The Black Sun

‘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 drive the car. I was thirteen, for God’s sake. Everyone else accepted it was an accident, but not him. I got sent to America because he couldn’t bear to see me around. He abandoned me when I needed him the most.’

‘And you hated him for it.’

‘That’s not the point. The important thing is that I was prepared to try and start over. I really was. And you know what? It was working. We were just beginning to get to know each other again, to find our way back, to build something new. Then he died. I almost hate him more for that.’

A long pause.

‘You know he never forgave himself for what he did to you?’ Dominique sounded awkward and her eyes flicked to the ground.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He talked about it a lot. It never left him. I think that’s partly why he took me in. To try and make things right.’

‘Took you in? What are you talking about?’ Tom said, frowning.

‘The thing is, he never wanted to tell you, because he thought you might be jealous. And it was never like that. He was just trying to help me.’

‘Dom, what are you talking about? You’re making no sense.’

She took a deep breath before answering

‘I never knew either of my parents,’ she began, her normally confident voice strangely small and muted, her words rushed as if she was worried that, if she paused, even for a second, she wouldn’t be able to begin again. ‘All I remember is being passed from foster home to foster home as quickly as it took me to set fire to something or get into a fight. When I was seventeen I ran away. Spent a year living on the streets in Geneva. I was this close to the edge…’

Tom had always known that Dominique had a darker side. That she was a little wild. This, however, was totally unexpected.

‘But those stories about your family, about studying Fine Art, about going to finishing school in Lausanne – you made that stuff up?’

‘We all have our secrets,’ she said softly, her eyes locking with his. ‘Our own ways of blocking out the things we’re trying to forget.’

‘Did my father know?’ He picked up a knife and began to slice some vegetables distractedly.

‘I first saw him at a taxi stand one night. I think he’d just been to the cinema. A re-release of Citizen Kane or something. I never expected him to see me. Normally people would be halfway home before they’d notice their wallet was gone. But not your father. He was so quick.’

‘You stole his wallet?’ Tom hoped that his voice didn’t betray the fact that he was not so much shocked as impressed.

‘Tried to. But he caught me with my hand still inside his jacket. And the amazing thing was that, rather than call the police, he just told me to keep it.’

‘He did what?’ Tom couldn’t help smiling as he pictured the scene.

‘He told me I could keep it. But if I wanted a fresh start in life, I should bring it back to him at his shop and he would help me. I stared at that damned wallet for four days, desperately wanting to open it and take the money, but knowing that, if I did, I might lose my one chance to get out. And then on the fifth day I went to see him. Just as he’d promised, he took me in. Gave me a job working in his shop, taught me everything I know. He never asked for anything in return. I wouldn’t be here today without him.’

For a few seconds Tom was silent. Dominique’s confession certainly explained some of the contradictions in her character that he had never quite been able to put his finger on before. Less clear, was his father’s motivation in helping her, or indeed his reasons for keeping it a secret. Every time Tom thought he was beginning to understand him, a new revelation seemed to draw yet another veil between them.

‘He should have told me,’ Tom said, unconsciously gripping the knife he had been slicing the vegetables with until the tips of his fingers were white. ‘You both should.’

‘You’re probably right,’ she said. ‘But he was worried about what you might say. I think we both were. I’m only telling you now because I think that today, of all days, you should know that, all the time he was with me, he was trying to make up for not being with you. He knew that he would never be able to forgive himself for what he had done. But he always hoped that, one day, you’d understand and not hate him so much.’

There was a long silence, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator and the throb of the oven. Abruptly, Tom threw the knife down with a clatter.

‘I think we should have a drink. A toast. To him. What do you think? There’s a bottle of Grey Goose in the freezer.’

‘Good idea.’ She gave him a brave smile and swiped a finger across the corners of her eyes. Then, standing up, she crossed to the refrigerator. The door to the freezer compartment came open with a wet, smacking noise.

She gave a short sharp scream.

Tom was across the room in an instant. She pointed into the freezer, the cold air swirling inside it like fog on a wet winter’s morning. Tom could just about make out what she was pointing at.

An arm. A human arm. And it was holding a rolled-up canvas.

FOURTEEN

Black Pine Mountains, nr Malta, Idaho

5th January – 2.09 p.m.

The large H-shaped farmhouse and its rambling assortment of outbuildings nestled in a wide clearing in the middle of the forest. A single dirt track, wide enough for one car, snaked its way over three miles back to the nearest metalled road. Here and there animal tracks materialised and then faded away again, hinting at life without ever fully confirming it, the forest’s muffled silence broken only by the call of an occasional eagle, knifing through the air far overhead before vanishing into the sun.

Bailey lay in the snow, hidden amongst the trees, the crisp blue vault of the sky just about visible through their dark, oily branches. He was already cold and now he could feel the moisture seeping in through the knees of his supposedly waterproof trousers. Viggiano was lying on one side of him, a pair of binoculars glued to his face, with Sheriff Hennessy on the other.

‘How many people did you say were in there?’ asked Viggiano.

‘Twenty to twenty-five,’ Bailey replied, shifting position to relieve the stiffness in his arms. ‘Each family’s got their own bedroom in the side extensions. They all eat and hang out together in the main building.’

‘Goddamned cousin-fuckers,’ Viggiano muttered. Bailey sensed Hennessy shift uneasily beside him.

Viggiano picked up his radio.

‘Okay, Vasquez – move in.’

Two teams of seven men rose from their hiding places along Phase Line Yellow, their final position for cover and concealment, and emerged running in single file from the trees at opposite ends of the outer perimeter. Still in formation, they vaulted over the low wooden fence and passed Phase Line Green, the point of no return, rapidly moving in on the front and rear entrances to the main building. Once there, they crouched along the side-walls to the left of each door.

Using his own set of binoculars, Bailey checked the farmhouse for signs of life from inside – a shadow or a twitching curtain or a hurriedly extinguished light – but detected nothing apart from a few flakes of white paint peeling from the window frames and fluttering in the wind.

Then he ran his binoculars along the two SWAT teams in their helmets, gas masks and bulletproof vests. Against the whiteness of the snow they looked like large black beetles, the visors on their helmets winking in the afternoon sun. In addition to submachine guns and pistols, one man in each unit was also equipped with a large metal battering ram.

‘Okay,’ came Vasquez’s voice over the radio. ‘Still no sign of activity inside. Alpha team, stand by.’

A voice amplified through a bullhorn rang out.

‘This is the FBI. You are surrounded. Come out with your hands up.’

‘I said to keep it low-key, Vasquez, you macho idiot,’ Viggiano muttered under his breath.

Silence from the farmstead. Again the amplified voice blared out.

‘I repeat, this is the FBI. You have ten seconds to show yourselves.’

Still nothing. Viggiano’s radio crackled.

‘Nothing doing, sir. It’s your call.’

‘Make the breach,’ Viggiano ordered. ‘Now.’

At each entrance the man with the battering ram stepped forward and slammed it into the lock. Both doors splintered on impact and flew open. A second man then lobbed a tear-gas canister through each open doorway. A few seconds later, the canisters exploded, sending dense, choking clouds of gas billowing out of the front and rear of the building.

‘GO, GO, GO!’ yelled Vasquez as the men disappeared into the house.

From their vantage point, Bailey could hear muffled shouting and the regular pop and fizz of further tear-gas grenades being let off, but nothing else. No screams. No crying children. Certainly not a gun shot. The seconds ticked by, then turned into minutes. This was going better than any of them had expected.

The radio crackled into life.

‘Sir, this is Vasquez…There’s nobody here.’

Viggiano pulled himself up into a crouching position and grabbed the radio.

‘Say again?’

‘I said there’s nobody here. The place is empty. We searched every room, including the attic. It’s deserted and it looks like they left in a hurry. There’s half-eaten food on the table. The whole fucking place stinks.’

Bailey swapped a confused look with Viggiano and then with Hennessy, who looked genuinely concerned.

‘There must be someone there, Vasquez. I’m coming down,’ Viggiano said.

‘Negative, sir. Not until we’ve secured the whole area.’

‘I said, I’m coming down. You and your men stay put till I arrive. I want to see this for myself.’

FIFTEEN

Bloomsbury, London

5th January – 9.29 p.m.

‘Coffee?’

‘I need a drink.’ Tom went to the decanter on the side table and poured himself a large glass of cognac. He took a mouthful, swilling it around before swallowing it, and then sat down heavily in one of the armchairs and glanced around him.

This was only the second time he’d been to Archie’s place. It was a realisation that brought home to Tom how little he knew about his partner – who he was; what his passions were; where his secrets lay – although he now saw that, based on the evening’s revelations, he could say the same of Dominique. Perhaps that said more about him than either of them.

Despite this, he was able to detect in the room itself some hints of Archie’s character. Immediately apparent, for example, was his love of Art Deco, as evidenced by the Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann furniture and the selection of Marinot glassware that adorned the mantelpiece. And a collection of Edwardian gaming chips displayed in two framed cases on either side of the door betrayed his fascination with gambling.

More intriguing was the teak coffee table, which Tom immediately identified as a late nineteenth-century Chinese opium bed. The brass fittings around its edge would once have housed bamboo poles to support a silk canopy, shielding the occupant’s anonymity.

‘Sorry about your game,’ Tom said, his gaze returning to Archie as he settled into the chair opposite him.

‘Don’t worry,’ Archie dismissed the apology with a wave of his hand. ‘I was losing anyway. Is she all right?’ He tilted his head in the direction of the closed bathroom door in the hallway.

‘She’ll be fine,’ Tom said. If what he had learnt about Dominique’s past had confirmed anything, it was her ability to tough it out.

‘What the hell happened?’

Tom simply handed him the rolled-up canvas by way of reply.

‘What’s this?’

‘Take a look.’

Archie unscrolled the painting on the coffee table. He looked up in surprise.

‘It’s the Bellak from Prague.’ Tom nodded. ‘Where did you find it?’ Archie ran his hands gently over the painting’s cracked surface, his fingers brushing against the ridges in the oil paint, pausing over a series of small holes that punctured its surface.

‘It was a gift. Somebody kindly left it in my freezer.’

‘In your what?’ Archie wrinkled his forehead as if he hadn’t heard properly.

‘In my freezer. And it wasn’t the only thing they left.’

Archie shook his head.

‘I’m not sure I even want to know.’

‘There was a human arm in there, too. In fact, come to think of it, it’s still in there.’

For once, Archie was speechless, his eyes bulging in disbelief. When he did manage to get a word out, it was in a strangled, almost angry voice.

‘Turnbull.’

‘What?’

‘It’s that two-faced bastard Turnbull.’

Tom laughed.

‘Come on, Archie. You said he checked out.’

‘He did. At least according to my contact. MI6, originally on the Russian desk at GCHQ. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. Think about it. He shows up wanting our help. We refuse, and a few hours later the missing forearm miraculously shows up amongst your frozen peas. It’s a bloody set-up. I expect he’s round there now, waiting for you to get home so he can nick you.’

‘You’re assuming the arm belongs to Turnbull’s Auschwitz survivor.’

‘Too right. How many severed arms do you think there are floating around London?’

‘Not many,’ Tom conceded.

‘Well, there you are then.’

Tom stood up and moved over to the window. Below, a couple of taxis rattled past, their gleaming black roofs flickering with pale orange flames each time they passed under a streetlight. On the other side of the street, sheltering behind thick iron railings, the sombre façade of the British Museum peered through the night with patrician indifference, the granite lions flanking the main entrance standing permanent guard.

‘I’m just saying that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions,’ Tom continued. ‘Besides, there is another option…’

‘Here we go,’ Archie muttered.

‘…whoever is behind the murder of that old man is also behind the theft of the painting.’

‘You think it’s Renwick, don’t you?’

‘Why not? We know he’s working with Kristall Blade, and we know they killed that man. Given that, thanks to me, he only has one hand, he of all people probably appreciated the irony of dropping off someone else’s limb as his calling card.’

‘And the Bellak paintings?’

‘Stolen by them at his request,’ Tom said with a shrug.

‘Bellak?’ Unnoticed by either of them, Dominique had emerged from the bathroom and slipped into the room. Her earlier shock had been replaced by a calm resolve and there was something almost ethereal about her as she stood there, a slim silhouette framed by the open doorway. ‘The painter?’

Tom and Archie exchanged uncertain glances.

‘You’ve heard of him?’ Even Tom was impressed by this latest example of Dominique’s ever-expanding mental database of the art market.

‘Only by name.’

‘How come?’

‘Because your father spent the last three years of his life looking for Bellak paintings.’

‘Really?’ Tom said disbelievingly.

‘It became quite a big thing for him. He had me scanning databases and newspaper files and auction listings to see if I could find anything. I never did. By the end, I think he had almost given up.’

‘That’s where I’d heard the name before,’ Tom said, clicking his fingers in frustration at not having remembered this before. ‘Now you mention it, I think he even asked me to see if I could come up with anything.’

‘But why on earth would he want to collect them?’ Archie asked, disdainfully holding up the painting of the synagogue to prove his point.

‘He wasn’t collecting them,’ Dominique corrected him, sitting down crossed-legged on the hearth rug. ‘He was looking for one in particular – a portrait of a girl. He said it was probably in a private collection somewhere. He said that it was the key.’

‘The key to what?’ Archie asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Dominique sighed. ‘Remember what he was like with his secrets.’

‘Well, Renwick clearly does,’ Tom said bitterly. ‘That’s why he’s put this here – to show me how close he is to finding it.’

‘Which is precisely why you shouldn’t let him get to you,’ Archie said firmly. ‘He wants to get a reaction. We’ll just dump the arm and pretend none of this ever happened.’

‘Never happened?’ Dominique countered, her eyes shining defiantly. ‘You can’t just ignore something like this, Archie. They killed someone – I heard you say so. They killed someone and we might be able to do something about it.’

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Archie protested. ‘Look, I know Cassius. This is just another one of his sick games. It’s too late to help the old man that arm belonged to, but we can still help ourselves. Tom? What are you doing?’

‘Calling Turnbull,’ answered Tom, picking up the phone and extracting the slip of paper with Turnbull’s number from his wallet.

‘Didn’t you hear what I just said?’ pleaded Archie.

‘I heard what you both said, and Dominique’s right – we can’t ignore this.’

‘He’s playing with you. Let it go.’

‘I can’t let it go, Archie,’ Tom snapped, before taking a deep breath and continuing in a gentler tone. ‘If you want to stay out of this, fine. But I can’t. This involves my father. And if Renwick’s after something my father spent years looking for, then I’m not just going to stand by and watch him get it first. I’m not having him make a fool of me. Not again.’

SIXTEEN

Black Pine Mountains, nr Malta, Idaho

5th January – 2.19 p.m.