The Double Eagle (16 page)

10:40
P.M.

“D
id you find the port?”

Renwick had reappeared at the sitting-room door and Jennifer turned round to face him, reluctantly tearing her eyes away from the oil painting she had been studying.

“Water’s fine for me, thanks.” She held up her glass to show she had helped herself.

“Very sensible. Let’s do this in the kitchen, shall we? Give us a bit more room to spread out.” He nodded toward the dark blue folder he was clutching under one arm.

Jennifer followed him through to the kitchen and helped him clear a space on the table, piling plates and glasses high on the work tops, the sounds of expensive china and cutlery echoing around them.

“Leave all that, my dear,” Renwick boomed as Jennifer began to clear some of the plates into the trash. “The housekeeper will clear it away in the morning. Now, why don’t you sit yourself down there and I’ll pull a chair up next to you.” He pointed at a chair on the left-hand side of the table and dragged another over next to it. Jennifer sat down.

“So what is all this?” she asked as Renwick began to empty the contents of the file onto the table’s coarse wooden surface.

“Press cuttings, newsletters, sale reports. Anything relevant to the European coin and medal markets. I have a company that collates them all for me as well as for other areas I work in. Helps keep me up to speed. Anyway, between all this we should be able to come up with a list of names and companies you can look into.”

“You know, I really appreciate you helping me on this. Especially this late.”

Renwick beamed at her.

“My dear, it’s my pleasure. Really, it is.”

He sat down and then immediately stood up.

“I’m hot. Are you hot?” Without waiting for an answer he moved over to the French windows that gave onto the garden and threw them open. A cool breeze slid into the room. Renwick sat down again.

“I hope you didn’t mind Thomas being here as well?” he said with a smile.

“No, not at all,” she replied, careful not to sound too enthusiastic. The last thing she wanted was Renwick realizing that they were just using him to get to Tom.

“It’s just that Robert told me that you were only in town for a few days and I’d already invited Thomas over last week. He didn’t think you’d mind. And it did occur to me that Thomas might have some useful input for your investigation as well. I hope that wasn’t presumptuous.”

“Of course not. Although I’m intrigued. What is it that Mr. Kirk—I mean Tom—does for a living that made you think he could help?”

“Ah!” Renwick laughed. “Many people have asked themselves that same question. From what he tells me, and that’s not much, he’s some sort of antiques dealer. They’ve always been his thing, ever since he was a child. I suppose he got that from his parents. Anyway, he knows the business inside out, hence why I thought he could help.”

“Have you known Tom for long, then?”

“Since he was fourteen, at least. I met Charles, his father, after he moved to Geneva. Tom would turn up every so often at the holidays.”

“He didn’t live at home?” Jennifer already knew the answer to this question, but then she couldn’t let Renwick realize that the CIA had a file on Kirk an inch thick.

“No. His mother, Rebecca, was killed in a car accident when he was about thirteen. It turned out that Thomas was driving.”

“Oh.” Jennifer nodded in understanding. Her father often used to let her sit on his knee and drive the short distance from their house to the first main intersection. It was a game that in this case had clearly gone horribly wrong.

“Charles took it very badly—never really recovered, if truth be known. Thomas was sent to live with his mother’s family. I think Charles found it too painful to have him around.”

“That must have really screwed him up. Losing one parent and then being rejected by the other.”

“Yes.” Renwick paused. “You know, he never really talks about his childhood now, but he did once tell me a story that always stuck with me. One day at junior school—or whatever it is you Americans call it—Thomas saw two boys stealing a purse belonging to one of the teachers. He didn’t say anything because he’d only been there a few months and it was hard enough for him as a new pupil at a new school in a new country without attracting even more attention to himself. Apparently, these two pupils somehow knew that Thomas had seen them and decided to put the money they’d taken in his locker before tipping off the teacher. She opened his locker in front of the whole class and there was her purse, right where these two boys had put it.

“They suspended him for a few weeks and no matter what he said, no one ever believed he was innocent. Charles least of all. Not even when the same two pupils were caught shoplifting and the police then found a stash of stolen items in one of their rooms. Thomas was always guilty in his father’s eyes, and I’m not sure he ever forgave him for that.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Jennifer, arching her eyebrows at the irony of Tom, having been wrongly accused of theft, actually becoming a thief.

“Anyway, that was all a long time ago now.” A pause. “We should get cracking. Let’s split this up.” He roughly divided the wedge of papers into two equal piles. “You go through that one, I’ll go through the other.”

For the next forty-five minutes they both read through their papers, the silence broken only by the noise of their pens as they took notes and the occasional question from Jennifer or comment from Renwick as he pointed something out to her. He had been right. It was a small market, the same names, some institutional, some private individuals, showing up several times over. Jennifer kept score, adding a little line next to each name every time it was mentioned. Van Simson had already scored twelve, double his closest competitor. Looking over, she could see that Renwick had amassed a similar score for him.

She paused mid-scribble.

“What was that?”

Renwick didn’t look up.

“What was what?”

“That noise. It sounded like it came from the garden.”

“Oh.” Renwick looked up, smiling. “Probably the neighbor’s cat culling the local mouse population.”

Jennifer nodded, looked out the window and then back down at her notes. A few moments later her head snapped toward the open window again.

“That’s no cat.”

“What?”

“I said, that’s no cat.” Jennifer had got up and moved over to the window. “Too big. And there’s more than one, too.”

“Are you sure?” Renwick stood up, a concerned look on his face.

“Quick, turn the lights out,” Jennifer whispered. Renwick stumbled over to the light switch and flicked it off, his forehead crumpled into a worried frown. Jennifer edged her head round the window’s edge so that she could see into the garden. She immediately jumped back and pressed herself to the wall.

“Two men,” she whispered. “Making their way toward the house.”

“What the blazes do they want?” Renwick whispered back, his voice suddenly afraid.

“I don’t know, but I figure we shouldn’t wait around to find out. Let’s get outside and call the cops.”

“What about all my paintings?”

“You’re insured, aren’t you?” Renwick nodded. “So leave them. These guys look like they mean business.”

They both tiptoed out of the kitchen and made their way to the front door. Jennifer unbolted it.

“Now remember…” she said as she pulled it open.

She never finished the sentence.

“Watch out!” shouted Renwick.

Instinctively she raised her arms in front of her face and a fist glanced harmlessly off her elbow. She could tell from how quickly it had come that whoever it was had been waiting for the door to open and she knew then that the other two men must have been deliberately sent round the back to flush them out onto the street.

She only had time to register that her assailant was a short, stocky white man, before she had to dodge his follow-up punch, his knuckles slamming instead into the door’s polished surface and making him yelp. She seized the opportunity, chopping him in his throat with the edge of her hand and then kicking him hard in the groin. He immediately dropped to his knees with a groan and sagged forward, his face bright red as he choked and gurgled, unable to catch his breath.

“’Nuff, bitch.”

Jennifer jerked her head round to see the two men who’d come in through the garden standing in the hallway, the one on the left holding a gun to Renwick’s head. Like the other man, they were also white, although their forearms were dark with matted hair and swirling tattoos. Both wore jeans, shiny black bomber jackets and bright white sneakers.

“Pull another move like that and we off granddad. Got it?” Renwick stared at her, his head tilted to one side where the man was pressing against his temple with the gun’s muzzle, clearly terrified.

“Fine.” She raised her hands. “Take what you want.”

The man on the right stepped forward, his mouth thin and purple from poor circulation, his right ear pierced in three places, his nose bent like a boxer’s.

“Oh, we will, sweetheart, don’t you worry.”

“Get out of my house, you scum,” Renwick shouted, his eyes fierce and proud. “I know who sent you and you can tell him from me that—”

The man pulled a gun from the waistband of his jeans, turned round, aimed it at Renwick’s chest and fired.

“Harry!” Jennifer called out as Renwick collapsed onto the stone floor, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

The man she had knocked to the ground struggled to his feet behind her, still wheezing, the fingers of his right hand now gripping a thick brass knuckle.

“You fucking bitch,” he snarled as he struck her with a big looping punch to the back of her head.

Jennifer saw the marbled floor accelerating toward her as she fell, but blacked out before she hit it.