Lev is on his way from Eastern Europe to Britain, seeking work. Behind him loom the figures of his dead wife, his beloved young daugher and his outrageous friend Rudi who - dreaming of the wealthy West - lives largely for his battered Chevrolet. Ahead of Lev lies the deep strangeness of the British: their hostile streets, their clannish pubs, their obsession with celebrity. London holds out the alluring possibility of friendship, sex, money and a...

When Tim Harding agrees to represent a friend at an auction in Penzance, he is unaware of the secrets that tie the ring he is sent to buy to three separated events: the loss of HMS Association with all hands in 1707; an unsolved murder in Penzance 30 years later; and a fatal accident during a dive to the wreck in 1999.