The Cassandra Sanction: The most controversial action adventure thriller you’ll read this year!. Scott Mariani

guy shrugged, like saying, ‘So-so.’

      Switching from German, Ben asked him, ‘Are you the owner?’

      The guy’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘I am the proprietor. What is this concerning?’

      ‘We’re here to inquire about an item of jewellery you sold about three weeks ago. A pendant made of diamonds, shaped in a spiral, blue at the centre, about so big, with a silver mount. Very distinctive. I think you know the one I mean.’

      The guy made a big deal of trying to remember, but Ben could tell he knew exactly what piece he was talking about. ‘Ja. What about it?’

      ‘We’d like to know who sold it to you.’

      ‘Are you cops?’

      Ben shook his head.

      The guy pulled a face. He probably would have spat on the floor if he hadn’t been in his own premises. ‘Then is none of your fucking business who sold it to me. I do not remember anyway. Now I have business to run. You are not here to buy, the door is that way.’

      Ben nodded. ‘Fine,’ he said. He turned and walked towards the door.

      Raul stared at him. ‘Just like that?’

      Ben said nothing. He reached the door, flipped the open sign around so that it read GESCHLOSSEN, then popped the latch. Then he walked back to the counter and said, ‘Your business is now closed until we say it isn’t. Ist das klar, mein dicker Freund?’

      Three shades paler, the pawnshop owner raised his hands. ‘I want no trouble.’

      ‘That’s good,’ Ben said. ‘Because my associate here has a tendency to get extremely violent when people piss him off. Once he starts, I can’t stop him. The last person who pissed him off, he—’

      ‘Okay, okay.’ The guy glanced nervously at Raul, suddenly all eager to help.

      ‘What’s your name?’ Ben asked.

      ‘Mattias. Mattias Braunschweiger.’

      ‘Okay, Mattias. Now let’s rack our brains and see if we can’t remember who sold us that diamond cluster. I don’t believe pieces like that come your way every week.’

      ‘A woman sold it to me.’

      Raul and Ben exchanged looks.

      ‘Description,’ Ben said.

      ‘Very beautiful woman. Dark. She looked familiar to me. I think afterwards, she is a movie star. Or singer.’

      Ben smiled. The pawnshop had ‘haunt of the rich and famous’ written all over it. ‘Would you remember her face?’

      ‘You would not forget her,’ Braunschweiger said, showing yellow and grey teeth.

      ‘Is this her?’ Raul asked. He took a photo from his wallet. It was a duplicate of the one framed over his desk at home, showing himself and Catalina on a sandy beach. He’d folded it in half so that only she was visible.

      Braunschweiger squinted at the picture and nodded. ‘Ja. That is the woman.’ His eyes darted back up at Ben and Raul. ‘You are not cops?’

      ‘Just tell us about the woman.’

      ‘She had lot of things to sell. Very good stuff. I show you.’

      He limped back through the door that said PRIVÄT. Ben watched him in case he tried to run, though he wouldn’t have got far on that leg. Braunschweiger reappeared a moment later, carrying a tray that glittered even in the dingy light. There was a delicate gold watch with a tiny rectangular case, several pairs of diamond earrings and a bracelet studded with small emeralds. The stuff was on a different planet to the trash in the display cabinet.

      ‘I have to revalue,’ he explained. ‘I think after I sell the other, price is too small.’

      Braunschweiger laid the tray on the counter, and Raul stepped close with a deep frown on his face to examine the things on it. He recognised them immediately. ‘This is Catalina’s,’ he said, holding up the small gold watch. Its rectangular face was studded with minute diamonds.

      ‘You’re sure?’ Ben said.

      ‘No question. It’s hers. A Cartier Tank Américaine. She’d always wanted one. I was with her when she bought it. And these earrings. You can see them in a lot of photos of her. And this bracelet—’

      ‘All right,’ Ben said, convinced. He turned to Braunschweiger. ‘When exactly did she bring you these things?’

      ‘Exactly? You want date?’ Braunschweiger considered for a moment, then grabbed a thick, well-thumbed ledger from beneath the counter and started flicking back through its pages, which were covered in entries: description of goods, date of transaction, price paid. After a few moments he tapped a page with his thick finger. ‘I find it. She come here Zwölftel Juli.’

      July twelfth. Just four days before Catalina’s car had gone over the cliff. Ben and Raul exchanged glances. Raul’s brows were knitted and his jaw was clenched. ‘Are you certain this is right?’ Ben asked Braunschweiger.

      ‘You want see security recording? This prove it, ja?’

      ‘Get to it,’ Ben said.

      The German led them behind the counter into his office, a poky room that smelled of stale body odour and was choked with clutter and stacked paperwork. On a scarred pine table that served as a desk was Braunschweiger’s grimy computer, hooked up to wires that ran up the wall, attached by duct tape, and disappeared through a hole to connect up to the security camera Ben had noticed in the corner of the ceiling overlooking the counter.

      Braunschweiger cleared away piles of mess with a sweep of his arm and scraped up a chair. Air seemed to hiss out of him as he sat. ‘For insurance I must keep video footage one hundred days,’ he explained, pointing at an external hard drive that was plugged into the machine. ‘Then I delete.’

      Catalina Fuentes’ car had gone over the cliff eighty-seven days ago. According to the entry on the ledger, the recording of her visit to the pawnshop should still be here.

      Ben and Raul stood flanking Braunschweiger’s chair as he turned on the computer and spent a couple of moments dithering about searching for the hard drive icon on his busy desktop. Finding it at last, he clicked with his grubby-looking mouse and a window flashed up showing a menu of video files arranged by month. He scrolled back to July and clicked again, and a list of thirty-one separate files appeared with individual dates. Braunschweiger ran his cursor back to the twelfth of the month, clicked once more, and the screen dissolved to black, then flicked back into life with a wide-angle view of the counter and shop as seen from the raised perspective of the security camera. The light was so dim, it was hard to make anything out. A time readout in the bottom corner of the screen showed that the footage commenced at midnight.

      ‘I fast-forward,’ Braunschweiger said, and clicked a couple of keys on his keyboard. The image onscreen remained fixed, but the clock started to race ahead with an hour elapsing every few seconds. As dawn approached, the image quickly began to brighten in time-lapse sequence. The clock had hit eight thirty a.m. when the shop’s front door seemed to fly open and a crazily speeded-up Braunschweiger came waddling into the premises, looking as if he could limp for Germany in the Olympics. For a few instants he ricocheted around the shop like a steel bearing in a pinball machine, then shot out of sight. The time readout raced on. Nine a.m. Nine thirty. Nothing happened. The image was completely static.

      Then the door flew open again and another figure hurtled into the shop.

      ‘There,’ Raul said.

      Braunschweiger tapped the keys and the image reverted back to normal speed. The time readout said 09:42.

      Raul leaned closer to the screen, and swallowed. ‘That’s her.’

       Chapter Thirteen