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With Apologies to Waking the Dead

Monday, May 19th, 2008

INT. MAIN OFFICE, CCHQ. NIGHT

CLOSE ON BOYD. TRACK round STELLA, SPENCER, GRACE and EVE finally alighting back on BOYD

BOYD

What have we got?


EVE

Unknown Male Caucasian height one hundred and sixty eight centimetres, weight sixty seven kilos. Killed by a single stab wound to the chest with a combat dagger. No signs of struggle. A length of video tape had been forced down his throat post mortem and then wrapped around his body as though he was a horror movie mummy. I’ve reconstructed the tape and it was credit sequences from popular two part BBC dramas. No other forensic evidence. No DNA. No hairs. No fibres. No odd stones from a graveyard that have turned up in another investigation. Whoever did this knew how to clean up after themselves.

GRACE

So we can assume he knew his attacker or attackers…

SPENCER

Found naked apart from the video tape on waste ground by a canal near Shepherd’s Bush by a man walking his bloodhound at dawn along the tow path. I went door to door to every property within a mile and no one witnessed the body being dumped during the night.

Clutching a plastic coffee cup, STELLA takes up the briefing. She walks to the transparent board where mug shots of of a number of men are displayed.


STELLA

I’ve run his finger prints, checked all missing persons reports for the last fifty years; watched every moment of CCTV footage for all of London for the last week; contacted Interpol, the CIA, the Vatican, the Bavarian Illumninati and Starbucks and no one reported missing who matches the description.

STELLA picks up a white marker pen and with

Gallic flare writes: Leads None

STELLA

Maybe your friend from Mossad might help Sir?

CLOSE ON BOYD, who briefly has a dreamy look as though he might be remembering a brief happy moment in his otherwise pained and tortured existence. Then he remembers Shoestring only ran for twenty one episodes so the DVD residuals and his financial adviser says that’s not enough to make up for the shortfall in his pension.

GRACE

The MO matches the other killings. I’ve plotted the location that all the bodies were dumped at and the only pattern is the vicinity of a television production facility making crime dramas for the British Broadcasting Corporation production facility.

CLOSE ON BOYD, pointing with a vicious looking dagger covered with dried blood.

BOYD

So we have no motive, no identification, no forensic evidence, no murder weapon, no witnesses and we’ve been assigned as the only unit to investigate this ongoing series of bizarre serial killings dating back fifty years.

CLOSE SLOW MOTION ON BOYD, he flips the dagger then stabs it into the interview table.

BOYD

Put that away till we need it again Grace.

GRACE’s GLARES at BOYD

GRACE

Boyd we can’t just keep bumping off the staff who give the entire second parts story away in a thirty second trailer at the end of the first part. Sooner or later the real police will catch on.

BOYD

The police don’t care. First it would take hundreds of them to do what we five do in a single story. Second they hate the b*****d as much as we do for giving away the end. So it sounds like we’ve gotten away with killing the b*****d again this time and that’s good enough for me.

BOYD Smiles a strange smile a bit like a predatory great cat that just spotted the biggest saucer of cream.

THE END

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