The Gilded Seal. James Twining
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attempting to extrapolate the man’s face from the narrow sliver of his features that hadn’t been obscured. He suddenly fixed Archie with an incredulous look.
‘Is that Rafael?’
‘That’s what I thought too. It’s the only shot they got of him. He dodged the other cameras.’
‘It can’t be him.’ Tom shook his head in disbelief. ‘He’d have let me know if he was over here.’
‘You were away when this happened.’
‘What was he after?’
‘Part of a dinner service. They rumbled him before he could get to it. He’s a better art forger than he is a thief.’
‘A dinner service?’ Tom looked up with a frown. ‘The Egyptian dinner service?’
‘You know it?’
‘It’s one of a pair. I saw the other one once at the Kuskovo Estate near Moscow.’
‘Well, next time maybe he should try his luck there instead,’ Archie laughed. ‘He certainly ballsed this one up.’
Tom silently considered the grainy image, his brain furiously calculating all the possible reasons Rafael might have had to try and pull off a job like this. The problem was, none of them made sense. Just like this picture didn’t make sense. If Rafael had managed to avoid all the other cameras, why allow himself to be seen in this one, even if he was only barely recognisable? He would have known it was there, same as the others.
Unless that was the whole point. Unless he wanted to be seen. The question was, by who?
Ginza District, Tokyo
19th April – 6.02 a.m.
This was a sanctuary. A refuge. A place to escape the sensory assault of the outside world. The choking fumes from the long ribbons of traffic, cut into neat strips where the streets crossed. The deafening floods of people, the roar of their heavy footsteps as they funnelled obediently along the sidewalks in different directions, depending on the time of day. The blinding strum of the persuasive neon, the advertising signs preaching their different religions high above the heads of those passing below, heads bowed as if in prayer.
Here there were no windows, and no way in, apart from a solitary, soundproofed door that could only be opened from the inside. The air was filtered and chilled, the walls covered in the same black Poltrona Frau leather used by Ferrari, the recessed lights waxing to nothing more than a lunar glow before waning back into darkness at the press of a switch.
There was a single chair positioned in front of a blank screen that took up almost an entire wall. A man was sitting in it, naked. To his left was a glass of iced water. His head, face, chest, arms, legs and groin were totally bald, giving him the appearance of a grotesque oversized baby. From the way he was sitting, it was also impossible to see his penis, giving him a strange, androgynous quality that his distended stomach, swollen breasts and delicate bone structure did nothing to dispel.
He pressed the small remote balancing on his lap. The screen flickered on, a searing rectangle of white light that made the colourful brocade of tattoos that snaked over his entire upper body ripple as if alive. From all around him came the low hum and hiss of the concealed surround speakers.
Now an image appeared. A man. Terrified. His arms pressed flat against a doorframe. Then someone else stepped into the picture, a hammer in one hand and two nails in the other. The first man’s eyes widened in sudden understanding. The nail went through his wrist, the metal stretching his median nerve across its blunt tip like the strings over the bridge of a violin, his thumbnail drawing blood where the reflex had caused it to embed itself into his palm. He screamed, the saliva dribbling down his chin, then fainted. Reaching for the remote, the viewer turned the volume up.
They waited until he regained consciousness and then hammered in the second nail. He shrieked again, his body momentarily rigid with pain, hands clenched into white talons, before sagging forward as the men released him and let his wrists take the strain. The camera never left his face, silent tears running down his cheek, a sudden nosebleed drawing a vivid line across his upper lip and chin before dripping on to his chest.
His tortured breathing echoed through the room, a steady metronome that marked every few passing seconds with unfeeling regularity until slowly, inevitably, the gap between each rasping breath grew. For a few minutes it seemed as if time itself was slowing, his lungs clawing for air, his lips thin and blue, each breath shallower than the last until little more than a whisper remained.
Then he was still.
Taking a sip of water and freeing his penis so it lay across his stomach where he could touch it, the man settled down to watch the film again.
Clerkenwell, London
19th April – 1.16 a.m.
With a sigh, Tom threw the bedclothes off and swung his feet down to the floor. He’d never been a good sleeper, and experience had taught him there was no point trying to wrestle his mind into submission when it had decided it had better things to do.
He pulled on the jeans and shirt he’d thrown over the back of a chair and negotiated his way across the open expanse of the living room, the orange glow of the slumbering city seeping in through the partially glazed roof overhead. Unbolting his front door, he made his way down the staircase to his office, the rubber soles of his trainers squeaking noisily on the concrete steps.
The desk light snapped on, a brilliant wash of bleached halogen sweeping across the worn leather surface. He prodded the mouse and his computer blinked reluctantly into life, the screen staining his face blue.
He scanned through his emails – junk mail mostly, offering to improve his sex life or his bank balance. For a moment his cursor hovered over the three unopened messages from Jennifer Browne that lurked at the foot of his inbox. Two from the year before, one sent this January. Then nothing.
Not that that was surprising. Jennifer had better things to do than waste time writing to him if he couldn’t be bothered to reply. But then it wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to read them. It was just simpler that way. His was a life that could only be lived alone and there was no point in pretending otherwise. And although he would never admit it, he drew a perverse satisfaction in his asceticism; in proving that civilian life had not blunted his self-discipline. Even so, he hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to delete her emails yet. That would have been a little too final. Perhaps, deep down, he liked to believe that there might be another way.
A noise made Tom look up. The roller-shutter over the entrance had been activated and was retracting itself with a loud clanking. He crossed over to the window that looked on to the warehouse below, just in time to see a powerful motorbike pull in, the dazzling beam of its headlamp picking out a series of packing crates and cardboard boxes before both it and the engine were extinguished. Almost immediately, the shutter unfurled behind it.
Dominique jumped to the ground and removed her helmet, blonde hair spilling out on to her shoulders. Looking up, she waved at Tom with a smile, before turning and making her way up the spiral staircase towards him.
‘Welcome home.’ She kissed him on both cheeks, her blue eyes sparkling under a silvery eye shadow.
‘Thanks. You’re late back.’
‘You checking up on me too?’ She grinned, unzipping her leather jacket to reveal a strapless black cocktail dress. ‘I’ve already had two missed calls from Archie tonight.’
‘I just didn’t know where