LITMIR.BIZ

       FIVE

       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.’

      ‘I did, I did,’ Archie conceded. ‘It’s just, well, you know…sometimes I miss it.’

      ‘I know what you mean,’ Tom mused. ‘Sometimes, I miss it too.’

      ‘Dom told me about those ads in the paper, by the way.’

      Tom nodded grimly. ‘Seems the FBI aren’t the only people looking for Renwick.’

      ‘You all right with that?’

      ‘Why wouldn’t I be? He deserves everything that’s coming to him.’

      They had left the market and were making their way down Park Street towards Archie’s car. Although the pub on the corner was busy, the crowds soon thinned out away from the main market and Tom was relieved that it was easier to make himself heard now. They walked past a succession of small warehouses, the faded names of earlier, now forgotten enterprises still just about visible under the accumulated grime.

      Archie reached for his packet of cigarettes and lit one. Smoking was a relatively new vice. Tom put it down to his missing the buzz of the underworld. Archie put it down to the stress of being honest.

      ‘Did you find what you were after in the States?’

      ‘More or less,’ Archie replied. From the way his eyes flashed to the ground, Tom sensed that he didn’t really want to talk about it. ‘How was Prague? Worth following up?’

      ‘Maybe. You ever heard of a painter called Bellak?’

      ‘Bellak? Karel Bellak?’

      ‘That’s him.’ Tom had long since ceased to be amazed by Archie’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the art market, painting especially.

      ‘Yeah, course I’ve heard of him. What do you want to know?’

      ‘Is this one of his?’

      Tom reached into his pocket and withdrew the photograph the rabbi had given him. Archie studied it for a few seconds.

      ‘Could be.’ He handed it back. ‘Bleak palette, heavy brushstrokes, slightly dodgy perspective. Of course, I’ve never actually seen one in the flesh. As far as I’m aware, they were all destroyed.’

      ‘That’s

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