What does it matter? It’s over, settled, restituted. The last debt has been cleared. The violin that he loved so much it never left his side has been returned to its rightful owner. Off to Baileys tomorrow and then up for sale or put out on loan to a promising newcomer – like that distant Odessa cousin of David Oistrakh’s whom we have just signed. Mine alone to decide.

And that’s when I spot the trap, the revenge for his displacement. What will happen when I take this fiddle in for repair? Bartholomew Bailey, grandson of the great Arbuthnot, will receive me with unctuous expertise. But the moment I leave the shop, he will search the card files. Haven’t we seen this Guadagnini before? Isn’t this the Hubay that Mr Simmonds senior bought for that young virtuoso, Rapoport, in, when was it, May 1947? And didn’t the violin vanish with Rapoport, four years later, no trace of either of them ever since?

If this is the Guadagnini, where is Rapoport? Was the insurance ever collected? The police will have to be informed. The violin is a piece of evidence in a missing-persons investigation. Now, Mr Simmonds, where did you say you found this violin, and would you mind telling us exactly where you were and who saw you on the morning of 3 May 1951, when Mr Rapoport disappeared? Take all the time you need. We never call time on a possible homicide investigation.

Phew, I congratulate myself, that was close. I could have gone to jail. Dovidl must have been testing to see if my strategic brain is still ticking over. Damn. I cannot take this violin into a restorer or put it up for sale without bringing the plods to my door, followed by the press. Dovidl has released his grip on me but he has made me the prisoner of his instrument, his most cherished possession. I lay the violin case beside me on the seat. When I die, I suppose, I shall have to have it buried with me to end the matter once and for all. I lift up the case and see my coffin.

No, that’s ridiculous. I can get out of this.

The next morning I call a man I know, Norman Lebrecht by name, a newspaper columnist notorious for his acerbic exposures of musical skulduggery. We fix lunch, and I proceed to lay some of my cards on a white tablecloth at the Langham Hotel, where Puccini, Janáček and Sibelius used to stay.

‘I wonder if you remember,’ I begin, ‘the strange case of Alma Rosé.’