The Ides of April

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Lucius Bassus was three years old when his mother took her eyes off him and he ran out of the house to play. They lived on the Clivus Publicius, a steep road on the Aventine Hill, where he was knocked down by a builder's cart. The cart, which escaped its driver's control as it sped down the slope, was owned by Metellus and Nepos, an outfit that worked from a yard on the hill. Nobody talked about Nepos; at first I thought he might be an invention for some tax fiddle.

This business was no more shady than most in Imperial Rome. It carried out refurbishments for bar owners who wanted to move up from blatantly sleazy to a pretence of hygiene. The custom was that the Metellus crew would tender for a full deep-clean and fancy renovation, promising to complete in eight weeks max. In practice, every project took two years and they skimped on the fittings. They would re-grout the marble counters, put in a new doorstep, provide a misspelt signboard and charge the earth for it. By then their clients, unable to operate in the permanent dustcloud, had lost their custom and were going under. It amazed me that other bar owners saw what happened yet still used the firm, but they did. Over the years Metellus and Nepos had done very nicely out of Roman rotgut-sellers innocently trusting them. But killing a child, in the close-knit Aventine community where we had some standards, just might be commercially stupid.

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