The Black Sun Conspiracy

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Peter Street proved to be an odd jumble of a street. High-end designer boutiques and dealers selling expensive abstract prints nestled cheek by jowl with tourist tat shops flogging plastic Beefeaters and die cast red buses. A typically English pub with a horseshoe bar and a portrait of the Queen on the wall stood opposite a restaurant offering ‘experimental molecular gastronomy’. At one end of the street the epic grandeur of the British Museum was visible, and at the other end the only view was of a Brutalist office block in need of a good clean.

Although most of the properties on Peter Street had been divided up into flats and commercial units, a few of the buildings remained intact. Number 34, the house they had been sent to find, was one of these. Built as a chic town residence some time in the early 19th century, it bore a considerable resemblance to the frequently-rebuilt Black Sun house.

Sam and Nina stopped at the dilapidated newsagent on the corner and bought sandwiches to eat while they studied the floor plan on the second card. “Our luck seems to be taking a turn for the better,” said Sam. “We’re here. It’s not raining. We got the last two BLTs in the shop, there’s a bench to sit on and you’ve still got a few cigarettes left in that packet. Here’s my lighter. You smoke one of your ones and I’ll bum one off someone outside the pub, the packet’ll go further that way.”

They tore into their sandwiches ravenously, demolishing them almost instantly. “Do you find it weird,” Nina asked, “being back in London? I know I do. Steven had a favorite restaurant somewhere around here. Some overly fancy tapas place.”

“Being at King’s Cross was weird,” Sam replied. “This… not so much. I was hardly ever around here. Mostly I was out in East London or around Farringdon where The Clarion was based. Central London’s never really been my cup of tea. Too many people.”

Nina nodded. “Yup. I know what you mean. Looks like that might be our problem tonight as well.” She waved her sandwich expansively at Peter Street, taking in the fading daylight and passers-by. The restaurant and pub were beginning to fill up, and even though it was after closing time at the Museum there were still plenty of people using the street as a through route. “How are we going to do this without anyone noticing? It’s not like we can just take a crowbar to the door. There’s a window that’s slightly open, but we’re not getting up there without getting ourselves arrested.”

Peter Street led onto a number of side streets, one of which led to what had once been an alley before extensions to the ground floor had blocked it. It had been a small, narrow alleyway, and the rear windows of the upper floor looked out over it.

The idea hit them both at the same time. They looked around, checking that the side street was still quiet, then Sam reached down and lifted Nina up so that she could climb onto the roof of the extension. He scrambled up after her. They crossed the roof and dropped down the other side, back down to street level.

“This looks good,” Nina said, pointing to a small cellar window by her feet. She got down on her knees. “It looks like a utility room. I think I can get in here. I’m not sure you can, but maybe I can get round to the front door and let you in that way. Can we muffle the noise? Someone’s going to hear us if we break the glass.”

Sam looked around for anything that would deaden the noise. A damp newspaper lay half-submerged in a puddle nearby. “Try this,” he said. “Oh — and this.” One of the neighboring houses had recently had its windows repainted and a small tin of paint had been forgotten beneath the sill. “Use the paint to stick the paper to the glass. That way the shards should stay on the paper when it breaks, or most of it will, at least.”

She did as he suggested, smearing the window with pure white paint before applying a layer of newspaper. Then she picked up a small stone and began to tap on the glass. Fortunately, the old building had only single glazing, and the glass surrendered swiftly to the impact and adhered to the paint and paper. Only a small amount found its way to the floor, not enough to cause the kind of commotion that Nina had feared. Once the frame was clear Sam helped to lower her through, then climbed back over the extension and went round to the front of the house again.

A couple of minutes later, Nina opened the door and waved Sam inside. “You need to see this place,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful!”

Even the vestibule was well-proportioned and elegantly decorated. It was the kind of exquisitely rich property that had always made Sam wish that he felt more at home in fancy places. They crept up the thickly carpeted stairs to the first floor, where they found a landing with a number of doors.

“Let’s start with the open ones,” Sam whispered, “and hope we’ll know what we’re looking for when we see it.”

Nina stretched out a hand and tentatively pushed open the first door they came to. “Our luck’s in, Sam,” she said softly. “I think we just did.”

The room was not unusually large, but its high ceilings and pristine whiteness made it feel vast. The polished wooden floor sent every footstep echoing all around. On each wall hung a framed painting, their colors vibrant even in the dingy orange glow from the traffic lights filtered through the sheer curtains.

“Which one are we meant to take?” Sam looked helplessly from one painting to the next, suddenly gripped by fear that they would fail after having come so far. “Is there anything on those cards to give us a clue?”

“No,” Nina shook her head emphatically. She was staring intently at the artwork in front of her, a tondo depicting the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. “This is the test. It’s a riddle of sorts. We have to prove our worth by picking the right one. I think I’m starting to see how Renata thinks… Whatever we’re looking for, it’s going to have some significance concerning—”

“The Black Sun?” Sam interrupted. “Then I think we might have found the one we’re looking for.”

He was examining the painting on the wall behind Nina. She recognized it instantly as the Arnolfini Wedding, a piece by Jan van Eyck she had seen before in the National Gallery. A man in a long dark gown and black hat stood holding by the hand a woman in a voluminous green dress, most likely in the act of getting married or betrothed. She remembered the guide book pointing out the mirror in the background as an example of van Eyck’s exceptional artistry, where the other occupants of the room were depicted in a display of perfect perspective. In this version, however, there was no mirror. There was only a black sun hanging between the couple, its ebony rays spilling across the wall behind them. Viewed this way, knowing what she now knew, the dealings between the man and the woman looked less like a marriage and more like an initiation.

“That’s got to be it,” she concurred. “How do we get it out of the frame?”

“No idea,” said Sam. “Let’s get it down off the wall to start.”

The painting was not large, but it had been executed on a wood panel which did not make for easy handling. With some difficulty they removed it from its hanging and grappled it to the floor without injury, but it was clear from touching it that any rough treatment would result in serious harm. Whatever they did next, they were going to have to do it very carefully. ‘We might be better just leaving it in the frame and putting our jackets over it while we’re outside,’ Sam thought. ‘There’s no point in — ’

The light above their heads snapped on. Sam looked up in alarm and found himself staring down the barrel of a shotgun.