he memory banks of career waiters never ceased to amaze Lindsay. It must have been at least seven years since she'd eaten in the little family trattoria in Camden, but the waiter who had always flirted with her and Cordelia greeted her as if it had been only seven days. "Bella signorina, come sta?" he'd asked automatically, sweeping a deep bow in front of her that revealed his hair was starting to thin round the crown.

The exchange continued as it always had. She was fine, how was he? He was so-so, but what was the point of complaining, the government always got in. He ushered her to a familiar table at the back in a corner. The same bad paintings of Sorrento still hung in their identical positions. The walls had acquired some Italia '90 memorabilia, but apart from that everything was the same. Without being asked, the waiter brought Lindsay a Peroni while she studied the menu. It was as if the door to the restaurant was a time slip. When the door opened next, Lindsay half expected to see Cordelia glide in. It was both a relief and a disappointment when Helen swept in instead.

She plonked herself down and mouthed, "Gin and tonic," at the waiter. "God, what a day," she sighed.

"It's not going to get any better, trust me on that," Lindsay said. The waiter placed a sweating glass in front of Helen. "I couldn't believe it when you suggested meeting here. I'd no idea it was still going. I imagined it would have turned into some terrible pizza parlour. I felt really dislocated when you said the name - this was one of the places I always came with Cordelia. It was our private secret. Like we thought we were the only people who knew about it. We never had dinner with anybody else here. So I didn't expect you to know about it. Illogical, I know, but..."

Helen snorted. "You think I could work five minutes' walk away and not know about the best Italian restaurant in north London? Do me a favour! You ready to order? I need the prospect of something solid in me before I can bear to hear any more bad news."

While they waited for their meal, Lindsay outlined her afternoon discoveries to Helen, who looked more and more glum with every passing sentence. Even the arrival of a lasagne that looked rich enough to have its own Swiss bank account couldn't relieve her gloom. As Lindsay virtuously wolfed her tuna and bean salad, Helen said disconsolately, "It's a bit of a double-edged sword, isn't it? We've found the skeleton in Stella's cupboard, but if I expose her I'm bound to bring Watergaw's reputation down with her." She banged the end of her fork angrily on the table, attracting glances from the handful of other diners. "I can't bear it," she raged. "We built this company up from nothing, we've started to get a really good name in the business for delivering what we promise, and now this bitch is using us to make scummy little porno films. How dare she? It's so outrageous that if it had come from anybody except you, I wouldn't have believed a word of it. It's not just that she's exploiting the knickers off me and the company, it's the fact that she's involved in the skin trade. It goes diametrically against everything Watergaw is supposed to stand for." Her eyes sparkled with anger. "I don't suppose there's any chance that her nasty little racket doesn't involve the company?" she asked, faint hope in her voice.

Lindsay stretched out her free arm and squeezed Helen's hand. "It's always a possibility, but I wouldn't hold out too much hope. But I thought the best thing to do was to get as clear a picture of what's gone on as we possibly can. That's why I suggested we get together tonight, so we can map out a plan of campaign."

"You've got an idea?" Helen said eagerly.

"Nothing specific. We've got to try and uncover how long it's been going on, how involved Guy is, and if we can, how seedy these films are. We also need to establish what the involvement of Watergaw is in what she's been up to. It might be that there's a way to manipulate the information so you can get her out of the door and out of the business. But we won't know until we've had a good trawl through her computer and her filing cabinets. Which is why I suggested meeting on this side of town."

"You want to do it tonight?" Helen asked.

"How soon can you finish your lasagne?"

I want to kill her," Helen growled. On the TV screen in Stella's office, a slightly built woman was fellating one man while another entered her from the rear. It was the fifth of a couple of dozen video tapes they'd found in the bottom drawer of Stella's filing cabinet. They'd sampled brief sections of each, their disgust and anger mounting with every one. "I want to kill her with my bare hands," Helen continued. She'd been delivering variations on the same theme ever since they'd turned their attentions from paperwork and computer files to the videos. "She's even used the sets from one of Watergaw's drama productions, the cheap bitch. Turn it off, Linds, I'm going to be sick if I watch any more of these."

Lindsay pressed the "stop" button with an overwhelming sense of relief. "We probably should check the others, make sure they're all the same sort of thing."

"You do it if you feel you have to. I'm going to get some mineral water from my office to try and take the taste away." Helen walked out and Lindsay slotted the next film into the player. She wound it on a fair way, then hit the "play" button. The screen filled with a close-up of a woman masturbating. Behind her in the corridor she heard a set of footsteps. "Did you bring me some?" she asked.

"Who the fuck are you?"

Lindsay whirled round, dropping the remote control, and stared open-mounthed at Stella. She stood in the doorway, a tall man with cropped pepper and salt hair behind her.

Stella advanced a step. "What the fuck are you doing in my office? You're a burglar!"

Regaining her composure, Lindsay shrugged. "So call the cops. Go on, give them a bell." She pushed the phone toward Stella. "You must be Stella. And you, I presume, are Guy."

Guy pushed past Stella and loomed above Lindsay, so close she could have identified the stone in his nose stud if she'd been interested. "And who the hell are you?"

From behind them all, Helen's voice came, cold as the ice that clinked in the jug she carried. "She's with me. She's a friend. It's a concept you won't be familiar with, Guy."

He flinched at her tone as much as her words. "Whoever she is, she's got no business in here."

"He's right," Stella butted in, finding outrage from somewhere. "She's been going through my stuff. Look, there's papers everywhere. And she's been in my filing cabinet. Those tapes were locked in there. She's broken in!"

"No, she hasn't," Helen said wearily. "Who do you think has the master keys to all the office furniture, dumbshit? You think I trust my staff not to lose the keys to their desks and storage cupboards? You've never had any idea, have you, Stella?" She managed to make the name sound like an obscenity.

"You're out of order, Helen," Stella said. "You've got no right to be doing this. What's the matter with you? Don't you trust your business partners?"

"I don't trust pornographers," Helen said. "You do something that exploitative on a routine basis and you forget where the lines get drawn in real life. I wouldn't trust you if your hands were nailed to the wall. Which, frankly, would be too good for you, and I'd resent spending the money on redecoration afterwards. How dare you do what you've been doing?"

Stella looked at Guy, who was hiding his discomfort in the business of lighting a cigarette. "So what's the charge, Helen? Me and Guy like to watch porn? It's a criminal offence to keep a few horny films for our personal pleasure? I didn't realise you dykes were so puritanical."

"This isn't about watching blue movies. It's about making them," Helen said flatly.

Stella laughed. "What is she on?" she demanded. "Whatever it is, I don't fucking want any. Helen, where do you get this strange idea that I've been making pornographic films?"

Helen looked as if she was on the point of realizing her ambition to kill Stella. "You were too tight, Stella. You were too keen on making a profit. You used the sets we built for Home Movies to make your scummy skin flicks. You didn't even attempt to disguise them."

Stella's hands clenched into fists, and Guy sucked in smoke like it was oxygen. Lindsay decided it was time she butted in to lower the temperature before Helen did something they'd both regret. "You film on site and do the editing in the suite here," she said, her voice clinically matter of fact. "Then you take the edited film over to Media Masters, and they make you video versions in U.S. and UK formats. You take the samples to your outlet - It's Personal in Robb Street in Soho - and they place their order."

"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 realised 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 penalise 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."

For the first time, Stella's defiance took a dent. She looked momentarily uncertain, glancing at Guy, who was too busy lighting a fresh cigarette off the end of the previous one to notice. "You're full of shit," she said, but her eyes told a different story to her words.

"I'm not the bullshitter in this room. As we say where I come from, Stell, the ball's on the slates. The party's over. I've read the paperwork." Lindsay turned to a neat pile of papers behind her on the desk. As she went through them, she slapped each document down hard on the desk in front of Stella. "Exhibit number one. Helen's submission to the EU for funding for a three-part drama about asylum seekers. Exhibit number two. A letter from the EU revealing the application has been successful and enclosing a cheque for the cash. Exhibit number three. A forged letter purporting to be from the EU to Helen explaining her application has been unsuccessful in this round of funding awards, but it will be reconsidered in the next bidding sequence when it stands a strong chance, and that she need not resubmit her application. Exhibit number four. A bank statement showing the deposit of the identical sum of money in the account of Shooting Star two weeks after the date on the authentic EU letter."

"A real shit's trick," Helen said.

Stella closed her eyes and breathed heavily through her nose. "I'm really fucked off about this," she said. "You have no idea how fucked off I am."

"We were going to put the money back, Helen," Guy said, moving a couple of steps closer to her and spreading his hands in a supplicatory gesture. "As soon as we'd generated enough profit, we were going to replace the money with another faked letter saying the money had come from a fresh allocation of funding. It's a license to print money, Helen. With the profits Shooting Star generates, we can make all the films we want about things that really matter. Like Stella said, it's not as if we're doing hard-core stuff. And if we weren't doing it, someone else would be."

Helen's upper lip twitched in contempt. "Any minute now, you'll be telling me you were only obeying orders. How can you think I'd ever want to make a film with you again? Less than six weeks ago, we were sitting in my office trying to put together a proposal for a film about the evils of sex tourism. Where's your brain gone, Guy?"

"Helen, don't get worked up..."

"Don't get worked up!" she yelled. "Don't get worked up!"

"He's right," Stella said with an exasperated sigh. "Look, Helen, you get your EU money, you get to make your films, everything goes on exactly like it did before. There's no reason why not."

Helen stared at Stella, for once in her life beyond speech. Lindsay jumped in. "I don't think that's going to be possible, Stella. I don't think Helen would feel comfortable with that."

"I don't want to be in the same hemisphere as you, never mind the same company," Helen snarled. "I'm leaving this partnership, and I'm taking my grant money with me, and I'm going to set up my own company that is totally vermin-free, even if I have to get Rentokil to vet every member of staff."

"That's not what we want, Helen," Stella said calmly. "Your expertise and your street cred is really important to the company. If you were that dispensable, don't you think we'd have dumped you ages ago? If you go, you go without a penny. The legal battles to dissolve the partnership against our wishes will take years and every penny you've got."

It was Lindsay's turn to look thunderstruck. "I don't think you appreciate the position you're in," she said incredulously. "We've got you bang to rights. All we have to do to end your career is to call the Fraud Squad and show how you expropriated the money to start Shooting Star with no intention of paying it back."

Suddenly, Stella jumped forward and grabbed the documents off the desk. Lindsay snatched at them, but Stella danced across to the corner behind Guy, waving the papers. "No evidence, no case," she said, grinning crazily. She grabbed Guy's lighter, spun the wheel and let the flame dance along the bottom of the pages. The papers caught and yellow flames started to lick their way up the paper.

With a scream of rage, Helen threw the jug of water she was still carrying across the room at Stella. She raised one arm to fend it off and the jug tipped, then tumbled, cascading down Stella and the papers. The flames died, leaving the papers charred and sodden. Stella laughed. "You don't stop me that easily," she said, grasping the soggy paper and tearing it into irregular pieces. "Get the vids, Guy."

Showing more savoir faire than he'd managed so far, Guy swept the videos off the desk into the wastepaper bin, which he clutched to his chest. Helen leapt at him, clawing his arms with her nails, but he clung on grimly to his burden. Lindsay stepped up behind Helen and grabbed her, pulling her back.

"Leave it, Helen," she said.

"But they're destroying the evidence," she said, her voice teetering on the edge of a sob.

"And we can't stop them. Two on two, nobody with a weapon, it's just going to degenerate into a rammy. She's determined to destroy it, we're not going to stop her, and the cops aren't going to get here in time. Come on, Helen, don't give her the satisfaction."

All the fight suddenly went from Helen, and she subsided into Lindsay's arms. "Sensible move," Stella said approvingly. "By morning, there won't be anything left to tie us to the blue films or to the missing grant. In fact, if you do call in the cops, the only thing they'll be able to investigate is the misappropriation of the EU grant. And let's face it, Helen, the person who could rip that money off easier than anyone else is the person it was intended for. All you had to do was tell me and Guy that the EU had blown you out, and you could have pocketed the readies no trouble. But for me to do that... Well, it'd be complicated, wouldn't it?"

"Let's get out of here, Helen," Lindsay said, steering Helen toward the door. Somehow they made it out of the building without giving way to the fury that bubbled inside them both. Out in the car park, Helen turned back and stared up at the lighted skylight above Stella's office.

"I can't believe we were so stupid," she said bitterly. "We let them get away with it."

"We were scuppered as soon as they found us in there," Lindsay said, furiously kicking the tyre of Stella's Fiat. "You'd only ever have nailed her with the element of surprise on your side."

"I just can't believe Guy was involved with her seedy, scummy little scheme."

"When sex walks into a relationship, sense walks out," Lindsay said, squatting down by Stella's car with her Swiss Army knife in hand. She uncapped the valve on the nearest tyre and opened it up with the tip of the blade, taking childish satisfaction in the hiss of escaping air. Methodically she worked round the wheels, letting the air out of each tyre while Helen paced the car park, ranting.

"Let's go," Lindsay said when she'd finished. "I'm sorry it didn't work out the way you wanted."

"It's worse than when we started. At least then I didn't know what her dark secret was. Now I'm implicated."

"I let you down."

Helen shook her head. "No. It's my fault. I underestimated the bitch. Now I'm completely boxed into a corner. I want out and I want revenge, but what can I do?"

"Yeah, well, it's not over till the fat lady sings," Lindsay said grimly. "There's got to be a way to screw them like they've screwed you. And I'm the very person to find it."