Petronius spoke, dour as a bad-tempered oracle: "There is nowhere beyond Britain. The only way is back!" He hated Britain.

So did I. I played it down while I was the procurator's guest. Hilaris had been in Britain so long he had lost his nostalgia for the real world. Tragic.

"If Verovolcus came to Londinium," mused Aelia Camilla, "would he have had to hide?"

"From me?" I laughed. So did rather too many of my friends and relatives.

"He thought he was a fugitive, though in fact," Aelia Camilla said demurely, "you had not told the governor!" I tried not to feel guilty. "Verovolcus didn't know that. So he might have skulked in that bad district to lie low?"

"What's the bad locale, Falco?" asked Petronius. A professional question. At home, he was a member of the vigiles. "A bar."

"What bar?" At least he had revived and taken an interest. Petro was a big, active man who seemed cramped in smart indoor locations. He could have relaxed on a padded couch with lion's head feet as I did, but he preferred to ignore what passed for comfort here, hugging his knees uncomfortably and scuffing the striped woolen rugs with his sturdy paramilitary boots.

I felt an odd reluctance to tell him about the crime scene. "A black little hutment at the back of the wharves."

"Whereabouts, Falco?" His brown eyes quizzed me. Petronius knew when I was stalling for some reason. "How did you get there?"

"You don't mean you want to take a look?"

"Take the road down from the forum, bear left, and go into the worst alleys you see," explained Hilaris. "It was called the Shower of Gold-incongruously. There was a dim painting on the outside wall. Did you notice that, Falco?" I had not. The hovel had hardly been the kind of place where Jupiter would flash in through a window disguised as a shower of gold-or anything else-to reach the arms of a lady friend. The waitress we met would surely repel divinities. "What's your interest, Lucius Petronius?" Hilaris then asked. He spoke politely, but I reckoned he regarded Petro as an unknown quantity who should be watched.