Yaxley Farcett and Brian Worthington were installed in the young detectives new office at The California Sluice on the River Snare. They were having a cup of tea and listening to 'Gasbag 109' on the radio in the hope that the synthesised caller would repeat his confession of earlier on. Sidney Prince, the morning show presenter was in full flow. He specialised in playing the devil's advocate and would wind up his audience to the point where they would phone in spitting and snarling with indignation. At that point Sidney Prince 
would become extremely pompous and berate them for getting angry and tell them that he would cut them off if they didn't stop it. He was a bully and he got great listening figures. On this particular morning he was defending the use of animals in research into cosmetics and suggesting that there was nothing wrong in smearing a piglet in sun tan lotion and putting it under a sun ray lamp until it began to smell like a bacon butty. He had received three irate calls, all which suggested that he was mad and in the pay of the large corporations. Sidney responded to the third caller, a lady from Cambridge, by saying that she was obviously a raving socialist of the old school and that she was 'sick to the core' if she believed that Sidney meant the animals any harm. 'Lets face it, Lady' he barked, 'Your type would be first to complain if little Johnny got burnt on holiday in Ibiza, wouldn't you !' There was a strangling sound from the caller as she fought to control her breathing as the anger welled up until she was on the verge of hyperventilating. 'I would cover up my children against the sun, you fool ! And what's more, I holiday in Scotland, not Ibiza, so my children do not run the risk of sunburn !' Sidney Prince cackled and shouted 'Get off the line Hippie and get a life !' Yaxley Farcett and Brian Worthington were engrossed. Now THIS was entertainment.
The next call was the one they had been waiting for. Sidney Prince gave his usual salutation- 'Hi, you're through to Gasbag 109. What's your beef ?' There was a silence for a second or two, which always seems like a hour on radio and then the strange mechanoid voice filled the office. 'It was me. I killed Reginald Dixon. I acted alone. I will pay the ultimate penalty'...and he/it hung up. The voice was only on the second word and Yaxley was scrambling for his mobile phone to call The Large Phone Company's special tracker line. He soon discovered that the call had been traced to a telephone kiosk in Plough Lane, Barnham. Yaxley threw on his jacket and headed for the door, closely followed by Brian Worthington. They leapt into the Ford Escort and Yaxley tried to start the car. Tried. The engine wouldn't turn over. He screamed and beat his fists on the steering wheel.
'Waddawegonnadonoww !' he moaned. As luck would have it, an East Anglian Water Authority van had just pulled into an empty space on the other side of the car park. Farcett and Worthington dashed from the Escort to the van and surprised the normally placid Gary Tweedy, who had just arrived at the sluice for his morning cuppa. Farcett flashed his ID in Tweedy's face and demanded that he hand over the keys to an officer of the Drainage Board. Tweedy handed the keys to Farcett nonchalantly, 'There you go mate. Pleasure. Any time'. A moment later, Farcett was spinning the transit van into reverse and gunning the vehicle in the direction of Barnham for a potentially dangerous encounter with a Professor Hawking soundalike in a small village in the Cambridgeshire Fens. Somewhere, a cow mooed.
