Hotel Bel-Air, Stone Canyon Road, Los Angeles

18th March – 7.12 a.m.

Verity always sat at the same table for breakfast. In the far left corner, under the awning, behind a swaying screen of bamboo grass. It was close enough to the entrance to be seen by anyone coming in, sheltered enough not to be bothered by anyone walking past.

‘Good morning, Ms Bruce.’ Philippe, the maître d’, bounded up to her, his French accent so comically thick that she wondered if he worked on it at home. ‘Your papers.’

He handed her meticulously folded copies of the Washington Post and the Financial Times, both still warm from being pressed. Politics and money. The cogs and grease of life’s little carousel, even if the deepening global economic downturn had rather slowed things recently

‘Your guest is already here.’

She pushed her sunglasses back on to her head with a frown and followed his gaze to where Earl Faulks was sitting waiting for her, absent-mindedly spinning his phone on the tablecloth.

‘He tried to sit in your seat,’ Philippe continued in an outraged whisper. ‘I moved him, of course.’

Faulks had just turned fifty but was still striking in a gaunt, patrician sort of way, his dark hooded eyes that seemed to blink in slow motion looming above a long oval face and aquiline nose, silver hair swept back off a pale face. He was wearing a dark blue linen suit, white Charvet shirt with a cut-away collar, Cartier knot cufflinks and one of his trademark bow-ties. Today’s offering was a series of garish salmon pink and cucumber green stripes that she assumed denoted one of his precious London clubs.

‘Verity! Looking gorgeous as always.’

He rose with a smile to greet her, leaning heavily on an umbrella, an almost permanent accessory since a riding accident a few years ago. She ignored him and sat down, a waiter pushing her chair in for her, the maître d’ snapping her napkin on to her lap.

‘Muesli with low-fat yogurt?’ he asked, his tone suggesting he already knew what her answer would be.

‘Yes please, Philippe.’

‘And a mineral water and a pot of fresh tea?’

‘With lemon.’

‘Of course. And for monsieur?’ He turned to Faulks, who had sat back down and was observing this ritualistic exchange with a wry smile.

‘Toast. Brown. Coffee. Black.’

‘Very well.’ The maître d’ backed away, clicking his fingers at one of the waiters to send him running to the kitchen.

Verity reached into her handbag and took out an art deco silver cigarette case engraved with flowers. Opening it carefully, she tipped the thirty or so pills it contained into a small pile on her side plate. They lay there like pebbles, an assortment of vitamins and herbal supplements in different shapes and sizes and colours, some of the more translucent ones glinting like amber.

‘Verity, darling, if you go on being this healthy, it’ll kill you,’ Faulks warned as their drinks arrived.

He was American, a shopkeeper’s son from Baltimore, if you believed his detractors – of which he had amassed his fair share over the years. Not that you could detect his origins any more; his affected accent, clipped way of speaking and occasional Britishisms reminded her of a character from an Edith Wharton novel. She’d always thought it rather a shame that he didn’t smoke – she imagined that a silver Dunhill lighter and a pack of Sobranies would have somehow suited the casual elegance of his slender fingers.

‘I mean, what time did your trainer have you up this morning for a run? Five? Six? Only tradesmen get up that early.’

‘I’m still not talking to you, Earl,’ she replied, watching carefully as the waiter strained her tea and then delicately squeezed a small piece of lemon into it.

‘You were the one who wanted to meet,’ he reminded her. ‘I was packing for the Caribbean.’

She ignored him again, although she couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy. Faulks seemed to ride effortlessly in the slipstream of the super rich as their sumptuous caravan processed around the world: Gstaad in February, the Bahamas in March, the La Prairie clinic in Montreux in April for his annual check-up, London in June, Italy for the summer, New York for the winter sales, and then a well-earned rest before the whole gorgeous procession kicked off again.

She began to sort her pills into the order in which she liked to take them, although she had long since forgotten the logic by which she’d arrived at this particular sequence. Satisfied, she began to take them in silence, washing each one down with a mouthful of water and a sharp jerk of her head.

‘Fine, you win,’ Faulks said eventually, throwing his hands up in defeat. ‘What do you want me to do? Apologise? Wear a hair shirt? Walk up the Via Dolorosa on my knees?’

‘Any of those would be a start.’ She glared at him.

‘Even when I come bearing gifts?’ He unfolded his napkin to reveal three vase fragments positioned to show that they fitted cleanly together. ‘The final pieces of the Phintias calyx krater that you’ve been collecting for the past few years.’ He smiled at her. ‘In our profession, patience truly is a necessity, not a virtue.’

‘The same fragments I seem to remember you wanted a hundred thousand for last year,’ Verity said archly. ‘Are you feeling generous or guilty?’

‘If I had a conscience I wouldn’t be in this business,’ he replied with a smile, although there was something in his voice that suggested that he was only half joking. ‘Let’s call it a peace offering.’

‘Have you any idea of the embarrassment you’ve caused me?’

‘You have nothing to be embarrassed about,’ he assured her.

‘Tell that to Thierry Normand and Sir John Sykes. According to them, I paid you ten million dollars for something that was at best “anomalous”, at worst a “pastiche”.’

‘Pastiche?’ Faulks snorted. ‘Did you tell them about the test results? Don’t they know it’s impossible to fake that sort of calcification?’

‘By then they weren’t listening.’

‘You mean they didn’t want to hear,’ he corrected her. ‘Don’t you see, Verity, darling, that they’re all jealous. Jealous of your success. Jealous that while their donors have pulled back as the recession has begun to bite, the Getty remains blessed with a three-billion-dollar endowment.’

‘Sometimes I think it’s more a curse than a blessing,’ she sniffed. ‘Do you know we have to spend four and a quarter per cent of that a year or lose our tax status? Have you any idea how hard it is to get through one hundred and twentyseven million dollars a year? Of the pressure it puts us under?’

‘I can only imagine,’ he commiserated, shaking his head. ‘That’s why the kouros was a smart buy. After all, don’t you think the Met would have made a move if they’d been given even half a chance? But you beat them to it.’

‘Vivienne Foyle is close to the Met.’ She nodded grudgingly, remembering how she had twisted the knife right at the end. ‘She’s never liked me.’

‘The problem here isn’t the kouros,’ Faulks insisted, his full baritone voice taking on the fervent conviction of a TV evangelist. ‘The problem is people’s unwillingness to accept that their carefully constructed picture of how Greek sculpture developed over the centuries might need to be rewritten. They should be thanking you for opening their eyes, for deepening their understanding, for extending the boundaries of their knowledge. Instead, they’re seeking to discredit you, just as the church did with Galileo.’

She nodded, rather liking this image of herself as an academic revolutionary that the establishment was desperate to silence at all costs. The problem was, she didn’t have the time or the temperament to become a martyr.

‘I agree with you. If I didn’t, the kouros would already be on its way back to Geneva. But the damage is done. Even if they’re wrong, it’ll take years for them to admit it. Meanwhile the director can’t look me in the eye, the trustees have asked for a second round of tests, and the New York Times is threatening to run a piece at the weekend. I mean, what if something else comes out?’