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happy face. But Bryn was well acquainted with liars.
    ‘If something’s bothering you—’
    ‘Bryn!’
    The office was silenced by Jason’s shout – or possibly by the tall blonde at his side. She strode up to Bryn without waiting for an invitation.
    ‘I’m Frieda Haas from the National Crime Agency.’
    Bryn blinked at her. ‘Bloody hell, you’re quick. I wasn’t expecting you ’til at least Monday.’
    ‘And yet here I am. I will expect your full cooperation with my investigation and will be deputising your officers as required.’
    Bryn tried not to swear. She had a tinge to her accent that, combined with her name and Aryan poster-girl looks, made him think German. He could add cold efficiency to his equation now.
    ‘This is a South Wales Police investigation—’
    ‘Not anymore. Do you understand the diplomatic significance of this painting, Mr Hesketh?’
    Bryn ground his teeth. Robbing him of his title was a cheap psychological trick, but he couldn’t help the way it grated on him. ‘Enlighten me.’
    ‘The French tolerate British possession of Impressionist paintings because we guarantee their safety and security. Now one of them is missing, presumed stolen. What would happen to the National Museum of Wales if France demanded the repatriation of all French paintings?’
    ‘It would financially collapse,’ Owain said. His eyes were fixed on the newcomer like an eager puppy dog. It only took a whiff of the Big City to impress the boy with big ambitions.
    ‘And Welsh tourism would take a hit it can’t afford. If other museums received similar demands, the financial recovery could stutter. This is about so much more than a stolen painting.’

Chapter 7
Smooth operator
    Amy was seething. How dare he hang up on her! While flirting with that moronic NCA officer!
    She threw her phone on the floor, the casing bursting open and the battery lying exposed on the floor. She left it there out of spite. If Jason wanted to get hold of her, he could come home.
    Staring at the broken phone, Amy realised that had been a particularly stupid thing to do. But she couldn’t quite muster the effort to put it back together, so it remained as a symbol of her anger – towards Jason and NCA agents who blatantly wanted to sleep with him.
    Amy knew Jason was a hit with women, but she rarely witnessed these encounters. Somehow, it made the reality more solid, the churning in her gut justified. Of course, this was professional interest. While she’d like to say his tail chasing had never compromised him professionally, she remembered all too well the witness he took to bed and the ill-fated date to a body dump.
    She swallowed a couple of little blue pills, to quiet her anger, and returned to her research. The original design and blueprints for the National Museum of Wales were locked away in an archive somewhere, and the historical map data was sadly lacking – at least, in an online-accessible format. From what she could tell, however, there had been a number of architectural landmarks nearby, including an old convent, numerous canals and, of course, Cardiff Castle. The museum had been built in what had been Cathays Park, the only remnant a small patch of grass in the centre of the civic buildings which boasted the city’s war memorial.
    It was therefore feasible that there was some underground way out of the museum that the thief could’ve exploited. Amy would need to access experts in historical architecture to confirm it, and the most likely candidates worked at said museum. Which argued for an inside job.
    She would need external verification of possible locations before sending Jason in to investigate. It would be too easy for one of the museum staff to misdirect them, if they didn’t know what they were looking for.
    Amy set AEON to finding a list of names who might be able to help and switched her focus to investigating art heists. She was surprised by the sheer number of missing paintings, expensive ones, never