[Greasy Spoon Café, Elephant and Castle — March 17, 2008, 10:00 AM]
Tommy Brennan was built like a fire hydrant—short, wide, impossible to knock over. He sat in the corner booth of a café that smelled of chip fat and bleach, nursing a mug of tea the colour of brick. His hands were thick, scarred across the knuckles, and his eyes tracked James from the moment he walked in with the flat, evaluating gaze of a man who'd spent decades deciding whether people were threats.
"Jim." A nod. No handshake. His accent was South London, ground down to gravel.
James slid into the booth opposite. Ordered tea. Waited.
Tommy was muscle. Kevin's accounting had been clear on that—Tommy did the intimidation jobs, the door-standing, the quiet conversations that ended with people paying what they owed. He was fifty-two, had done time in Wandsworth for assault in the nineties, and had worked for the original Moriarty for eighteen months. He wasn't clever and he knew it, which made him smarter than half the people in this business.
"Kevin says you want to talk." Tommy's spoon clinked against his mug. Slow circles. Unhurried. "So talk."
"I'm auditing the operation. Everyone, everything. Top to bottom."
Tommy's eyebrows climbed a centimetre. "Auditing."
"What jobs have you done in the last three months? What went wrong? What nearly went wrong? What should we be doing differently?"
"That's not—" Tommy stopped. Chewed on the word he'd almost said. That's not how you usually do things. James could see it sitting behind his teeth. "Right. Three months. I put the frighteners on four blokes who owed money. Collected about twelve grand total. One of them tried to leg it—chased him down near Borough Market. Got the money. Bruised his ribs a bit."
"Police involvement?"
"None. Small fry. Nobody reports that sort of thing."
"Injuries? Witnesses?"
"Nothing that matters. I'm careful, Jim. You know that."
James drank his tea. It was terrible—stewed, bitter, the milk slightly off. He drank it anyway. "What do you know about our exposure? Anyone asking questions about us? Police, rivals, anyone?"
Tommy set down his mug. His eyes changed—shifted from guarded to serious. "There's been some Bratva lads poking about. Viktor Kozlov's crew. They've been asking around Southwark, Bermondsey. Looking for you."
James filed the name. Viktor Kozlov. Nothing from the show—not a character he remembered. Local colour. Real-world criminal ecosystem filling in the gaps between fiction and reality. "How long?"
"Three weeks, maybe four. Started before you went—before whatever happened to you happened."
"Before I changed, you mean."
Tommy held his gaze. Steady. "Yeah. Before that."
"What do they want?"
"Money, I think. You made some arrangement with them. Kevin might know more."
James finished his tea. Stood. "I need to meet Marcus and Priya today. Set it up."
Tommy reached for his phone. Paused. "Jim."
"Yeah."
"Whatever's different about you—" A beat. The words came hard, like he was pushing them through a sieve. "It's better. The old way was... messy."
James nodded once and left.
---
[Priya Shah's Flat, Brixton — March 17, 2008, 3:00 PM]
Priya Shah answered the door with a laptop under one arm and sauce on her sleeve. Mid-twenties. British-Indian, dark hair pulled back in a practical knot. She wore glasses that kept sliding down her nose, which she corrected with an absent push every thirty seconds. The flat behind her was small, tidy except for the desk in the corner, which looked like a server room had exploded across its surface—three monitors, cables, a tower case with its panel removed.
"Come in. Don't touch anything on the desk."
James didn't touch anything on the desk.
She made tea—properly this time, with actual teabags and milk that hadn't gone—and sat cross-legged on the sofa while James took the armchair. Her flat smelled of cumin and solder.
"Kevin said you want a systems review." She pushed her glasses up. "I've been wanting to do one for months. The encryption on our email is basically a locked door with the key taped to the frame. Anyone with six months of CompSci could crack it."
"Fix it."
"Already started." She reached for her laptop, turned the screen toward him. "I'm migrating everything to PGP with rotating keys. New email addresses for each crew member, compartmentalised. You talk to me, I relay to the others. Nobody knows more than they need to."
James studied the diagram on her screen. Clean. Logical. Colour-coded nodes with directional arrows showing information flow. The consultant in him wanted to point out three structural improvements. He pointed out two and kept the third.
Priya blinked at the second suggestion—a redundancy protocol for if any single node got compromised. "That's— yeah. That's good. I hadn't thought about cascading failure modes."
"Think about them. It's the thing that kills organisations."
She studied him over her glasses. The same evaluating look Tommy had given him, but sharper. More analytical. "You're different."
"So I've been told."
"No, I mean—" She uncrossed her legs. Leaned forward. "Before, you had ideas but you never... structured them. It was all instinct and then screaming when things went wrong. This is—" She gestured at the air between them. "This is methodology."
"I've had a productive week."
"Clearly." A pause. "I want more money."
James raised an eyebrow.
"I've been running your intelligence operation on four hundred a week. That's insulting and you know it. I have a computer science degree from Imperial. I could be making six figures at a tech firm."
"But you're not at a tech firm."
"Because the work here is interesting and the hours are flexible and I don't have to pretend to care about some wanker's start-up." She crossed her arms. "Eight hundred a week. And a percentage of any job where my intel is the primary asset."
James looked at her. Twenty-five, possibly twenty-six. Underpaid, overqualified, and sharp enough to know it. The original Moriarty had kept her cheap through intimidation. That was short-sighted. You didn't underpay your intelligence arm. You invested in it.
"A thousand a week," he said. "And ten percent of intel-dependent jobs. But I want real infrastructure. Encrypted comms, background research capability, digital surveillance basics. Build me a proper intelligence desk."
Priya's mouth opened. Closed. Her glasses slid down her nose and she didn't push them back.
"Deal," she said.
---
[The Lamb and Flag Pub, Southwark — March 18, 2008, 7:00 PM]
Marcus Webb was a problem.
James knew it within ninety seconds. The man sat in the pub booth with a pint he hadn't touched, his fingers drumming the table in a pattern that had nothing to do with the background music. Late thirties. Thin, receding hair, the pinched face of someone who counted other people's money while resenting every pound.
"The books," James said. He set a printout on the table—the financial summary he'd assembled from the laptop and Kevin's notebook. "Walk me through the last quarter."
Marcus launched into an explanation. Income sources, expenses, distributions. His voice was steady, his numbers were precise, and his left eye twitched every time he mentioned a specific outgoing payment.
James listened. Let him finish. Then pulled a second printout from his jacket—this one annotated in red.
"The payments to 'Southwark Services' on February 2nd, February 16th, and March 3rd. There's no corresponding vendor. No receipts. No documentation of what service was rendered." He tapped the page. "Eight thousand pounds, Marcus. Where did it go?"
Marcus's face went the colour of old paper. His drumming fingers stopped.
"That's— those are legitimate expenses. Security deposits. For the— for operational—"
"Southwark Services isn't registered with Companies House. The account it's linked to was opened in January. Your name is on the application."
Silence. Marcus's throat worked. His pint sat untouched between them, condensation running down the glass like sweat.
James waited. He was getting good at the silence. It was the cheapest weapon in the arsenal and the most reliable.
"Jim, listen—"
"Eight thousand. Plus fifty percent interest. Twelve thousand total. You have one week."
"I don't have twelve—"
"Then find it." James's voice didn't rise. Didn't need to. The Irish lilt carried the words with a precision that was worse than shouting—it was calm, it was patient, and it left no room for negotiation. "You stole from me, Marcus. The old me might have broken your fingers. I'm offering you something better. A debt. Payable. Manageable. You pay it, you keep working, and we pretend this conversation was about accounting errors."
Marcus stared at the table. His hands were shaking.
"The alternative," James added, "is that I tell Tommy."
Three days later, Kevin picked up an envelope from Marcus containing twelve thousand pounds in mixed notes. Marcus continued working. He also stopped skimming.
---
[Priya Shah's Flat, Brixton — March 19, 2008, 8:00 PM]
Priya had made curry. Lamb, slow-cooked, with rice and a side of something involving chickpeas and spices James couldn't identify. They ate at her kitchen table while reviewing the new communication protocols on her laptop.
"This is excellent," James said between bites. The curry was fragrant and rich and it hit somewhere deep, some memory that didn't belong to this body—
He cut the thought off. Took another bite instead.
"My mum's recipe," Priya said, not looking up from her screen. "Right, so the new email system goes live tomorrow. Everyone gets a clean address and a key. Kevin's already set up. Tommy will need hand-holding—the man thinks 'encryption' is a type of medical condition."
James almost laughed. The sound surprised him. He'd been in this body, this life, for four days. He hadn't laughed once.
Priya glanced up. "Did you just—"
The burner phone rang. Tommy's number.
James answered. "Yeah."
"The Bratva blokes. Kozlov's lot." Tommy's voice was flat, clipped. All business. "They've been round the Crown asking for you. Not asking nice. Word is Kozlov wants a meeting. Says you owe him."
The curry turned to cement in James's stomach. "How much?"
"Twenty grand, from what I hear. And something about police intel you promised and never delivered."
Twenty thousand pounds and broken promises. The original Moriarty's mess, inherited along with the passport and the Glock and the flat with its cracked ceiling.
"Tell me everything you know about Kozlov," James said. "Start from the beginning."
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