Through the tinted car window, I could see the silk dress lying on the back seat, shrouded in non-acidic paper. We’d decided it was best if Liam drove the dress himself to a lab he had found on the Dutch mainland. Located in the small town of Castricum, the archaeological facility was maintained by a private investment fund and boasted a state-of-the-art lab as well as an archival storage system endorsed by Harvard University. He’d spent an hour this morning speaking to the archaeological team there going over last-minute preparations for the dress’s arrival. I’d chosen to stay behind, promising to join him in a few days’ time. I wanted to be on Texel when Rob’s team of technical Defence divers arrived to explore the wreck. The other artefacts – the lice comb, the velvet purse, the book cover and the glass earrings – had been collected yesterday morning by an antiquities historian Liam knew who ran a research facility at Leiden University. The historian, a woman called Marien Smits, had an army of post-doc students and researchers at her disposal and she’d promised to share her findings with us as soon as they could be collated and checked. She was particularly interested in the glass earrings and she’d emailed me this morning with a link to an article about the process 17th-century Dutch artisans had used to create them. According to the article, the glass beads were so strong they could withstand a blow from a hammer or a bullet without breaking. People gave them to their friends as love tokens or curiosities, calling them glass buttons or Dutch tears. They were valuable, but more for their scientific interest than any monetary investment. Someone had considered them precious enough to sew into the seam of the silk dress. Perhaps the dress’s owner had feared they would be stolen? But why, if they were mainly of sentimental value, had she decided to conceal them where they would not be discovered?

Bram, Nico, Sem and another man in a knitted vest pulled up in the carpark just as Liam was leaving. Bram introduced the stranger as Cristof.

‘Look after our treasure, won’t you?’ he called. Liam returned his smile tightly. He wasn’t comfortable talking to the divers. He saw them as reckless bounty hunters, clumsily destroying items of cultural value without considering the greater consequences. I’d tried to get him to understand that there were valid reasons why the divers had brought up the items, but it was no good.

Liam climbed into his hire car and drove off in the direction of the ferry.

‘There’s been a slight change of plans,’ Bram said, gathering us all together in the reception area of the clubhouse. ‘The state divers are due to arrive any minute. Before they get here, I want to know how you all feel about going down again to the wreck.’

A ripple of excitement ran though the group.