“It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it?” Lord Hickstead said as he looked around. “One could be in a country house anywhere in England. Sadly, it’s not mine.” He smiled and looked at the briefcase.

“I’m DCI Coombes and this is Detective Sergeant Scott. We believe that we have found your stolen briefcase.”

“Oh, good,” Hickstead responded, trying his best to sound pleased. “I’m delighted. Are my papers still inside? They are quite confidential.”

“No, I’m afraid not, but shall we take a look inside, so that you can be sure that the case is yours?” DCI Coombes carefully set the briefcase down on a glass topped table in front of him. He suspected that if he broke the table it would cost his monthly salary to replace it. He looked at their host.

“This is your briefcase, isn’t it, Lord Hickstead?”

“Yes, I believe it is, though they all look the same from the outside.”

“We recovered the briefcase when the mugger eventually confessed that he had discarded it as he was being chased,” Coombes explained. “It was found less than a hundred yards from where you were attacked. It has your fingerprints on the handle, and his on the sides. Once he heard about that, he knew the game was up.”

Coombes opened the briefcase. Inside lay a sealed Jiffy bag and another sealed envelope addressed by hand to Dr Crippin. The police had carefully resealed the envelopes for the purposes of this morning’s visit.

“Are these yours, sir?” DS Scott asked. “It’s just that you didn’t mention them in your statement, and we were reluctant to open them without you present.”

Arthur Hickstead was on the horns of a dilemma. If he denied all knowledge of the envelopes, it meant that he lost the diamonds forever. If he confirmed they were his, he could be linked with the blackmail plots. He had to think quickly.

“No, they weren’t in there when the case was taken,” he said calmly.

“Are you quite certain of that, sir?” Coombes asked, looking Hickstead squarely in the eyes.”

Hickstead felt a quickening of his heart rate. He didn’t like the way this interview was going. Nevertheless, he answered calmly. “That is a puzzle, detective, but not one I can help you with, I’m afraid. Those packages do not belong to me. I’ve never seen them before.”

DS Scott wrote copiously, being careful to record the Peer’s words accurately.

“We didn’t want to risk your safety, your Lordship, and so we scanned the packages for incendiary devices,” Coombes said. “They were both cleared, which is why we have brought them here, but I think you might be rather sorry you didn’t claim ownership of the Jiffy bag. That is, of course, if the scanner operator is right in his assumption as to what it contains.”

Coombes opened the Jiffy bag and slid out the velvet pouch. He closed the briefcase, and very carefully he tipped the diamonds onto the brown leather lid.

“Bloody hell!” DS Scott exclaimed, acting his part well, and then added somewhat sheepishly, “Sorry, Lord Hickstead.”

“No need to apologise to me, young man. ‘Bloody hell’ seems to cover it rather appropriately,” the Peer replied, gazing at the stones with envy. “I suppose it’s too late for me to claim the Jiffy bag now,” he continued, smiling at his quip, even though he didn’t feel like smiling at all.

“I’m afraid so, sir. DS Scott, could you take a record photograph, please?”

“Sorry, guv,” Scott said, shrugging his shoulders. “I didn’t bring the camera with me.” Coombes seemed to be bristling with anger, and Scott added, “You didn’t say anything to me about bringing a camera.”

The situation seemed as though it might soon become embarrassing and so Lord Hickstead spoke up.

“Gentlemen, I have a digital camera you can use.” He turned to open a Pilot case behind him. Coombes, unseen by the Peer, winked at Scott. The practised double act had worked again. His Lordship turned back to face them and handed a Nikon Coolpix P100 to the DS.

Scott took two photographs of the diamonds, and pressed the display button to check that the resulting images were satisfactory. He then pressed the back button surreptitiously, but there were no more photographs on the card. It didn’t matter. They had what they wanted.

“I’ll transfer the photos from the card onto my eBook,” DS Scott said as he took a tiny Acer Notebook Computer from his bag and slotted the SD card into it.

***

When the stones had been safely restored to their pouch, DCI Coombes turned his attention to the other envelope and spoke solemnly to their host.

“Sir, I do not mean to offend you in any way, but the scans show that this envelope contains dense photo paper, the type usually associated with Polaroid cameras. Could there be any Polaroid photographs in here that may cause you embarrassment?”

Lord Hickstead laughed. “If that is your overly polite way of asking whether the photos are of me in indiscreet circumstances, then no. I’m a bit to old for all that sort of thing.”

“All right, sir, I am now opening the envelope,” Coombes explained, “but I must warn you that the contents could either be innocent or explicit, we have no way of knowing.”

“I think we are all men of the world here,” Hickstead smiled. “I don’t think I will be offended.”

The photos dropped out of the envelope, and DCI Coombes slipped on a pair of cotton gloves and arranged them inside a transparent evidence bag so that they could all be seen. The reality, of course, was that they had all seen them before; indeed, the forensics lab had already extracted Lord Hickstead’s prints from the Polaroids.

“Lord Hickstead, have you seen any of these photos before, or do they in fact belong to you?” Coombes asked. Scott waited to write down anything His Lordship might say, verbatim, when he denied all knowledge of the photos which carried his fingerprints, as he surely would.

The photos were in random order, but they all showed a girl, probably in her late teens, evidently inside a house. She appeared in various states of undress with two different men. Only one of the men appeared in the frame at any one time, suggesting that the other was taking the pictures. The girl seemed semi-conscious in most of the shots. Her tired, half closed eyes were unfocussed, her pupils massively dilated. Lines of what might have been cocaine could be seen on the table in front of the sofa the girl was kneeling on. Any one of these photos would end the burgeoning career of a young woman in the public eye and make any serious romantic relationship a thing of the past.

“No,” Lord Hickstead responded after a moment’s silence. “I have never seen these photographs before. Do you know who she is?”

DS Scott wrote assiduously in his notebook, as Coombes answered.

“I’m afraid not, Lord Hickstead. She might be a singer or a film star or something, or she just might be an ordinary girl. I’m afraid I’m not au-fait with current pop culture.”

Both men looked at DS Scott, who was still in his twenties.

“Don’t look at me,” he said defensively. “I’m a married man. I have no idea who she is, either.”

Coombes slipped the evidence back into the briefcase, speaking as he did so.

“Well, whoever she is, these pictures are unlikely to see the light of day, which is very fortunate for her. They will probably be destroyed, after they have been tested for fingerprints.”

DS Scott had been watching the Peer closely, waiting for a reaction, and he got it. At the mention of the photos being dusted for fingerprints, the Peer blanched for a moment before regaining his composure.

“Is it really possible to lift decent fingerprints from photographs?” Hickstead asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Oh, yes,” DS Scott replied. “As a matter of fact, the secretions from the human eccrine glands are particularly responsive to the chemicals used for film emulsions. In the seventies and eighties criminals would use Polaroids to photograph banks and shops when planning robberies and the like. More than one gang has been sent down by their careless handling of Polaroid photos.”