A young man wearing a Vastrick polo shirt handed me an electronic screen with buttons on it. “You might want to borrow this,” he said.

“I might if I knew what it was,” I replied, and Dee laughed.

“It is a Kindle E Reader, it displays electronic books. I’ve loaded up a book you may be interested in.” Dee leaned over and switched it on. It was a large screen with navigation buttons for page turning. The screen showed black print on a white background, just like a real book.

The book title page came up as we all looked. It read “Red Art – An Unofficial Biography of Arthur Hickstead by Robin Treadwell”. Treadwell was a right wing journalist for a well known tabloid. The book was published by Cornwell Books, a reactionary publishing house with a deeply conservative bias. Dee showed me how to use the Kindle and I started to read whilst she set up the case on the Vastrick System. I could have laughed when I saw the code name she had chosen for the computer files, and for the case as a whole - “Peer Down”.

“Josh, don’t mention our investigation to anyone, because if DCI Coombes gets wind of our involvement we can expect another midnight interview.”

“Dee, I agree, but we have to continue to help Inspector Boniface where we can. He’s been a real friend.”

“Of course we will, but he knows better than anyone that to bring down a peer of the realm he will need irrefutable evidence, or he will be jumped on by everyone from the Home Secretary down.”

In three hours we were due to meet with Boniface, and so I decided to skim read the biography of the blackmailing Lord Hickstead.

Chapter 2 9

Breakfast Car, London Bound East Coast Train. Monday 8am.

Lord Hickstead was feeling quite pleased with himself. Jim and Bob had gone, along with all links to the individuals they were blackmailing. So far his revenge plan had netted him one million pounds in cash and diamonds. Of course his big pay day, five million from Sir Max, hadn’t worked out, but at least the old bully who’d made his life hell at school was now dead, which was fair compensation.

The peer finished his Great British Breakfast - too late to worry about the calories or the cholesterol now - and looked at his BlackBerry. He had meetings lined up all week, and on Wednesday he would fly to Rotterdam from London City Airport at five in the evening, returning early the next morning. He already had a buyer for the gems. He was surprised at how affected he had been by the glittering diamonds; he had even contemplated keeping them. There was a hypnotic attraction to their cleanly cut beauty. He knew that he had no option but to sell them, though. They were evidence.

As the train drew into Stevenage he smiled to himself. By the time the Dutch buyer had paid the agreed sum for the diamonds - in US dollars - into his Cayman Islands bank account, exchange rates would mean he had banked almost exactly a quarter of a million pounds.

Reaching into his pocket he retrieved a cheap white mobile phone that had been allocated to the terrorising of Richard Wolsey-Keen, banker to the rich and famous. Former chairman of the collapsed Bank of Wessex, he had persuaded Arthur Hickstead to join him on the board and invest five hundred thousand pounds, which he guaranteed would double. The bank had thrived for a couple of years, but the government had to bail it out at the start of the credit crunch, and the shares were now worthless. Arthur was livid when the man who led the bank into near bankruptcy escaped with a hefty pension and a new job with an Investment Bank in the City.

“Dear Richard,

12 hours to go. By way of reminder I don’t accept any excuses for delay. By the way, best not wear your favourite suit today.

Sam

Lord Hickstead sent the text message to the banker and looked forward to an outing to Clapham Common, which he felt sure would secure Richard Wolsey- Keen’s one million pound ransom demand.

Chapter 30

City of London Police HQ, Wood St, London: Monday, noon.

The sign on the door said ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Boddy’. We were on the first floor of the police headquarters for the first time. I noticed that the decor and furnishings were more lavish up here.

The young constable ushered us into the room where Inspector Boniface and an older heavier man in full uniform were sitting around a small but well polished conference table. They both stood, in deference to Dee, I supposed, and offered their hands. We shook hands with the new man who, I had correctly guessed, was DCS Boddy.

We sat down and the DCS spoke up straight away.

“Mr Hammond, Ms Conrad. On behalf of both the City Police and the Metropolitan Police, I would like to apologise for your treatment on Friday night. It was unnecessary, and the use of old school detective tactics is to be regretted. DCI Coombes will continue his investigations into the deaths of Andrew Cuthbertson and Sir Max, and we will cooperate wherever our paths cross. Inspector Boniface has assured the Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner that you will both help with our enquiries, but for the time being if they need to speak to you again it will be here, and in conjunction with the Inspector.”

“Thank you.” Dee and I responded almost simultaneously. There was a pause.

“Now, how are we going to manage this little rat’s nest of aristocratic villainy? What on earth is a Peer doing blackmailing folk? It’s beyond belief, and if he’s directly involved with either death, well....” Boddy let the thought hang. “Mr Hammond, you said on the phone that you had found out some historical facts about Lord Hickstead that might assist the investigation.”

“Yes,” I replied, conscious that the information was in the public domain. “It boils down to this, really. Arthur Hickstead was born in 1954 at Brighouse, close to Halifax, which is just off the M62 in Yorkshire. His parents were active in the Labour Party and when he was eleven years old his father’s Trade Union offered him a scholarship to study at a public school. They had an arrangement with Harrow on the Hill Catholic College, where scholarship boys could board at special low fees. Both sides were keen on social mobility. However, Arthur hated it, according to his biographer. He felt as though he was little more than a slave for the richer boys, and he suffered bullying and persecution because of his accent and the fact that he was a “stig”, the nickname they used for a scholarship student.

He followed some of his peers to Cambridge University and Professor Tony Bartlett was his tutor. Bartlett was arrested many times on demonstrations in the 1960s, and in the 1980s it was thought he had been working for the Soviets.

Oddly, the young Arthur chose to go into the Army for officer training at Sandhurst. The book suggests that in 1976 jobs in the City were hard to find, but retired Army officers were always sought after. He was soon disillusioned by the Army, as he saw it as an extension of the public school. He served in Northern Ireland, and was horrified at the way the officers always managed to escape punishment when a riot turned into a bloodbath, yet the ordinary squaddies would find themselves in the brig.

In 1982 he left the army, but didn’t go for a job in the City. He was head hunted for the job of Deputy to the President of the Oil, Gas and Offshore Workers Union. The unions were replacing moderate leaders with hardliners as quickly as they could, to take on Margaret Thatcher.

By 1997 he was President of UNIFY, a conglomeration of his old union and two larger unions who represented skilled tradesmen. His new position meant that he wielded enormous power in the Labour Party, but he hated New Labour with a passion, according to the book - something he denies.