“Useful if you’ve got an Anglo-Saxon belt,” I said.

He chuckled. “It’s a ceremonial buckle, worn by chieftains and buried with them. It’s about five inches by two inches. The original is made of solid gold, chased with Celtic designs and studded with semiprecious stones. There are only two known to be in existence. One’s in the British Museum, the other’s in a private collection in High Hammerton Hall, near Whitby.”

“Sounds perfect,” I said. “Have you spoken to the owner?”

“I have. He’s been displaying a replica for the last five months, but I’ve managed to persuade him to lend it to you. We were at school together,” he added in explanation.

“What’s it made of?” I asked.

“The replica’s made of lead and plastic, with a thin coating of gold leaf. He says it would fool someone who wasn’t an expert, even close up. He says if you sit the two of them side by side, it’s almost impossible to tell them apart.”

“Sounds perfect,” I said. “When can I get it?”

“He’s sending it to you by overnight courier. It will be at your office by ten tomorrow morning.”

“Lord Ballantrae, you are a star,” I said, meaning it. So much for the inbred stupidity of the aristocracy. This guy was more on the ball than ninety-five percent of the people I have to deal with.

“No problem. I want to get these people as badly as you do. Probably more so. Then we can all get back to the business of doing what we do best.”

Speaking of which, I finally got down to doing something about Trevor Kerr’s case. I felt guilty for ignoring the material he’d sent me, but the art theft case was far more absorbing. I felt it was something I could get to the bottom of single-handed, unlike the Kerrchem case. I found myself inclined to agree with Jackson. This was a case for the cops, if only because they had the staffing resources to cover all the bases that it would take me weeks to get round. Then the little voice in my head kicked in with the real reason. “You can’t stand Trevor Kerr, so you don’t want to put yourself out for him. And you’re desperate to impress that Michael Haroun.”

“Bollocks,” I muttered out loud, seizing the sheets of fax paper with fresh energy. Someone-the indomitable Sheila, I suspected-had conveniently included the job titles as well as the names and addresses of those made redundant. I reckoned I could exclude anyone who worked on the factory floor or in the warehouse. They would have neither the chemical know-how nor the access to sales and distribution information that would allow them to pull a sabotage scheme as complex as this. That left thirty-seven people in clerical, managerial and scientific posts who had all been given what looked like a tin handshake to quit their jobs at Kerrchem.

By nine, I felt like the phone was welded to my ear. I was using a labor-market research pitch, which seemed to be working reasonably well. I claimed to be working for the EC Regional Rind, doing research to see what sort of skills were not being catered to by current job vacancies. I told my victims that I was calling people who had been made redundant over the previous year to discover whether they had found alternative employment. A depressingly low number of Kerrchem’s junked staff fell into that category, and they were mostly low-grade clerical staff. Not one of the ten middle managers had found new jobs, and to a man they were bitter as hell about it. Of the chemists, two out of the three lab technicians were working in less skilled but better-paid jobs. The four research lab staff who had been laid off were bound by their contracts and the terms of their redundancies not to work for direct competitors. One had taken a job as an analyst on a North Sea oil rig, two of the other three were kicking their heels and hating it and one was no longer at the address the company had for him. It looked like I had no shortage of suspects.

I stood up and stretched. Richard still hadn’t come home, so there was nothing to divert me from work. There was nothing more I could do with the Kerrchem stuff tonight, but I wasn’t quite stalled on the other investigation. The sensible part of me knew I should go to bed and catch up on last night’s missed sleep, but I’d had enough of being sensible for one week. I went through to the kitchen, cut open the other half of the ciabatta and loaded it with mozzarella, taramasalata and some sundried tomatoes. I wrapped it in clingfilm, and took a small bottle of mineral water out of the fridge. Fifteen minutes later, I was cruising down the M62, singing along cheerfully to a new compilation of Dusty Springfield’s greatest hits that I’d found lying around in Richard’s half of the conservatory. Never mind the mascara, check out that voice.

I was in Leeds before ten, navigating my way through the subterranean tunnels of the inner ring road, emerging into daylight somewhere near the white monolith of the university. The roads were quiet out through Headingley, but every now and again, a beam of light split the night from on high as the police helicopter quartered the skies, trying to protect the homes of the more prosperous residents from the attentions of the burglars. Burglary has reached epidemic proportions in Leeds these days; I know someone whose house was turned over seven times in six months. Every time they came home with a new stereo, so did the burglars. Now their house is more secure than Armley jail and their insurance premiums are nearly as much as the mortgage.

I slowed as I approached the Weetwood roundabout, scanning houses for their numbers. Six seventy-nine A looked like it might be one of an arcade of shops, so I parked and stretched my legs. I can’t say I was surprised to find there was no 679A. There was a 679, though, a small newsagent’s squeezed between a bakery and a hairdresser. I walked round the back of the shops, checking to see if the flats above had entrances at the rear. A couple did, but 679 wasn’t one of them. I walked back to the car, with plenty to think about. Whoever Dennis’s fence was, he was determined to cover his tracks. Using an accommodation address for his phone bills was about as careful as you could get without actually being sectioned for paranoia.

I decided to check out the directors’ addresses while I was in the city, but I held out little hope of finding any of them at home. James Connery’s alleged residence was nearest, back in Headingley proper. It was number thirty-nine in a street of ten houses. On to Chapel Allerton, where Sean Bond apparently lived in a hostel for the visually handicapped. Penny Cash was even worse off. According to Companies House, she was living on a piece of waste ground in Burmantofts. I doubled back through the city center, passing the new Health Ministry building up on Quarry Hill, spotlit to look like a set from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Apparently, the place contains a full-sized swimming pool, Jacuzzi and multigym. Nice to know our hard-earned taxes are being spent on the health of the nation, isn’t it?

It was nearly midnight when I got home. Richard’s car was parked outside, though I didn’t need that clue to know he was home as soon as I touched the front door. It was vibrating with the pulse of the bass coming through the bricks from next door. As I shoved my key in the lock, I could feel exhaustion flow through me, settling in a painful knot at the base of my skull.

I walked through the house to the conservatory. Richard’s patio doors were open, revealing half a dozen bodies in varying states of consciousness draped over the furniture. Techno dance music drilled through my head like a tribe of termites who have just discovered a log cabin. The man himself was nowhere to be seen. I picked a path to the kitchen, where I found him taking a tray of spring rolls out of the oven. “Hi,” he said. His eyes were as stoned as the woman taken in adultery.

“Any chance of the volume coming down? I need some sleep,” I said.