‘See it?’ I asked when we were inside.

‘Yup. Goliath?’

‘Could be. Think they’re still pissed off about losing Jack Schitt into that copy of The Raven?’

‘Probably,’ replied Bowden, pulling into the main road.

I looked in the vanity mirror at the black car four vehicles behind.

‘Still with us?’ asked Bowden.

‘Yup. Let’s find out what they want. Take a left here, then left again and drop me off. Carry on for a hundred yards and then pull up.’

Bowden dropped me off as instructed, sped on past the next corner and stopped, blocking the street. I ducked behind a parked car and, sure enough, the large black Pontiac swept past me. It drove round the next corner, stopped abruptly when it saw Bowden and started to reverse. The car was big and the road narrow, and with me tapping on the smoked-glass window and waving my badge, the driver obviously thought brazening it out would be a better course of action.

‘So here I am,’ I told him as soon as he had wound down the window. ‘What do you want?’

The driver looked at me.

‘We seem to have taken a wrong turning, miss. Can you tell me the way to Pete and Dave’s Dodo Emporium?’

I was unimpressed by their drab cover story, but I smiled anyway. They were SpecOps as much as I was.

‘We can lose you just as easily, boys. Why don’t you just tell me who you are so we can all get along a lot better?’

The two men looked at one another and then held up their badges for me to see. They were SO-5, the same Search & Containment unit I was at when we hunted down Hades.

‘SO-5?’ I queried. ‘Tamworth’s old outfit?’

‘I’m Phodder,’ said the driver. ‘My associate here is Kannon. SpecOps 5 has been reassigned.’

‘Does that mean Acheron Hades is officially dead?’

‘The case will always remain open, Miss Next—but Acheron was only the third most evil criminal mind on the planet.’

‘Then who—or what—are you after this time?’

‘Classified. Your name came up in preliminary enquiries. Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently?’

‘What do you mean, odd?’

‘Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented weird.’

I thought for a moment.

‘No.’

‘Well,’ said Mr Phodder, ‘if it does, would you call me on this number?’

‘Sure.’

I took the card, bade them goodbye and returned to Bowden. We were soon heading north to the Cirencester road, the Pontiac nowhere in sight. I explained who they were to Bowden, who raised his eyebrows and said:

‘Sounds ominous. Someone worse than Hades?’

‘Perhaps. Where’s the next stop?’

‘Cirencester and Lord Volescamper.’

‘Really?’ I replied in some surprise. ‘Why would someone as eminent as Volescamper get embroiled in a Cardenio scam?’

‘Search me. He’s a golfing buddy of Braxton’s so this could be political. Better not dismiss it out of hand and make him look an idiot—we’ll only be clobbered by the chief.’

We swung in through the battered and rusty gates of Vole Towers and motored up the long drive, which was more weed than gravel. We pulled up outside the imposing Gothic Revival house which was clearly in need of repair, and Lord Volescamper came out to meet us. Volescamper was a tall man with grey hair and an exuberant manner. He was wearing an old pair of herringbone tweeds and brandished a pair of secateurs like a cavalry sabre.

‘Blasted brambles!’ he muttered as he shook our hands. ‘Look here, they can grow two inches a day, you know; inexorable little blighters that threaten to engulf all that we know and love—a bit like anarchists, really. You’re that Next girl, aren’t you? I think we met at my niece Gloria’s wedding—who did she marry again?’

‘My cousin Wilbur.’

‘Now I remember. Who was that sad old fart who made a nuisance of himself on the dance-floor?’

‘I think that was you, sir.’

Lord Volescamper thought for a moment and stared at his feet.

‘Goodness! It was, wasn’t it? Saw you on the telly last night. Look here, it was a rum business about that Bronte book, eh?’

‘Very rum,’ I assured him. ‘This is Bowden Cable, my partner.’

‘How do you do, Mr Cable? Bought one of the new Griffin Sportinas, I see. How do you find it?’

‘Usually where I left it, sir.’

‘Indeed? You must come inside. Victor sent you, yes?’

We followed Volescamper as he shambled into the decrepit mansion. We passed into the main hall, which was heavily decorated with the heads of various antelope, stuffed and placed on wooden shields.

‘In years gone by the family were prodigious hunters,’ explained Volescamper. ‘But look here, I don’t carry on that way myself. Father was heavily into killing and stuffing things. When he died he insisted on being stuffed himself. That’s him over there.’

We stopped on the landing and Bowden and I looked at the deceased earl with interest. With his favourite gun in the crook of his arm and his faithful dog at his feet, he stared blankly out of the glass case. I thought perhaps his head and shoulders should also be mounted on a wooden shield, but I didn’t think it would be polite to say so. Instead I said:

‘He looks very young.’

‘But look here, he was. Forty-three and eight days. Trampled to death by antelope.’

‘In Africa?’

‘On the A30 near Chard one night in ‘34. He stopped the car because there was a stag with the most magnificent antlers lying in the road. Father got out to have a peek and… well, look here, he didn’t stand a chance. The herd came from nowhere.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sort of ironic, really,’ said Volescamper, ‘but do you know, the really odd thing was, when the herd of antelope ran off, the magnificent stag had also gone.’

‘It… it must have just been stunned,’ suggested Bowden.

‘Yes, yes, I suppose so,’ replied Volescamper absently. ‘I suppose so. But look here, you don’t want to know about Father. Come on!’

And so saying he strutted off down the corridor that led to the library. We had to trot to catch up with him, but any doubts as to the value of Volescamper’s collection were soon dispelled. The doors to the library were hardened steel.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Volescamper, following my gaze. ‘Look here, the old library is worth quite a few pennies—I like to take precautions. Don’t be fooled by the oak panelling inside—the library is essentially a vast steel safe.’

It wasn’t unusual; the Bodleian these days was like Fort Knox—and Fort Knox itself had been converted to take the Library of Congress’s more valuable works. We entered, and I saw Bowden’s eyes light up at the collection of old books and manuscripts.

‘You didn’t just buy Cardenio recently or something, then?’ I asked, suddenly feeling that perhaps my early dismissal of the find may have been too hasty.

‘Goodness me no. Look here, we found it only the other day when we were cataloguing part of my great-grandfather Bartholomew Volescamper’s private library. Didn’t even know I had it. This is Mr Swaike, my security consultant.’

A thick-set man with a humourless look had entered the library. He eyed us suspiciously as Volescamper made the introductions, then laid a sheath of roughly cut pages bound into a leather book on the table.

‘What sort of security matters do you consult on, Mr Swaike?’ asked Bowden.

‘Personal and insurance. This library is uncatalogued and uninsured. Criminal gangs would regard this as a valuable target, despite the obvious security arrangements. Cardenio is only one of a dozen books I am currently keeping in a secure safe within the locked library.’

‘I can’t fault you there, Mr Swaike,’ replied Bowden.

I pulled up a chair and looked at the manuscript. At first glance, things looked good, so I quickly donned a pair of cotton gloves, something I hadn’t even considered with Mrs Hathaway34’s Cardenio. I studied the first page. The handwriting was very similar to Shakespeare’s and the paper clearly handmade. I smelled the ink and paper. It all looked real, but I had seen some good copies in my time. There were a lot of scholars who were versed well enough in Shakespeare, Elizabethan history, grammar and spelling to attempt a forgery, but none of them ever had the wit and charm of the Bard himself. Victor used to say that Shakespeare forgery was inherently impossible because the act of copying overrode the act of inspired creation—the heart being squeezed out by the mind, so to speak. But as I turned the first page and read the dramatis personae, something stirred within me. Butterflies mixed with a certain apprehension. I’d read fifty or sixty Cardenios before, but… I turned the page and read Cardenio’s opening soliloquy: