Dark Market

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Savage had bought the house at the start of the boom. His base, his first investment.

It'd been cheap back then, a three story in a part of town that had no underground connection guaranteed lower prices. It did have a regular and quick train route to the heart of London through leafy green suburbs, or a high-speed ferry along the Thames. Both far more pleasant and quicker than the subterranean tube. A nicer area with nicer houses at out of town prices, all because you didn't suffer commuter hell every morning.

Go figure.

He heard the strum and stroke of musical instruments from the basement flat below. He owned that too. The music teacher from Greenwich still lived there. His rent paid Savage's mortgage on the place, just. It washed its own face in the parlance of the trade.

If he bought the house at post-boom prices he could rent the whole thing at corporate rates and still not cover his costs.

Progress, he thought, means the people who live here can't afford to live here.

The key he'd picked up from the property manager still worked. The door didn't. Not until he put his shoulder into it, then his foot, enough to force the three year mountain of mail that had accumulated behind the door back several inches. He squeezed through. The weight of the pile slammed the door shut behind him.

If dust could talk it would have called the cops. It felt like breaking into a museum. Savage stalked carefully along the hallway past the once familiar hat-stand, covered in coats. The deep thrum of a cello downstairs broke into the first bars of a tune. As he rounded the corner into the Victorian high-ceilinged living room, a bass guitar joined in. Classical avant-garde.

Framed paintings covered one wall, two sculptures, irregular Art-is-Cheap impulse buys. He moved to the rear window at the end of the long lounge.

The view there made his heart beat just a little faster, as it always had. The weight of the last few years, of the last week, left him, as the orange evening twilight touched his face.

The high window framed a postcard-perfect view of London's Canary Wharf. The aircraft warning light atop the pyramid roof of One Canada Square winked like the mischievous eye of Mammon. To his right the support struts of the Millennium Dome, or the O2 as it had been re-branded, marked the boundary that led out to sea.

In the centre frame, the sun dropped into the other end of the Thames and in the far distance, silhouetted against the sky, the London Eye, Houses of Parliament, and the distinctive tower that Londoner's referred to as The Gherkin. You had to love them.

He'd sat and admired the view virtually every evening he'd lived there. The wharf had been his domain, he'd been going places. From nowhere to somewhere, wasn't that every poor boy's dream?

His life in the Middle East had been humble, hermetic, he'd scorned the trinkets that he'd collected. The joke of a person he'd wanted to be, suited, wealthy, cultured – bought in culture of course – fast car, trophy wife.

He sat on the couch and stared until twilight turned to night.

Then made his way upstairs to the bedroom, without using lights. That was his way now. He'd learned to live without them. The carnage of his last day's departure lay scattered about the floor and bed.

He'd left in a hurry.

Tabitha's clothes still mixed in with his.

Tabby Cat to her friends and lovers. His love, or so he'd thought. Blonde, tall, old money, plum in her accent and silver spoon up her arse. She'd been nice enough, hell, she'd been great. She'd thrown off the shackles of her upbringing to become a beautiful and intelligent woman.