The Treasure of a Byzantine Merchant

Kamila Housková, a student at the School of Applied Arts in Prague working part-time at an engravers' cooperative, arrives at the main police station with important information. A customer has come to the engraving workshop where she works asking them to make a cast of an old coin. The problem is that the coin, as the girl was to find out, was originally part of the well-known treasure of a ninth-century Byzantine merchant, which was supposed to have been completely destroyed by fire during an air raid in the Second World War. The young criminologist Exner doesn't take the enthusiastic blonde too seriously but, since he quite fancies her, he finally offers to help her. Kamila is not only good-looking; she is also tremendously curious and decides to take part in the investigation despite Exner's attempt to forbid her. A woman's dead body is found at the site of a car accident. The body doesn't seem to belong to either of the participants in the collision. The body has fallen out of the boot of one of the cars. His investigation into the violent death of Holubová, an employee of the Institute of Archaeology at the Academy of Science, leads Exner to an archaeological site with the remains of a Neolithic settlement, and to some academics in Prague. There are four suspects in the case, and they have all had a close, mostly negative, relationship with the victim. A deeper bond develops between Kamila and Exner. His thorough investigation proves successful. The person who comes to the cemetery to pick up the treasure is the senior lecturer Mr Černý, the man responsible for Ms Holubová's death and her accomplice in the earlier larceny.