The Black Sun. James Twining

a small grid of twelve squares, one of which had been set with a lone diamond.

      ‘The beginning?’ the voice laughed. ‘What are you talking about? Everything is safe now. He was the only one left who knew.’

      ‘He was murdered. Killed in his hospital bed.’

      ‘He deserved a far worse death for what he had done,’ was the unfeeling response.

      ‘His arm was cut off.’

      ‘Cut off?’ The question was spat into the room. ‘Who by?’

      ‘Someone who knows.’

      ‘Impossible.’

      ‘Why else would they have taken it?’

      Silence.

      ‘I will have to call the others together.’

      ‘That’s not all. British Intelligence is involved.’

      ‘I’ll call the others. We must meet and discuss this.’

      ‘They’re working with someone.’

      ‘Who? Cassius? We’ll have caught up with him before he gets any further. He’s been sniffing around this for years. He knows nothing. The same goes for all the others who’ve tried.’

      ‘No, not Cassius. Tom Kirk.’

      ‘Charles Kirk’s son? The art thief?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Following in his father’s footsteps? How touching.’

      ‘What do you want me to do?’

      ‘Watch him. See where he goes, who he talks to.’

      ‘Do you think he could…?’

      ‘Never!’ the voice cut him off. ‘Too much time has gone by. The trail is too cold. Even for him.’

       THIRTEEN

       Clerkenwell, London

       5th January – 8.35 p.m.

      Tom had never really been one for possessions before now. There had been no need, no point even, in owning anything: until recently he had rarely spent more than two weeks in the same place. He had accepted that this was the price for always having to stay one step ahead of the law.

      It was not, in truth, a price that had cost him too dear, for he had never been a natural hoarder or acquirer of belongings. He had got into the game because he loved the thrill and because he was good at it, not so he could one day enjoy a comfortable retirement sipping cocktails in the Cayman Islands. He’d have done the job for free if money hadn’t been the only way of keeping score.

      He was, therefore, well aware of the significance of the few pieces he’d recently bought at auction and scattered throughout his apartment. He recognised them as a tangible sign that he had changed. That he was no longer just a packed suitcase away from skipping town at the slightest sign of trouble, a mercenary wandering wherever the winds of fortune blew him. He had a home now. Roots. Responsibilities even. To him, at least, the accumulation of ‘stuff’ was a proxy for the first stirrings of the normality he had craved for so long.

      The sitting room – a huge open-plan space with cast-iron struts holding up the partially glazed roof – had been simply furnished with sleek modern furniture crafted from brushed aluminium. The polished concrete floor was covered in a vibrant patchwork of multicoloured nineteenth-century Turkish kilims, while the walls were sparsely hung with late Renaissance paintings, most of them Italian, each individually lit. Most striking was the gleaming steel thirteenth-century Mongol helmet that stood on a chest in the middle of the room, leering menacingly at anyone who stepped into its line of sight.

      ‘Sorry I’m late,’ Dominique panted as she came through the door, hitching her embroidered skirt up with one hand and clutching her shoes in the other. ‘Went for a run and sort of forgot the time.’

      ‘Well, at least you’re here,’ Tom said, turning away from the stove to face her, his face glowing from the heat.

      ‘Oh no, Tom, he hasn’t cancelled again, has he?’ she said. ‘Let me guess. He had a card game, or greyhound racing, or he got tickets to a fight?’

      ‘Right first time,’ Tom said with a sigh. ‘At least he’s consistent.’

      ‘I can’t believe that you used to place your life in the hands of someone so unreliable,’ she said as she sat down at the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen area from the main sitting room and slipped her shoes on.

      ‘Yeah, well, that’s the thing. Archie never got the job wrong, not once. He might forget his own birthday, but he’d still be able to tell you the make and location of every alarm system in every museum from here to Hong Kong.’

      ‘You don’t think it’s all getting a bit out of control?’

      Tom rinsed his hands under the tap as she finished rearranging her top.

      ‘He’s always been a gambler of one sort or another. It’s in his nature. Besides, in many ways this is an improvement. At least now he’s just playing for money. The stakes were much higher when we were both still in the game.’

      ‘If you ask me, the gambling’s all an excuse anyway,’ she said, her eyes twinkling. ‘I think he just doesn’t like your cooking.’

      Tom grinned and flicked water at her.

      ‘Stop it,’ she laughed. ‘You’ll ruin my mascara.’

      ‘You never wear make-up.’

      ‘I thought I might jump on the bike and go to a club after dinner. Lucas and some of his friends said they would be going out. Do you want to come?’

      ‘No thanks.’ He shrugged. ‘Not really in the mood.’

      ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

      ‘Me? Fine. Why do you ask?’

      ‘You just seem a bit down, that’s all.’

      Tom hadn’t mentioned the afternoon’s detour with Turnbull. There was no reason to, and besides, he didn’t really want to relive the whole Renwick discussion again. The wounds were still too fresh. Wounds that he clearly wasn’t concealing particularly well.

      ‘It’s nothing.’

      ‘I just wondered whether it was because…well, you know, because it’s today?’

      Tom gave her a blank look.

      ‘What’s today?’

      ‘You know, his birthday.’

      ‘Whose birthday?’

      ‘Your father’s, Tom.’

      It took a few seconds for the words to register in Tom’s brain.

      ‘I’d forgotten.’ He could barely believe it himself, although part of him wondered whether, subconsciously, he’d deliberately blocked it out, like all those other things he’d blocked out from his childhood. It was easier that way. It made him feel less angry with the world.

      There was a pause.

      ‘You know, it might help if you sometimes spoke about him with me. With anyone.’

      ‘And say what?’

      ‘I don’t know. What you felt about him. What you liked. What annoyed you. Anything other than the big hole you’re always trying to step around.’

      ‘You know what he did to me.’ Tom could feel the instinctive resentment building in his voice. ‘He blamed me for my mother’s death. Blamed me, as if it was my fault she let me