Miriam held the necklace under the kitchen tap, rubbing gently with her thumb, and the tarnish reduced to reveal a dull gold lustre and the unmistakable shape of an oval pendant, roughly the size of a fifty-pence piece. On one face, a small inlaid stone — deep red, possibly garnet—surrounded by a border of tiny raised dots. On the reverse, markings that might have been letters, or might have been something older than letters.
“Take it to someone,” Miriam said, setting it on the draining board.
On Monday, Gerald took it to Ackerman & Son on Parliament Street, the kind of shop that still had a bell above the door and velvet pads in the window. He’d bought Miriam’s engagement ring there, twenty-six years earlier, from the father. Now it was the son — David Ackerman, fifties, half-moon glasses, the careful unhurried manner of a man who had handled other people’s precious things his entire life.
Gerald set the pendant on the glass counter and said nothing, curious to see what a professional would make of it. David Ackerman picked it up. He turned it once. Then he set it down, removed his glasses, and looked at Gerald with an expression that was not quite what Gerald had expected—not the polite curiosity of a man assessing a trinket, but something considerably more guarded than that.