Burley Cross Postbox Theft. Nicola Barker

       Internal Mail

      Skipton,

      09/03/07

      14.00 hrs

       (Package and covering letter sent by internal mail)

      For attn PC Roger Topping, Ilkley

      CONFIDENTIAL

      Great news, Rog, great news –

      At last all those long, incalculably boring, soul-destroying hours of trudging and waiting and moping and cussing have finally paid off, and the career-making case you’ve been yearning for (stuck out there on your lonesome, all stiff and cross and swollen – with that haunting, blue tinge around your gills – like a huge, neglected gouty toe; a beached whale; a dour, oversized funeral director with no funeral to direct; a bad joke; a lazy error; a missed train; a dropped stitch; an unsightly stain on the perfect, white napkin of West Yorkshire’s tea-cake and charity-shop capital) is about to land – not the cake, you dope – with a lovely, resounding plop! right in the middle of your capacious lap.

      Oh, and it’s a good one, Rog, it’s a choice one! It’s something that’s going to frustrate and perplex that razor-sharp intellect of yours for many, many years to come. It’s going to haunt your dreams, Rog, and dominate your every waking moment. It’s going to confound and enrage you, Rog. It’s going to challenge you in ways you never imagined, ways you never even thought possible.

      Put plainly, Rog: it’s going to take over your miserable, pointless little existence and turn it upside down in exactly the same way it took over (and turned over) mine (which is slightly less miserable and pointless than yours, admittedly. No, considerably less, Rog – considerably less

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