Cornelius dusted chocolate crumbs from his lap. 'I don't think we're really cut out for a life of brig-andage. We must remember to pay everyone back as soon as we're able.'

'So where do we go from here?' Anna licked her fingers.

'Back to my house,' Cornelius told her. 'We'll have to walk I'm afraid. I had a car, but it got-'

'Dumped on,' said Tuppe. 'From a great height. A crying shame so it was.'

'We were tricked,' Cornelius explained. 'By a villain called Arthur Kobold. He employed me to find the missing chapters from a great book. Tuppe and I were almost killed doing so. Come on, let's go. I'll tell you everything that happened on the way.

Anna shrugged. 'I'm still not certain I should believe anything you've told me so far.'

'It's all true.' Cornelius stood and stretched.

'It is,' Tuppe agreed. 'There's no plug on that drill, by the way.'

'Stuff the plug,' said Anna. 'Tell me again about the booty.'

'Tell me again about the booty.' These words, although spoken at exactly the same moment, came from another mouth altogether.

Coincidence? Synchronicity? The chromium-plated megaphone of destiny? The speaker of the words didn't know. Neither did he care. All he knew about and all he cared about, above and beyond everything, including the call of duty, absolutely everything, was the science of deduction. The art of detection.

And why should it be otherwise?

For this man was a detective. And not just any old detective. This man was the detective.

This was he of the Harris Tweed three-piece whistle.

He of the albino crop and the ivory ear-ring.

He of the mirrored pince-nez, the black malacca cane and the heavy pigskin valise.

He of the occasional affectation.

This was the man, the legend and the detective.

Inspectre Hovis of Scotland Yard. (Who?) The man, the legend and the detective straddled a single regulation police-issue chair and carefully re-phrased his question.'The booty,' he boomed in a deep baronial bari-tone. The voice of one whose social cla.s.s is scheduled to be first up against the wall come the revolution. 'Tell me about it.'

Terence Arthur Mulligan, known regularly as 'the accused', made a surly face at the great detective.

'I've told you all I know,' he muttered in fluent working cla.s.s.

'Then tell me again.'

'Look,' Terence gripped the edge of the regulation police-issue interview table, 'I was driving me cab, right? And I'd just dropped off me fare, right? Old bloke, white hair, looked like Bertrand Russell.'

'Bertrand Russell.' Hovis breathed on to the silver pommel of his cane and buffed it with a mono-grammed handkerchief.

'Bertrand Russell, 'cept it weren't him, because he's dead. Though I did have him in the back of me cab once. D'you know what I asked him?'

'About the booty.' Hovis examined his reflection in his cane's gleaming pommel. It was immaculate.

As ever.

'Nah, it weren't about that. I. asked him-' But the flow of Mulligan's discourse was unexpectedly staunched by the sudden introduction of a polished silver pommel into his gob.

'The diamonds.' Inspectre Hovis rattled Mulligan's teeth, withdrew the cane and cracked it down on the interview table. 'Tell me about the bally diamonds and tell me now.

'Just you see here...' Mulligan fell back, flapping and spluttering.

'No.' Hovis rose to loom above him. 'Just you see here. You were pulled in for exceeding the speed limit. When asked to turn out your pockets, what should the arresting officer find but a veritable king's ransom in diamonds. Now, I am going to ask you just one time more. Where did you get them?'

'I found them. I was having a f.a.g, right? Sitting in me cab and then there was a b.l.o.o.d.y big explosion and this dirty great sort of train thing came steaming out of this h.o.a.rding. Lights flashing and stuff. And it flew by, right? And then I saw the diamonds. They were lying all over the road. So I scooped them up and I was just driving to the nearest police station to hand them in, when two of your blokes stopped me, right?'

'Wrong,' said Inspectre Hovis.

'It's the truth,' pleaded Mulligan. 'Except for the last bit. I wasn't really taking them to the nearest police station.'

'No,' said Hovis. 'I thought not.'

'No,' said Mulligan. 'I was going to distribute them amongst the poor and needy.'

Hovis raised his cane to smite Mr Mulligan, but thought better of it. There was always the chance that the video camera, supposedly recording the interview, might actually be switched on. 'Tell me some more about this train,' he said wearily.

'I only saw it for a moment. It was like a ghost train or something. It made this sound...

The great detective lifted a quizzical eyebrow.

'Yabba dabba do,' said Terence Arthur Mulligan. 'Where did you steal those diamonds?'

'I didn't steal them!' Mulligan drummed his fists on the table. 'How many more times? I found them.

They were lying all over the road. Just like I told your blokes.'

'Yet when they drove you back to the scene of this outre occurrence, they could find no broken h.o.a.rding. No evidence of any train.'

'I can't explain that.' Mulligan slumped in his chair. 'But I didn't steal them. I found them. I swear.

Hovis shook his head. 'No,' said he, 'and again no. I put it to you that you are telling me a pack of lies. Spinning me the crambe repit.i.ta.'

'What is that, by the way?'

'The crambe repit.i.ta. The warmed-up cabbage. The old old story.'

'Ali,' said Terence. 'That.'

'That.' Inspectre Hovis removed his mirrored pince-nez and fixed Mulligan with a baleful stare. 'I regret to inform you, sir, that you are, as we say in the trade, bang to rights. In the frame and up the Swanee. Flagrante delicto, or as near as makes no odds.''I wanna see my brief,' growled Terence, who knew his rights.

'And so you shall,' replied Inspectre Hovis, who knew them also. 'But you are going down this time, chummy. There's bird in this for you. Your goose is cooked.'

'Your goose is cooked, dear,' called the mother of Cornelius Murphy to the adoptive father thereof.

Her words travelled through the open kitchen door of the family home, down the length of the back garden and fell upon the intended ears of her large and sorry-looking spouse.

Jack Murphy sat in the doorway of his shed. The very picture of despair. His wig was off and his great head was down. A multiplicity of chins rested upon his befairisled chest. The bepatched elbows of his shirt rested upon the bepatched knees of his corduroy trews. His hooded eyes were fixed upon the dud cheque that he held between prodigious fingers.

The once merry mouth was turned down at the corners and a low murmur arose from it, as a rumble of distant thunder.

'Woe unto the house of Murphy,' murmured this rumble. 'For lo it has become undone.'

The daddy held up the cheque and let the late afternoon sun play upon its evil edges. Twelve hours before it had read, Pay Jack Murphy the sum of 5000. Signed Arthur Kobold. But no longer.

When he had presented it to the bank, a terrible transformation had occurred. The words of joy had vanished away, to be replaced by those which glowed there still. Pay this fat fool one hundred laughs, then kick him into the street.

The junior bank clerk had been pleased to do so. 'Your son was in here earlier with one of these,'

he smirked.

The elder Murphy scowled at the rogue cheque. He'd been done. His son had been done. Kobold had st.i.tched them up like a pair of the proverbials. It was too much to bear.

'Are you coming in to eat this goose?' called his wife. 'The cat's already had two of its legs. You'd best hurry before it gets the others.'

Inspectre Hovis returned to his office. It was a long haul from the interview rooms of Scotland Yard, but he knew the way well enough by now. He strode down a corridor. Marched up a staircase. Strutted along a pa.s.sageway. Strolled through the typing pool. Sauntered past the forensic labs. Plodded down a back stairway. Stumbled through a fire exit and finally staggered across the car park to the Portakabin.

The Portakabin!

Hovis gazed up at the abomination and chewed at his lower lip. And the same evil thoughts entered his mind as ever they had done for the last twenty-three days. The days that he had been exiled here.

And the same name came once more to his lips. The name that he loathed and despised with every natural fibre of his expensively clad being. The name of Brian 'Bulwer' Lytton.

Chief Inspector Lytton. The new broom that was sweeping clean the department.

And a fresh young broom he was. Ten years the junior of Hovis. And an influential broom also. One which held sway with those of the high echelon. One which had had Hovis 'Temporarily Relocated'. And who now occupied his former office in a manner that seemed anything but temporary.

'Lytton.' Inspectre Hovis uttered the name as the profanity it was and, turning momentarily from the prefabricated door of the Portakabin, he raised a defiant fist towards the distant window of his erstwhile domain. 'I'll be back,' said he.

He didn't see the flutter of the venetian blinds, nor the satisfied smile on the face of Brian 'Bulwer'

Lytton as he fluttered them. Which was probably all for the best really.

The temporarily relocated detective pressed open the prefabricated door and entered the disagreeable confines of his new abode. They were crowded. Very crowded.

Elderly filing cabinets flanked the cabin, standing where the removal men had left them. Their drawered faces to the walls, as if in disgrace. Files, once impeccably indexed, were now piled in unmarked boxes, cartons and crates, along with the inspectre's personal effects. His pictures, commonplace books, fencing trophies, awards for bravery, bits and bobs and fixtures and fittings.

But where was his desk? Where his precious Louis XV ormolu-mounted, kingswood and parquetrykneehole desk? With its painted leather-lined top and its channelled border? With its kneehole flanked by drawers with rococo handles and ram's mask escutcheons? The desk presented to him by the royal house of Windsor, in grat.i.tude for his sensitive handling of a tricky little matter concerning an heir to the throne, a h.o.m.oeopathist called Chunky and a Dormobile named Desire. Where that?

Still in his old office, that was where! Too large to get into the Portakabin and now commandeered by Chief Inspector Brian b.l.o.o.d.y Lytton!

Hovis glowered about his temporary accommodation, regarding it with a face of foul contempt.

Taking in its each and every hideous detail, before releasing his pent-up fury in a silent primal scream.

This done, he straightened his regimental necktie, placed his cane by the door, removed his pince-nez, folded them into a sleek tortoisesh.e.l.l case and slipped this into his top pocket. And then he smiled upon his second in command.

His second in command smiled back at him from her place behind the knackered trestle-table, which now served both she and Hovis as a desk. Her name was Polly. Polly Gotting. She was Anna Gotting's twin sister. And she was the inspectre's new second in command.

His old second in command, often years standing reliable Ron St.u.r.dy, had been temporarily relocated. And although Polly was quick on the uptake, willing, eager and helpful and possessed of an IQ far in excess of reliable Ron's, she just wasn't the same.

'Any joy?' Polly asked.

'Joy?' Hovis had almost forgotten the meaning of the word. 'Joy?'

'With Mulligan. Did he respond positively to questioning?'

'No.' Hovis negotiated his way between the boxes cartons and crates. 'He remains adamant. A train emerged from nowhere and showered the street with diamonds. He just picked them up.

'You'll have to let him go then.'

'I know.' Hovis sank on to a cardboard box. Something valuable within fractured with an alarming crack. The inspectre was deaf to the sound. 'Have you rechecked all the witnesses' statements?'

'The independent witnesses? Yes. There were a lot of reports. Some kind of weird train. Three people have come forward to say they saw a taxi-driver picking up what looked like diamonds after it pa.s.sed by.'

'A curious business.' Inspectre Hovis rapped a brisk tattoo on the prefabricated floor with the heels of his hand-st.i.tched brogues. 'Something happened last night. Something momentous. Half the force out in pursuit of a spikey Volkswagen. A ward full of chase casualties. A train from nowhere and a cache of diamonds. Did you check on the diamonds? Was I right?'

'You were right.' Polly pa.s.sed papers. The in-spectre inspected them. 'Amazingly they were still on record.'

'I knew it.' Hovis scanned the papers, nodding all the while.

'But how did you know? How could you possibly recognize the cut of diamonds stolen before you were even born?'

'The great unsolveds.' Hovis returned the papers, then tapped the portside of his skull. 'All in here.

They are the staff of life to me. There is crime and there is cla.s.sic crime. I have it within me to solve the Crime of the Century. It is my destiny. I know it and I will fulfil it. When I saw Mulligan's diamonds my heart rose. I recognized them immediately to be part of the lost G.o.dolphin h.o.a.rd. If those diamonds had not been stolen in 1914, it is probable that the First World War might never have taken place.'

'Really?' Polly shook her head. 'I always thought that the war was precipitated by the a.s.sa.s.sination of Austria's crown prince, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to Emperor Franz Josef I, at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914.'

'Did you indeed?' Hovis examined his fingernails.

They were immaculate. As ever. 'Then let me tell you this, history is rarely written up by those who actually make it.'

'Oh I do so agree. As Gibbon remarked in Decline and Fall, Chapter Three, History is indeed little more than a register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.'

'Quite so,' said Inspectre Hovis.'And wasn't it Napoleon who wrote, What is history but a fable agreed upon?'

'I believe it was,' said Inspectre Hovis.

'And Sir Robert Walpole. All history is a lie, he said.'

'Polly,' said Inspectre Hovis.