'Not to mention the fact that if you do go,' said Helena, 'whichever order you flog around these ten gracious metropolitan sites, she's bound to be in the last town you visit. By the time you get there, you'll be too tired to argue with her.'

'No point anyway,' I added. 'She's probably got a set of twins and marsh fever by now. Don't you have any other facts to go on, Thalia?'

'Only a name one of the menagerie-keepers remembered -Habib.'

'Oh dear. In the East it's probably as common as Gaius,' said Helena. 'Or Marcus,' she added slyly.

'And we know he's common!' Thalia joined in.

'Could the girl have gone looking for her mother?' I asked, having had some experience of tracing fostered children.

Thalia shook her head. 'She doesn't know who her mother was.'

'Might the mother have come looking for her?'

'Doubt it. I've heard nothing about her for twenty years. She might be working under a different name. Well, face it, Falco, she's most likely dead by now.'

I agreed the point sombrely. 'So what about the father? Any chance Sophrona heard from him?'

Thalia roared with laughter. 'What father? There were various candidates, none of whom had the slightest interest in being pinned down. As I recall it, only one of them had anything about him, and naturally he was the one the mother wouldn't look at twice.'

'She must have looked once!' I observed facetiously.

Thalia gave me a pitying glance, then said to Helena, 'Explain the facts of life to him, dearie! Just because you go to bed with a man doesn't mean you have to look at the bastard!'

Helena was smiling again, though the expression in her eyes was less charitable. I reckoned it might be time to halt the ribaldry. 'So we're stuck with the "young love" theory?'

'Don't get excited, Falco,' Thalia told me with her usual frankness. 'Sophrona was a treasure and I'd risk a lot to get her back. But I can't afford the fare to send you scavenging in the Orient. Still, next time you have business in the desert, remember me!'