James Twining - The Black Sun

‘Screw you, McCoy.’

Viggiano’s distinctive New Jersey drawl somehow suited the Italian ancestry suggested by his thick black eyebrows and hair and permanent five o’clock shadow. His dark looks were complemented by a firm, unyielding jaw that jutted out like a car bumper, giving the impression that, if you threw something at him, it would bounce off like a rock hitting a trampoline.

The woman next to him squeezed off her shots one by one with a plodding, rhythmic monotony confirming Viggiano’s impression that she probably ironed her husband’s socks. She then carefully placed her gun down in front of her and retrieved her target. Viggiano couldn’t help but peer over.

Eleven holes. She had eleven holes in her target. How was that possible unless…unless it was her six and his five? He’d been so worked up he’d fired at the wrong target.

The woman had obviously come to the same conclusion. She looked up at him, her eyes dancing, her laughter only seconds behind. He threw his ear protectors down on the bench and stalked out of the room before she could show anyone else.

‘Oh, sir, I was kinda hopin’ I’d find you down here.’ Byron Bailey was an African American from South Central LA, a bright kid who’d made it the hard way, winning a scholarship to Caltech on the back of good grades and an evening job packing shelves in his local 7-Eleven. He had bad acne, which had left his ebony skin pitted like coral, while his nose was broad and flat and his eyes wide and eager. What struck Viggiano most, though, was his tail-wagging enthusiasm, a sickening trait that he shared with most rookies and one which only served to make Viggiano feel even older than he already did.

‘So, you found me.’ Viggiano marked his disinterest by fastidiously picking invisible pieces of lint off the lapels of his immaculately pressed suit.

‘Er, yessir.’ Bailey seemed momentarily unsettled by Viggiano’s irritable tone. ‘We got a tip-off about that heist from the NSA complex in Fort Meade. You know, the one the boys back in DC are all choked up about. It sounds like it might be for real.’

‘What are you babbling about?’ Viggiano caught his reflection in a glass door as he spoke and adjusted his tie so it was centred precisely under his chin.

‘You ever heard of the Sons of American Liberty?’

‘Who?’

‘The Sons of American Liberty.’

‘Nope.’

‘They’re a fringe group of white supremacists. Our mystery caller fingered them as the people behind the theft.’

‘Did you get a trace?’

‘No. The call was made right here in Salt Lake, but that’s all we know. Whoever he was, he had the sense to ring off before we could get a fix on his location.’

‘Any intel on the caller’s ID from the tape?’

‘Forensics are still working on it. They don’t think they’ll get much. Only thing they’re saying at the moment is that he doesn’t sound like he’s from these parts.’

‘That’s it?’ Viggiano sighed heavily. ‘Jesus, it hardly narrows it down.’

‘No, sir.’ Bailey agreed.

‘Where are these jokers based?’

‘Malta, Idaho.’

‘Malta, Idaho!’ Viggiano exclaimed in mock celebration. ‘Just when I think I’ve run out of two-bit shithole towns to visit, another one shoves its head right up my ass.’

‘If it’s any consolation, sir, Carter said that he wanted you to head up the investigation at our end.’

‘Regional Director Carter?’ A flicker of interest in Viggiano’s voice now.

‘That’s right. Apparently you dealt with a similar situation a couple of years back. He said that you were the only one available with the right level of experience for this. He suggested I help you out too, if that’s okay, sir.’

Viggiano clipped his gun back into its holster. ‘Well, for once Carter’s right,’ he said, running a hand through his hair to check that the parting was still right. ‘Saddle up, Bailey. You’re coming along for the ride. Paul Viggiano’s gonna show you a shortcut to the big time.’

Borough Market, Southwark, London

5th January – 12.34 p.m.

The market stalls were tightly packed under the rusting cast-iron railway arches, their shelves groaning with freshly imported produce: Camemberts from Normandy as big as cartwheels, pink Guijelo hams, and bottles of olive oil from Apulia that glowed like small suns.

Shoals of eager shoppers, wrapped up against the cold, battled their way along the aisles, their movements seemingly governed by whatever enticing smell, be it fried ostrich burger or warm bread, the wind happened to bring their way. Overhead, trains screeched and scraped their way along the elevated track, an intermittent rolling thunder that grew and faded as quickly as a summer storm.

‘What are we doing here?’ Archie snapped irritably as he dodged between two pushchairs and then squeezed past a long queue in front of one of the many flower stalls.

In his mid-forties and only of average height, Archie had the stocky no-nonsense build of a bare-knuckle boxing champion, his cauliflower ears and slightly crumpled unshaven face reinforcing the image. So there was a certain incongruity about his choice of a tailored beige overcoat over an elegant dark blue pinstripe suit, and his neatly clipped hair.

It was a contradiction reinforced by an accent that Tom had never quite been able to place, although he was the first to admit that his own – a transatlantic hotchpotch of American and British pronunciation and idioms – was hardly easy to nail down. In Archie’s case, the street-speak of the market stall where he had first learnt his trade mingled with the rounded vowels and clipped Ts of a more middle-class background.

Tom suspected that Archie, ever the opportunist, had developed his own unique patois to enable him to move unchallenged between two worlds. It was a neat trick, but one that left him, like Tom, fully accepted by neither.

‘You’re meant to be coming to dinner tonight, remember? I thought I’d splash out.’

‘Oh shit.’ Archie slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘I’m sorry, mate, but I’d completely forgotten.’

‘Archie!’ Tom remonstrated. What made Archie’s unreliability especially annoying was its very predictability. ‘We spoke about it last week. You promised.’

‘I know, I know,’ Archie said sheepishly. ‘I just plain forgot and now…well, Apples has got a game round at his place tonight. Big money. Invitation only. I can’t get out of it.’

‘More like you don’t want to get out of it.’ Tom’s voice was laced with disappointment. ‘This whole gambling thing’s getting a bit out of control, isn’t it?’

‘No, it’s just a laugh.’ Archie spoke a little too emphatically, as if it wasn’t just Tom he was trying to convince.

Looking back, Tom sometimes found it hard to remember that throughout the ten years that Archie had been his fence, he had known him only as a voice at the end of a phone line. Archie had always insisted that it was safer that way. For both of them.

Tom still remembered his anger when Archie had broken his own rule the previous year, back when they were both still in the game, tracking him down to convince him to follow through on a job. And yet from that first, difficult meeting, a friendship had developed. A friendship that was still finding its way, perhaps, as they both struggled to overcome a life built around suspicion and fear, but a friendship nonetheless, and one that Tom increasingly valued.

‘Besides, I need a bit of excitement now and then,’ Archie continued. ‘The art recovery game, well, it’s not exactly got the buzz of the old days, has it?’

‘I thought you got out because you’d had enough of the old days.’