Read the book: «The Black Sun»

THREE

Clerkenwell, London

3rd January – 5.02 p.m.

Tom was sitting at his desk with a copy of The Times in front of him, folded into four so that only the cryptic crossword was visible. He had a ballpoint pen in his mouth, the end chipped and split where he had chewed it, his forehead creased in concentration. Much to his frustration, he hadn’t filled in a single word yet.

The desk itself was French, circa 1890, solid mahogany carved with fruit, foliage and various mythological creatures. It had four drawers on the left and a cabinet on the right, each opened by a lion-mask handle. Caryatids and atlantes flanked the corners, supporting the overhang of the polished top.

Tom and Archie had bought the desk not for its rather obvious beauty, but because it was identical on both sides, a subtly symbolic statement of equality that had resonated with the two of them. And despite occasionally feeling like one half of some odd Dickensian legal couple, for Tom, at least, the desk had come to encapsulate his new life – a solid partnership on the right side of the law.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Yeah?’ Tom called, grateful for the interruption. He had been staring at the paper so long that the clues had started to swim across the page.

The door opened and a woman wearing jeans, a pale pink camisole and a tight black jacket walked in, her right arm looped through the open visor of a black motorcycle helmet.

‘Catch,’ she called.

Tom looked up just in time to see a tennis ball flashing towards his head. Without thinking, he shot a hand out and snatched it from the air, his fingers stinging as they closed around it.

‘How was your game?’ Tom asked with a smile as Dominique de Lecourt stripped off her jacket, hitched herself up on to the side of his desk and placed her helmet down next to her. She had a pale, oval face that had something of the cold, sculpted and remote beauty of a silent-movie star, although her blue eyes, in contrast, shone with an immediately inviting blend of impulsive energy and infectious confidence. Her right shoulder was covered with an elaborate tattoo of a rearing horse that was only partially masked by her curling mass of blonde hair. Her left arm, meanwhile, was sheathed in a glittering armour of silver bangles that clinked like a hundred tiny bells every time she moved. Just about visible, under her top, was the bump of her stomach piercing.

‘Didn’t play. Decided to go to that auction instead.’

‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist,’ Tom laughed. ‘See anything good?’

‘A pair of Louis XV porphyry and gilt-bronze two-handled vases.’ Her English was excellent, with just a hint of a Swiss-French accent.

‘Made by Ennemond-Alexandre Petitot in 1760.’ Tom nodded. ‘Yeah, I saw those in the catalogue. What did you think?’

‘I think two million is a lot to pay for a couple of nineteenth-century reproductions made for the Paris tourist market of the day. They’re worth twenty thousand at most. It’s a law suit waiting to happen.’

Tom smiled. Sometimes he found it hard to believe that Dominique was still only twenty-three. She had an instinct for a deal, coupled with a sponge-like ability to retain even the most incidental detail, that rivalled all but the most seasoned pros. Then again, Tom reminded himself, she’d had a good teacher. Until he died last year, she’d spent four years working for Tom’s father in Geneva. When Tom had relocated the antiques dealership to London, she’d readily accepted his offer to move with it and help run the business.

The antiques shop itself was a wide double-fronted space with large arched windows, vital for attracting passing trade, although most visitors to Kirk Duval Fine Art & Antiques called ahead for an appointment. At the rear were two doors and a staircase. The staircase led to the upstairs floors, the first floor currently empty, the second floor Dominique’s apartment, the top floor Tom’s. It was supposed to have been a short-term arrangement, but the weeks had turned into months. Tom hadn’t pressed the point, sensing that she would move out when the time was right for her. Besides, he valued her company and, given his pathological inability to form new friendships, that gave him his own selfish reasons for keeping her around.

The left-hand door opened on to a warehouse accessed via an old spiral staircase while the right-hand door gave on to the office. The office was not a big room, perhaps fifteen feet square, the space dominated by the partners’ desk. There was a single, large window which looked out over the warehouse below, a low bookcase running underneath it. Two comfortable armchairs were positioned on the left-hand side of the room as you went in, the brown leather faded and soft with age. Most striking, though, was the wall space behind the desk, which was taken up with Tom’s glittering collection of safe plates – an assortment of brass and iron plaques in various shapes and sizes, some dating back to the late eighteenth century, each ornately engraved with the safe manufacturer’s name and crest.

‘How are you getting on with the crossword?’ she asked with a smile, peering down at the unfilled grid in front of him. ‘Any easier?’

‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘I mean, take this: “Soldier got into cover for a spell.” Five letters.’ He shook his head. ‘I just don’t see it.’

‘Magic,’ she answered after a few seconds thought.

‘Magic,’ Tom repeated slowly. ‘Why magic?’

‘A soldier is a GI,’ she explained. ‘A cover is a Mac. Put GI into Mac to get a spell. Magic.’

She tapped her long, graceful finger playfully on the tip of Tom’s nose as if it was a wand.

‘I give up.’ Tom, defeated, threw his pen down on to the desk.

‘You just need to keep at it,’ she laughed. ‘One day it’ll all just click into place.’

‘So you keep saying.’ Frustrated, Tom changed the subject: ‘When’s Archie back?’

‘Tomorrow, I think.’ She picked at a frayed piece of cotton where her jeans were ripped across her left thigh.

‘That’s twice he’s been to the States in the last few weeks.’ Tom frowned. ‘For someone who claims to hate going abroad, he’s certainly putting himself about a bit.’

‘What’s he doing there?’

‘God knows. Sometimes he just seems to get an idea into his head and then he’s off.’

‘That reminds me – where did you put those newspapers that were on his desk?’

‘Where do you think? I threw them away along with all his other rubbish.’

‘You did what?’ she exclaimed. ‘They were mine. I’d been keeping them for a reason.’

‘Well, try the bottom left-hand drawer then,’ Tom suggested sheepishly. ‘I put a bunch of old papers in there.’

She slipped off the desk and opened the drawer.

‘Luckily for you, they’re here,’ she said with relief, pulling out a large pile of newspapers and placing them down in from of him.

‘What do you want with them anyway?’ Tom asked. ‘Are you collecting tokens or something?’

‘Do I look like I collect tokens?’ She grinned. ‘No, I wanted to show you something. Only you might not like it…’

‘What are you talking about?’ Tom frowned. ‘You can tell me anything, you know that.’

‘Even if it’s about Harry?’ she asked.

‘Harry?’ Tom sprang up.

Harry Renwick. The mere mention of his name was enough to make Tom’s heart rise into his throat. Harry Renwick had been his father’s best friend; a man Tom had known and loved since…well, since almost as long as he could remember.

That was until it transpired that dear old Uncle Harry had been living a double life. Operating under the name of Cassius, he had masterminded a ruthless art-crime syndicate that had robbed and murdered and extorted its way around the globe for decades. The betrayal still stung.

‘You told me he’d disappeared after what happened in Paris. After the –’

‘Yeah,’ Tom cut her off, not wanting to relive the details. ‘He just vanished.’

‘Well, wherever he’s gone, someone’s looking for him.’ Dominique unfolded the top newspaper, the previous day’s Herald Tribune. She turned to the Personals section and pointed at an ad she’d circled. Tom began to read the first paragraph.

‘Lions may awake any second. If this takes place alert me via existing number.’ He flashed her an amused glance. She indicated that he should read on. ‘If chimps stop their spelling test within one or so hours, reward through gift of eighty bananas.’ He laughed. ‘It’s nonsense.’

‘That’s what I thought when I first saw it, but you know how I like a challenge.’

‘Sure.’ Tom smiled. Amongst her many attributes, Dominique had an amazing aptitude for word games and other types of puzzles. Never one to be outdone, it was partly this which had driven Tom to attempt the crossword. Not that he was making much progress.

‘It only took me a few minutes. It’s a jump code.’

‘A what?’

‘A jump code. Jewish scholars have been finding them for years in the Torah. Did you know that if you take the first T in the Book of Genesis, then jump forty-nine places to the fiftieth letter, then another forty-nine places to the fiftieth letter after that, and so on, it spells a word?’

‘What?’

‘Torah. The book’s name is embedded in the text. The next three books do the same. Some say that the whole of the Old Testament is an encoded message that predicts the future.’

‘And this works in the same way?’

‘It’s a question of identifying the jump interval. In this case, it’s every eighth letter.’

‘Starting with the first letter?’

She nodded.

‘So that makes this L…’ Tom counted seven spaces, ‘then A…’ He grabbed a pen and began to write down each eighth letter: ‘Then S…then T. Last!’ he exclaimed triumphantly.

‘Last seen Copenhagen. Await next contact. I decoded it earlier.’

‘And there are others like this?’

‘After I found this, I looked back through earlier editions. There have been coded messages using the same methodology every few weeks for the last six months or so. I’ve written them out here –’

She handed Tom a piece of paper.

‘HK cold, try Tokyo,’ he read. ‘Focus search in Europe…DNA sample en route…Reported sighting in Vienna…’ He looked up at Dominique. ‘Okay, I agree that someone seems to be looking for someone or something. But there’s nothing to say it’s Harry.’

Dominique handed him a newspaper from the bottom of the pile and opened it at the Personals page.

‘This was the first and longest message.’ She pointed at a lengthy ad she’d circled in red.

‘What does it say?’

‘Ten million dollar reward. Henry Julius Renwick, aka Cassius, dead or alive. Publish interest next Tuesday.’

Tom was silent as he tried to digest this news.

‘Did anyone reply?’ he asked eventually.

‘I counted twenty-five replies in all.’

‘Twenty-five!’

‘Whoever’s behind this has got a small private army out there trying to track Harry down. The question is why.’

‘No,’ Tom reflected, ‘the question is who.’