Dodona had been silenced. He had been put out of contention by the redoubtable dame from the Elian Council of Sixteen.

As for my trip up the Hill of Cronus, as I expected, that had been a waste of time. My turn for confiding. I described it to Helena. I had walked up, looked around at the scenery, found nothing, and walked back down again feeling very tired. Now we had to sail away from Olympia with no real new evidence, either in the murder of Valeria Ventidia or the mystery of Marcella Caesia three years before.

I warned my party to be packed and ready as soon as the tireless Olympia cockerel sounded his first note next day. They were all subdued, especially Young Glaucus. As if he wanted to atone for his part in the death of Milo, he came to me with an object that we would carry away with us, our one piece of tangible evidence. it was a jumping weight.

"I persuaded Myron, the flute-player, to steal this from the superintendent's office. It was kept in a cupboard, after Valeria was killed.'

As weights go, it was striking. Unlike the much plainer styles that Glaucus had shown me, this was made of bronze, in the form of a charging wild boar, full of character. A plain bar formed the handgrip. In use, the boar's curved body would extend over the knuckles. His sharp spinal crest would make the weight doubly dangerous if used to bludgeon someone.

"Is this the one they found covered with blood?'

"We think so, though it's been cleaned up. There were two on the wall. The other one has not been seen since the attack.'

"I wonder if the killer took that. Some of them want a trophy…' Running my finger along the wild boar's crest, I did not go on.

Glaucus shuddered. I wrapped the boar weight in a spare cloak and put it away with the rest of my luggage.

I refused to be hijacked. I would not meekly accept the ship Megiste had arranged and then go where she sent me – probably straight back to Rome. Instead, we would saddle up our own donkeys, and head for Pyrgos, thence overland to Patrae on the southern shore of the

Gulf of Corinth, where we would take a ship of my choice up to see the provincial governor.

Stuff the respectable ladies. This was nly brief from Claudius Laeta at the palace. Normally I ignored official instructions. For once I would stick to them.

Our independence presumably annoyed the sanctuary authorities. I hope so. It certainly upset almighty Zeus. That evening, we noticed flashes of light intermittently, as if there was a storm far out on the Ionian Sea. These gradually increased. As darkness fell, all the hills around us were lit by ever more intense bursts of sheet and forked lightning. The pine-scented air grew heavy. We ate a frugal evening meal, sweating and argumentative, amidst wild and eerie flickers of light. It became all too clear why this remote place had inspired the ancients to say Zeus ruled the area. Closer and closer came the storm, until a slight skirl of rain preceded sudden huge drops. A long, heavy rainfall then lasted all night while Olympia resounded with thunder for hours, until any among us who believed in divinities must have believed that our presence had angered the all-knowing gods.

Up on top of Acrocorinth is a shrine of Aphrodite. They say the spring behind the Temple is the bribe Asopos gave to Sisyphos. I have heard this was Peirene and the water in the city runs down from it…

Pausanius, Guide to Greece

Corinthus. Rome had governed Greece, our province of Achaea, for over two hundred years now, so we had stamped our own style on the capital. First, the Consul Mummius robustly subdued ancient Corinth after it failed to support him. Standing no nonsense, he burned it down, levelled the walls, and buried the foundations. Architects like to start a rebuild on a cleared site. For added cleansing, Mummius had killed all the men, sold the women and children into slavery, and auctioned the city's art treasure in the marketplace in Rome. To call him thorough was rhetorical understatement. Still, those were the bad old days. We, for our part, hoped the Greeks understood that point.

For a hundred years the once rich and famous city of Corinth remained a wasteland. Then Julius Caesar rebuilt it with heavy grandeur. Corinth, full of shops, temples, and administrative buildings, was settled anew with freedmen and foreigners. Nowadays it was a haunt of traders, sailors, and good time girls, its houses and markets peopled by Italians, Judaeans, Syrians, and immigrant Greeks from other locations.

The famous Isthmus was only about eight Roman miles across. There were two harbours, Lechaion looking west down the Gulf (where we landed) and Kenchreai facing east. Many people landed at one, then crossed on foot and took a new ship from the other harbour. Alternatively, a paved tow-road, the diolkos, allowed empty ships to be transported on wheeled carriers right across the land bridge, to save them having to sail all the way around the Peloponnese. At the narrowest point of the Isthmus we saw two partly dug immensely deep channels for a canal – one of Nero's spectacular ideas, ended by his death. I reckoned it would never happen now.

Corinth had a ground-level settlement and a steep, rocky acropolis, which was included in a great loop of the city walls. Corinth town was low by anybody's standards, because of its shifting commercial population; we heard the acropolis was not much better, though

emptier because rioters and drunks hate climbing hills. Both the low and the high towns had temples to Apollo and Aphrodite, and both had fountain outlets for the famous Peirene Spring. Gaius and Cornelius had convinced themselves that one of the Temples of Aphrodite was famous for its thousand official slave prostitutes. Don't ask me who had told them that. I swear it was not me.

I had a mandate from Claudius Laeta to report progress to the governor. I would make that useful. I had in mind to insist that the governor provide me with a pass for a repeat visit to Olympia, backed up this time by an armed guard.

He might have done it, had he been there. But naturally, in a world where all Romans who could afford it were busying themselves sightseeing, the governor was away that month. When I turned up at his palace, I was told the bad news. He had disappeared on a long summer break – or as his official engagement diary put it, he was up country, "inspecting milestones'.

Well, I never expected a governor to work. As in so many similar situations, I was stuck with the substitute. Even he was said to be locked in a meeting, but a few jokes with the petitions clerk got me in anyway. And just my luck. While the governor was swanning off on the milestone count, his deputy looking after Roman rule in Corinth was. Aquillius Macer. That's right. Still wet behind the stuck-out ears, he was the quaestor who had bungled the original investigation into the murder of Valeria Ventidia.

I had no hope that Aquillius would help me identify a killer he himself had failed to find.

"I say, Falco; I've never seen one of these things before.' A man of twenty-five or six, he had a big Roman nose, heavy jowls, fleshy lips, and luxuriant floppy hair. He had, however, taken some trouble to supply me with refreshments. In a better mood, I might have found his unflappable attitude endearing. He was now looking at my letter of introduction from Laeta as if it was a poisoned arrow stuck in his foot. "What am I supposed to do?'

"Treat it as top priority and give me every assistance.'