Chapter 10: The Criminal Market
[Moriarty's Flat, Southwark — April 15, 2008, 11:00 AM]
The man's hands gave him away.
He sat in the chair Priya had positioned near the door—always near the door, so the exit was behind the guest, not the host—and his hands wouldn't stay still. Fingers interlaced, then separated, then interlaced again. His wedding ring caught the light each time, a gold band he kept twisting clockwise, quarter-turns, like winding a mechanism that had already broken.
"I want my wife dead," he said. Flat. Rehearsed. The kind of sentence that had been practised in a bathroom mirror until the words lost their edges.
James leaned against the kitchen counter. Crossed his arms. Studied.
Mid-forties. Rumpled suit—not cheap, but not maintained. A salesman, maybe. Middle management. The kind of man who owned a house with a mortgage he resented and drove a car one tier above what he could comfortably afford. His story had arrived through two degrees of referral: a friend of a friend of Gavin Price, which meant the vetting chain was already stretched thin.
"Why?" James asked.
"Insurance. She's— we have a policy. Joint life. Seven hundred thousand."
"And divorce isn't an option because?"
The man's jaw worked. His eyes darted left—constructing, not remembering. "She'd take everything. The house, the kids, the—"
"Stop."
The word landed like a door slamming. The man flinched.
"You're lying about the reason, which means you'll lie about everything else." James uncrossed his arms. "The answer is no. Find someone else."
"But I was told you could—"
"I can do a great many things. This isn't one of them. Kevin will show you out."
Kevin, who'd been standing by the front door with his arms folded and his expression carefully blank, opened it. The man left. His footsteps receded down the stairwell—fast, stumbling, the gait of someone whose plan had just collapsed.
Priya emerged from the bedroom, where she'd been monitoring the conversation through the open door. Her laptop was tucked under her arm. "Why not?"
"Three reasons." James poured himself water from the tap. The flat's plumbing groaned, a familiar complaint he'd stopped noticing. "First, he's emotionally unstable. The hands, the ring, the eye movement—he's making this decision from panic, not planning. Panicked clients confess. To bartenders, to therapists, to the first person who shows them sympathy."
"Second?"
"The referral chain is too long. Two intermediaries between him and Price. That's two extra people who know Moriarty takes murder contracts. One is manageable. Two is a liability."
"Third?"
James drank his water. Set the glass down. "I don't kill people's wives for insurance money."
Priya studied him over her glasses. The question she didn't ask hung in the air between them—Where's the line, then? What will you do and what won't you?—but she was learning, the same way Kevin had learned, that some questions were answered by observation rather than interrogation.
"The jewel heist consultation," she said instead. "Client confirmed for tomorrow. Two PM, the pub in Clapham."
"Good. What do we know about the target?"
Priya opened her laptop. They got to work.
---
[Various Locations, London — April 15-30, 2008]
Three jobs in two weeks. James ran each one like a case study.
The first was a jewel heist—a private collector in Kensington with a safe that was newer than the alarm system protecting it. The client was a professional thief named Reggie who'd been doing this for twenty years and had the patience to match. James designed the entry sequence, mapped the security camera blind spots, and identified the ninety-second window when the guard changed shifts and the back corridor was unmonitored. Reggie's crew executed flawlessly. Fee: forty thousand pounds, paid in cash through the drop-box system at Marylebone. The same locker system Kevin had walked him through after the Millbrook job—that first night when James couldn't admit he didn't know the protocol. A month ago. It felt like a year.
The second was corporate espionage. A pharmaceutical executive wanted clinical trial data from a competitor—not for safety reasons, but to front-run a regulatory decision that would move stock prices. Priya handled the digital architecture: which servers to target, what encryption to bypass, how to extract without leaving forensic traces. The client's tech team did the work. James took twenty percent of the projected trading profit—thirty thousand, paid after the stock moved exactly as predicted.
The third was smuggling logistics. A wine merchant who was actually a cigarette smuggler needed his shipping routes optimised to avoid a new customs inspection protocol at Dover. James redesigned the routing through Felixstowe, using a legitimate container shipping company Priya had identified as having the weakest inspection oversight. Fee: twenty-five thousand flat rate.
Three jobs. Three successes. Ninety-five thousand pounds in revenue across fifteen days.
The numbers were satisfying in the way that only numbers could be—precise, unambiguous, a ledger entry that proved something was working. But the real value wasn't monetary. It was reputational. Each client talked. Not loudly—these weren't the kind of people who advertised—but in the right circles, to the right ears. A man who plans things. A man whose plans work.
The inquiries accelerated. Priya's encrypted inbox carried two or three new contacts per week. Most were genuine. Some were desperate amateurs James rejected within minutes. One, he suspected, was a fishing expedition by someone connected to law enforcement—the questions were too specific, too interested in methodology rather than outcomes. He declined politely and had Priya trace the email's routing. It dead-ended at a VPN. Inconclusive, but noted.
And then there was The Broker.
Tommy brought the name first, dropped casually into a briefing like a coin into a tip jar. "Bloke called The Broker. Operates out of North London—Islington, Camden, that area. Does similar work to you. Planning, connecting, taking a cut."
"How long?"
"Years. Maybe five, maybe more. He's established. Has territory, clients, reputation."
James filed it. Competitor analysis was familiar ground—he'd spent three years at the consulting firm mapping competitive landscapes for corporate clients. The principles were identical. Identify the competitor. Assess their strengths, weaknesses, market position. Determine whether to compete, cooperate, or avoid.
For now, avoid. The Broker controlled North London. James operated in the south and east. Their territories didn't overlap. But markets grew, and growing markets attracted attention, and attention created friction. Eventually, they'd meet. James wanted to be ready when they did.
---
[Westwood Boutique, Mayfair — April 28, 2008, 3:00 PM]
The suit cost two thousand eight hundred pounds. Dark navy, single-breasted, cut close through the shoulders and tapered at the waist. Vivienne Westwood—the label carried weight in certain circles, a signal that announced taste and money without shouting either.
James stood in front of the fitting room mirror while the tailor made final adjustments. The man who looked back at him was Moriarty. Not the character from the show—not Andrew Scott's manic grin and sing-song delivery—but something newer. Sharper. A version that had been shaped by a month of negotiation and crisis and the particular education that came from building something out of nothing.
The tailor pinned the left cuff. James held still.
One month. Thirty days since the passport on the bedroom floor and the kettle boiling in a stranger's kitchen. The flat in Southwark still felt borrowed, but London itself was starting to feel like his. He knew its streets now—not just the geography but the rhythm. Which pubs served which purpose. Which postcodes belonged to which operations. Where the police concentrated and where they didn't bother.
The suit fit. He paid cash. Walked out into Mayfair carrying the garment bag over his shoulder, and the doorman at the Westwood boutique held the door for him the same way the doorman at the Clarendon Club had held it for the original Moriarty.
The difference was that this time, James held it back.
He wasn't the original. He was the replacement. And replacements, if they were smart, built something the original never could.
The fourth satisfied client called that evening. A jewel fence named Cartwright, recommended by Reggie. "How do I reach you if I need you again?"
James reached into the jacket of his new suit and produced a card. White. Thick stock. No name, no address, no title. Just a phone number in embossed black lettering.
"This number," he said. "Memorise it. Destroy the card."
Cartwright turned the card over. "No name?"
"You'll know who answers."
But walking back to the Audi—Kevin waiting, engine running—James turned the question over. A brand needed a name. Something memorable. Something that stuck in the criminal consciousness and carried weight without explanation.
Consulting criminal. The words had been circling his mind for weeks. Not just a title—a category. A new position in the ecosystem. The way Sherlock Holmes would one day call himself the world's only consulting detective, James would be the world's only consulting criminal.
The symmetry appealed to him in ways he chose not to examine too closely.
"Kevin."
"Yeah?"
"I need blank cards printed. Same stock as this one. Just the number." He paused. "And start using the phrase 'consulting criminal' when you describe what we do. To everyone."
Kevin pulled into traffic. "Consulting criminal." He tested the words. "That's... actually quite good."
"I know."
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