By the end of the alley the fine hairs in my nostrils were starting to twitch. It was late May, and the weather in Rome had been warm for a week. Energetic spring sunlight had been beating on the warehouse roof, fermenting a generous must inside. All the eastern spices would be humming like magic, and the corpse we had come to bury would be lively with human gases and decay.

I brought four volunteers from the Praetorian Guard plus a captain called Julius Frontinus who used to know my brother. He and I prised off the chains from the backstreet gates, then sauntered around the loading yard while the troopers rattled at the lock on the huge inner door.

While we were waiting Frontinus grumbled, 'Falco, after today, just reckon I never met your brother in my life! This is the last disgusting errand you can expect to drag me on-'

'Private favour for the Emperor… Festus would have had a word for it!'

Frontinus described the Emperor with my brother's word, which was not genteel.

'Easy work, Caesaring!' I commented light-heartedly. 'Smart uniform, free living quarters, the best seat at the Circus-and all the honeyed almonds you can eat!'

'So what made Vespasian select you to deal with this?'

'I'm easy to bully and I needed the money.'

'Oh, a logical choice!'

My name is Didius Falco, Marcus to special friends. At the time I was thirty years old, a free citizen of Rome. All that meant was that I had been born in a slum, I still lived in one, and except in irrational moments I expected to die in one too.