Michael Fantony had been aware of his younger brother's growing impatience but he had none nothing about it in order to try to teach Barry some self-discipline. Disposing of the mountain of silver as antiqued creations had to be a slow and careful business. The craftsmanship of their pieces had to be of an appropriate quality to make each one look ‘right'. They also had to sell the pieces to carefully selected customers through an apparently respectable dealer.
  There was a large profit margin available for all concerned. Both Michael and his silversmith saw long-term employment when they looked at the scheme. Barry Fantony had accepted the risks of the robbery and now he wanted something to show for it right away.
  Their bullion robbery was four months old in August and ancient history as far as the police officers on the case were concerned. They had long since moved on to fresher cases. And yet recent newspaper stories seemed to confirm that the other three members of the team had received their payments from the insurance company.
  Barry Fantony was as capable of drawing a conclusion as anyone. Unfortunately for his brother, he was starting to think that it might be preferable to have forty-five thousand pounds right away instead of a million or more spread over as much as ten years. Michael was reluctant to take drastic action against his own brother, but he had considered more than once how nice it would be if Barry had a little accident; nothing fatal, but enough to distract him for a while.
  The word Treasure in a headline caught Michael's eye as he was unpacking some small silver items, which he had acquired from an acquaintance with very little capital to support his title and his gambling habit. Michael unpeeled part of a Sunday Express from around a silver cream jug that was destined for expansion into an eighteenth century coffee pot in due course. He smoothed the paper and satisfied his curiosity.
  GARDEN TREASURE TROVE read the full headline. The story told how a Mr. Haig had bought a Victorian folly in North Devon after finding a hoard of Viking silver worth a million pounds with his metal detector. A girl called Mickey, whom Michael assumed was Haig's daughter, had found half a dozen jugs packed with gold sovereigns quite by accident while digging the garden.
  "She's a bit of all right," Barry remarked over his brother's shoulder. "And so's her mate."
  They were unpacking the silver candidates for ‘extension' in Barry's London office. It was more a retreat and a place for meeting friends socially than a place where business was conducted, but Barry felt that having an office gave him a touch of respectability. And it gave Michael, the accountant, a source of tax-deductible business expenses.
  Barry looked at the other pictures then glanced through the accompanying story. "That bloke lives with two birds? Bloody hell! He's doing all right."
  "They're his daughters," Michael assumed. The article failed to spell out the relationships between the principals.
  "Maybe we should get out and dig the garden up a bit more often," Barry said.
  He lived in Roehampton, near Richmond Park. His brother lived down the road in Coombe, near the golf course. Barry's wife did their gardening. Michael employed a local man. Both owned a detached house in a third of an acre of grounds. Their neighbours had been led to assume that the relatively young brothers had made their money out of the pop music business.
  "Just shows," Michael said, taking the crumpled newspaper over to his brother's under-used desk, "you can't beat sheer dumb luck."
  "He must have the sheer dumb luck of the seven blind bastards. Quite nice stuff, this." Barry rubbed at a smudge on the silver jug with a thumb.
  Like his brother, he was wearing suede gloves to avoid etching his fingerprints into the silver with acid body oils. Having wandered round a few antique shops to see what the silver market was all about, Barry was starting to consider himself an expert.
  "How do you fancy a holiday?" Michael returned the scissors to the desk and tossed a ball of crumpled newspaper back into the box with the rest of the packing. He had stored the interesting cutting in his wallet.
  "We've just come back from a fortnight in Spain."
  "Tell Jean there's nothing much happening at the moment around here. Tell her it's a holiday for her but also a sort of business trip for you."
  "Doing what? And where?"
  "A week in a motor caravan in Devon. All mod cons on the road. Spend a few days near this Farne place. I want you to have a word with Mr. Haig."
  "What, ask him where he's got his sovereigns so we can nick them?"
  "Your big trouble, Bazzer, is you've got a criminal mind," sighed Michael. "Have a chat with him, in the pub or somewhere. Ask him what sort of metal detector he uses and what sort of things he found before he bought his lighthouse. Go and look at some metal detectors in the shops first, so you know what sort of names they have and roughly how they work. And see what the papers said about this other stuff they found. However many years ago it was."
  "What for?"
  "It says he found some Viking silver; or stuff the Vikings had nicked off other people. If our silversmith friend Peter can make Georgian coffee pots, he can make some of that, too."
  "Stuff to flog to the Yanks?" sighed Barry. "One sodding little bit at a time?"
  "Think about it," Michael said impatiently. "You're always moaning about middlemen taking a cut. But with this stuff, all you do is bury it, find it with your metal detector, maybe even in front of a witness, and turn it over to the police like an honest citizen. Then you wait a couple of months till they have an inquest and declare it treasure trove. Then you cop for the full market value. And the thing about the Vikings is that they didn't have any hallmarks."
  "As easy as that?"
  "Well, probably not quite. But I'm sure we can sort the details out. it should be a completely safe way of raising half a million. And a way that looks completely legal from the outside."
  "So then you can spend all this cash without the filth wondering where it comes from?" grinned Barry.
  "If you handle it carefully, you can spend more than your half million," smiled Michael. "I suppose you can call it a form of reverse embezzlement – sneaking cash into the system instead of out of it. Quite an interesting challenge."
  "Sounds good to me." Barry began to spend a mental half-million pounds.
  "Of course, we'll have to know what we're doing," added Michael. "We'll have the usual gang of professors wanting to look at everything. It'll have to look right to them. But people have found this stuff before, so we should be able to find out enough to make it look right. And there's also some scope for private sales to some of our dodgy collectors. We can tell them we kept back a few choice pieces. They'll have to pay quite a premium for something they'd never be able to add to their collection honestly."
  "Jean's always going on about the caravan holidays she used to have when she was a kid. We'll soon find out how good she really is at managing in a sardine tin. And we can maybe get down on the beach with the metal detector. See if we can find some old pirate treasure."
  Michael smiled to himself. Barry was a man of action. As long as he was doing something, or surveying an area of a plan, he would be quite happy and his mind would be off chivvying his brother about quick ways to turn stolen silver into spendable cash.

Pru Haig was sprawled in a deck chair in the garden, glancing through the morning paper with a cigarette and a mug of coffee, when Nigel Faraday arrived on foot to confer with her brother. She had agreed to do her smoking either outside or in her room if the weather was wet.
  She was looking suitably beach-comberish in her holiday outfit. She had cut a pair of jeans down to ragged Bermuda shorts and, as a gesture of goodwill, she had bought one of Vanessa's towelling sweatshirts, on which the message I've been to Farne Lighthouse and the picture of the folly had been embroidered instead of printed.
  Her fourth day in Devon was hot and sunny. Pru was wearing a pair of dark green, wraparound sunglasses, which she had found almost as effective as goggles in dusty, desert conditions. She was feeling totally relaxed and totally idle, and not a little sinful.
  "Morning," called Nigel Faraday, letting himself through the sturdy gate. "I'm looking for Mr. Haig. Is he about?"
  "I think he's playing with his computer," smiled Pru. "Do you have an appointment?"
  "Well, not really. I'm his solicitor, actually. He's half expecting me."
  "I'll give him a ring, then." Pru heaved herself out of the deck chair, attracting a look of surprise and greater interest as her height became apparent. "Would you mind holding this? I'm not allowed to smoke inside in case I pollute their precious environment."
  Nigel took charge of the cigarette while Pru used the ground-floor extension of the internal telephone system.
  "Were you out when they found the sovereigns?" he asked when Pru had passed on the news of his arrival. "I can't think how you avoided getting your picture in the papers."
  "In a manner of speaking. I was in Norway." Pru retrieved her cigarette, then held up her left hand to show an absence of rings. "No, I'm not his wife. Or his girlfriend."
  "What does that leave? An ordinary friend? A relative. The mother of one of the girls? No, surely not."
  "Kind of you to say so. I'm Jay's sister, actually."
  "Younger, of course."
  "No, older. But only by half an hour. We're twins and I'm here on holiday."
  "Nothing like having a brother living by the seaside you can inflict yourself on," remarked Haig, arriving at the front door. "You've got to watch yourself with this one, Nigel. She's a fast worker. No man over six foot is safe anywhere near her. Excuse me a minute."
  A party of half a dozen tourists had arrived. Haig summoned Vanessa, then rejoined Pru and Nigel at the deck chairs.
  "I just wanted a word about your windfall," Nigel said.
  "It's all right, you can talk business in front of Pru," said Haig. "It'll save repeating it to her later."
  "Well, it's nothing too startling. Dad had a phone call from a solicitor in Bristol, acting for some of the descendants of James Fullerton's family. A touch of the old-boy network. He wanted to know if there could be any doubt about the letter you found with the sovereigns."
  "You mean, did I scribble it myself?"
  "Something like that. He wanted to know the health of the horse he's flogging. Dad told him it's stone dead, of course. That's the other thing I wanted to tell you. Colonel March, he's the local coroner," Nigel added for Pru's benefit, "he wants a professor at Cardiff University to look at the original of your letter. Plus some out of our files."
  "Does that mean I won't have to pay someone to have it authenticated?"
  "The Colonel reckons it's information he needs for his inquest and he wants an unbiased opinion from a specialist he can trust. It's not strictly his job to authenticate documents but I'd like to see anyone stop him. Something of a law unto himself," Nigel added to Pru.
  "Yes, he does have a tendency to want to get things right rather than just legally correct," nodded Haig.
  "He wants some letters from our files so that his expert can check the paper, the ink, the handwriting and even the pressures used for individual strokes of the pen."
  "If he's getting all that done, I take it the inquest isn't going to be in the next few days?"
  "Early next month, probably. Not that the Colonel is likely to be dragging his feet. Or letting his expert drag his. He's looking forward to the inquest eagerly."
  "That's encouraging. Certain people around here have got itchy fingers. Mikki was reading up on Capital Transfer Tax the other day, just in case the Colonel decides it all belongs to me and the taxman won't believe it was a joint discovery."
  "Mikki is the brunette? The one with the herb garden? Yes, she struck me as being a very organized sort of person."
  "Not to mention lucky." Pru buried her cigarette end and smiled at her brother. "It's quite funny, really. The expert treasure hunter not thinking to look in his own back garden."
  "Glad to see you've finished polluting the environment." Haig smiled at his sister and ignored the crack.
  "It's my only vice," said Pru. "Apart from drinking and going out with loose men. And giving the occasional tenner to a bookie."
  "In defence of my client," said Nigel, "one's own back garden isn't where one usually expects to find buried treasure. And as far as the sovereigns are concerned, I'm not sure that Capital Transfer Tax will come into it." Nigel shrugged. "But what do I know? I'm a solicitor, not an accountant."
  "People like Mikki also tend to pursue knowledge for it's own sake," remarked Haig.
  "Talking about going out, are you doing anything for dinner on Saturday?" Nigel added.
  "I'd love to," said Pru.
  "Pick you up about seven?"
  "I think with two days' notice, I ought to be able to make myself presentable by then."
  "You look exactly right for this sort of weather. Funny how people won't take solicitors seriously if we're not wearing a soliciting suit. Well, I'd better be getting back. It's not often I get an excuse to sneak out for a walk on a nice day."
  The Haigs watched Nigel Faraday start along the road to Farne then returned to their deck chairs.
  "Do you often get good-looking, tall men just dropping in?" Pru asked.
  "I suppose Nigel could be very acceptable brother-in-law material," her brother said. "I'm sure our aged parents would approve. One daughter married to an accountant and the other going out with a solicitor."
  "Going to go out, you mean. I'll be able to wear my heels without towering over him."
  "Serves you right for being five foot nine."
  "You've never forgiven me for being taller than you for a while in our teens, have you?" laughed Pru. "What did your computer tell you?"
  "Low tide's at fourteen thirty-seven this afternoon. And it gave me a likely area for you to try with my second-best metal detector."

On a sunny Thursday afternoon in August, the beach above and around the seaweed-littered tide line was packed with holidaymakers. Very few of them had ventured out into the flat, half-mile expanse of Farnescombe Bay. The approach of a younger couple as Haig was digging near Farne Rock and Pru was searching with the metal detector and planting flags was a rare event.
  "Hello, finding anything interesting?" said the man. He was in his mid-twenties, tanned, well built and he had short, dark hair. His accent belonged to the London area.
  "Nothing to get excited about," Haig said noncommittally.
  "Is that the four-oh-four SD you've got there?" Barry Fantony nodded to Pru's metal detector.
  "It's the ST actually," said Haig. "But I suppose they look much the same. Do you do a bit?"
  "He's only just got his," said Jean Fantony, a slim brunette who had turned a delicate golden colour. She liked the look of a tan but she was concerned about premature ageing of her skin, and skin-cancer, if she exposed it to the sun for too long.
  "The one-on-one D," said her husband with a touch of apology. "Just to see what I could find. I had a look at one like yours in the shop, but I didn't fancy spending six or seven hundred quid. Are you the bloke that lives at the lighthouse?"
  "That's me," Haig admitted.
  "What were you using when you found the Viking battle site?"
  "A Beller. The model QD."
  "That's about three hundred quid. And I suppose it had a pretty good rating three or four years ago." Barry Fantony had a good memory for trivia.
  "And it was a pretty good investment." Haig added an unidentifiable, sand-covered lump to the collection bucket and moved on to the next flag.
  "Yeah, right," grinned Barry. "Didn't it say in the paper you found some ninth century weapons and things? Horned helmets?"
  "Swords and helmets. No horns on the helmets, though."
  "Even so, they must have been really something to see."
  "I think that was the biggest thrill of the whole thing. The coins and the snip silver were worth a lot of money, but I was hoping they were just showing me I was on the right track. They were scarce but not rare, if you see what I mean."
  "Lots of similar stuff from other places," nodded Barry.
  "Right. The scarcity value has reversed over the centuries. Swords and helmets weren't cheap then, but there were lots of them around and it was the silver that counted. Now, it's the weapons you can't get hold of. And that was the biggest thrill of all. Actually having a helmet on my head and holding one of the swords, very carefully, and knowing over a thousand years had gone by since anyone else had used them. That was what it was about, really. Getting these things into a museum where people can look at them for the next thousand years."
  "And getting your name put on the little card," added Pru. "Presented by Mr. J. Haig and Mr. T. Wainright. Public benefactors and definitely not just treasure hunters."
  "If he did all the work of finding them, he's entitled," said Barry. "We might have a look in on them if we get up to Yorkshire."
  "What was this snip-silver?" said Jean Fantony. "Is that a special type?"
  "No, it's just an accurate descriptive name," said Haig. "It's also known as hack-silver, which also tells you what they did to it. If you've looted some Saxon nobleman's home and you've got away with some big, silver plates, it makes it easier to carry them if you hack them into smaller pieces. It's scrap you can pack down into a smaller volume and sell by weight when you get it back home. And usually found with small complete silver items mixed in; like, small ornaments, buckles, chains, things like that."
  "It's not going to be worth as much, chopped up," said Jean. "Not nearly as much as the original plate if it's got decoration and stuff on it."
  "True," said Haig, "but don't forget, these are hit-and-run raids. You have to get in quick and out quick if you're going to survive to enjoy your loot. And if you have to fight, it's a lot easier to do so with a set of skin bags of scrap slung round your waist than trying to hang on to a big, silver plate."
  "And it makes it easier to share it out," said Barry. "If you chop it up."
  "But you don't find anything like that around here?" said Jean.
  "There wasn't much around here to attract the Vikings," said Haig. "If you want to get some practice with your metal detector, your best bet is back above the tide line when the crowd's gone. You'll find a lot of beer cans, unless you can tune out aluminium, but you'll pick up an interesting selection of lost property and a few bob in coins. It's usual to hand in lost property at the police house in Farne. But it becomes yours if it's unclaimed after three months."
  "I might try that." Barry offered a silver cigarette case.
  "No, thanks, I don't," said Haig.
  Pru accepted a cigarette and a light, and carried on showing the comparatively diminutive Jean Fantony how the metal detector worked. Her brother was so disarmed by the young Londoner's interest in the archaeological significant pieces of his earlier find that Barry Fantony was able to capture a complete record on his pocket cassette recorder.
  His brother Michael had decided that an eye-witness account from someone who had made a major find of silver treasure was an essential starting point for his research programme. Luckily, there was plenty of detail to be found in newspapers of the time and Haig seemed willing enough to talk if approached in the right way.
  Michael Fantony felt that distracting his brother with another scheme would give him some peace. The problem of keeping Barry patient would recur when they had planted and discovered their hoard of fake silver from the Viking period, and endured the long wait for a coroner to rule on the ownership. Looking forward, Michael could see that he would have to find another distraction. But he believed that the longer he could put off a problem, the more likely it was that a solution would appear of its own accord.

Neither robbery gave the thieves much trouble. The worst part of the combined operation was the 112-mile drive between them. According to the wire-man, who neutralized the alarms, security at the two museums was a joke. He was able to open a first-floor window of both buildings silently within a couple of minutes.
  There was little of any value in either museum. Secondary alarms on selected display cases took a little more time to neutralize, but the wire-man never felt challenged technically. The driver, who was also a lookout, enjoyed a quiet smoke while the others were working and he was not required to use his personal radio to warn them of approaching danger.
  Barry Fantony found his way to the interesting items without difficulty and packed them quickly and carefully. His two helpers had received one third of their fees in advance. On the way home from the second robbery, Barry stopped to collect the balance of their fees from its hiding place and paid off the wire-man and his driver/lookout.
  He waited until the other two were out of sight before walking to his own car and driving to the craft workshop in Catford. He dropped off the loot an hour before dawn, obeying brother Michael's instructions to approach and leave quietly, and remembering not to slam any doors.
  Five hours later, in nice time for morning coffee, Michael Fantony dropped in on his silversmith. Peter Wells was thirty-two, tall, wiry and he enjoyed being told that he had aristocratic features. He had learned his trade from a great-uncle, whose father had worked for the crowned heads of Europe before the evil plagues of Communism, Fascism and Socialism had swept most of them away.
  Wells had been working in the heritage industry as a restorer and resenting the lack of opportunities to perform original work when Michael had found him. Michael had seduced him with flattery, a challenge fitting for his skills and an appropriate rate of pay for risky work.
  The workshop was full of the smells of freshly brewed coffee, hot metal and scorched cloth. Squatters had broken open a display window at the front while the workshop had been empty. The owners had been forced to call on the services of a firm of winklers, who had waited until the squatters were all out, removed their possessions, boarded up the window and the front door, and kept an eye on the place until the squatters had moved elsewhere.
  Michael Fantony had left the sheet of fibreboard in place but he had had the window space behind it bricked up. The sheet of fibreboard on the front door hid a security grill. Anyone who wanted to enter the workshop had to go round to the back and find a way past the security grills on either the double loading doors or the door straight to the workshop.
  Peter Wells spent his working hours in artificial light, where spectrum-adjusted, flicker-free neon tubes recreated daylight quite accurately. He had two work areas. One housed his computer and other design equipment, such as a drawing board. The other was his workbench with its racks of tools.
  His furnace was placed at the middle of a side wall, where waste heat could be sucked up a chimney to prevent the workshop from becoming too hot in summer. Michael Fantony poured himself a mug of coffee in the kitchen area at the back of the workshop, then moved a stool over to the workbench at the front.
  "Find some presents?" he asked, raising his voice to compete with the dull throb of a vacuum pump and a Bon Jovi compilation on the CD player.
  "I'm in the process of making some casts." Wells stroked a rough edge on the lid of a silver coffee pot with a fine-toothed file. He let the vacuum system inhale the silver dust, then switched it off and turned down the volume of the CD player.
  "How long's it going to take you?" said Michael.
  "A couple of days. If I'm allowed to make a proper job of it," Wells added pointedly.
  "Well, don't hang about. We don't want our presents on the premises any longer than necessary." Michael ignored the reference to his brother's impatience. If he had to put up with it, so did the hired help.
  "Just as a matter of interest, what are you going to do with them?"
  "Dump them where some yokel out walking his dog can find them. It'll take the push out of the police operation if they get everything back."
  "Nearly everything."
  "How do you mean?" frowned Michael.
  "One piece of silver may look like any other to you, but a public analyst could tell them apart. Almost like fingerprints. A detailed analysis will give you percentages of trace impurities; gold, platinum, lead, antimony, arsenic and so on. And how much copper's been added to harden it for coinage use, where appropriate." Wells smiled at his patron. He had a habit of smoothing the back of his thinning, black hair while looking at others with half-closed eyes.
  "So?" Michael retained his frown.
  "That's not a problem as far as the antiques are concerned. All anyone is interested in is making sure the piece looks right. And if anyone checks the metal, it'll only be to make sure the silver content is right."
  "What if someone does a detailed analysis?"
  "It's not unusual for the various parts of a silver item to come from different bullion stocks. I know a bloke who works in a lab. He's tested samples from the pieces I've expanded and I've been playing about with my silver melt for castings to get the rest about right. Within the usual variations."
  "So how does it become a problem with this clip-silver?"
  "Reproducing the workmanship is not a problem if we're talking about stuff that's been bashed about a lot. Nor is some basic chemical ageing. But we're going to have to be pretty accurate with the metallurgy because the archaeologists will be measuring it down to decimal points. That's how they try and trace where a new find came from; by comparing it with other stuff of known origin."
  "And that's a problem?"
  "Only if they can't match any of it up with existing finds. We don't want them starting some research project to track down a new source of silver."
  "Right. Too many questions," nodded Michael.
  "Which is why I need to analyze quite a few of the bits of this Viking silver. To get a reasonable melt."
  "So what's the problem?"
  "Only that there's quite a lot of work involved. My contact's doing it mainly in his lunch hours, when there's no one else about."
  "What do you tell him about the work he does for you?"
  "It's either unofficial checking for the heritage industry, to make sure things left to the nation to cover death duties are worth what the owners claim, or it's an antiques dealer I know checking up on slightly iffy pieces. There's no problem about getting a silver content done, but he might get curious about why I need all the extra info on diluents and trace metals."
  "You mean, he could get to know too much about our business?"
  "Possibly."
  "What about spreading the business out?"
  "I'd need to work up the contacts for that. Or organize some sort of official front with some proper printed stationery and invoices, and so on."
  "I don't fancy that."
  "Or I could do the job myself. But I'd need an atomic spectrograph."
  "Something radioactive?" Michael said doubtfully.
  "No, nothing to do with atomic bombs. It just measures the concentrations of the metals I want to know about. The trouble is, a decent one would cost about five thousand quid."
  "If it's a necessary expense, we can justify it."
  "As long as your brother doesn't think it's another delaying tactic," smiled Wells.
  "You leave Barry to me," Michael Fantony said with more confidence than he felt.

Peter Wells had been expecting an immediate visit from Barry Fantony. Barry surprised him by holding out for two full days after the museum robberies before driving over to Catford. Wells had been preparing himself mentally to tell Barry to get lost and stop pestering him while he was working. By the time Barry did put in his appearance, Wells had repeated his rebukes in his mind so often that they had become too stale to utter.
  Barry Fantony had his usual look around the workshop before he approached the craftsman at his workbench. He poured himself a mug of coffee at the filter machine and added milk and sugar. He had a look through the small window into the fiery heart of the electric furnace and then he spotted a new toy. He read the labels on the atomic spectrometer's controls and displays before taking a look into the sample chamber. After a flick through the instruction manual, he turned his attention on the craftsman.
  Wells had completed his initial campaign of mould-making, measurement and photographing of interesting pieces of hack silver. He had filled a flat box with sample vials containing a weighed amount of fine filings for analysis. He was now busy with a final check of some of the pieces before they were returned to their rightful owners.
  Barry sat down beside him at the workbench and offered a tin of small cigars. Wells put a medallion down on a square of black velvet and took off his suede gloves.
  "What're you up to?" said Barry.
  "Cheers." Wells dipped a small cigar into the flame of a lighter, then took a gulp of cooling black coffee. "I made a moulding of this. I'm just checking to make sure there's no moulding compound left in any of the crevices."
  "You look like a bloody dentist, prodding at it with that spiky thing. Nearly done?"
  "I've got another three to do," Wells said patiently. "It's a job that has to be done thoroughly."
  "Yeah, I know," sighed Barry. "Every bloody thing has to be done thoroughly. How long's it going to take you to make the bits and pieces?"
  "It'll vary. The castings, I can make fairly quickly. The larger pieces will need shaping and engraving."
  "Can't you do them all like that, casting?"
  "Not the sort of thing your brother wants. Large plates and so on, that have a value way, way above what the metal's worth. And for the sake of authenticity, I'll have to use the same techniques the Dark Age craftsmen used."
  "Like what?"
  "They weren't cast, they were hammered into shape from large discs of silver and then engraved in the usual way."
  "So they couldn't do castings then?"
  "Oh, yes. That technique's thousands of years old. The lost wax method is known all over the world."
  "Oh, yeah? What's that?"
  "You make a model of something, a figure, a buckle or whatever, in wax, make a solid mould around it and pour molten metal in at the top. The wax burns away and you're left with the silver shape. Which can be filed and polished to tidy it up."
  "So you're going to have to make all these bloody wax models? How long's that going to take, for chrise sakes?"
  "No, if we have the originals, I can make a two-piece mould around them and use that for the castings. It's a quick and easy process."
  "Okay, we've got lots of silver, why don't you just make a load of these castings and forget the plates and stuff?"
  "The more workmanship, the more valuable the piece. It's the difference between adding hundreds of pounds to the value of the metal and tens of thousands. And it's something we can only do once. People don't keep on finding hoards of Viking silver. This is strictly a one-off jackpot, so we want it to be worth as much as possible. And to look so genuine and test so genuine that no one ever thinks it's not over a thousand years old."
  "But all this bloody workmanship is going to take its own sweet time, right?" sighed Barry. "Next year at the earliest. If they made waiting an Olympic sport, I'd get a gold medal. Not a bloody silver one."
  "If you don't take the time to get things right, you could come unstuck. And then you'll end up with nothing," said thirty-two-year-old Wells, offering his wisdom as if he were sixty rather than six years older than Barry.
  "But you're going to be finished with the bits that have to go back quite soon?" Barry struggled to keep frustration out of his voice.
  He felt sorely tempted to plant a fist on the silversmith's aristocratic nose but he knew that any violence would have to be smoothed over with a larger share of the profits from the silver, and that he personally would have to pay the compensation. At times, he felt, it would almost be worth it. It was only his love of money that was sparing Peter Wells a knuckle nose-job.
  "Yes, I'll be done in an hour or so," Wells said patiently.
  "Right, then." Barry took his coffee across the workshop. There was a portable television next to the computer. Barry plugged it in and switched to Channel Four to watch the racing. He was watching golf on BBC Two when Wells announced that he was satisfied that the items stolen from the two museums could be returned without arousing suspicion.
  The haul had included coins, decorative pieces such as armbands, brooches and belt buckles, and silver scrap, much of it in the form of loops, twists, chains and flat, decorated fragments the size and shape of a watch strap. Several small silver figurines from earlier periods had been on display in the Viking sections of the museums because they had been found among Viking loot.
  In addition to his casts and stereoscopic photographs of selected items, Wells had retained what were obviously pieces of larger items for future reference. He planned to use the design work on fragments to help him make his reproduction beakers, plates and other larger items look ‘right'.
  Wearing cotton gloves, Barry loaded stolen silver into flat, cardboard boxes and enclosed the boxes in size No. 6 padded bags. He sealed the ends with stables to create two innocent parcels, which looked as if they contained hardback books. Each weighed about two and a half kilograms. The padded bags wore torn address labels and sets of cancelled stamps. Barry felt totally innocent as he carried them out to his car.
  He had been all for shoving the stolen silver in freezer bags and carrying it around like that, knowing that no one was likely to see it. His brother had insisted on the fancy packaging. Michael refused to take any unnecessary risks. Barry considered him to be a bit of a worry-wart but doing what Michael wanted was easier than opposing him.

In the evening, Barry drove to Holmeslea, a small town roughly mid-way between the two robbed museums. An earlier reconnaissance had located a hiding place for the stolen silver; a hollow in the roots of a large tree by the canal. Local dog owners used the canal bank to exercise their pets.
  At dusk, with daylight fading slowly under the trees, Barry tipped the silver from the boxes into a single, fingerprintless, supermarket carrier bag, which he stuffed into the hollow. Then he took up a lurking position on the eastern side of the canal, in a belt of trees that separated it from fields containing cows and a few horses.
  Barry's position at the apex of a long loop around a hill gave him a good view in both directions along the tow path. He was on the lookout for an honest citizen approaching from the houses on his left. He rejected two men in their twenties with vicious-looking dogs, and a scruffy man of around sixty, who looked hard-up. Just when he was beginning to think that he would have to try again the next evening, two ideal prospects came along.
  They looked like a girl in her teens and her mother. Their dog was an Alsatian with a dark coat and legs that looked too short for its body size. The animal looked more than capable of looking after itself and its owners. Making sure that he was not seen, Barry hurried back to the hollow among the tree roots and made liberal use of an aerosol spray that his brother had provided. The spray was supposed to contain essence of rabbit and be absolutely irresistible to any active dog.
  Barry then walked briskly away from the tree. A few minutes later, he ascended a flight of steps to the road that crossed the canal on a stone bridge. Sitting in his car, apparently consulting a map, he watched the unfolding drama. The dog was digging for phantom rabbits by then.

Mrs. Irene Owen and her daughter Betty were letting their dog Jasper run free along the canal bank, sniffing at points of interest. Suddenly, he dashed into the trees. Betty called to him but he ignored her. Finally, his owners had to leave the tow path to find out what had claimed Jasper's attention.
  There were bits of metal all over the place. Jasper had chewed at the carrier bag for a few moments, then abandoned it in favour of digging for the source of the interesting smell. It was not until she found a coin that Irene Owen realized that the metal pieces might be valuable.
  Barry Fantony watched the mugs gather up the silver scrap and pile it into an undamaged corner of the carrier bag. Betty had to put Jasper on his lead and drag him away from the interesting smell. The women hurried home, struggling to persuade their dog to co-operate.
  Barry drove round the long way to the point at which the tow path met a lane that would take them into Holmeslea. He had chosen the town because it was the site of a police station for the area. He watched his unwitting accomplices hurry through the town and practically run into the police station. Job completed, he drove out of Holmeslea and headed for the road to the south and home.
  Keeping an eye on the finders of the stolen silver was an essential part of Michael Fantony's plan. He wanted to be sure that it was returned to the museums. If the finder had taken it home and looked like keeping it, Barry had been instructed to shop him to the police with an anonymous phone call. The plan for disposing of their haul of stolen silver bullion was too important to be put in jeopardy by some amateur crook.