Chapter One

I

Scorpio is metaphysics, putrefaction and death, regeneration, passion, lust and violence, insight and profundity; inheritance, loss, occultism, astrology, borrowing and lending, others' possessions. Scorpians are magicians, astrologers, alchemists, surgeons, bondsmen, and undertakers. The gem for Scorpio is the snakestone, the plant the cactus; eagles and wolves and scorpions are its creatures, its body part is the genitals, its weapon the Obligatory Pain, and its card in the Tarot is Death.

Finn shared his birthday, November 16, with the Emperor Tiberius. He had been told by a soothsayer, who was a friend of his mother's whom she had met in the mental hospital, that he would live to a great age and die by violence.

On the morning of his birthday, his twenty-sixth, one of Kaiafas' children came round with the money in a parcel. He knocked on Finn's door. Someone downstairs must have let him into the house. They didn't know it was his birthday, Finn realised that. It was just a coincidence. He undid the parcel and checked that it contained what it should contain-?2,500 in ten-pound notes. Now it had arrived he had better get on with things, he might as well start now.

It was too early to go up to Lena. She liked to sleep late in the mornings. Not that she would mind his waking her on his birthday; she would like it, she would expect it almost. But he wouldn't just the same. He tucked the money safely away and went downstairs.

Finn was very tall and thin and pale. He was near to being an albino but was saved by the watery grey colour that stained the pupils of his eyes. It was remarkable that eyes of such an insipid shade should be so piercing and so