‘Here,’ said Lucius, throwing Gafon a small leather bag full of coins. It was caught and weighed by a person well used to calculating the contents of a purse, a man who knew that what he had in his hand was either his whole agreed fee, or something very close to it. ‘We agreed half your fee in advance. You will already have ascertained that the purse contains more.’

‘Does it, your honour?’ Gafon’s eyes were wide, and larded with insincere surprise.

‘I have another task for you.’ That changed the innocent look to one of barely disguised suspicion. ‘It is nothing like as dangerous, but it is, to me, just as important. It therefore qualifies for a substantial reward.’

His hired assassin was thinking that if there was another fee, it was one of which his thugs would know nothing, therefore payment of whatever was required, if he agreed to it, would be for him alone.

‘I have a slave who has betrayed me,’ said Lucius, fingering a tightly rolled scroll of paper. ‘I could of course just kill him, I have the legal right to do so, but that would not send out the message that I require.’

‘He could die beside Livonius.’

Lucius shook his head. This Gafon was stupid, but he dealt with that every day, quite often with men who held high rank, so masking the thought came easily. ‘Nor would his body in the street point out what’s required, quite apart from his obvious association with me.’

Lucius waited for Gafon to draw the conclusion he sought to convey; that this household slave was in some way connected to the party of populares who supported Tiberius Livonius; that his death had to send a message to them as well as the rest of Rome’s slaves; that spying on their masters would result in only one fate; not just death but total oblivion.