But it was a pretty heartless crime, because a lot of these postal orders and paper money were being posted off to kids as birthday presents and Jim didn’t feel too good about nicking stuff from children.

But he did see the potential.

The prop telephone box that Fudgepacker had in stock was another goody. It looked just like the real thing. It even had the phone and the coin box and everything. And nicking cash from a phonebox is hardly an evil crime, is it?

So the Rev took to hiring the telephone box and setting it up beside a row of other telephone boxes and collecting it after a few days and helping himself to the money in the cash box, which people had put in before realizing that the phone didn’t work and using one of the others. Well, he couldn’t keep hiring this week after week without rousing suspicion.

But he did see the potential.

There are other prophouses, you see. Prophouses that specialize in other items required by the film industry. There are those that hire out weapons. Those that hire out costumes. And those that hire out vehicles.

The one that hires out vehicles has an AA pickup truck in stock. It’s not a real AA pickup truck; it’s just been painted up to look like one. It does look very convincing, though.

The Reverend Jim was making quite a lot of money from the telephone box and he’d taken the lease on a lock-up garage, where he used to take the box and empty it. It occurred to him that he might branch out into car theft. And that if he was going to do so, he might as well start at the top end of the market and rip off a Rolls-Royce.

It’s remarkable really. If you tried to break into a Rolls-Royce and drive it away, people would look. People would see you. People would call the police. But if you arrive with an AA pickup truck and simply tow the Roller away, people don’t even seem to notice.

Those who do, usually laugh. Well, there’s nothing more pleasing than a broken down Rolls-Royce, is there? It’s nice to see that even rich blighters come unstuck once in a while.

The Reverend Jim would rip off a Roller a week with the hired out AA pickup truck and he probably would have been content with that. He’d made an underworld connection, which was hardly too difficult a thing to do, if you were brought up in the kind of neighbourhood where Jim was brought up. The Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood of Brentford. And this partner in crime was selling the Rollers on to Arabs and the money was pretty good. But one day, when he was returning the AA pickup truck to the prophouse that hired out the vehicles, he spied a new vehicle that they had in stock.

The prophouse had mocked it up for a crime thriller movie about a bullion robbery. The vehicle in question was a Securicor van.

The Reverend Jim was not slow to realize the potential of this particular vehicle. And of course there were those other prophouses. The ones that hired out costumes. So the uniforms wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The Reverend Jim took a week off work. He followed a real Securicor van around. Mapping its routes and logging the times at its various ports of call.

The following week he hired the van and the costumes and he and his partner in crime did the rounds, arriving ten minutes earlier than the real van.

It was a masterstroke.

And once they’d emptied the contents of the bogus van into the lock-up, they returned it and the costumes to the respective prophouses and then drove back to the lock-up in another hired van to pick up the loot and carry it far far away.

And were promptly arrested by the police.

Well, almost.

It was that close.

They were returning to the lock-up when they saw the police cars. The police had the lock-up surrounded: pretty quick work, thought Jim. Far too quick, in fact. It occurred to him that the police had probably been tipped off about all the Rollers that had been going in and out and that they’d get quite a surprise when they opened the lock-up and discovered all the newly stolen bullion.

This was just an unfortunate coincidence. A caprice of fate. Jim was pretty rattled seeing all those police cars there, but also felt somewhat proud that he had had the foresight to hire the sort of van he had hired, with which to carry his loot so far far away.

This particular van was a mock police van.

Jim had hired the police uniforms and everything.

Well, let’s face it. The police, once alerted to the robbery, would be looking for a bogus Securicor van, not a police van.

Jim got a real kick out of having real policemen help him and his partner load up the van with all the stolen booty.

He told a friend about this over the phone.

Jim was living in Spain at the time.

The Reverend Jim’s present whereabouts are unknown. But at least two further crimes committed in this country have his unique stamp on them.

The first one was the great art robbery.

Jim had always had a love for original art. His taste was for certain living artists who produced the kind of abstract stuff that most people wouldn’t give you a thank you for, but Jim adored it and wanted to own a collection.

So what Jim did was to take a short lease on a shop premises in Mayfair and open it up as a very prestigious art gallery. He then contacted the various artists for whose work he had his taste and asked them whether they’d care to exhibit. Unlike other art galleries, he would waive the 40 per cent commission on this occasion and allow the artists to keep all the money their paintings sold for. It would be good for the reputation of his gallery, he told them. A one-off event.

Well, you’d be surprised what greedy blighters some artists can be. The ones who said yes to Jim put a really high value on the pieces they exhibited.

Jim insured the lot.

Not that he expected the insurance company to actually pay up. But he felt that it was nice to have the documentation of the art works’ values, in case he ever chose to sell the pieces on in the future.

The night before the exhibition — which had been widely advertised in the arts media — was to open, Jim went round to the gallery with another hired van, opened it up with his keys, took down all the canvases and removed them to a place that was far far away.

Spain probably.

You might well know of Jim’s final great crime, although it is doubtful that you will have known it for the thing it really is until now. It was a logical progression, though. A matter of seeing potential.

Having graduated from bogus post box to bogus telephone box to bogus AA pickup truck to bogus Securicor van to bogus police van to bogus art gallery, it was natural that Jim would progress to a bogus organization into which millions and millions of pounds might readily pour, week in week out, without anyone ever seeing it for the thing it really was.

So he did.

You probably do know of it.

It’s called the National Lottery.

Allegedly.

But let us return now to Icarus Smith, who is about to have a little action. A great deal of action, as it happens.

But no.

Wait.

Let us not return to Icarus just yet. Let us return instead to Lazlo Woodbine, which is to say, the world’s greatest private eye. Because Laz is about to meet up with an old companion, a very important companion, and that companion is about to impart certain information to Laz which is of major importance to our tale. Information which will change the direction of Lazlo Woodbine’s investigations, and indeed the world, for ever.

We left Laz falling into that deep dark whirling pit of oblivion that all great genre detectives always fall into after they’ve been bopped on the head by the dame who does them wrong, or, as in this case, the fat boy barman. So let us join Laz as he regains consciousness.