‘It does sound a little strange, sir, yes.’

‘To be honest,’ Hegarty said, ‘if I hadn’t gone through the files today to compile the list for you, I doubt I would have remembered it was such an exact match.’

‘Sounds like that might have been a stroke of good fortune. I appreciate your telling us. Did you ask her where she obtained them?’

Hegarty dropped his voice, as if nervous of being overheard. ‘She said she’d inherited them from an aunt in Australia and that someone she’d met at a party in Melbourne told her I was one of the dealers she should talk to.’

‘You, rather than anyone in Australia, sir?’

‘She said she was told that she would get a better price in the UK or in the States. As she was moving back here to look after her elderly mother, she thought she would try me first. She’s coming over tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock to show me them. I thought I would ask her a few discreet questions then.’

Branson looked at his notes. ‘Do you have an interest in buying them?’

He could almost feel the twinkle in Hegarty’s eyes as the man replied.

‘Well, she said she was in a hurry to sell – and that’s usually the best time to buy. Not many dealers would have the kind of ready cash needed to buy this lot in one go – it would be more usual to break it up into auction lots. But I’d want to ensure they were all certificated. I’d hate to part with all that money and get a knock on my front door from you boys a few hours later. That’s why I rang you.’

Of course. This isn’t about Hugo Hegarty being a dutiful citizen. It’s about him protecting his own backside, Glenn Branson thought. Still, such was human nature, so he could hardly blame the man.

‘Roughly what value would you put on these, sir?’

‘As a buyer or a seller?’ Now he was sounding even more wily.

‘As both.’

‘Well, total catalogue value at today’s prices, we’re looking around four – four and a half million. So, as a seller, that’s what I would be aiming to achieve.’

‘Pounds?’

‘Oh yes, pounds.’

Branson was astonished. The original three and a quarter million pounds Lorraine Wilson had come into had gone up by around thirty per cent – and that was after a substantial number of them, probably, had been sold off.

‘And as a buyer, sir?’

Suddenly Hegarty sounded reticent. ‘The price I’d be willing to pay would depend on their provenance. I’d need more information.’

Branson’s brain was whirring. ‘She’s coming to you at 10 tomorrow morning? That’s definite?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Katherine Jennings.’

‘Did she give you an address or phone number?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

The DS wrote the name down, thanked him and hung up. Then he pulled his keyboard closer, tapped the keys to call up the serials log and entered the name Katherine Jennings.

Within a few seconds a match came up.

Roy Grace sat in the back of the unmarked grey Ford Crown Victoria. As they headed into the Lincoln Tunnel he wondered whether, if you were a seasoned enough traveller, you could identify any city in the world just from the sound of the traffic.

In London the constant petrol roar and diesel rattle of engines and the whine-swoosh of the new generation of Volvo buses dominated. New York was completely different, mostly the steady tramp-tramp-tramp of tyres on the ribbed or cracked and lumpy road surfaces, and the honking of horns.

A massive truck behind them was honking now.

Detective Investigator Dennis Baker, who was driving, raised a hand up to the interior mirror and flipped him the bird. ‘Go fuck yourself, asshole!’

Grace grinned. Dennis hadn’t changed.

‘I mean, for Chrissake, asshole, what you want me to do? Drive over the top of the dickhead in front or what? Jesus!’

Long used to his work buddy’s driving, Detective Investigator Pat Lynch, seated alongside him in the front passenger seat, turned without comment to face Roy. ‘It’s good to see you again, man. Long time. Wayyyyy too long!’

Roy felt that too. He’d liked these guys from the moment they first met. Back in November 2000 he had been sent to New York to question a gay American banker whose partner had been found strangled in a flat in Kemp Town. The banker was never charged, but died from a drugs overdose a couple of years later. Roy had worked with Dennis and Pat for some while on that case and they’d stayed in touch.

Pat wore jeans and a denim jacket over a beige shirt, with a white T-shirt beneath that. With his pockmarked face and lanky, boyish haircut, he had the rugged looks of a movie tough guy, but he had a surprisingly gentle and caring nature. He had started life as a stevedore in the docks and his tall, powerful physique had stood him in good stead for that work.

Dennis wore a heavy black anorak, embossed with the legend Cold Case Homicide Squad and the NYPD shield, over a blue shirt, and also had on jeans. Shorter than Pat, wirier and sharp-eyed, he was heavily into martial arts. Years ago he had achieved tenth dan in shotokan karate, the highest level, and was something of a legend in the NYPD for his street-fighting skills.

Both men had been at the Brooklyn Police Station on Williams-burg East at 8.46 on the morning of 9/11, when the first plane had struck. Being literally one mile away, across the Brooklyn Bridge, they headed over there immediately, with their chief, and arrived just as the second plane struck, crashing into the South Tower. They had spent the following weeks as part of the team sifting through the rubble at Ground Zero, in what they had described as the ‘Belly of the Beast’. Dennis had then transferred to the crime scene tent and Pat to the bereavement centre on Pier 92.

In the ensuing years both men, previously extremely fit, had developed asthma, as well as trauma-related mental health problems, and had transferred from the rough and tumble world of the NYPD to the calmer waters of the Special Investigations Unit at the District Attorney’s Office.

Pat brought Grace up to speed on their current work, which was mostly transporting and interrogating mobsters. They now knew the US underworld as well as anybody. Pat talked about how the Mafia no longer had the juice it used to have. Villains flipped easier today than they used to. Who wouldn’t try to cut a deal, Pat said, when looking at the wrong end of a twenty-year to life sentence?

Hopefully they’d find in the next twenty-four hours someone who’d known Ronnie Wilson, someone who had helped him. If anyone could help him to look for someone who, Grace was becoming increasingly certain, had deliberately disappeared during 9/11 and its aftermath, it was these two.

‘You’re looking younger than ever,’ Pat said, suddenly changing the subject. ‘You must be in love.’

‘That wife of yours, she still never turned up, right?’ Dennis asked.

‘No,’ was his short answer. He’d rather not talk about Sandy.

‘He’s just envious,’ Pat said. ‘Cost him a fortune to get rid of his!’

Grace laughed and at that moment his phone beeped with an incoming text. He looked down.

Glad u there safe. Miss u. Humphrey misses u

too. No one 2 throw up on. XXX

He grinned, instantly feeling a pang of longing for Cleo. Then he remembered something. ‘If we’ve got five minutes, could we go into one of those big Toys R Us places? I’ll get my god-daughter’s Christmas present. She’s into something called Bratz.’

‘Biggest one’s in Times Square, we can swing by there now, then go on to W, where we thought we’d start,’ Pat said.

‘Thanks.’ Grace stared out of the window. They were going up an incline, past precarious-looking scaffolding. Steam rose from a subway vent.