He gave her a sarcastic smile and said, "Oh yes, the Dick Van Dyke school of Cockney English. Very good." She nodded as though taking a bow and got stuck into another sandwich.

"Well I don't have very much. It's a leather and bone box containing a piece of ancient platinum jewellery. Like a piece of filigree. I can draw you a rough sketch based on a fairly rough sketch I was shown," he said, pulling his notepad out of his folio case and starting to draw.

"I thought platinum was a modern thing, like aloom..." she paused. "Aluminium," she said carefully.

"Well, not so, apparently. According to my client, the Egyptians and the Aztecs both made platinum jewellery. Or it may have been Mayans," he said, unsure.

"I'm guessing Incas, actually," Susan suggested. "Point is, people who lived a long time ago. So is this Egyptian or South American?" she asked.

David had finished sketching. "Apparently Chinese, although I don't know from where exactly." He turned the pad round and slid it towards Susan. "Not exactly Michelangelo, but..." He broke off when he saw Susan's expression. "What is it?" he asked.

Susan was trying to open her bag and in her haste failing to unclip the catch. "Hold on," she said, getting the bag open, pulling out her iBook and flipping up the screen. She turned on the power. "When you say Chinese, might you maybe mean Tibetan?" she asked. The iBook was coming to life.

"Well, all I have is China and the fact that there are supposedly legends told about it there. You being an expert in legends and mythology..." he trailed off.

She was clicking on things. "Sorry, won't be a minute," she said. And then said triumphantly, "Yeah, there are legends about it and here's one of them." She rotated the laptop around so that David could see the screen. The image displayed was a piece of paper containing a lot of hand-written text, in the roman alphabet, and a sketch that looked not unlike the one on David's notepad.

"Damn, you're good," said David. "So what is it?"

"You don't understand," Susan said, "I was reading this," she tapped the screen, "this morning. And then this afternoon you ask me to identify it. How spooky is that?"