Michael Fantony called at the craft workshop the following morning to find out how the expensive piece of new hardware was performing. Peter Wells was able to show him enough charts and lists of numbers to baffle him with science. The work that he was doing with a 3-D design program on his computer was more comprehensible.
  Wells had constructed beaker and plate shapes out of ghostly, green frameworks and clothed them with a decorated silver skin. He could rotate his phantom creations and provide them with an alternative decorative design after his computer had chewed over the instruction for a couple of minutes.
  "Pity we can't get this thing to make the silverware, too," remarked Michael Fantony.
  "You probably could, if you're prepared to spend a few millions on a robot and the programming necessary," said Wells smugly, secure in his position of indispensable craftsmanship. "And take the time to set it all up. Your brother would be climbing the walls. I mean, even higher than he's going now."
  "I suppose he would."
  "And machine-made pieces would be too regular and too perfect; unless you can program some sort of random irregularities into it to make it look more like the work of a humble human, who can make mistakes."
  "Yes, I take your point. So what does all that atomic analysis stuff mean?"
  Wells stopped the graphics program and loaded another one. White lines divided the monitor screen into quarters and a vertical bar chart appeared in each section. "I've identified four different main sources for the silver from the museum. All the bits are from these sources or mixtures. You can see the differences in the trace impurities."
  "Much difference?" Michael looked doubtfully at the sets of coloured bars of different height.
  "Enough for a competent analyst to find. What I'm planning to do now is make up half a dozen silver stocks that could be mixtures from these or similar sources, which is what the majority of the stuff from the museums is; mixtures."
  "And what will that prove?"
  "That the pieces I'm going to make are made from scrap from a number of different sources, that was melted down together to create a new blend. History tends to be a bit of an unholy mess and recycling of precious metals is nothing new."
  "So what's the bottom line as far as the archaeologists are concerned?"
  "Authentic period designs, a metal composition that fits what was floating around at the time. So the pieces are genuine and worth a hell of a lot more than the same pieces made today."
  "Sounds good to me. How are you getting on with the bread and butter stuff? Expanding existing antiques?"
  "I should have the coffee pot finished by tomorrow. I thought I'd better crack on with that to have something to show to your brother. He wants to see some income from the silver. Like, yesterday."
  "Let me worry about keeping Barry sweet. You just concentrate on doing the job right. Is that stuff on the computer safe?"
  "There are two passwords with an automatic erase and write-over between them," said Wells patiently.
  "What about the samples?"
  "From the stuff from the museum? Gone. Used up in the measuring process. What I could really do with is an assistant or two to help me get on with the rest of the work."
  "The more people in the know, the lower the shares and the greater the risk," Michael said firmly.
  "I just thought I'd mention it," Wells said lightly.
  "I told you," said Michael, "I'll keep Barry quiet."

The next day was Saturday. Barry Fantony made an earlier than usual start to a new day. He drove ten miles to Catford to pick up an antique coffee pot, which Wells had packed, appropriately, amid crumpled newspapers in the box for a filter coffee machine. Twenty minutes later, Barry found a free parking meter in the triangle between Edgeware Road and Bayswater Road.
  His car had ignition and steering locks internally, the registration number engraved on all of the windows and a sticker on the windscreen warning potential thieves that he had an alarm system. Being in the business himself, Barry knew that his anti-theft precautions were not foolproof, but he hoped that they would be sufficient to persuade a thief with a choice to pick on someone else. His insurance company could afford to pay out for a car but Barry did not want to be stuck with the inconvenience and the loss of his no-claims bonus.
  He walked quickly to Anglian Place. He turned into a stairway next to the Anglian Gallery and climbed to the first floor. Two keys let him through a solid door into an office. White letters on a dark brown plaque on the door proclaimed that the office belonged to Peter Fish Associates.
  Barry perched on a corner of the desk and tapped out a three-number code on the telephone. After half a minute, the double-beeps in the earphone ceased. Barry replaced the receiver and lit a small cigar. Someone at the other end of the line had noted his presence. He would be contacted at a convenient moment.
  The office was bare. It contained a desk, a padded leather chair behind the desk and another in front of it, two black-steel-framed chairs on either side of a lonely, grey filing cabinet and a metal cupboard. A dark orange carpet matched the orange blush on the walls. The lower part of the window had been painted white and net curtains shielded the upper part. There was a white-painted security grill fitted to the inside of the frame. Any business that was carried out in the office was of a confidential nature. In fact, it was a concealed entrance and exit for special clients of the Anglian Gallery.
  Barry had dropped two lumps of ash into the green mouth of the steel waste bin before his telephone rang. He identified himself, then he moved over to the wall to the left of the door. Feeling like the Man From UNCLE, he stepped into the battleship grey cupboard. A panel at the back was open. He stepped on into a yard-square room. The door in front of him remained closed until the one behind him had shut. Barry stepped out of another cupboard.
  Adrian Vere-Harley smiled a greeting. He was in his mid-forties, tall, well-groomed and very sure of himself. The crown of his head had been naked since his mid-thirties but he kept it warm with an expensive, silvery-grey toupee. He led Barry from the store room, which contained mainly shelves and packing materials, to his office on the other side of the first-floor corridor.
  The Anglian Gallery offered paintings, porcelain and fine silverware to the discerning buyer. Vere-Harley's office faced north. The sun would never shine on the two landscapes and the eighteenth-century family portrait on the wall to the left of his desk, nor fade his coral wallpaper. Barry glanced at the display cabinet of small porcelain items. Nothing took his fancy. There was nothing in the case of silverware to compare with his delivery. Barry equated size with quality.
  "Coffee?" said Vere-Harley, moving an ashtray across his desk. The gallery's logo was captured in green glass in the transparent base. The filter machine filled two delicate cups. The spoons were silver, of course.
  "Two sugars," said Barry. He had been trained to put his deliveries on the blotter rather than the highly polished wood of the desk.
  "One more present for the Yanks," said Barry as Vere-Harley investigated his delivery. "They must have one each by now, the ones with a few bob."
  "This sort of thing is popular with the older-established families. They can pretend a Georgian coffee pot was captured from the British during their war of independence. They bring them out for special occasions and draw attention to them by wondering about the initials on them. Or they pretend it was a wedding present from relatives in England."
  "DOW," read Barry. "Duke of Wellington?"
  "Wrong period," smiled Vere-Harley. "But close. The workmanship is really magnificent. Your man is a genius."
  "Yeah, he keeps telling me that," said Barry.
  Vere-Harley turned the coffee pot around in white-cotton-gloved hands, estimating a value. He was careful never to describe a piece beyond its provenance; documentation that traces the history of an object from initial purchase to present ownership. When he sold pieces created by Peter Wells, he listed the weight of silver in troy ounces, a translation of the hallmarks and commented on the style of the design. In his opinion, the items that Barry Fantony brought to him were well worth his asking price, even if they were much younger than the hallmarked section, and his customers were under no obligation to buy if they were unhappy with the goods.
  Barry tucked an envelope of cash into an inside pocket. Some of Vere-Harley's customers preferred to pay in vulgar banknotes, sometimes to convert an illegal asset into an object that would hold its value, sometimes to conceal the true price paid to evade taxes, and sometimes because they did not want their bank or credit-card records to reveal how they had spent their money. Vere-Harley could pass on such working capital to his suppliers without leaving traces.
  Back in the store room, Adrian Vere-Harley wrapped the coffee pot in bubble-plastic sheet, added it to a straw-filled crate and made an addition to a hand-written inventory. Barry Fantony left via the room between the cupboards and the offices of Peter Fish Associates. His car was still at the meter, unviolated. Barry drove out of the city with the extra care that he always took when he was carrying something valuable. He had no wish to attract the attention of the police when he was carrying either silverware or a lot of cash.
  When he reached his brother's home in Coombe, Barry parked his car on the drive and walked round to the back. Beryl Fantony was playing with her two young daughters in the garden. Michael was in his study. He had been listening again to the cassette recording of Barry's conversation with treasure-hunter Jeremy Haig.
  Barry dropped the envelope onto the desk and collected a can of real ale from the small fridge, which was disguised as a television set. The screen was hinged at the left side to act as a door. The left-hand pillar of Michael's modern desk was a concealed safe, which was bolted solidly to the floor. Barry watched him check the contents of the envelope then lock it away.
  "You're not going to tell me you really needed any of that?" Michael said, interpreting the look of mild disappointment on his brother's tanned face.
  "You can always spend a bit more," shrugged Barry.
  "For the sake of spending it, not because there's anything you need to buy. It doesn't grow on trees, you know."
  "I know," grinned Barry. "You have to find it with a metal detector and dig it up. Is that what you're working on? With that bloke's tape?"
  "Considering possibilities," nodded Michael. "According to your mate in Devon, you don't always have to dig it up. People hide stuff in caves."
  "Yeah, that saves all the hard work of burying it and digging it up again."
  "Except you have to find a cave that people aren't likely to have explored regularly for the last thousand years. And you have to have some good reason for being there. And there's the problem of what to put the stuff in."
  "What the Vikings used instead of supermarket carrier bags, you mean? Can't we get some made?"
  "How the hell do you make a thousand-year-old leather bag, Barry?" Michael said patiently.
  "You don't," Barry smirked. "You nick the sods from a museum."
  "And land yourself in trouble right away," smiled Michael. "When some professor finds out it's full of preservatives no Viking ever heard of."
  "So what's your answer?"
  "I don't have one yet. It's something we'll have to work out. Depending on whether we decide to bury the goods or find them above ground. But we've got plenty of time to think about it. Pete's not even started making the stuff yet."
  "Maybe he should stop making bloody coffee pots," Barry said pointedly.
  "Hold your water, Baz," sighed Michael. "We're working towards turning a few thousand pounds worth of metal into at least a million in a way that looks perfectly legitimate. But we won't collect it if we're careless."
  "It's over five months since we nicked that silver, Mike."
  "And we've already moved some of it across to the States for a hell of a lot more than we could have got from selling it as scrap metal or collecting from some poxy insurance company. You're making as much as a director of a privatized industry at the moment. You don't really need to cash in the rest of it all in one lump, do you?"
  "I want to be able to count it."
  "Sure! And I suppose you'd like it delivered in a dumper-truck full of one-pound coins?"
  "That'd be nice," grinned Barry.
  "I thought we'd agreed it would be invested and you'd only get the income? So you don't blow the whole lot in six months?"
  "If you've got a million quid, you ought to be able to spend it."
  "But life's not like that, Bazzer. And we haven't got a million quid for you yet. There's still a hell of a lot more work to be done."

August's sunny weather continued into September. As her third week in Farne began, Pru Haig began to show signs of coming back to life. Having spent most of her first fortnight in a deck chair, she summoned up the energy to borrow her brother's motorbike for a trip into Barnstaple. Mikki put on an expression of amazement as she watched Pru leave. She had assumed that the machine was strictly owner-driver, even though the Haig twins enjoyed a very close relationship.
  Pru had been something of a disruptive element. Led by Mikki, the girls had made a point of doing thing that they wanted to do to prove how liberated they were. Haig had raised no objections. He was willing to let them learn from their mistakes and liberated people had no excuse for not doing their share of lighthouse-work.
  As a guest, it was all right for Pru to lounge about and let others wait on her. As a member of Haig's family, it was also her duty to volunteer to help out. Haig had felt obliged to explain to the girls things that had been matters of understanding between himself and his sister.
  Pru was a creature of extremes. She threw herself into a job, gave it all her energy and attention, and finished it in a state of emotional and physical exhaustion. Then she collapsed, threatening to retire from such an active life. Her family had learned to adapt to her lifestyle.
  Haig had taken over the largest share of the extra work to head off grumbles of discontent. He could see that the girls, Vanessa in particular, were feeling a little excluded. Vanessa had been living at the tower for eleven months, Mikki for eight. All three had made adjustments to allow themselves to live with and around two other people.
  Haig could adapt to include his sister in the circle without effort. He was on his home ground and secure of his possession of it. His younger companions lacked his flexibility. They still felt that they were visitors and they wanted nothing to change as a sign of their security. Pru was still a non-participating stranger to them and a disruptive influence in an established order.
  When Nigel arrived to collect Pru for an evening out in Ilfracombe, he was ambushed by treasure-finders eager for news of progress toward the inquest. Nigel was becoming skilled in the art of letting the girls down gently. Pru was wearing a new outfit when they left in Nigel's car. They were spending most of their evenings together away from the village to make life difficult for the local gossips, some of whom had no inhibitions about joining a couple when they wanted to be left alone.
  Low tides were coming at noon and midnight and the Moon was more than half-full. Haig was taking full advantage of the bright conditions at night for prospecting expeditions. As Mikki was a good half hour from serving dinner for three, he decided to take some coins round the bay to the Seadog's Roost. He was pleased to find that Pru had put some petrol in his motorbike.
  There was a Land Rover with a racing dinghy on a trailer in the pub's car park. Half a dozen men with pint mugs were admiring the boat. Haig made his usual entrance into the pub. Kitty Bishop, the landlady, smiled a greeting and gushed a half-pint of bitter into a glass.
  "No sovereigns?" she smiled as she sorted through a bag of silver.
  "We're a long way from that," said Haig.
  "Are you allowed to say how it's going? People are starting to give me orders for necklaces with sovereigns, assuming you're going to be allowed to hang on to them."
  "There's no problem about talking about it. It's not sub judice, or anything. Colonel March's Welsh professor has done about ninety-nine dozen tests on the letter we found in the jug and he can't find anything wrong with it."
  "I bet that pleases Mr. Fullerton's relatives."
  "They're the ones holding everything up at the moment. The Colonel's giving them time to decide what to do next."
  "Put up or shut up, kind of thing?"
  "Something like that. He wants all the interested parties in his court with all their ammunition, jumping through hoops in front of him. He especially wants to see one lot of experts busy trying to rubbish another lot."
  "They'll make a nice Christmas present, the sovereigns."
  "Please!" groaned Haig. "I've got two would-be spend-thrifts going crazy. We couldn't last another four months."
  Mrs. Bishop took the coins to her workshop. Her husband, Ed, served the last of a small group, then moved along the bar to join Haig.
  "Evening," he said with an obvious air of embarrassment.
  "Something up?" Haig divined.
  "It's not my place to come between a man and a woman, but I think you ought to know yours has been coming in here with a bloke who should know better. Often enough to start people talking. I know it's none of my business, but I thought you ought to know. Okay?"
  "I suppose she's allowed to have friends." Haig shrugged.
  "Yeah, well, you know how people talk. There's a lot with nothing better to do round here."
  "True. But it's useful to know what they're saying behind your back, I suppose. Thanks."
  One of the regulars tapped his pewter tankard on the bar and cleared his throat noisily. Ed Bishop hurried away gratefully to serve him. Haig finished his half pint and returned to his motorbike. The crowd around the boat had increased to a dozen.
  As he put his crash helmet on, Haig found himself wondering if Vanessa had revived a boyfriend of her own age; perhaps someone from the previous summer's party circuit had decided to renew an old acquaintance if she looked like coming into some money.
  He found it rather strange that Vanessa had not mentioned her friend, she was usually quite transparent about the people she met, but Haig had to admit that he had been spending a lot of time with Pru. They had not seen each other for over four months and they were still finding things to remember and share.
  Their elder sister was four years their senior. During their early years, Dorothy had always been keeping a protective eye on them when she had been forced to play with the twins for the lack of anything better to do.
  Pru had enjoyed football and cricket, and she had infiltrated female friends into such all-male preserves. Haig and his twin sister had gone though a mixed school in the same classes. Co-operation had reduced the chore of homework to a minimum. They had discovered at an early age that two people working together can achieve more than two isolated individuals; except in examinations. And it helped to have someone to share the blame for mistakes and disasters.
  They had shared first a flat and then a rather run-down terraced house during their university years. Their parents had approved of the arrangement. They had assumed that having Jeremy around would shield Prunella from temptation, or inhibit boyfriends. The twins, however, had been willing to co-operate to make their respective love-lives successful and to disappear discreetly when required.
  University had been the beginning of separate lives. Pru had studied a blend of natural history, cinematography using both film and video techniques, and European languages for her BA. Her brother had combined European history, maths with a bias to statistical analysis and computer studies.
  Pru had taken her brand new honours degree to London, to a job on the production side of television. Her father had managed to edge open that particular door and her enthusiasm for the work had done the rest. Her brother had found a job as a night-shift computer operator and trouble-shooter at a data clearing centre in Leeds. He had enjoyed a good salary for working unsociable hours and the abundant free time during the day for his private research projects.
  Growing public interest in wildlife survival, conservation and possible man-made shifts in the planetary ecology had allowed Pru to travel all round the world over a period of fifteen years. Jeremy Haig had become a part-time worker, opting for long night shifts on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. With overtime and allowances, he was effectively paid for seventy-two hours' work every week.
  He was interested in archaeology but clashes with museum and university-based professionals over the use of metal detectors had turned him into a lone wolf. Haig could see no difference between using geo-magnetic and radar techniques to map sub-surface structures to look for evidence of ditches and buried foundations and using a detector to search for metal artefacts. The attitude of the professionals seemed to him to be just routine selective technophobia.
  A metal detector used in a systematic, disciplined manner, Haig felt, could provide valuable information without digging anything up. Like the geophysicists, he believed that it is important to learn as much as possible about a site before beginning the essentially destructive process of excavation.
  Haig had made several dozen small but interesting discoveries before his big strike in Yorkshire. He had also made one or two converts. Some academics were prepared to see the difference between methodical research and pure treasure-hunting, which results in people ripping valuable items out of the ground with no regard for establishing their place of origin or their position in geological strata.
  Haig had been amused by his virtual canonization after he had persuaded farmer Terry Wainright to join the campaign to insist that the relics be kept together and close to where they had been found. Haig had been portrayed very much as an amateur archaeologist, who was following the best traditions of the profession, and a thoroughly admirable chap.
  Pru's salary tended to accumulate in her bank account while she was working overseas. Before the big strike, her brother had been earning what amounted to a double salary. Joining her for a break somewhere relaxing, and inevitably expensive, had been no problem for him. Relaxation was becoming a dominant element at the beginning of Pru's breaks. She liked to sit and admire a view until she had recovered the will to be energetic. The trip to Barnstaple to buy a new outfit was a sign that she was coming back to life. The girls would be quite surprised by the transformation, Haig knew.
  He had five minutes in hand for a wash when he reached the tower. Mikki was trying out a recipe for duck with apple and lemon stuffing – prepared separately to make sure that the carcase cooked properly. Haig contributed a bottle of Anjou rosé from the cellar. Roast potatoes, green beans, carrots and strips of yellow pepper added their colours to the meal. The Channel Four news on Vanessa's portable television provided another accompaniment. Orange jelly with fresh peach and pineapple slices, topped by double cream, finished the meal.
  "You all right?" remarked Vanessa as Mikki was pouring coffee on the other side of the kitchen.
  "Sure." Haig shrugged. "Why not?"
  "You've hardly said a word. Not even mocking the politicians on the news."
  "Sometimes I sits and thinks," Haig said wisely.
  "And sometimes I just sits," added Mikki.
  "And I enjoys a work of culinary genius," added Haig, "knowing it's not my turn to do the washing up. I'm surprised I've not had to fight Biffo for my share of the duck."
  "He's had his," laughed Vanessa. "He had one of the legs and he's sleeping it off in his cupboard."
  "So everyone's happy?" said Haig. "In that case, everything's all right. Anyone fancy a liqueur?"
  "Drambuie, please," said Mikki, making the cook's choice.
  The group took their coffee upstairs to the comfortable chairs and the larger television in the drawing room. Haig filled three glasses with liqueur whisky. There was nothing in Vanessa's manner to suggest that she was two-timing him and he could not believe that she was a good enough actress to cover it up. Vanessa with a secret was someone with ants in her pants. If she could not tell her secret to Haig, then she would have to tell it to Mikki, whose sense of honour was very well developed.
  If Mikki was not treating Vanessa with massive disapproval, then there was no secret boyfriend. Which left Haig with the puzzle of what the landlord of the Seadog's Roost was up to. Ed Bishop was not a vindictive sort of person. Perhaps he had just made an honest mistake.
  Suspicion, Haig decided, is a thoroughly corrosive force, which can destroy as thoroughly as actual misdeeds. Someone with part of the truth had burdened Haig with a faulty analysis. He had faced his moment of doubt and he had turned away from it. There was a lot to be said for the presumption of innocence and choosing to give someone the benefit of the doubt. It could be called sticking his head in the sand, but Haig preferred to view it as showing respect and trust.
  Haig spent the next evening in Barnstaple. A loose circle of antiquarians met at a pub near the museum on the first Wednesday of each month. Haig had been invited over to view the results of expert restoration work on some bits and pieces that he had found in the bay and passed on to the museum. He travelled both ways by taxi. The circle was made up mainly of professional people, who provided a generous buffet supper for themselves and their visiting experts. And the pub offered an excellent local bitter.
  Pru and Vanessa spent most of Thursday afternoon patrolling the bay with a lighter and less powerful metal detector than Haig's super-de-luxe model. Haig's computer had identified an area about fifty metres from the tide-line as promising. The expedition returned with a bucketful of bits and pieces.
  The tide tended to form vortices as it filled and emptied the bay, moving around a series of low, shifting sandbanks. Haig made regular sequences of measurements that were designed to identify such whirlpools. They were areas where rough water could throw small enough objects into suspension with a great deal of sand. When the suspension settled in a calmer region, the process of particle size analysis left larger items on top of smaller grains of sand.
  Unfortunately, from the prospectors' point of view, the recent weather had been ideal for holidaymakers. There had not been a really good blow to create waves that would stir up the bed of the bay. Pru and Vanessa, however, seemed quite happy with their modest haul. Pru, in particular, was surprised that they had found anything at all. She gave racing tips about the same degree of respect as the predictions that came out of her brother's computer.
  Pru had volunteered to make dinner, as long as someone else did the washing up. While the girls waited to discover how her beef olives would turn out, and what Biffo would make of them, Haig took some lost property to the police house and some coins up to the pub. As before, the landlord approached him with an air of embarrassment.
  "They were in again last night, large as life," Ed Bishop murmured. "Near closing time."
  Haig shrugged. "Pity the gossips haven't got something better to do. Looking for something sinister whether it's there or not."
  "You don't reckon there's anything in it?"
  "I don't think it's wrong for people to have friends, and I don't think it's necessarily a sign they're stabbing someone in the back."
  "Well, you know your own business." Bishop shrugged. "And it's your business to mind it. I hope I wasn't speaking out of turn?"
  "No, it's as well to know what malicious gossip's in circulation," Haig said. "I appreciate being kept in the picture. Some people think they have a divine right to say what they like about a foreigner, who's only lived here a couple of years."
  "It's the only exercise some folk get," smiled the landlord. "Wagging their tongues."
  Haig finished his half pint and left the pub in a state of some bafflement. He had arrived home from the antiquarians' meeting at a quarter past eleven the previous night. The tower had been deserted. He had taken his metal detector down to the beach for a low-tide search by the light of a three-quarter Moon.
  He had watched lights go on and off in the tower during the next couple of hours. Vanessa had been asleep in the four-poster bed when he had turned in. He had not checked further, but the girls had mentioned going out with a group from the badminton club, which used a college gym and closed down during the summer holiday.
  Pru had forgotten about the linen thread that she had used to tie the beef olives into shape. The kitchen scissors moved round the table as the diners got busy with their meat course and peppers stuffed with savoury brown rice after a melon starter. The alcoholic gravy, containing half a bottle of red wine, was voted an instant success.
  Chocolate chip ice cream, Pru's favourite, was her final offering. Over coffee and Cointreau, the cook resumed her reminiscences of preparing edible food under hostile conditions. Pru had rustled up meals in jungles, swamps and deserts. Cooking in a kitchen fitted with modern conveniences was sheer luxury.
  Haig volunteered to give Mikki a hand with the washing up. It gave him an opportunity to do some investigating.
  "Don't think I'm trying to check up on you," he said when he had finished the cups and glasses, "but do you mind telling me where you were last night?"
  "Why?" frowned Mikki.
  "I'll tell you afterwards."
  "We went ten-pin bowling in Flynton. Me, Van and about eight others from the badminton club. Something up?"
  "It's just that I've been hearing strange things in the Seadog. About quote ‘my woman' unquote gadding about with someone else and scandalizing the gossips. But I don't understand why they're saying it. She was supposed to be in the pub last night with some bloke. But you've just said she was in Flynton."
  "Maybe they mean Pru. Quite a lot of people think she's your wife."
  "What, seriously?" grinned Haig.
  "Well, look at it from their point of view. She's called Haig too. It's on her credit cards. You're the same age. And you've obviously known each other for ages. And you're obviously pretty close."
  "If we're so close, how come she hasn't been living with me here for the last couple of years? Instead of just visiting occasionally."
  "Maybe she's been in gaol," grinned Mikki.
  "Don't say that. You'll give the gossips a field day!"
  "And she wears all those antique gold rings, like Van. One of them could be a wedding ring."
  "Shit!"
  "What?"
  "Come to think of it, I've got an idea I told some busy-body that Pru's my estranged wife, come back for a share of my loot. But I thought it was clear to anyone with a couple of brain cells that I was being sarcastic."
  "Maybe it wasn't so clear to someone eavesdropping on you. So that's why you were so quiet the other night. I thought you'd had a row with Van at first, but she wasn't sulking. And then you were back to normal."
  "I came to the conclusion that if Van goes to the pub with a friend, so what? She's entitled to know other people, male and female. Even if bloody gossips want to make something sinister out of it."
  "But it was Pru all the time?"
  "Looks like it. Maybe I'd better put Ed at the Seadog straight on a few things next time I'm up there."
  "Is this a secret, by the way?" Mikki asked.
  "No, I don't think so," Haig decided. "I think we can put the others in the picture. It's not as if I flew into a jealous rage and made an idiot of myself."
  "That might count against you. A sign you're not serious about Van."
  "That's life, though, isn't it? It's got you whatever you do."