29

Tony Baverstock had been at work for a little over an hour when he took a call from the switchboard. A member of the public had telephoned the museum with a question about a piece of pottery they'd found, apparently bearing part of an inscription.

It was the kind of call the museum got all the time, and almost invariably the object turned out to be completely worthless. Baverstock vividly remembered one elderly lady from Kent who'd actually brought along the alleged relic for inspection. It was the grubby remains of a small china cup she'd dug up in her garden, and had borne the partial inscription '1066' and 'le of Hastin' in a kind of Gothic script on one side.

The woman had been convinced she'd found something of national importance, a relic dating from nearly a thousand years earlier and a crucial reminder of one of the most significant events in England's turbulent past, and refused to believe it when Baverstock told her it was rubbish. It was only when he turned the cup over, cleaned the dirt off it and pointed to the other, complete, inscription on the base of the vessel that he'd been able to convince her that she was mistaken. That piece of text, in very small letters, had read 'Dishwasher safe'.

'Not my field,' Baverstock snapped, when the switchboard girl described what the caller had apparently found. 'Try Angela Lewis.'

'I already have,' the telephonist replied, just as irritated, 'but she's taken some leave.'

Five minutes later he had convinced the caller, who lived in Suffolk, that the best place to have his find examined was the local museum in Bury St Edmunds. Let somebody else have their time wasted, Baverstock thought. Then he placed an internal call to Angela Lewis's superior.

'Roger, it's Tony. I was just looking for Angela, but she doesn't seem to be at work. Any idea where she is?'

'Yes.' Roger Halliwell sounded somewhat harassed.

'She's taken some leave. At pretty short notice, actually.

She rang yesterday afternoon – some domestic crisis, I gather.'

'When will she be back?'

'She didn't say – which is all pretty inconvenient. Anything I can help you with?'

Baverstock thanked him and replaced the receiver. Now that's interesting, he thought. Very interesting indeed.