He would certainly be the Number One suspect. And he would certainly be caught. There was very little crime in the days after the days after tomorrow. This was not because there was nothing worth stealing any more: there always is, and always will be, things worth stealing. And if there are things worth stealing, they will be stolen.

Will knew that the painting had to be worth millions. This would be the crime of the century.

But it isn’t a crime, Will told himself. Destroying the painting was a crime, saving it was praiseworthy.

And he did have a plan, and not just a plan, but one, if he could pull it off, that would allow him to escape undetected with the painting.

Three security doors lay between Will and his goal, security doors to which he did not possess the access codes. Mr Santos possessed the access codes; he regularly visited the archive, although Will’s pleas that he might join him had so far met with refusal. Mr Santos had the codes on a card that he kept in the top pocket of his white work coat, the white work coat that he donned when visiting the archive, the white work coat that presently hung upon the back of the door in his office.

Will removed the disc from his drive, popped it into his pocket and then removed himself to Mr Santos’s office. And so it came to pass that ten minutes later Will found himself standing in the archive of the Tate Gallery.

The archive was a vast and brightly lit subterranean gallery that dwindled into hazy perspective. Will breathed in the air and sighed. The air smelled of art: of canvas and paint and varnish and veneer, smells all new to Will, smells all flavoured with the magic of a bygone age.

To the left and the right of him, and for many, many metres beyond, stood tall metal racks, upon which hung …

Art.

High Art. The Art of the Victorians.

Will took a deep breath. It was all a little too much for him to really be in the presence of all this. His knees were trembling, his mouth was dry. Will was scared. But for all this, he felt something, something that perhaps he’d never really felt before. He felt alive. He felt that he was on a mission. And it thrilled him greatly.

The racks moved upon casters and Will slid one out at random, exposing the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the great Pre-Raphaelites.

Will found himself confronting Proserpine.

He felt almost impelled to kneel.

Will took another deep breath. He should so not be here. This was so bad.

Will had the reference number of Mr Dadd’s painting penned on the back of his hand. And he also had a plan, which was a good plan – or would be, if it worked. Which it could only do if the iconoclasts who wanted to destroy the painting had not got to it first.

Will slid the rack containing Rossetti’s Proserpine back into place and checked the writing on his hand.

Aisle 33, rack 409, painting number five.

Will went about his business.

And he was all but on the point of completing his business when he heard the noise of a door being opened. And not just any door, but the very door that Will had entered by.

“Oh damn,” said Will to himself. “But perhaps I should have expected it.” He edged quietly away and hid himself amongst the racks.

“This way,” he heard a voice say.

“Are you sure?” he heard another.

“Well of course I’m sure.”

“So you’ve been here before?”

“Well, not here, but I’ve been to other places. I do know how to read a plan.”

“Oh yes, of course you do.”

These voices were young voices. And, to Will’s surprise, they were also female voices.

“It’s aisle 33, rack 409, painting number five,” said the first female voice. Will slipped a little further away.

“And what are we to do with this painting?” asked the second female voice.

“Burn it,” said the first voice. “Like we’ve done with the others.”

“We should burn them all,” said the second voice. “Just to be sure. There are too many loose ends.”

“They get fewer every day. All traces of the other past are being eradicated. There’s not much left. The Sisterhood is safe. The Sisterhood will remain in control.”

Will cocked his head to one side. The Sisterhood? Would that be the Sisterhood of Sainsbury’s? It was the only Sisterhood Will had ever heard of. The voices were close now; Will pressed himself into the shadows. He could see the tops of their heads: a violet wig, decorated with plastic flowers, and a pink wig. Big wigs on big heads. Will ducked his own head and held his breath.

“Here we are,” said the first voice. “Rack 409, slide it out.” Sounds of racks sliding reached Will.

“Painting number five, fish it down.”

“It’s a big one, we can’t burn it here. Where’s the anomaly, do you think?”

“Who cares. Fish it down; we’ll smash it up here and bag it.”

“Fair enough.”

Will heard further sounds, of stampings and tearings and breakings, and then of baggings-up, all accompanied by gleeful cries of triumph.

“Job done,” said the first voice. “Let’s go and get lunch in the canteen.”

The sounds of footfalls diminished. The sounds of the door opening and closing followed.

Will emerged from the shadows. He took himself over to rack 409 and viewed the space where painting number five had hung.

“A job well done,” said Will. “A job very well done.”

Which might have appeared a rather odd thing for him to say, had it not been for the fact that Will held in his hands The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke.

And it did have to be said that he had rather enjoyed the sounds of the Rothko that he had substituted for Dadd’s masterpiece being stomped to smithereens and then bagged up.

A large smile now appeared upon the face of Will Starling. And a sigh of relief escaped from his lips.

“I no longer need to steal this painting,” said Will to himself. “All I have to do is hide it somewhere here, recatalogue it under a different name, and tell no one. Job done, I think.”

And that was that really. Except of course that it wasn’t. For Will was now greatly intrigued: hugely, greatly intrigued. Why did the painting have to be destroyed? And what was this Sisterhood, that had the authority to come into the Tate’s archive and do the destroying? What kind of power did this Sisterhood have? And what was this business of “the other past”, all traces of which were being eradicated? Will was very hugely greatly intrigued. And as he had seemingly got away with saving the Dadd, well, why not try to find out what all this was really about?

Will rehung the Dadd amongst some French Impressionists that he had previously checked on his screen. Assured that it would be safe there for the time being, he took himself off to the staff canteen.

It was Will’s intention to get himself very close to the two female iconoclasts and listen in to their conversation, but sadly, this was not to be.

Will joined the food queue, and Tim McGregor joined Will.

“Hi, Will,” said Tim in a jovial fashion. “How are you doing?”

“Very well, Tim,” said Will, taking up his tray and preparing to load it.

“You look a bit hyper,” said Tim. “Not been up to anything naughty, I trust?”

Will grinned at Tim. Tim was all of Will’s height, big of hair and beard and of a medium build that was neither fat nor thin. Tim was Will’s bestest friend. They’d been to corporate school together and remained close ever since. Tim, a gifted computer programmer, was presently in Forward Planning at the Tate; his influence had got Will his job.

Tim was a practising Pagan – possibly, for all Will knew, the very last practising Pagan there was. Paganism had never really made it to the big time when it came to religions, and now even the big-time religions were nothing more than memory. Those that had not been absorbed and altered by corporate sponsorship had been consigned to the web pages of history: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, all had vanished from the Earth, along with The Church of Branson, The Church of Elvis, The Church of England, Knotee (a string-worshipping cult) and, most recently, Roman Catholicism.