“That’s where I’ve seen you before,” Stella interrupted angrily. “You were in the shop. You’ve been following me!” Her voice climbed in volume and pitch as she made her accusation and she pushed Guy out of the way. “I’ll have you, bitch. Fucking dyke. Just wait, I’ll have you.”

“Will that be before you come out of the nick or after?” Lindsay asked sweetly.

Stella laughed in her face. “I’m not going to jail. That’s not on the agenda. You can’t hand me over to the cops, because this is all being done under your precious friend Helen’s umbrella. I go down and I take my partners with me.”

“Wait a minute,” Guy said nervously.

“It’s all right, Guy,” Stella said, reaching out and patting his arm as she would have done a dog. “I don’t think Helen’s friend wants to come and visit her in Holloway.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Lindsay said, relaxing as she played her trump card. “We didn’t just look in the bottom drawer. We’ve been right through your filing cabinet and your computer files. Pretty stupid to use Blue as your password when you’re making pornography, don’t you think?”

Guy looked as if he wanted to be sick. His eyes were everywhere except on Helen and Stella. “Listen, I’m sure we can sort this out . . .” His voice trailed off as he realized no one cared what he thought.

“Shut up, Guy,” Helen said savagely. “Listen to some sense for a change.”

Stella cocked her head to one side and put her hands on her hips. “Okay, smartarse. Tell us what it is you think you know.”

Lindsay perched on the corner of the desk and spoke as dispassionately as she could manage. “We know all about Shooting Star Investments. We know that since it started with virtually no assets except an interest-free loan of £500,000 from an unspecified source, it has built into a considerable earner. In the space of a mere eight months, it has made profits of around £450,000 from the sale of video films produced by Shooting Star Investments.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Stella said, refusing to give an inch. “There isn’t a court in the land that’s going to penalize me for being a successful businesswoman. And there isn’t a police force in the land that will prosecute Shooting Star for those videos. I’m not a fool. We might have sailed close to the wind, but none of the films we made is anything like hard core enough to interest the Vice Squad.”

“Who said anything about the Vice Squad?” Lindsay asked, a threatening edge slipping past her control and into her voice. “I’m talking about the Fraud Squad.”