Re:Start

By Kennedy Davis

Violet Oyelana wants to live forever....... what she does not yet know, is that she already has!

Violet is a confident sixteen year old, enjoying her life in Bath. Then, one ordinary Saturday afternoon, she becomes the victim of a shooting accident and memories of a former life become her own. As Violet recovers, she discovers it is not just memories she can recall, but skills and abilities learnt in that past life.

A small, silver coin is the first of many clues in both her present and her past life, that leads Violet and her teenage friends, Plum and Percy, into a deadly race first to the Gower coast and then to Galway. Along the way she discovers she is not alone; there are other returners - people who have lived countless times. They call themselves the Cognoscenti and their history can be traced back to Norse mythology.

Will Violet find the truth behind those memories? Will she uncover the reason the Cognoscenti are shadowing her every move? Or will Drachen Siecher, the vile Weill lover with his gang of Jack-knives, overtake them all and realise his dream of immortality and with it the destruction of the Cognoscenti themselves?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kennedy Davis
• Release date: Aug 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311377791

Book preview

Bath

One

AT THE TOP of the hill a car growled into view and stalked its way slowly between the shops and pedestrians that made up Milsom Street. It was a tricked-up wreck of a car, roofless and stark, throbbing to the music that spilled like industrial waste over Bath’s senses and sensibilities.

Percy thought it was the coolest thing he’d seen all day. Second coolest thing, he corrected himself as he turned his attention back to the girl in the Afghan coat. 'Will I see you tomorrow?' he asked again.

'Maybe,' Violet teased.

The car was close to the couple. There were four youths in it, swaying to the music: boom, boom, boom. People were staring at them. Boom, boom, boom. One hundred and forty beats to the minute. Urban music. Percy was laughing, it was his kind of music. The youth in the back seat smiled back and winked at Percy as the car lurched to a halt beside them. He was still smiling as he raised a revolver and pointed it at Violet’s face. ‘Give me the coat,’ he demanded.

Violet looked into the barrel of the gun and laughed. ‘Friends of yours?’ she asked Percy.

‘No, not my friends,’ Percy replied.

The youth in the car stopped smiling. ‘Give me the coat. Give it to me now!’

‘Is this for real?’

The driver turned round to the youth in the back seat. ‘Just shoot her and get the coat,’ he ordered.

‘Yep, it’s for real,’ the youth said as he pulled the trigger.

At the same instant, the convertible lurched and with a squeal of tyres, it raced away down the road. At the bend, the car gave a twitch, then a judder, and then it was cartwheeling over and over in a deafening cacophony of scraping metal, whining engine and music as it burst through a shop window and slewed to a stop.

Silence fell on the street. Then someone started running towards the car, then another, and all of a sudden the noise of panic filled the air.

'What was all that about?' Percy asked. Violet said nothing. She felt heavy, as if all her weight was bearing down on him. 'Violet? Are you OK?' He tried to shift her weight and as he did, he touched the back of her head. He could feel something warm and wet. Percy looked at his red, blood-soaked fingers and felt sick. 'Help me!' he screamed. 'Somebody please help me!' He sank down to his knees and wept over the girl he had only just met.

Above the road, in a dimly-lit room edged with a peeling opulence, a man scrutinised the crashed car through the high-powered rifle sights. They were all dead, the driver from a rifle bullet and the passengers from the crash. There was no remorse, just a cold, studied professionalism for a job successfully undertaken.

‘That was reckless!’ said a voice from within the shadows of the room. ‘You were merely to watch them.’ There was a note of exasperation in his voice as though this was just another in a long line of reckless moments.

‘They were going to shoot the girl.’ It was not an excuse and the rifleman knew it.

‘That would have been… unfortunate.’ The man stood up and walked across the room. He was a small man, barely an inch over five feet, thin and immaculately dressed. He wore a small pointed beard topped with a flowing handlebar moustache that curled up at the edges. He had worn it like that for as long as the shooter could remember, and that was a very long time. The man ran his eyes quickly over the scene outside. ‘It seems they did, despite your best efforts.’

The rifleman raised the sighting scope to his eye. ‘A head wound,’ he said. He watched the strong pulse in her neck: ‘She’ll live.’

‘Her parents will be most relieved,’ the older man said without a shred of compassion. ‘Is that not the bird boy?’ he asked, noticing the scruffy youth for the first time.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Curious,’ the man offered as he returned to his chair in the shadows of the tall room. It was his favourite word and he used it often.

The rifleman glanced across at the boy kneeling beside the prone girl. There was something in his hand, something that glinted in the sunlight as the boy unconsciously slipped it into his jacket pocket. ‘I think the boy has the coin.’

‘Has he? Has he, indeed? Curious it should be the bird boy. A curiosity or a coincidence?’ the man mused, half to himself. He sat in silence for several more moments. 'Do you recall when it became a curse?’ There was a trace of melancholy in his voice, a weariness that clung to the shadows.

The rifleman looked at the man in the chair. ‘A long time ago. A lifetime and more ago.'

‘We need to find out more about the boy. Find out if he is important, Civetta,’

The man at the window turned back to the outside world. He adjusted the sights on his rifle and swung the barrel back on the rooks harrying a pair of buzzards. They were just over a mile away, but that did not seem to deter the man. He pulled the trigger. The rifle made a noise like a retired colonel stifling a cough and far away another rook crumpled up and fell silently to earth.

Two

THREE HOURS had passed since the shooting and in a room in a sixties monstrosity along Manvers Street, a dreadlocked teenager was sitting in a chair. The police had taken him to the local police station, given him a coffee, and then left him to stew. His companion, a cocky jackdaw, sat on his shoulder, pecking affectionately at his ear. The bird croaked and it sounded suspiciously like trouble. 'You're not wrong, Gert,' Percy said. ‘A load of it.'

At ten past seven, two police officers – one male, one female – and a social worker came into the room. Percy gave them a cursory glance. They were DI John Eastwood and DC Mary Barry: Magnum Farce and Dirty Barry. He knew them vaguely. They were little more than legalised thugs with a poor reputation. Whatever trouble he was in, it was serious if these two were involved. Percy didn't recognise the social worker, an earnest sandal-wearer who was probably called Stephanie or Hilary – most likely Hilary, Percy thought. Percy wasn't sure whom he disliked the most.

'Can it talk?' social worker Hilary asked.

'Which one, the crow or the scarecrow?' Magnum Farce joked. Dirty Barry laughed.

'There's no call for that,' the social worker said. 'I meant the bird as you well know.'

Percy was not listening to them. He was thinking about the girl. She had asked him the same question. It had been the very first thing she had said to him.

'Can it talk?'

Percy turned. A girl about his age, stood in front of him. She was tall, taller than Percy, with long hair dyed a warm blonde, tumbling down her back. It contrasted with her dark, coffee-coloured complexion and brown, almost black eyes. She was wearing an ancient and rather moth-eaten Afghan coat, a relic from a previous century. It would have looked incongruous on most people, but to the girl with the smiling face and dazzling eyes, it seemed perfect.

'Try to stop her,' Percy replied and, as if on cue, the jackdaw perching on his shoulder let out a dry-croaked call: Blox.

The girl laughed. It was a relaxed, confident laugh. 'A jackdaw with attitude. How sweet.'

'You have to excuse Gertrude,' Percy said. 'She can be a bit possessive, but she brings in the money.'

'Well, can it?' Dirty Barry demanded. She stared at Percy with hard, damning eyes.

'It's a jackdaw, not a parrot,' Percy replied tersely. 'A jackdaw - Corvus Monedula. A passerine. Do they not teach you anything in the police force?'

'It's a disease-riddled piece of vermin,' said the male half of the interrogation party.

Percy ignored Magnum Farce and stroked his pet. The bird had fallen down a chimney one morning – a lost hatchling like himself – and Percy had reared her. He named the jackdaw Gertrude after a character in a book he had once read. Later, in the dark, winter months, he had taught her to speak. It was his gimmick. Other runaways had dogs; but Percy had his bird and together they made money selling magazines to tourists and grannies. A pile of money, as it happened.

'So, bird boy, what’s your name?'

'Nice technique,' the girl in the Afghan coat said. Gertrude had just sworn at a Japanese tourist who, laughing, had paid Percy over the odds for a photograph of her and Gertrude.

'I get by.'

'Enough to buy a girl a coffee?' she asked.

'One of the joys of being alternatively employed is that you can give yourself a coffee break whenever you feel like it and I know this really good coffee shop. You'll love it.'

'Sounds perfect. By the way, my name's Violet,' the girl said.

'Percy,' Percy said.

'That's nice,' Violet said, a hint of teasing in her voice.

'Perception,' Percy added. 'Which is less so. Nice, that is. You see, my surname's Dawes and ... well... my parents – my dad, really – thought I should be called Perception as in the Doors of Perception. I guess they thought they were being clever, but they don't have to live with it.' Percy felt the old anger rising in him and fought it back. 'Bloody stupid name, when you come to think of it,' he shrugged self-consciously.

'You could always change it; call yourself Flash or something.' Violet laughed.

'Flash.'

'I was asking for your name, not your hobby.' Magnum Farce smirked at his own joke. Percy said nothing, lost to the memory unfolding in his mind.

‘Maybe not Flash, but perhaps I should change it.'

'As it happens, I rather like the idea of someone being called after a line from Blake,' Violet said.

Percy was shocked and selected a reasonably convincing look to accompany the emotion. Few people got the connection with Aldous Huxley; fewer still got the connection with William Blake. Violet was only the second person, which made her a bit special as far as Percy was concerned and he told her so.

'Who was the first?' Violet asked.

'A girl.'

'Oh.'

'No, not like that!' Percy felt he objected too quickly. He could feel himself colouring. 'Plum's just a friend who lives in a bookshop. I think she has read every book in the place.'

Gertrude stretched and preened herself. Geek, she croaked. They both laughed.

'So tell me, Flash, why would several London gang-members want to shoot you?'

'He's a coke-head,' Dirty Barry almost spat the accusation out. 'A drugged-up pusher who fell foul of his suppliers.'

That snapped Percy out of his reverie. 'I don't do drugs,' he protested. 'Never have. Caffeine's the strongest drug I take and as an unemployed homeless victim, I don't get to taste it very often.' Percy noticed the social worker making a note in her file and smirked inwardly as she underlined the word victim.

'What makes you think you’re a victim?' Dirty Barry snapped and the smirk, inward as it was, vanished. 'You make your own choices. What's yours? Crack? Dope? What's your drug of choice, bird boy?'

'Music,' Percy said.

They made a strange couple as they walked to get their coffee; the streetwise youth with a bird nestling in his dark dreadlocks – to sleep on and hide behind, he would tell her later – and a stylish girl in her newly bought coat. Somewhere across the city came a muffled roar. It came from the rugby supporters cheering on the local team, but to Percy, it felt as though the roar was for him.

The coffee house was tucked down a side street. It was a dark, windowless cavern of a place, full of noise and people and the beguiling, seductive aromas of freshly ground coffee. The girl instantly fell in love with the place. 'They play music here?' she asked.

'Yeah, jazz. Goes great with a cappuccino. Plum sings here occasionally...' Percy realised he was talking about another girl – again – not really the best approach with someone you've just met, he thought. 'Looks like it's Posh Ken, today. You'll like him,' Percy said, nodding towards the dapper, elderly man erecting the paraphernalia of his trade: a music stand, a small amplifier and a beautifully polished cornet.

They sat down beside the stage and watched the old musician go through a bizarre ritual, picking out pieces of kit from his bag and examining them as though it was the first time he had ever seen the item. A muffler for his instrument was taken out at least a dozen times before he finally decided to leave it in the bag. 'He has Alzheimer's,' Percy said. 'He can get lost walking the two dozen paces from his house to here. Yet when he plays it's as though everything is still fully functioning. I guess there's still a piece of his mind that's untouched by the disease.'

'I would hate to lose my memories.'

'It's a bolt-hole for him, a place of sun and love.'

A second musician stood in the shadows, running through silent arpeggios on his unplugged electric guitar. There was no rush, but then music was like that. The old man would eventually find the right combination of equipment and they would play. Expectancy clung to cobwebs and then, after what seemed like an eternity, the ancient jazz player was ready. He nodded to his guitarist partner, counted his trademark 'eins, deux, three, quattro...' and together they launched into the most joyous, eclectic and smoky jazz Violet had ever heard.

'Of course you smack up. You all do. I don't know a single Pikey that doesn't.' Magnum Farce added, ignoring the concerned noises coming from the social worker.

'How old are you?' Dirty Barry took up the interrogation. 'Can't be any more than fourteen,' she guessed. 'How does someone your age end up on the streets?’

'Have you been homeless for long?' Violet asked. There was no preamble, no skirting around the topic. Percy liked that.

'Four years,' Percy replied. 'I ran away when I was twelve. Well, that's not really true. I guess you'd say I went out one day didn't go back.'

'Do your parents know where you are?'

'They know I'm OK, but that's all. I guess if they had been interested in me they would have come looking. After all, it's not that difficult to find someone if you really want to.' Percy stopped. He could feel his anger rising in him. If he was not careful, it would explode into bitter resentment. He decided to shift the emphasis away from him. 'It's cool. I'm happy.' Percy took a sip of coffee and let the simmering anger wash away.

'Indifference,' Percy said.

'What?'

'You asked how I ended up on the streets. And I'm sixteen; I just look small for my age.'

'So,' said the policewoman, 'if you don't do drugs, why would these guys want to shoot you?'

'I don't know. I've never seen them before. '

'Then are we to believe they were after your girlfriend?' Magnum Farce said sarcastically. 'Who is she, then?'

Percy looked up from the table and looked the policeman straight in the eye. 'She is not my girlfriend. She was just a girl in the street, someone who wanted to help me. I know nothing about her.'

'So tell me about yourself,' Percy asked the girl.

'It's all boring, really. I was born in Lagos to a Nigerian doctor and an English nurse. We moved to England when I was still a baby and dad joined a medical practice here in Bath. We've lived here ever since.'

'So you're local? I mean, you're not a tourist?'

'No, I'm not a tourist,' Violet laughed.

'It's just that I've not seen you before.' Percy felt he wanted to get to know this girl better. Much better.

Beside them, Posh Ken was introducing another song. 'Our next song is a bit special. It’s an old Nina Simone song called Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out - unless you're called Percy, that is.’ Posh Ken gave the teenager a wink. 'It features a dear friend of ours on vocals. Are you ready, Plum?'

Percy whooped and whistled as a girl stepped up and sung the old song. 'Go Plum', he shouted to the girl on the stage, then to Violet, 'She's the friend I was telling you about, the one from the bookshop.'

'Is that true that nobody wants to know you when you're down and out?' Violet asked.

'Mostly, but then I'm not down and out, and one day...' he let the dream float away unformed. 'What about you? What do you want to be?'

'I want to be a super-hero,' she teased, 'or immortal. Yeah, I'd like to live forever.'

'You had coffee with her before the shooting. Did she say anything? Anything at all that might be helpful to the police?' Hilary, or whatever-her-name-was, suggested.

'She said she wanted to live forever.' Percy looked from the social worker to the policewoman and those black, emotionless eyes that stared back at him. 'She's dead, isn't she?' Percy whispered, feeling himself welling up for the girl he barely knew.

'You should be careful what you wish for,' the policewoman said.

'Is she dead?' Percy asked again.

'Yeah, she's dead,' Magnum Farce said, 'and you're in a whole lot of trouble.’

Three

THEY LIED. She was not dead, not yet, at any rate and not at all if Doctor Zoe Randall had anything to do with it. The doctor and several nurses were working quickly and efficiently around Violet's inert body. 'Clear!' Zoe Randall called out and two plates discharged their energy into the girl’s fluttering heart. 'Anything?' The line on the electrocardiogram continued to show a faint and irregular beat. 'Come on, Violet,' she implored. 'Your mother will not be happy with me if I were to let you die.'

In the blackness of Violet's coma, a thought begins to take shape or, perhaps, it is a memory, though if it is a memory, it is not hers, for in this strand of recollection, she is in a bar lit by gas lights and candles.

And she is a man.

I am dead, I am dead. So runs the voice in his mind, like a continuous echo. The man shakes his head and swats at his temple with his hand as if trying to get rid of a persistent fly. I am dead… He drinks another mouthful of the black stout and licks the froth from his lips. Behind him, the ragtag group of musicians start up another reel. It is yet another distraction that fails to work; the shadow that blights his world fails to go away. He turns back to his beer and takes another gulp. A thin, liquid rivulet courses its way down his chin through the week-old stubble that is prematurely flecked with grey.

'Another beer, Sean? On me.' The barkeeper does not wait for the nod and pours the pint, or at least he completes the first part of the process. While he lets the dark stout settle, he returns his attention to his customer.

'I don't need your charity,' Sean McCluskey, reached into his pocket and threw several coppers on the bar.

'It's not charity. We look after each other here.'

'Why was I the only one to survive? I should be dead.' The voice in his head continues its litany. 'I am dead,' Sean echoes.

'You shouldn't think like that, Sean. No-one blames you.'

The barkeeper was wrong - they all did. They may not say it to his face but Sean can see it in their eyes. A smouldering anger rises like a bitterness that he alone has survived. He breaks away from the barkeeper’s gaze.

'It’s still early days.' The barkeeper tries to be sympathetic. 'Give them a week or two. A man of your skill will not go wanting.’ The barkeeper tops up the drink as he speaks. It was true that there was work to be had, but the docks were full of superstitious captains. Who would want a Jonah on his boat, worse a captain who has lost his boat and his crew?

Outside, the gale crashes in over the Atlantic. It sweeps over Galway Bay, where, deep in its icy waters, the wreck of the Molly slips silently in the undertow, presenting a last show of animation to the fishes and the crabs. Aboard, the bodies of four sailors, late of Sean McCluskey’s captaincy, float around the pieces of silver they had fought so fiercely over in the minutes before their deaths. The gale rages on, crossing over the Claddagh and on to Galway City. It carries with it a raw, flesh-stripping wind filled with the banshee wails of a thousand dead sailors. It races over the docks, prising tiles off roofs and peeling the sheets of corrugated iron from sheds and huts. Squally showers strafe the pavements, spitting out their hail volleys at anyone foolish enough to brave the elements. Not that many do. On nights like this, Galwegians stay inside their homes, drawn close to the peat fires, with shawls pulled tight around their shoulders. Only the perennial drunks, the sailors and those seeking a living shoulder their way through the gales to the inns and taverns of Galway City.

Back in the bar, McCluskey shivers as the memory of the watery grave sublimates and interacts with the voice in his mind that continues to repeat its monotonous litany: I am dead, I am dead…

'Who are you?' he yells, startling the customers. 'Leave me be!' The fiddlers stop fiddling and as they stop so too do the dancers and the conversationalists and the old men sucking away at their memories and all of them, every man jack of them, stare at the sad man at the bar.

McCluskey gets up, and goes to the lavatory. At the sink he splashes cold water over his face in a vain attempt to rid his mind of the voice. He looks at the lined and worn abomination that stares back from the cracked mirror. It was almost unrecognisable to him. He is twenty-seven but looks at least ten years older. It seems as though a stranger has infested his soul and brought him nothing but misery. As he turns away from the mirror he sees a trace of a girl, dark-skinned and brown eyed, lying inert on white sheets. Spinning back to the faded, grimy mirror, Sean sees nothing but his own image staring accusingly back. It is nothing, another trick of his mind, another moment of madness. He lashes out with his fist and smashes the mirror into a thousand pieces, each part reflecting a tiny image of his desperation. Sean McCluskey wipes his bloody hand on his sleeve and strides purposefully through the bar to the door. He ignores the barkeeper's calls and steps into the gale where he lets the rain intermingle with his tears.

Five minutes later he reaches the bridge that straddles the River Corrib. The river is in full spate and thunders under the masonry. The noise of the river is a constant roar that fills McCluskey's ears, blocking out everything except the voice that still calls out in his head. Sean McCluskey stares down into the black water. It would be so easy to take the pain away, he thinks as he steps onto the balustrade. He leans forward, swaying, feeling the magnetic pull of the river and imagines falling into the white spume. In his mind he can hear the gulls that are the lost souls of his shipmates. So very easy, he thinks.

From his pocket, Sean takes out the picture of his wife and daughter. 'I shall be with you, soon', he whispers. For several moments he stands motionless, contemplating an end, but it will not be tonight, not while there is still work to be done. He has the package – it is at home, safely wrapped up against the damp. He needs one more day and then, when he has sealed the cursed place up forever, he will be able to rest.

'Not today,' he shouts. He kisses the images of his dead wife and dead daughter and lets the picture fall into the river. 'Not today!' Sean McCluskey raises his head and screams into the gale. It is a wordless howl that chills all who hear it. The scream ebbs to an insensate battle cry, a call to arms: a rage against untimely death. It is a call from an earlier age, a pagan age filled with gods and runes. He steps back into the road and resumes his solitary walk home, for the voice that had been speaking to him throughout the night has stopped its lament and his head is mercifully free from all sound and for a few moments, free from all thought as well.

'Come on Violet, you're not going to die on me. Not today. Do you hear me? Not today!' Doctor Randall held the two defibrillator plates and watched for the light to indicate they were ready. 'Clear!' she called out as she placed the pads on the girl's chest. The measured dose of electricity coursed into the girl's heart. There was silence for a moment and then a tiny electronic beep, a second, and then a third. On the ECG, a green trail showed the pulse steadying and strengthening. The doctor sighed. 'OK, guys, good work. Make her comfortable.' Zoe Randall, noted the time on a chart. 'Thank God,' she muttered to herself as she strode down the corridor to find her phone.

Deep in her coma, Violet could still hear the remnants of a primal scream echoing into a black night. Her heart was beating regularly now, a fragile flutter of life little more than the beat of a butterfly's wing, but it was a beat nonetheless and it would sustain her through the coming days of her coma.

'Tell me about the gang members in the car,' Magnum Farce demanded.

'There's nothing to tell,' Percy sighed. 'I've never seen them before.'

'You have to help us, Percy,' the social worker looked up from her scribbled notes and tried to sound sympathetic. 'The police only want to find out why she was shot and anything you can tell us, anything at all, could help them. You want to help us, don't you, Percy? You want to help us find out why Violet was shot?'

'Of course I do.’ But he didn't know how. Percy could feel the frustration welling up inside him. He wanted to run, like he always did when he retreated into himself. His brash, overt confidence was a front, a thin veneer, that rapidly fell away when he felt himself challenged, or threatened, or when emotion pushed its way into his consciousness. His confidence was crumbling now, eroding away with the tears that welled up for the girl whose blood had stained his shirt.

The policewoman took up the sympathetic line. 'Is there anything, anything at all?' It may seem like nothing, but it could be the lead we need.'

'I don't know,' Percy groaned. He felt cornered, he could feel his brain shutting down, as he sought the solitude of his darkening mind.

'Is there anything you can tell us about this?' The harshness of the policeman's voice cut through the building layers of sympathy. Percy looked up into the cold eyes, then at the coin the policeman was holding in his hand.

Percy had walked Violet back to Milsom Street. He wanted to see the girl again, but would not ask her. He would not give her the opportunity to say no. Instead, she asked for him, and his life became suddenly infinitely better. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Something to remind you of me,’ she teased, handing him a small metallic object, It was a coin, old and battered, slightly bent, but a coin nonetheless.’

‘What’s this?’ Percy asked dubiously. He was not asking for money from her.

‘I don’t know,’ Violet said. ‘I found it in a pocket of this coat. I don’t think it’s real money, probably something from a game. Have it.’

So, I’ll see you tomorrow?' Percy asked the girl. 'Maybe have another cup of coffee?'

'Maybe.' Violet said it teasingly. It meant yes, it meant without doubt, and Percy grinned inanely at the girl. Then the car pulled up and some maniac pulled a trigger. There was blood in her hair and on her coat, and blood on his fingers and on the coin he still held. Percy lay Violet gently down on the pavement as he screamed for help and, without thinking, he slipped the coin into his pocket as the first of the paramedics arrived.

'Is she going to be OK?' he asked.

'If I have anything to do with it,' the man in the green paramedic uniform said. 'I've not lost one yet. Girlfriend?'

'I hope so.'

'So do I, son, so do I.'

Percy looked into the cold eyes of the policeman who had lied to him. Violet was not dead. The darkness ebbed away for he knew now with a certainty he could not dislodge that Violet was alive and he would see her again. He looked deeply into the balding detective's eyes and saw nothing in there to frighten him. He smiled. 'It's a coin,' he said.

'I can see that, Einstein, but what the hell are you doing with an eighteenth century coin?'

'Bloody tourists,' Percy said. 'You'd be surprised what rubbish they give you.'

Violet was alive. He knew it and he knew also that the cops could not keep him.

Four

A HUNDRED miles away to the East was a private penthouse suite perched at the top of an anonymous-looking office block in London's Canary Wharf. The suite took up the entire top floor of the building providing both living and working accommodation for its long-term, and very private inhabitant, Drachen Siecher.

Siecher was sitting in his favourite leather chair and gazing out over a particularly beautiful May morning. Golden sunlight imbued the streets below him with a lustrous quality, but his attention was not on the view, nor on the music emanating from an ornate gramophone player, which was surprising, for he was playing his favourite record, an original recording of Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera. No, none of that cheered him, for Drachen Siecher was livid and the reason for this particular bout of vitriol was a text message on his phone. It read: Coin not at Slough. Following up a lead. Will text again later today.. Eight days! His mind roared. Eight fruitless days he had waited for a response and had received nothing. He threw the phone onto the table and growled into the intercom. 'Is he here yet?'

In another room, Rachel Cox sat at her desk and looked at the reasonably calm-looking youth slouched on the sofa on the other side of the room. 'Yes, he's here,' she said.

'Then send the bugger in,' the voice crackled.

'Mr Siecher will see you...'

'Yeah, I heard,' the youth said as he walked into his boss's office. 'Yes, boss?' he asked as he closed the door.

Siecher