"Central to the creed of Shinto, for centuries indigenous to the ancient empire of Japan, was a belief in divine transcendency through death, that all men, laid to rest within their tomb, among the icons and artefacts thought to embody their very essence as mortal beings," "would, within a generation of decease, shed finally all earthly trappings and rise again as gods - ambivalent entities or kami who would thenceforth walk the Earth on missions both benign and destructive." "And among the high priests of the Nara Period, legendary was the name of Sikoto-no." "In life, a quixotic shaman with the power to both charm and terrify, his life and works largely unknown to Western culture until the late 19th century, when his tomb, long buried beneath the foothills of Mount Hiei," "disgorged a mouth-watering stash of treasures." "Chief among them, this remarkably-preserved porcelain likeness of the mystic monk himself, seen by many New Ageists today as a source of peace and transcendental oneness, by others as a rather malevolent-looking homunculus of more sinister design." "I'm bound to ask its present owner, Mr Owen Glendower, better known to us all as the nation's foremost gastronomic guru, to which theory he subscribes." "Oh, I'm quite convinced he's a wrong 'un." "Look at the eyes - positively glowing with evil." "He's not used to being out in the light." "Sadly, I have to keep it locked away most of the time." " One of the curses with a priceless treasure." " But he's making a rare public appearance." "For one month only in a little museum in South Buckinghamshire, where I was born." "Hopefully bring in some much needed revenue." "I'm sure it'll be a star attraction." "Eight centuries of myth from the Far East, the porcelain statue of Sikoto-no." " Owen Glendower, many thanks." " My pleasure." "That's great." "Very good, indeed." " OK, is that a wrap?" " That's a wrap, yeah." "That must have set you back!" "I'm amazed you let it out." "One must put something back where one can." "Rest assured, security tomorrow morning will be airtight." "The chances of anyone spiriting this away from under my nose are absolutely zero." "A case like this, as far as I can see, is without precedent." "The poor woman's whole quality of life now... we're talking, well, zombie here, really." "OK, what are you telling me?" "She's watching me on TV, hypnotising this guy on a TV screen, and the next thing you know she's..." " I mean!" " The humour is somewhat lost on me, Mr Klaus." " You have these dangerous powers." " Oh, come on." "They're tricks, man." "You think I have lasers coming out of my eyes?" "Look, Mrs Thrimpson, I give you marks for trying." "I mean, 25 minutes and she hasn't cracked." "So how about this - two tickets to the show, you and your husband, my guests?" "Never let it be said that I don't reward originality." "Mrs Thrimpson..." "When I snap my fingers, on the count of three, you will come out of the trance." "One..." "Two..." "Three!" "Mrs Thrimpson..." "Will you wake the hell up?" "!" "What is it with the public?" "They just can't stand the fact that you're richer than they are." "They've got to get a piece of the action." "I mean, she IS faking it, right?" "Very convincingly." "The question is how long can she keep it up?" "This has got to be a joke!" "Compensation to the husband for loss of marital relations." "He should be paying me." "Geez..." "So where did you say we're dropping you?" "Soho Square?" "That'd be handy, thanks." "Invite to the launch of Mrs Baxter's new fitness video." "Might be good for a giggle." "Oh, she may call you later to rope you into this new show." ""Animal Farm"." "Anything from George Orwell now is being snapped up as a ratings winner on the back of "Big Brother" and "Room 101"." "A bigger load of crap you can't imagine." "Celebrities are put into a pigsty for seven days to live like animals." "How sad must you be to want to roll around in mud with a nurse from "Casualty"?" "You'll regret it, I'm telling you." "On the other hand, Jonathan, people get to see you as a real person, right?" "Gentle, self-effacing." "Vulnerable." "Sometimes you gotta go for the sympathy vote." "You're right on time." "Thelma Bailey." "I'm the museum's manageress." "My daughter Gillian will be accompanying you on the collection." "We're a little nervous." "I'm sure it'll all go like clockwork." "They can never do it justice, can they, all the photos and illustrations?" "The power... is so strong." "One can feel it." "Nigimitama, the divine force of the Shinto kami." "Many will come here to meditate, one-to-one, to find peace." "To be the first would be a rare privilege." "At the risk of sounding odd, do you mind terribly if I had a quiet moment?" "Oh, my God!" "Mother!" "What happened?" "I closed my eyes, one minute." "When I opened them again, it was..." "Someone had taken it." " What?" " Someone must have come in..." "Mother, no one came in." "We would have seen them." "This is totally impossible." " Check the doors and windows." " Check again." "There we go." "Enjoy." "Hello." " So you made that all-important transition?" " Thank you." "From crime coverage to popular callisthenics." "That's one Ludovic Kennedy never quite pulled off." " Seems to be going well." " Assisted by our cross-promotional strategy with a leading cosmetics firm." "With every video, a set of scented face wipes." "It may get a bit sticky." "Lots of luck with it." "Have fun!" " You're not serious?" " Excuse me?" "Hello." ""You too can shed pounds with my triple whammy." ""Just follow me on screen and simply stretch, squeeze and shake it off"?" " What's your point?" " Apart from a few dim-witted plumpers, who do you think mainly buys these things?" "If you're insinuating what I think you're insinuating..." " I haven't a clue what you're insinuating." " You put a tape like this in the shops with a free box of tissues, it may not give off the signals you intend." " Could I trouble you, Miss Borrego?" " Yes, surely." "There you go." "Oh, I haven't got your name." "That's fine." "It's actually for my nephew." "What he'd really love - this is embarrassing - is to have his photo taken with you." " Maybe sitting on your knee?" " No problem." "Come on, then, Darren." "If you're quick." "Jonathan Creek." "Sorry?" "Buckinghamshire?" "I suppose I could." "What sort of disappearing trick?" "Now, it'll save your time and mine if I truncate." "The figurine left my house at 9.27 a. m." "Placed, under my supervision, in a box inside a locked steel case, which was handcuffed to two armed couriers and conveyed to this building." "The security staff, incidentally, were of impeccable credentials." "Safe arrival was verified by the senior officer in this room before it was passed to the curator, who appears to have gone into some kind of trance in here, before the piece then vanished into thin air." "The most priceless Nara Period ceramic this side of Kyoto." "I mean, it is beyond value!" "He doesn't look much, but you'd be amazed at the results." "A few days from now, he'll know exactly who stole your statue." "Well, give the man a biscuit" "Ms Borrego, I know damn well who stole it." "I just want the bloody thing back." "This woman, Thelma Bailey, had been pestering me for months." ""What a boost it would be for the community, a real cultural shot in the arm. "" "Now, against all my instincts, I agreed." "And, of course, walked straight into her trap." "Can't you see?" "What she's pulled off here is a very clever conjuring trick." "On stage, hidden from view for no more than a minute, she performs the impossible." "Playing me for a complete sucker!" "Well we find out how she managed it and, hopefully, we'll be on the way to retrieving my property." "But I won't be holding my breath." "Anyway..." "You've got my number." "Sorry, would you be Gillian?" "I'm Carla Borrego and this is Jonathan Creek." "We're doing a bit of legwork for Mr Glendower." "And he told you the same as he told the police?" "That my mother engineered it all?" "By witchcraft or something For all I know, that statue just evaporated." "If you'd been here, you'd have freaked out." "So where is Mrs Bailey now?" "Could we speak to her?" "You can speak to her." "Whether she can speak to you is another matter." "About an hour after all this happened, her whole face began to swell up into these like, horrible weals." "And her voice began to crack as if she..." "I don't know." "...was possessed by demons." "Yes, thank you for that, then." "Can't you see my mother's at death's door?" "How would you like a sniffer dog up your nightdress?" "Lousy man." "Anyway, as you can see, they found nothing." " If you'd like to go up." " I'm not very good with facial disfigurement." "Skin eruptions, weeping sores." "Maybe if I just wait down here while you two..." "Fair enough." "The doctor said it's like some extreme form of nettle rash." "I can't think why that would be." "Still, at least you're looking a bit better now." "Your body perhaps going into shock after what happened." "You should have seen me before the antihistamine." "This whole side of my face was a mass of horrible..." "Yes, think I could... use your toilet at all?" "It's just at the end there." "So, have I got this right, Mrs Bailey?" "Your eyes were closed the whole time, like in a state of meditation." "And that was for, what, about a minute?" "Isn't it bizarre?" "And how odd that I didn't even hear anything." "And then those wretched policemen descended on us." "It's been a complete nightmare!" "Your colleagues have all gone now." "He must have made a packet, then, out of all this." " I mean, to afford all that stuff." " The cult of celebrity." "Powerful marketing tool." "One set of gods to another." " How true." " Yes, it puts it all into perspective." "What a few soufflés can buy for you." "We're obviously all in the wrong business." "Lovely view." "You lived here all your life?" "As it happens - single, married and single again." " Sadly, Mr Bailey is no longer with us." " He's with a bus conductress in Woking" "Yes, I think I owe my sanity to Gorgons Wood." "Five decades now, it's been my spiritual retreat from life, all this world and its worries." "Gorgons Wood?" "Named on account of the carvings of these horrid little faces on a big beech tree." "Mother thinks they're quaint." "I find them deeply disturbing." " I wish there was more I could tell you." " Don't worry, Mrs Bailey." "It may be you've told us quite enough." "Do you fancy a walk?" "How she did it is your department." "She's pushing it with that meditation routine." "Fairly obviously, as the number one suspect, she's not going to risk keeping it in her house, so the minute she gets back, where does she hide it?" " Somewhere in a bloody great wood?" " With a very well-known focal point." "And how likely is it that if we find some nearby nettles or lethal vegetation that could have caused her face to explode like that, we'll also find our buried treasure?" " You've got this all worked out, haven't you?" " I've given it a bit of thought." "You'll come out with some oddball observation now that appears to have nothing to do with it." "Not at all." "Though you might ponder the significance of Engelbert Humperdinck and Jethro Tull in this." " Might I?" " It's so obvious, I don't know why I missed it." "Maybe you're just getting old and rusty." "Jethro Tull?" "A little bit before my time." "Where did all that spring from?" "Interesting." "And yet weird." "Someone must have had some patience." "Hmm." "Oh!" "And what do we have here?" ""Go to... " It looks like some sort of directions." ""East 19"." "What do you think?" "It's got to mean something." "Quite possibly." "But does this mean even more?" "What if somewhere round here there was some ancient hidey-hole that certain people who have come here all their lives would definitely know about?" "Which way's east?" "Let's say it means the 19th tree from this one, so that's..." "One, two, three..." "Will you not go waltzing off like Jim Hawkins?" "Just remember where we are." "In a little place called the real world." "Quite clearly, some woodpeckers or something have got at this over the years." " I suggest we're not seeing the complete..." " Oh!" "Ah!" "You must be Jonathan Creek." " My God!" "What happened?" " Want a hand getting up?" "Thank you, no." "A vertical position is absolutely the worst thing for sciatica." "Oh, tell me about it!" "It's not funny." "Like someone slicing into your thigh with a razor." "Probably needs a bit of traction." "Ah..." "I was just framing up on a spotted flycatcher." "Bent double, I suppose, to get a better shot." "That'll do it every time if you've got a back problem." "Whereabouts do you live?" "Is it far from here?" "Did I get the impression you were expecting us, Mr...?" "Well, yes, of course." "From what I saw on the news, a puzzle like this one, your presence was inevitable." "Now, if you make a sharp right at the next cedar, straight on for half a mile and we'll be there." "I can't tell you how much I appreciate this." "There we are." "Just as I thought." "Your piriformis has gone into spasm." "You want to get yourself to a good chiropractor." "In the meantime, there's a little thing I can try to help loosen it up, but..." "You might just want to bite on this for a count of three." "And... three!" "Two!" "One!" " Aaaah!" " Maybe just a bit longer." "Forgive my friend's overzealous concern for your health." "Be glad it wasn't a prostate problem." "It was fortuitous we should meet today, Mr Creek, in more ways than one." "You see, a talent to recall facts and faces runs in my family." "I have, as it happens, an unusually large brain." "Inherited from my grandfather." "And there are, shall we say, darker recesses to this mystery I may be able to help you with." "You've been to see our famous tree, of course, which you'll have realised by now is not unconnected with the problem." "Well there's certainly another angle to all this I'm only just starting to see." "It began with those old albums in her bedroom." "A singer and a rock band both took the name of slightly obscure figures from history." "Engelbert Humperdinck, composer, and Jethro Tull, who invented the seed drill." "Suddenly, I'm remembering another Owen Glendower." "Welsh warlord, in the 1300s, who led a revolt against Henry IV." "I'm thinking this is probably not the name our celebrity chef was born with." "And you put that signature of his against the letters in the tree..." " Hardly conclusive, but they're distinctive "G"s." " Which all suggests to you?" "The two people who carved their initials there a long time ago may just have shared the same surname." "Thelma Ogden, as she was then, had a brother." "Six o'clock of a spring evening..." "Many's the time I'd be cycling home that way from the bakery." "Hello, Ian." "Gordon..." "Young Gordon..." "Where that talent came from, God only knowsl" "It just seemed to pour out of him." "That one day he would find fame and fortune, I think no one doubted." "But the way it happened wasn't pretty." "When their parents parted company, so did they." "Divided up, like spoils of war." "Little boy, whisked off to the big city with his father." "Little girl, left behind to comfort her embittered mother." "Overnight, brother and sister no more." "Young minds, filled with poison." "They disowned each other from that day to this." "So... we're looking at what?" "Major sibling rivalry here?" "By tricking him out of that statue, she gets to rub his nose in it big time?" "As you say, Mr Creek, names can be changed to bury the past." "But for those of us who remember, it will always be Gordon's Wood." "Do you know, I think I really can feel a difference?" "From what you did." "It's amazing." " You're obviously a keen student of anatomy." " Well, I get a lot of stick for it, but..." "Remember I said to you I had an unusually large brain?" " Yes." " I'd like you to have it." "As a token of thanks." "It's only gathering dust around this place." "And I feel you will give it a good home." "Gillian!" "Gillian!" "Gillian!" "With a view to minimising the distress this is going to cause my client and her husband, may I suggest we proceed as swiftly as possible?" "We may as well face it, Adam." "She's good." "We can't see any way to get her to crack, so..." "How's it, uh going here, anyway?" "How's it going?" "I'm crawling around in a pigsty." "That's what going." "I'm living like a pig in pig shit in a pigsty, among what are laughingly called celebrities." "Did you ever see one of these nobodies before in your life?" "This is more pork than anybody has a right to." "You can blow me too, bozo!" "Been right in my face from the get-go." "Well, back to nature and all that." "I'm sure you'll emerge a more rounded person." "You have no idea, do you, what they're putting us through here in the name of entertainment?" "I'm drinking pig's milk, Jonathan!" " I'm sure it's not that bad." " No, I'm drinking pig's milk straight from the pig!" "I tell you, we gotta be sick as a society to want to watch this stuff." "OK!" "It's the moment you've all been waiting for - breakfast time!" "Another ratings winner there, then" "Eric Blair, king of the reality format." "What's next?" "Celebrity suicides?" "Leaping to their death off Wigan Pier?" "Now I think we're just being silly." "Anyway, that's my lot for today." "If you promised to be nice to me, I was going to invite you for lunch." "We could give this a try." "Oh, right." "With hubby in Edinburgh, sure you can trust me?" "I'll take my chances." "MM?" "You look at the rubbish he sticks in these things." "Every additive known to man." "List of ingredients?" "More like a set of log tables." "God knows what it does to your inside." " Oh, my God." " What?" "I've just realised." "The vanishing statue." "How she did it." "And the ridiculous thing is I've known for four days." "When we were there, in her bedroom, she as good as showed it to us, the whole secret." "It just never meant anything until now." " Do I get to share in this breakthrough?" " Drive us back there and I'll think about it." "I can give you two minutes, but..." "What sort of details?" " I've told you everything I know." " Well, not quite, Mrs Bailey." "There's peripheral stuff." "Like the fact that Owen Glendower, né Gordon Ogden, is actually your brother, though you're both keen to bury the fact." "More crucially I thought you'd be ready to come clean now, about how you made a 12" statue disappear into thin air." "We think we know where it went." "You get points for ingenuity." "You know I was searched with considerable vigour?" "What could I have done with it?" "I think what you did with it is the easy bit." "You ate it." "How's your face looking now?" "Seems to have died down." "Something that disagreed with you, maybe?" " Look, if you've nothing sensible to say..." " Three pounds of porcelain hardly slips down." "That's not what we're talking about here, is it?" "Exactly where the switch came I've been trying to figure, but when that guy checked it on arrival it was the genuine article, which means you couldn't do it without your daughter's help." "What's gloriously ironic here is the whole idea came from him." "A page in one of those books I evidently logged without realising." "How to make an edible toy that involved some kind of magic mixture that is poured into a mould to produce a couple of crisp candy shells." "A bit like the outside of an MM." "Put them together, you have a nice novelty item for parties." "But if you're careful how you hold it, you only need the front half to make everyone think it's real." "You get yourself an accurate impression of the original and you're in business." "You won't be surprised to hear probably that was all down to Gillian." "Since you seem to know all about us." "Of course, I had to get her to set it all up." "He wouldn't have let me through the front door." "Nice to see you." "Please, come in." "I'm not exactly wracked with guilt about it." "Having seen the pompous, avaricious, pinch-fist he grew up into," "I felt he could spare some family maintenance." "A sudden thought I had this morning about food additives." "One thing you hadn't bargained for was a reaction to all the colourings she used." "A whole bunch of E numbers, one of which your body didn't take to at all." "Yes, well, it's certainly blown up in my face, all this, in more ways than one." "I can't remember now how long it took her, but, yes... the result was impressive." "The way it worked inside the box, there was just room, more or less, for one to sit inside the other." "Two lids." "Identical, top and bottom." "Who was going to notice which way up she was carrying it?" "Nigimitama, the divine force of the Shinto kami." "You knew, I suppose, where we'd hidden it?" "In the wood." "Until the police had been." "Well, she went out again that afternoon to collect it." "Never returned." " Four days." "Haven't seen hide nor hair of her." " What?" "You're saying she's gone?" "She's gone." "The statue's gone." "Oh, I've really been hung out to dry." "You want the whole sordid picture?" "When I went to look for her that night, I found this." "It belongs to a local birdwatcher." "I gather you met." "He says he dropped it that afternoon, but has no knowledge at all of what's on the last few seconds of the tape." "It was too gross to even think about it." "Deep down I knew." "It was him." "With his own sister's daughter." "And how could she possibly...?" "Well, any doubts I might have had when I confronted him..." " You are nothing but scum!" " Gillian?" "My own niece?" "I should never have let her anywhere near you!" " I never laid a finger..." " Don't you dare try to pretend!" "Look at you!" "I mean, this..." "This is... the most preposterous..." "What unspeakable sins were his eyes confessing." "Oh, no, there was no question at all..." "what they'd been up to." "Of course, he swears blind that she hasn't been there." "And the truth of it, Mr Creek," "I don't know what to think." "Maybe she's double-crossed us both." "Gone off now to find some dealer somewhere." "I started going through her organiser." "Files, what have you." "Looking for a name, anything." "A contact or..." "The only thing I found that was slightly odd, on this piece of paper, an address with just the letter "D" on it." "Funny, isn't it?" "Suddenly, only one thing matters." "The only thing I'd ever cared about." "Now I've lost her." "I suppose I couldn't even dare to ask if you'll help?" "What did she say?" "The one with the bird's nest?" "Fair to say we wouldn't have stumbled on this in a hurry." "So she seduced him?" "God!" "Her own uncle, to get him to play ball in the first place." "Then as soon as she's pulled off this stunt with her mother, she does the dirty on her as well and legs it." "Having first come out here for a quick one with a guy she must clearly detest?" "Sorry, that's too messy." "If it comes to that, who do we suppose was also here, filming them at it?" "The answer to that, I suspect, is nobody." "Say that camcorder was on pause-record when the old guy dropped it into that bush." "Later on, it just happens to fall out again, the pause button gets knocked and it runs on." "Otherwise, why leave it behind?" "I suppose that makes sense." "But what doesn't make sense is this." "Four holes." "They certainly weren't here last time we looked." "I'm no ornithologist, but I'd say there's no way these were made by a woodpecker." " Think this is right?" " It's what she's written down." "Well, I'm not going in!" "That's upstairs." "Out the shop, round the back." " What?" " No, it's round the back, apparently." "Come in." "It's not locked." "You're 10 minutes early, but it doesn't matter." "No, actually, I was..." " What do you want?" " Do you know a girl called Gillian Bailey?" "Your address was in her book." "Who are you?" " Get out!" " The thing is, we were..." "Fine." "We're going." " Callum, don't, for God's sake!" " Shut up!" "So, probably just an old friend of hers or something, you reckon?" "From the Girl Guides." "Someone she used to sing in the choir with, perhaps." "Anyway, I seem to remember promising you a meal." "If you're still interested." "Go on, then." "Your thoughts being what, currently, on all this?" " Think he'll ever see that statue again now?" " Dunno." "Something distinctly odd, didn't you think, about that Dawn character this afternoon?" "The way that face of hers was all..." "I mean, what did that look like to you?" "As if she'd been badly burnt or something." " Or something." " OK." "Are we ready now for a little palate freshener?" "What's that?" "Citrus sorbet?" "If that's come straight out of the freezer, it might not be such a good idea." "Don't be such a baby." "Come on." "Now..." "Nice or what?" "Mm." "Oh, God!" "There you go!" "The knitting needles behind the eyes!" "Every time..." "Hello?" "Oh, yes." "Hi, darling." " Oh, God!" " No..." " No, I'm fine." " Aah!" "Aah!" "Can I call you back in just a minute?" "I'm in the middle of something." "OK, bye." "God!" "What are you like?" "What the hell he thought was going on here, I shudder to imagine!" "I did warn you." "Ice-cold sorbet, I'm sorry, does that to me every time." "Every time." "No..." "It's as if the holes on that tree..." "And while we're on the subject of orgasms, this afternoon, before we went up to her flat, what was it you saw in that sex shop that amused you so much?" "Sorry?" " What?" " Oh, Jonathan." "I've just had an amazing thought." "About our disappearing girlie, after what you said earlier." " Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" " Actually, I've got a horrible feeling I'm thinking of something much worse." "It's like you know when you can suddenly just see it all, there in front of you?" "You've got a young girl on the run with some stolen goods." "She'll be quite keen to lie low for a while." "And she jotted down the address of a prostitute who, it turns out, is completely unrecognisable under some very nasty facial disfigurement." "I wonder where the inspiration for that came from Why didn't we see it straight away?" "Maybe because it was never there to see." "I don't know." "Something tells me there could be a very nasty shock waiting for us at the top of these stairs." "I knew you'd be back." "So you came here looking for Gillian Bailey, right?" "I was gonna hand it in, but..." "Best now if you take it." "And just go before he gets back." "Well, yes." "But not until we've cleared up one or two other details, Dawn." " It is Dawn?" " I know what you're thinking, but..." "Hallowe'en mask?" "I wish!" "Too easy, wasn't it, Dawn?" "To start making up our own stories here." "Am I right in saying we weren't the only ones to see a faint resemblance between you and Gillian Bailey?" "We know she stole this thing, with help from her mother, from a guy called Owen Glendower." "He lent it to their museum." "Exactly what she had to do to get him to agree in the first place we're still a bit hazy on." "It obviously helped that she was young and good-looking and he wasn't too fussy about knocking off his own niece." "But I don't know, though." "Would she really have gone that far?" "Her mother seems to think so." "How well does she know her own daughter?" "It was just up by the West Side Centre." "About a month ago." "Said she was waiting for a taxi." "After a few minutes, this car pulls up, but it's like a clear case of mistaken identity." "And suddenly she's thinking 19 to the dozen." "If some punter on the street could get the two of us mixed up like that..." "So a couple of nights later she comes back." "Says would I be up for it?" "There's this guy she's trying to sweeten up to do her a favour." "Only, what he wants, no way she's gonna give it to him, but maybe I can help." "The whole idea was weird right..." "It was a job, you know, and what kind of business am I gonna turn down?" " Said she'd sussed how to sell it to him." " Uncle." "Said he was like putty in her hands." "Look, I know what you want, and it can be arranged... but not here." "How would it be if I had a... friend?" "Who could do things for you that Gillian can't." "A bit of rough trade." "Gillian..." "Are you sure you want to?" "Only on a professional basis." "Nothing wrong in that." "And he really bought it, you know?" "Like that was her there on the bed." "I saw him twice after that." "The third time he couldn't even do it." "Anyway, you see, the thing is I don't exactly work alone." "I've got, like, this..." " Personal management." " The history of that you don't need to know." "But, I tell you, when you've had your face shoved in a gas ring, you don't run away again." "His first idea was to blackmail him maybe." "But then he gets this big idea, doesn't he?" "Reads about this statue this guy is putting on show and, of course, he's got to have it." "The way they'd got it covered at that museum, he wouldn't have had a prayer, but, well, he just got lucky, didn't he?" "Soon as the heat's off at her house, he goes round there." "And waits." "So when he caught up with her in the wood, what we saw on that video..." "Him and her." "God, that takes some stomaching." "Sadly, what we saw on that video wasn't what we thought we saw." "The whole point we were all forgetting was that the camera was on its side, which means the image on that screen had actually been rotated through 90 degrees." "If you put that together with those four holes that then appeared on the tree as we found out earlier with that sorbet," "sometimes you can misread a situation so completely that..." "I said there was a nasty shock waiting here." "It's true, isn't it?" "This... thing, all it ever brings is evil and destruction." "I don't know." "I just want it out of h..." "I'm not gonna say please." "'Cause you're already dead." "You know that." "Aah!" "Just go, for God's sake!" "Uh..." "And news just in." "The body of Gillian Bailey, the missing museum worker at the centre of the Shinto statue theft, was today discovered in a wood near her home, hidden inside a hollow log." "It's believed she had been stabbed to death there." "That's lovely." "If you'd just like to go through." "Just waiting for Mr Klaus to arrive." " What...?" " I'm just checking in with Mr Tunstall on a little civil proceeding." "He seemed like a very good bet." " Ah, Miss Borrego." "The illicit inflatables." " I tell you, they will cop for a bundle!" " Putting MY head on a blow-up doll!" " Yes, I did check with the manufacturers." "It appears you signed an authorisation for them allowing them to license "all forms of sexual erotica, however explicit, bearing my name," ""face or likeness. " A copy here they faxed to us, dated the 23rd inst." "Well, it's a forgery, obviously." "I mean, what... 23rd?" "What was I doing on the 23rd?" "Um... signing autographs at a video launch." "I seem to remember a woman handing you a blank sheet of paper, then distracting you with a grown-up nephew." "Yes, but..." "You're not telling me it's all legal?" " If they think..." "What the hell is that smell?" " I don't know, but it's getting closer." "OK." "What can I tell you?" "My driver pulled over on Putney Bridge to throw up - not good news for the rowing crew going underneath." "Bad enough I've come from that crap hole and no more than a rinse between me and swine fever, but now I have to cough up gazillions to Grandma Moses in there because none of us can prove this is a lousy scam?" "!" "Can I suggest, Mr Klaus, if you seek a modest settlement, a little goodwill goes a long way?" "Mrs Thrimpson!" "How are you today?" "What IS that stench?" "!" "Please!" "Fresh air!" "Fresh air!"