a while, but she couldn’t keep it up. It wasn’t her style. No wonder they all walked around at the courthouse with a miserable face.
“Find anything?” Van In inquired.
“No prints,” Leo declared in a resigned tone. “And the gloves aren’t much help either … recent design, available everywhere. Maybe a microscopic examination might come up with something.”
“And the aqua regis?” Hannelore turned toward Vanmaele.
“What do you mean, ma’am?”
“Can’t it be traced? If you ask me, there’s a good ten gallons of the stuff in that tank. A sizeable amount for something that’s not available in the supermarket.”
“So you think there might be a record somewhere of such a purchase? If only. Aqua regis isn’t as rare and exotic as the name suggests. It’s just a mixture of one part nitric acid and three parts hydrochloric acid. Two innocent components you can buy in any drugstore without arousing anyone’s suspicions. Jewelers use it to separate gold from other alloyed metals.”
Leo grabbed a chair and sat down opposite Hannelore and Van In. He took off his glasses and launched into his explanation. Leo had started his career as a schoolteacher. He loved teaching, but the pupils at a variety of high schools hadn’t shared his enthusiasm.
“Pure twenty-four-karat gold is soft and unworkable,” he lectured. His round rosy cheeks were riddled with rosacea. “What we know as eighteen-karat or fourteen-karat is in fact an amalgam of gold and copper, silver, nickel, or palladium. The more the copper, for example, the yellower the gold. So-called “white gold” is a combination of gold and palladium or nickel. Eighteen-karat is an alloy containing 75 percent gold.”
“Well, well,” said Hannelore, “you learn something new every day!”
Leo thanked her with a broad smile. The lovely Hannelore was apparently everyone’s favorite.
“Processing old gold, or ‘scrap’ as they call it, is a question of separating the components. And one of gold’s more agreeable features is that it’s impervious to acid. The procedure is child’s play. You make a cocktail of two concentrated acids and dump in the ‘scrap.’ That’s how jewelers recover the pure gold.”
Leo Vanmaele returned his glasses to his nose as a sign that his lecture was over. He peered at the lovebirds in front of him through his thick lenses. For Leo, the situation was crystal-clear: something was blossoming between those two. His only problem was trying to understand how a woman like Hannelore could fall for the likes of Van In. His friend was forty-one, smoked like a nineteenth-century chimney, and drank like a Hummer in overdrive.
“So Degroof has nothing to complain about,” Hannelore concluded.
“The gold can still be used.”
“Absolutely, ma’am,” said Leo with a little too much emphasis on the “ma’am.” As if he wanted to underline the difference in rank.
“But ninety percent of the retail value of an exclusive piece of jewelry is in the design and the labor costs. Whoever did this caused a great deal of damage. If they had just taken it all, the insurance would have paid Degroof back to the last cent. Now it is more complicated.”
“Revenge,” said Van In cautiously.
“Exacted by a classically schooled psycho.” Hannelore waved the square of paper in the air.
Leo didn’t understand what she was talking about and paid no attention to her remark.
“If it was an act of revenge, then whoever did it was perfectly prepared,” he said. “No amateurs involved here. Semtex was used to blow open the safe, and that’s not the kind of thing you can pick up at the local bakery. The entire process of dissolving gold in aqua regis also takes more than twenty-four hours. Whoever was responsible must have known that the shop was closed on Saturday.”
“And don’t forget the alarm system. The culprit knew the code and the procedure followed by the security firm,” said Van In.
Hannelore fished a
“Find anything?” Van In inquired.
“No prints,” Leo declared in a resigned tone. “And the gloves aren’t much help either … recent design, available everywhere. Maybe a microscopic examination might come up with something.”
“And the aqua regis?” Hannelore turned toward Vanmaele.
“What do you mean, ma’am?”
“Can’t it be traced? If you ask me, there’s a good ten gallons of the stuff in that tank. A sizeable amount for something that’s not available in the supermarket.”
“So you think there might be a record somewhere of such a purchase? If only. Aqua regis isn’t as rare and exotic as the name suggests. It’s just a mixture of one part nitric acid and three parts hydrochloric acid. Two innocent components you can buy in any drugstore without arousing anyone’s suspicions. Jewelers use it to separate gold from other alloyed metals.”
Leo grabbed a chair and sat down opposite Hannelore and Van In. He took off his glasses and launched into his explanation. Leo had started his career as a schoolteacher. He loved teaching, but the pupils at a variety of high schools hadn’t shared his enthusiasm.
“Pure twenty-four-karat gold is soft and unworkable,” he lectured. His round rosy cheeks were riddled with rosacea. “What we know as eighteen-karat or fourteen-karat is in fact an amalgam of gold and copper, silver, nickel, or palladium. The more the copper, for example, the yellower the gold. So-called “white gold” is a combination of gold and palladium or nickel. Eighteen-karat is an alloy containing 75 percent gold.”
“Well, well,” said Hannelore, “you learn something new every day!”
Leo thanked her with a broad smile. The lovely Hannelore was apparently everyone’s favorite.
“Processing old gold, or ‘scrap’ as they call it, is a question of separating the components. And one of gold’s more agreeable features is that it’s impervious to acid. The procedure is child’s play. You make a cocktail of two concentrated acids and dump in the ‘scrap.’ That’s how jewelers recover the pure gold.”
Leo Vanmaele returned his glasses to his nose as a sign that his lecture was over. He peered at the lovebirds in front of him through his thick lenses. For Leo, the situation was crystal-clear: something was blossoming between those two. His only problem was trying to understand how a woman like Hannelore could fall for the likes of Van In. His friend was forty-one, smoked like a nineteenth-century chimney, and drank like a Hummer in overdrive.
“So Degroof has nothing to complain about,” Hannelore concluded.
“The gold can still be used.”
“Absolutely, ma’am,” said Leo with a little too much emphasis on the “ma’am.” As if he wanted to underline the difference in rank.
“But ninety percent of the retail value of an exclusive piece of jewelry is in the design and the labor costs. Whoever did this caused a great deal of damage. If they had just taken it all, the insurance would have paid Degroof back to the last cent. Now it is more complicated.”
“Revenge,” said Van In cautiously.
“Exacted by a classically schooled psycho.” Hannelore waved the square of paper in the air.
Leo didn’t understand what she was talking about and paid no attention to her remark.
“If it was an act of revenge, then whoever did it was perfectly prepared,” he said. “No amateurs involved here. Semtex was used to blow open the safe, and that’s not the kind of thing you can pick up at the local bakery. The entire process of dissolving gold in aqua regis also takes more than twenty-four hours. Whoever was responsible must have known that the shop was closed on Saturday.”
“And don’t forget the alarm system. The culprit knew the code and the procedure followed by the security firm,” said Van In.
Hannelore fished a
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