The Ultimate Serial Killer – Opening Chapters

 

1

A HEARTLESS CRIME

Aberdeen. Friday, 2nd August 2013

DARKNESS FINALLY FELL and began to cool the effects of a sweltering day as a light breeze swept down a tranquil Sunnyside Road near the University of Aberdeen. The huge grey-stoned tenements that lined one side of the street hid a ghastly secret …

Two streets away, a pair of police women were on their evening beat enjoying a pleasant conversation when—

“Papa-Charlie-Echo-Foxtrot? Copy …?” sounded a clear digitally constructed male voice out of a mobile communication device clipped on one of the policewomen’s lapels. The message was followed up by a recording of out-dated breathy static so as to make the receiver of the message aware that a response was expected. The phonetic alphabet was calling P-C-E-F (Police Constable Ellen Fraser).

A young blonde police constable dipped her head down to the activated mobile communicator on her lapel and spoke enthusiastically into its microphone area. “Copy, Control. PC Fraser here, accompanied by Sergeant Parkin. Do you want me tae use the phonetic alphabet? Over …”

PC Fraser had lurched to a halt in order to take the call despite such an action being against her recently completed training (Beat Rule 4.1.3: An officer on the beat shall make progress at all times unless circumstances demand otherwise).

PC Fraser’s more experienced colleague, Sergeant Fiona Parkin, a thirty-something brunette, slowed more casually to a halt in order to keep in step with her charge. Sergeant Parkin needed to exercise patience as PC Fraser was just beginning her probationary year, having scraped through her basic training and her recent summer policing examinations. This was, in fact, PC Fraser’s first beat as a qualified officer of the law.

The static continued uncomfortably …

“Control?” said PC Fraser, eyebrows knotting up in frustration.

Sergeant Parkin smiled, and then said quietly, nodding at PC Fraser’s communicator, “PC Fraser, your transceiver button …”

“Oh, aye. How very silly of me. What am I like!” PC Fraser began giggling like a gushing schoolgirl and swaying playfully so that her twin flaxen braided pigtails whipped the Aberdeen air. Then, suddenly, she rushed ten paces or so to be under a cone of silvery light pouring down from a tall metal lamppost. She pressed the red transceiver button and dipped her head to reach the communicator. Sergeant Parkin, meanwhile, marched after her, still doing her best to smile, her patience under pressure.

“Copy, Control. Fraser here, accompanied by Sergeant Parkin. Erm … yes … do you want me tae use the phonetic alphabet? Over …” said PC Fraser. She pressed the green receiver button. Sergeant Parkin gave her a thumbs-up sign and a smiley nod.

“No need for that, PC Fraser,” said the male voice. “Can you—‍”

PC Fraser cut off the receiving message by pressing her transceiver button. “Why not?” she interjected. “You used it, didn’t you! Over …” She pressed the receiver button. Sergeant Parkin looked shocked and shuffled about uncomfortably on her plain black standard issue policewoman shoes.

“Ach, PC Fraser,” said the male voice, “that’s just police protocol. Someone may have stolen your communicator. So we always start off with some phonetic alphabet codes. And we also use it if it’s very noisy, and so on. You must have covered this in your basic training. No bother though, as I know you and Sergeant Parkin are not in a noisy situation. So no need for any more phonetics for now. Copy …?”

“Erm … how come you know we’re not in a noisy situation? Over …”

“I can see you both. You’ve come to a stop having walked fifty yards past the University’s Queen Elizabeth Library. There’s no one else around, and no cars … well, except the one coming towards you now. Copy …?”

Sure enough, just at that moment, a car approached and then swept past them.

“Never! How did ye know all that, please? Over …”

“Well, anyone on the streets at this time of night—it’s almost twenty past ten—would have a mobile, wouldn’t they? And what car driver doesn’t have a mobile or an anti-theft tracer device in this day and age? So unless someone’s living in the Stone Age, what we see in the Control Centre on our monitors is what is there. Copy …?”

“Oh … I see. That’s using GPS, isn’t it? You can see all the mobile devices on the streets. I know the privacy laws stop you from viewing the location of devices inside buildings—unless victim requests are made, or crimes are suspected. Over …”

“That’s it, PC Fraser. The buzzword these days is wysi-wit: what you see is what is there. You must have done that in your training over the last two years, surely? Copy …?”

“Erm … oh … I didn’t revise that one for the exam. Anyway, can I use the phonetic alphabet fa practice? Over …”

“Oh, all right then, if you must, PC Fraser. Copy …?”

“I know who ye are … It’s Sergeant Thomas McDonald! Hello, Tongo-Oscar-Mikey-Mikey-Yardie! Ha ha. TOMMY, it’s ye! Bet you’re impressed with ma phonet—‍”

Sergeant Parkin had interrupted PC Fraser’s communications by reaching out her arm and pressing the mute button on PC Fraser’s communication device. She leant close to her charge and said quietly, “One: your use of the NATO phonetic code is poor (it’s Tango, not Tongo; it’s Mike, not Mikey; and it’s Yankee, not Yardie). And, two: you do not fraternise with members of the Control Centre during working operations.” Sergeant Parkin looked very cross and every day of her thirty-something years.

“Sorry, ma’am,” said PC Fraser politely, coming to her senses.

“Aye, you best be. Now apologise to Sergeant McDonald and continue with the call—professionally.”

PC Fraser turned off the mute button.

“Sorry, Sergeant McDonald, sir. It’s the first day of ma probation. I’m a little excited. What do ye want? Over …” She pressed her receiver button.

“That’ll be right. No problem, Ellen—er, I mean, PC Fraser. We all have to start somewhere. Now—‍”

Just then, an old man wearing dark glasses and a lightweight scruffy navy-blue overcoat came bustling around the corner of a side street with a guide dog and almost bowled over PC Fraser. His glasses went flying, but like a blind bat uses sonar to catch fast flying prey, he managed to catch his glasses in mid-air and put them back on his face almost as if they had never left his face.

“Sorry, sir,” said Sergeant Parkin quickly to the old man. “We didn’t see you coming.”

As the man had come to a sudden standstill and was facing towards PC Fraser, who was leaning back against the lamppost, Sergeant Parkin carefully and firmly guided him in the direction he seemed to be heading and set him on his way. He didn’t say a word, and allowed the guide dog, a golden retriever, to pull him off towards the Queen Elizabeth Library.

“—what’s going on? Copy …?” said the distant digital voice of Sergeant McDonald urgently.

PC Fraser’s finger pressed the red transceiver button and dipped her head to her lapel.

“Oh, just some blind Stone Age man and his faithful Stone Age pooch! Nearly skittled mae over, that’s all. So much fa your wysi-wit. Over …”

“Ha ha. There’s always a few who get through the net. Anyway, can you head to 19 Sunnyside Road, a tenement block, and investigate. Copy …?”

“Investigate wat? Over …”

“We’ve had a call from a man. He had a bad cold, and we lost the signal, but we think he said something about finding the missing 4-year-old—Simon Armstrong. He’s probably with the wee laddie now. His mobile phone probably ran out of juice. Copy …?”

“Never! The wee Armstrong bairn! We will investigate, Sergeant McDonald. Dinna ye worry yourself aboot that. This is Paper-Charming-Eco-Foxhound … over and oot.”

Sergeant Parkin gave PC Fraser a sharp glare.

“I got ma phonetics wrong, didn’t I?” said PC Fraser apologetically.

“Aye,” came Sergeant Parkin’s disapproving curt reply. Nevertheless, her frown melted into an encouraging smile. “What are you like? Well, never mind. Let’s investigate 19 Sunnyside Road!”

So off Sergeant Parkin marched around the corner to her left into the street the old man and his dog had emerged from. It led to a shortcut to Sunnyside Road. PC Fraser dithered for a moment … then scrambled after Sergeant Parkin.

“Ooh,” said PC Fraser, “real policing. On ma first beat, we get tae find the missing wee Armstrong bairn. His mammy will be pleased.”

“It won’t always be like this,” warned Sergeant Parkin.

And she was right. But not for the reason, she thought …

Down East Street they marched, turned right, and there, fifty yards in front of them, was Sunnyside Road.

By the time PC Fraser finally got into perfect marching synchronisation with Sergeant Parkin, she immediately fell out of synchronisation because Sergeant Parkin stopped as she reached Sunnyside Road to survey the street.

“There’s number 19!” Sergeant Parkin pointed to an open tenement front doorway. “See, to the right of that red door!”

Without a word, the duo walked to the open doorway and soon found themselves under a dim light inside the slightly dilapidated Victorian three-floored tenement. On their left was Flat 1, on their right, Flat 2. Just beyond Flat 2 on the right was a poorly carpeted wooden stairs leading to the upper floors, but in front of them to the left was a hallway leading to the back exit of the tenement. In the hallway there were a few bicycles leaning against the wooden panelled wall of the staircase. And—

“Sergeant! Look! There he is!” PC Fraser pointed at the back of the hallway on the right-hand wall. There, slumped motionless in a sitting position with his back against the wall, was the missing 4-year-old boy, Simon Armstrong. They knew it was him because he had on a distinctive cherry-red Terry The Tiger jacket. However, it was difficult to see him clearly in the weak light of the hallway, a light supplied by a single 40-Watt bulb hanging bare, almost apologetically, on the ceiling between flats 1 and 2.

The policewomen approached the boy cautiously.

“He’s asleep,” said PC Fraser.

Sergeant Parkin did not seem too sure. She whipped out a small yet powerful torch and shone the light on the boy’s face.

“He’s grey!” Sergeant Parkin quickly bent down and felt for the pulse in the boy’s wrist. “Cold, and I can’t feel a pulse!”

She checked the boy’s mouth, opening it, trying to ascertain if he was breathing at all. Unexpectedly, a 10p coin tumbled out of the boy’s mouth, and chinked and danced on the concrete hallway floor before coming to a rest.

“Might have choked on that coin …” suggested Sergeant McDonald “There’s something not quite right here.”

She was just about to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when suddenly the boy’s cherry-red Terry The Tiger unzipped jacket fell open—

“Aaaaaaaaah!” screamed PC Fraser, with a scream so loud and piercing that it must have woken up the whole street.

Sergeant Parkin drew herself back from the boy’s face to see what had caused PC Fraser to scream so violently. And when she followed PC Fraser’s gaze with the help of her torch, she witnessed a most unwelcome sight causing her to take in an enormous sharp intake of breath. The boy’s chest had been cut open. Sergeant Parkin realised his heart had been cut clean out with the utmost of surgical precision. She looked about the body for the heart, but it was nowhere to be seen.

Meanwhile, PC Fraser retched and sprayed her breakfast, dinner, and tea on the nearby bicycles.

Sergeant Parkin stared solemnly at the pathetic corpse of the little boy, shaking uncontrollably. She mumbled shakily, “No point administering mouth-to-mouth, this wee bairn’s heart has been stolen.”

“This hasn’a bin mae day,” added PC Fraser, wiping her mouth with a tissue and allowing tears to flow unabated down her cheeks.

At that point, it was solely a matter for the Aberdeenshire Police Force; however, the bizarre nature of the 4-year-old Simon Armstrong’s murder meant it hit the inner pages of the national press.

 

2

REPEAT PERFORMANCE

Edinburgh. Monday, 12th August 2013

JUST 10 DAYS later in Edinburgh, at ten past eleven in the evening, a worried mother was weaving through the tenement block streets of the Morningside area in her battered black Volkswagen.

“Silly boy!” said Mrs Acres, sweeping around into Lauderdale Road. There was no one listening to her because she was alone in the car. She was a single parent with a single child—her 14-year-old son, Terrence Acres. She often spoke to herself because she liked speaking, and there was no one else to talk to.

“How many times have I told him not to be late? He doesn’t listen. The streets aren’t safe these days. A little 9-year-old girl was stabbed the other day just for not sharing a jelly baby with her friend. Little girls stabbing each other! What’s the world coming to?”

She slowed to a halt half way along the road, outside a side entrance to a secondary school. “And what about that wee bairn butchered by some nutcase the other week? Just 4 years old! And the police don’t have a scoobie who did it. Disgusting!”

She slipped her tall thin frame out of the car, slamming shut the door. She shook her long brown hair and with her bulging angry eyes and long black coat, she looked a little like a witch searching for her pet cat. Into the school’s side entrance she marched. “I told him to be home by eleven! School Discos! The school should have ensured the pupils were taken safely home in a coach. Can’t be seen to be wasting petrol, they’d say. It’s disgusting!”

As she walked to the school gym where she knew the school disco was being held, she wondered why it was so quiet. She couldn’t see a sign of life in the school car park, only a large sack of rubbish to the back of the car park. She marched up to the entrance to the gym and saw that all the inside lights were out and everything was locked up. “I bet he went to a pub. Underage drinking! I blame his disgusting father.”

Mrs Acres then noticed something stirring on a bench facing the car park. She saw an arm fall down grasping a half finished bottle of whiskey.

“TERRANCE!” shouted Mrs Acres angrily, striding towards the bench, her black coat was ruffling on her skinny frame. “I can see you! Just like your old man!” Her eyes burned with anger, threatening to explode from their sockets, and the veins in her temples throbbed visibly.

However, when her feet scratched to a stop on the gravel in front of the bench, she saw it was not her son, but an old tramp. His eyes were closed and snores were regularly escaping his grinning mouth. He had a thick blue plastic sandwich box in wrapped in one arm across his chest and the whiskey bottle tightly gripped in the other. Mrs Acres looked down on him with disdain. She wanted to wake him up, but his clothes and skin were so filthy she didn’t want to put her hands on any part of him. Disgusting thing!

Mrs Acres didn’t have all night, so she overcame her revulsion of the unshaven man and wrestled the bottle of whiskey from his tight grip, hurling it onto the grass verge between the gym and the car park to the side of the bench.

The man’s eye’s had opened in the struggle and now he opened out into action.

“My whiskey!” he roared in a drunken English accent, as he lifted himself gingerly off the bench and staggered towards the whiskey bottle, which had not broken and was lying tantalisingly five yards or so away. As he scooped up the bottle, he cut a desperate figure. Stumbling beneath the orange light of a nearby lamppost that stood to the corner of the car park, still clasping his sandwich box to his chest, he raised his whiskey bottle up high, tilted his head back, and threw the remaining whiskey down his throat. He then belched loudly and his eyes seemed to glaze over with pleasure.

“You disgusting thing!” shouted Mrs Acres over to the man. “If you don’t mind, did you see a young man with blond hair and a black leather bomber jacket leaving the school disco?”

“Shud up you old witch!” thundered back the man, unsteady on his feet. He grunted and hurled the empty bottle towards Mrs Acres. It arced over her head and beneath the inky-black sky before crashing down on the car park’s concrete floor, where it shattered in a spray of glass shards.

The man staggered away, towards the side exit of the school, and disappeared out onto Lauderdale Road.

“Charming,” said Mrs Acres, dumping herself on the bench, trying to regain her composure and trying to think of what to do next.

Out across the darkened car park, lighted only by the lamppost on the corner and the outside school building security lights, she gazed. As her eyes began to acclimatise to the dark, she realised that the sack of rubbish in the distance near the back edge of the school car park might not be a sack of rubbish. It just might be another sleeping tramp. Up she rose from the bench and walked slowly towards the distant bundle. As she approached, a sudden surge of fear paralysed her heart. If it was a tramp, he had stolen her son’s clothes!

It was seconds later, on examining the motionless body, that Mrs Acres let out a blood-curdling scream—even louder than the one that PC Fraser had let out 10 days earlier in Aberdeen. Her son was short of a heart and his mouth had been burdened with a 10p coin!

Days later, Police put the time of death at about 9:45 pm, matching the previous victim’s estimated time of death. At this stage, Aberdeenshire Police Force teamed up with the Lothian Police Force. And the case found itself promoted to the front pages of the national press.

 

3

THIRD TIME UNLUCKY

Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Thursday, 22nd August 2013

AND SO, 10 days after the last horrific heart-stealing murder …

“Eee lad! Gan on and clean the toilet oot!” shouted the Geordie manager of The Tyne nightclub. He had hardly any neck, no hair, and was almost as wide as he was high. He was nicknamed “The Bald Minotaur”.

“Divn’t boss me aroond, that’s Phil’s job, ya nah,” said a young athletic-looking Geordie man in his black cleaner overalls. Music was pumping loudly in the dance room yards away.

“It’s my job to boss you aroond, you pillock! Phil’s had to go hame, man” The manager’s words left specks of spit on the young cleaner’s face.

“Why’s he had to go hame?” The young man wiped the spit off his face with the black sleeve of his overalls.

“Because I told him, if he doesn’t go hame, I’ll rip that beard he’s growing off his face and I’ll squash him up into a tiny ball and boonce him aroond on the dance fler to the tune of ‘Death Row Rock’.”

The young cleaner looked concerned.

“Eee! Why? What did he do wrang?”

“Aboot half an ’oor ago, he asked Jennie for a dance in the clerkroom.”

“The caged lap-dancer, you mean? That Jennie?”

“Yes, that Jennie.”

“I canna believe that, mind. Why should you get in a fettle oover that cheap little tart?”

The threat of the snarl that instantly formed on the face of “The Bald Minotaur” was nothing compared to the flying fist that followed it. A crunching blow to the young cleaner’s jaw sent him sprawling backwards and crashing up against a gaudily wallpapered wall. “Because that little tart is my daughter!”

On hearing these words, the young man slid down the wall, as if in apology, until he ended up sitting down on the sticky nightclub carpet, rubbing his painful jaw.

“Now get in the gents and clean it oot. It’s eleven o’clock, and it has to be cleaned and inspected on the ’oor due to Health and Safety regs. And divn’t bother to protest, mind!”

The young cleaner forced himself warily back up the wall and reluctantly made his way to the gents toilets.

Once inside, he donned some thin latex gloves, as he had to check the urinals and remove any gum or other bits and pieces of customer rubbish if it was in any of them. This was one of the worst jobs in the world, as customers were intermittently coming and going from the toilets. He also had to check the cubicles and make sure no one was taking drugs. Cleaners never managed more than a few months of employment, and the “Cleaners Required—Best Rates” advert was run every week in the Newcastle Chronicle.

After managing to clean the urinals and wash basins without causing too much embarrassment to himself and the customers (who were fortunately usually too intoxicated to get embarrassed anyway), he noticed that one of the engaged cubicles had seemed very silent in all the time he had been in there. He cleaned around inside the adjacent cubicle where he could see part of the floor in the engaged cubicle under the partitioning wall …

There was blood on the floor! Not a lot, but enough to suggest a serious injury. He could see a shoe and a glimpse of black sock on the end of a leg that was not moving … He knocked sharply on the wooden partitioning wall.

“Sir? Are you alreet?”

No reply …

“Sir?”

The young man was feeling a mixture of embarrassment and fear. What if the man had been in fight and had collapsed? He would have to look over the top of the partition, something he had never had to do before. Up he stepped carefully onto the toilet seat. He was about to look over into the adjacent cubicle when—

“Oi! Look at that pervert!” shouted a man dressed in a policeman’s uniform, pointing at the young cleaner through the open door of the cubicle. He was a southerner.

“I always wondered what sort of man works as a cleaner in a place like this,” said a man beside him, turning from the basin with wet hands. He was dressed as an astronaut, and he was a southerner too.

At least the policeman’s not real, thought the young cleaner, realising the police uniform was a party imitation uniform. Apologetically the cleaner said, “Looka here. There’s blood on the fler of the next cubicle and it’s ma job to investigate.”

“Sure it is,” said the astronaut mockingly, throwing a bar of soap at the young cleaner’s head. The cleaner ducked—but the bar of soap hit him smack on the crown of his head.

“Shall I arrest him?” said the policeman jovially.

“Nah,” said the astronaut, flicking his dripping hands in the direction of the cleaner, “you don’t know where he’s been.”

Then the two men in fancy dress left the toilets laughing.

The cleaner finally managed to put his head over the partition in trepidation …

“Eeee, Jesus, man!” The cleaner saw a motionless man slumped forwards sitting on the toilet seat.

Out of the toilets, the young athletic cleaner charged off to inform his manager.

Minutes later, “The Bald Minotaur” charged down the door and found 24-year-old fireman Neil Osborne. He was dead. Murdered. It was a significant murder, especially as his heart had gone walkabout in exchange for a 10p pushed into his mouth, and the estimated time of death was around 9:45 pm!

 

4

GREENIDGE AND HIS DESKTOP DANCE

CLEARLY, THE THREE heart-thieving murders were the work of a most heinous serial killer (or perhaps a team of killers). And to most, it seemed more than a coincidence that the age differences between the victims were exactly 10 years, that the number of days between the murders was 10 days, and that the estimated times of the murders were the same. Yet there appeared nothing to link the victims. They simply seemed to have absolutely nothing in common, except that their ages differed by 10 years. All that seemed certain was that somebody in 10 days’ time aged 34 would be in for an uncomfortable rendezvous with destiny at around 9.45 pm.

The murders became instantaneous international news, with the world media going ballistic. The case had become highly prestigious to those of the Law and Order fraternity. Finding the serial killer (or killers) had become the British government’s number one priority.

Naturally, the Prime Minister insisted that the renowned Detective Hamid Pahlavi of Scotland Yard, London, and his young dogsbody sidekick, Dr Robert Greenidge, were handed the case. And the rest of the world looked on with bated breath …

* * *

On the morning after the murder of the night before, up high in the sky on the seventeenth floor, Dr Robert Greenidge set about preparing to tackle the serial killer case. He was, of course, with Detective Hamid Pahlavi in the eccentric and inimitable detective’s office, an office housed humbly in the main Scotland Yard 20-story building standing proud and tall near the Houses of Parliament deep in the heart of London.

Greenidge, feeling cool and casual in his 1970s styled clothing, and sporting an audacious ginger afro, was just about ready to start photographing, tidying and cleaning the office. Something his moustachioed boss, Pahlavi, insisted on him doing before they officially started on any major case. And this case was major!

Greenidge had only recently qualified as a doctor of forensic medicine, and despite having only assisted Pahlavi for the last ten months, he felt he knew him better than anyone else did; which wasn’t to say he had a clue how the eccentric Pahlavi’s mind worked. Greenidge liked to think he was a little eccentric himself, which is why he believed he bagged the position to assist what he and many believed was the world’s greatest detective. At least in looks, Greenidge was eccentric. He owed his brown complexion, tall delicate build, blue eyes, pixie-like nose and extraordinary puffed up ginger afro hairstyle to both his father, a coloured immigrant from Jamaica, and his Irish mother, a Celtic redhead. On the personality side, Greenidge knew he inherited more of his father’s laid-back patient attitude than his mother’s fiery temper. This was fortunate because had it been the other way around, he would have murdered Pahlavi or committed suicide ages ago.

“Don’t forget to photograph the office properly before you clear things away and clean up,” said Pahlavi, raising a bushy jet-black eyebrow and pointing to a camera on top of a metal filing cabinet.

“Shall I photograph the ceiling too?” asked Greenidge who had screwed up a piece of paper into a small ball, threw it high up into the air, so that it just missed the ceiling, and unsuccessfully attempted to head it as if it were a football into the steel wastepaper bin near the open office door.

“Of course. The usual Yard standard. The ceiling, the floor, the walls, the window, the desktop, the inside of the desk drawers, the insides of all the cupboards and the filing cabinet drawers, the bookshelves. Every nook and cranny … and especially the notice board and whiteboard.”

“Even the contents of the wastepaper bin?” Greenidge joked.

“Especially the contents of the wastepaper bin! Photograph everything! We don’t want information swept under the proverbial carpet, now do we? Remember: we cannot go back in Time but we can keep records of it. Time can be stamped, indexed and filed away. This is the Digital Age!”

Pahlavi began striding purposely towards the office door, where Greenidge was now attempting to flick the ball of paper into the wastepaper bin with his hands firmly entrenched in the pockets of his black flared trousers. Not an easy task to perform if your platform shoes have a six-inch thick sole.

“Where are you off to?” asked Greenidge, dodging quickly, yet somehow lazily, out of the rampant detective’s path while still managing to keep his hands in his pockets.

“Upstairs library,” replied Pahlavi, whose march out of the office came to an unexpected halt as he jumped so that his legs landed astride of Greenidge’s ball of paper. Pahlavi snapped the heels of his brown leather sandals together so that they clenched the ball of paper. Then, in an acrobatic action defying his fifty-five years, he leapt up off the grey-carpeted floor, sending his heels up behind him. As he did so, he released the ball of paper from his heels and managed to propel it over the back of his head. And as he also managed to twist in the air as he made this leap of faith, this had the incredible effect of directing the ball of paper in the direction of the wastepaper bin …

Greenidge watched fascinated as the ball of paper looped down and disappeared successfully into the bin.

“Blimey! Nice one, sir.” Greenidge’s face split into an ironic grin. Pahlavi was better than him at everything. No detective had ever looked scruffier or more colourful than Pahlavi, and whenever he performed such skilful acts, he always reminded Greenidge of a circus’s Head Clown.

Pahlavi ignored Greenidge’s compliment and simply moonwalked in a robotic backwards fashion out through the open office door, all the time fixing Greenidge with an impassive stare. He then jumped up from the corridor floor with a half-turn, as if unwinding himself from his original twisting leap and accelerated away down the seventeenth-floor main corridor.

“Like a tramp escaping a paint shop!” shouted Greenidge at the open doorway after Pahlavi’s kaleidoscopic image had blurred away from him. Greenidge span around robotically on the tough grey-carpeted office floor, trying to do a Pahlavi, pleased and laughing at his clever remark.

Instead of facing the open doorway, Greenidge now faced the office window that was about five yards in front of him with the open doorway about two yards behind him. The width of the office was about four yards. The office more or less resembled a giant shoebox. Cabinets, cupboards and metal framed bookcases lined the sidewalls at various places, and a large desk stood under the broad office window. Pahlavi always sat on the window side of the desk so that he was facing the door, and Greenidge sat across the table from Pahlavi so that he could watch the world go by when not talking to Pahlavi. On his right, fixed to the wall, was a large whiteboard. And on his left, fixed to the wall opposite the whiteboard, was a large flat-screen TV monitor, fixed at a slightly annoying slant on the wall. Greenidge thought the TV installation man had done it on purpose, but he had no definite theory as to why. The 24-hour news channel, BBC News-24, was showing, as usual, but the volume was so low it may as well have been muted.

Greenidge stared at the large office desk under the window. It was an ancient desk, almost the size of a snooker table. It was made of pine with the desktop resting on six thick, wobbly legs. It contained a pair of huge drawers opening on the window side where Pahlavi sat.

Suddenly, Greenidge sprinted a handful of strides with all the grace of a two-legged spider and sprang up onto the office desk. The table lurched slightly on its wobbly legs, but Greenidge adjusted his stance and kept his balance. A perfect Pahlavian jump, he thought. Who would mind if he did a jig on a desktop he was about to photograph, tidy and clean? He stared out of the window towards the neo-gothic architecture of the Houses of Parliament, just around 1,000 feet distant, bathed beneath the fresh morning sun. Just to the north end of the Houses of Parliament to his left, he spied one of the giant clock faces of London’s iconic Big Ben houses at the top of the Elizabeth Tower. He knew it would take a person with binoculars sitting on the hands of the giant clock face to see him. He had the office to himself and no one could see him. He was free to do anything that took his fancy. He decided he would out-Pahlavi Pahlavi. And so, he began to dance on the desktop to the panoramic view of the city of London busily waking that he spied through the window.

His dance movements were restricted by the fact that he couldn’t move his legs for fear of disturbing the items on the desktop before photographing them. However, he made up for that by exaggerating his upper body movements. It wasn’t easy because of the rickety desk’s wobbly legs. And he started to sing too … with the first lyrics that came into his head …

 

I’m a great big furry bumblebee,

Look at me,

Look at my hairy knee.

 

At this point, he had quickly managed to incorporate the rolling up of one of the legs of his trousers above his knee into his outlandish-looking dance. An easy play if you wore 1970s styled flares, although he nearly fell off the desk in the process—not too clever, as he might possibly have crashed through the window and boogied on down from the seventeenth floor to the pavement doing an excellent impression of a bumblebee with broken wings attempting the cancan. And as he repeated the line, Look at my hairy knee, he jiggled his head about while rhythmically pointing with both hands at his exposed knee (which was paradoxically as smooth as glass and almost as fragile). And his singing continued, exuberant and unabated.

Then he quickly bent down and swiped up Pahlavi’s cup of half-filled cold tea. And he sang …

 

I’m a great big furry bumblebee,

Look at me,

Look at my hairy knee.

Look at my cup of tea.

 

And he had again managed to point at his knee on the line Look at my hairy knee. Then as he repeated the line, Look at my cup of tea, he pointed at the cup of tea.

The tall spindly, blue-eyed, ginger-haired, pixie-nosed dancing enigma was in the zone—the madness zone—as splashing cold tea started escaping from the cup and depositing itself on Greenidge’s 1970s styled clothing.

He realised he had invented a new song and dance. He would keep thinking of words that rhymed with “me” that were objects within his grasp and point at them, always repeating the last line. It was a funky classic.

In his next verse, he attempted the near on impossible. He saw the key to the back door of the building that Pahlavi and he used when needing to avoid the media press gathered at the front entrance. If he could wriggle his shoe off, he might just be able to flick the key up onto his head, leaving him a hand free to point at everything as one had to hold the cup of tea. While dancing frenetically on the wobbly desk, he managed to squeeze out of his right platform shoe. And he sang:

 

I’m a great big furry bumblebee,

Look at me,

Look at my hairy knee.

Look at my cup of tea.

Look at my backdoor key.

 

At this point, he managed to shovel with his shoed foot the key on to the bridge of his white socked foot. He bent down a little and managed to flick the backdoor key up spiralling high into the air … and he caught it as it looped down onto his glorious ginger afro. Greenidge bobbled his head about and the key jinked this way and that, sinking deep into the hairy ginger depths of his afro like a tiny metal-skinned robot helplessly sinking into quicksand. And Greenidge pointed at his hairy knee, his cup of tea, and eventually he pointed at his afro on singing the repeated line, Look at my backdoor key.

Greenidge continued his ridiculous dance while scrutinising the desktop for another object rhyming with “me”. This was glorious. He knew he was well on the way to out-Pahlaving Pahlavi. Brilliant! he thought. There, on the chessboard beneath him, he spotted an item that fitted the bill. And this time, in order to out-Pahlavi Pahlavi completely, he would flick the object up with his foot while keeping his free hand firmly behind his back.