Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

He swept some papers aside to make room, laid the note down on the desk. I walked up to it, squatted down and peered at it, stood up and looked down on it, tilted my head from side to side to look at it from every angle. “Good,” I said. “Very good.” I picked it up, holding the tiniest portion of one corner, held it up to the light. “Very, very good.” I put it back down on the table again, readied my pen. Rogers crowded in close to me, and I could smell his sweat under his too-strong aftershave.

“What are we looking for?” he asked. I could feel the heat off him and wished that he would take a step back. I could make him jump if I wanted to, but now was not the time.

“Orange,” I said. “If we see orange...”

“It’s fake?”

“It’s fake.”

I held the note steady with one hand, and drew the pen right down the middle of it.

“It’s fake,” I said. There was a thick orange streak, cutting right across the picture of the queen.

“My God,” Rogers said. “Is that — is it certain? It looks so real.”

“It should look real, Mr. Rogers, this is the product of about as sophisticated a counterfeiting operation as you can get. But even they can’t get the chemical composition of the surface of the note quite right, the Bank of England keeps that one as secret as anything gets in this country, and so these little pens are our greatest friends.” I put the pen down on the table. “Would you mind if I tried...?”

“No, no, not at all, I’ll go straightaway.”

He brought another five notes, and laid out each one on the desk for me to swipe with the pen, and with each one it was the same result.

“Cunning bastards,” he said. “All this time, this money passing through my office. God, people might have thought I was behind it.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Rogers,” I said. “I don’t know what else you might be up to—” I laughed as if I was joking. Maybe. He swallowed again and kept his face very still. “But I’m sure that you’re just an innocent bystander in all of this, just being used. Still, with this batch as evidence, this whole thing is going to stop. A few people at your head office will be getting a surprise visit in the next twenty-four hours. I’ll need to take the whole batch off, of course, there’s forensics to give it a going over first, pick up the characteristics of the printing plates, any fingerprints — someone will be out later on to take yours, just so we can eliminate them from the set, you and anyone else in this office who’ve handled the money, probably be some pretty WPC if you’re lucky — then it’s going to be part of the chain of evidence when we go to the Crown Prosecution Service to demonstrate a case — our accountancy team will be in touch with your head office, you won’t lose out. Not a word though for twenty-four hours, not a word. If there are any leaks, the whole thing will be blown. Even if you think you can trust someone at head office, not a word. If you did — well, colleagues of mine would take some convincing that you weren’t involved. They’d be in here going over all of your affairs with a fine-toothed comb. Of course, you’d have nothing to hide, but...”

Rogers was just about out the door. I let him go and waited. In about a minute, he came back in with the money, in marked courier bags from his company. I opened my briefcase and let him put it all inside. Then I closed the case, but did not spin the combinations.

“Are you completely mad, Mr. Rogers?”

The question caught him by surprise; he thought that it was all done, that it was over, that I was leaving.

“Sorry, I... I don’t know—”

I held up the case. “You’re letting me walk out of here with all this, and I haven’t even given you a receipt. I’m not one of the policemen one year off retirement that they give crime prevention to, going round giving pensioners talks about window locks, but really Mr. Rogers, have some more sense.” I pulled the form from my pocket, set it on top of the case, began to fill it in. “BS47/1. Always ask for one of these in a case like this. Always, always. And make sure the officer signs it and puts their number on. See — like this. If you can’t read the name — it should be printed, not a signature — or the number, then tell them you won’t accept it and ask them for another one. There, you sign, here, and here, where I’ve put the crosses. No, you can just sign it, no need to print, you know who you are. There, done. Now this is your copy, and I suggest that you put it straight back into that safe. And this is my copy, which goes on the case file — if we go as far as proceeding with the case, and with what you’re telling me hopefully we won’t get that far. And this one—” I opened the briefcase and dropped it in, snapped the locks shut, spun the combinations this time. “—this one stays with the exhibit at all times. Chain of evidence, Mr. Rogers, sure you’ve heard of it.”