Losing Ground by Catherine Aird

Author:Catherine Aird
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2007-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

‘It’s about the Anglo-Saxon items taken from the museum, sir,’ began Sloan as he and Crosby walked into Superintendent Leeyes’ office in Berebury Police Station.

‘Stolen from the museum, you mean, Sloan.’ The superintendent was not a man to mince his words.

‘Missing, anyway,’ said Sloan. That was as far as he was prepared to go for the time being.

‘Not there,’ contributed Detective Constable Crosby helpfully.

Leeyes glared across his desk at his two subordinates. ‘Well?’

‘Not a great deal more to say about them at this stage, sir, I’m afraid.’ Duty bound, Sloan had reported back to the superintendent in Berebury as soon as he could. ‘It would seem,’ he went on carefully, ‘that the items that aren’t there were small pieces of no great intrinsic value.’

‘In theft, Sloan,’ thundered the superintendent, sounding very like Lady Bracknell, ‘the value of the goods taken is immaterial. Let me remind you that there are no such things as unconsidered trifles in police work.’

‘Quite so, sir,’ said Sloan, ‘but in my opinion the significant thing in this instance is that items of greater – much greater – value in the same display cabinet were left and we know that the thief was undisturbed and didn’t have to leave in a hurry.’

Detective Constable Crosby flicked his notebook open and began to read. ‘The famous Almstone Brooch is still there…at least,’ he added dubiously, ‘Hilary Collins says it’s famous.’

‘Jewelled,’ put in Sloan. ‘Found by Professor Michael Ripley and part of the Almstone hoard which he excavated – and still there in the display cabinet.’

‘A quoit brooch,’ went on Crosby. ‘And some gold bracteates.’

‘A wafer-thin leaf of metal,’ explained Sloan swiftly, before the superintendent could draw breath, ‘used in the manufacture of embossed pendants.’

‘Still there,’ chimed in Crosby. ‘That is, not taken. Also a sword-hilt with silver and niello inlay…’

Sloan had seen a piece there that could have come straight from his wife’s dressing-table – a garnet brooch of cast silver. Perhaps nothing changed…

‘Suppose you just tell me what isn’t there,’ suggested Leeyes.

‘Just some small bronze pins and a type of button, sir. Oh, and some little pieces of bone…’

The superintendent’s head came up on the instant. ‘Bone?’

‘There was nothing missing from the Paleolithic Room, sir,’ said Sloan hastily. ‘The auroch remains are still there.’

The superintendent subsided back in his seat.

‘Nothing else appears be missing from that cabinet, sir, not even some fragments of reindeer antlers thought to have been used until recently in the Cullingoak Horn Dance. They’ve been carbon-dated to before the Norman Conquest.’

‘Nothing of monetary value taken, you say,’ murmured Leeyes thoughtfully. ‘But perhaps worth someone’s while to break in and take them all the same, would you say?’

‘The display cabinet might just have broken under the weight of whoever took the portrait, sir.’

Superintendent Leeyes leant back in his chair. ‘So, what we have so far is a case of arson…

‘The fire people think so,’ said Sloan.

‘And one definite case of theft,’ the superintendent ticked off his fingers. ‘A portrait of undoubtedly some – but not

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