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'No-one could,' said Kelly. 'People felt cheated by microtechnology, computer systems that fitted on a pinhead. People like plastic boxes with gubbins inside them. Plastic boxes are comforting.'

'And black ones are really macho,' said Constable Meek. 'Oooh, what's it doing now?'

'It's printing out,' said Kelly.

And printing out it was.

Paper spilled from the printer. Paper from a big roll at the back. Jack Kerouac typed On the Road in the 1950s upon a specially converted typewriter that had a spool of paper on the back. It took him only three weeks to type out his best-seller and it was all on a single piece of paper. Not a lot of people know that interesting fact.

Kelly did.

'There's at least a page full,' said Constable Meek, preparing to rip it from the roll.

'There's more coming,' said Kelly.

And there was.

And more.

'That's fifteen pages' worth,' said Constable Meek, fourteen pages later.

'There's more coming.'

And there was.

And more.

'Jumping Jesus on a rope. Give me joy and give me hope,' went Constable Ronald Meek, son of the famous Nigel and brother to the pirate Black Jake Meek (who always wore a wooden leg but never owned a parrot). 'There's fifty pages, no sixty, no maybe seventy. Half of the population of London seem to have all gone missing.'

Kelly tore off the paper. 'It's hundreds,' she said. 'But not thousands. But it's far too many people. This isn't good. It isn't.'

'It's The Rapture,' said the suddenly enlightened Constable Meek. 'The good are being carried off to Glory. I must tell the chief constable.'

'Don't do that,' said Kelly.

'But I must. If I am to be lifted bodily into Heaven, he'll need to call in a replacement for me from the Met. There's a lot of paperwork involved. He'll want to get started at once.'

'It isn't The Rapture,' said Kelly, who, truth to tell, was almost beginning to wonder. 'And I wouldn't go bothering the chief constable with it. Well, not at least until I've left the building.'

'Oh must you go?' asked Constable Meek. 'I was hoping to ask you out to lunch. There's this restaurant I know, the Laughing Sprout. You are a vegetarian, aren't you?'

Kelly smiled and nodded. 'However did you guess?' she asked.

'Call it intuition,' said the unintuitive constable.

'Could you just give me half an hour alone with this computer first?' asked Kelly. 'Before you take me out to lunch.'

'Oh yes,' said Constable Meek. 'Half an hour. I'll change out of my cravat. I'll see you in half an hour.'

Half an hour later the constable returned, but Kelly Anna Sirjan had, like Elvis, left the building.

Kelly sat once more in the saloon bar of the Flying Swan. Before her on the table was the stack of computer printouts, torn into page-sized portions. Beside this lay something most intriguing. It was another printout, but this one came in the form of a map of Greater London. Kelly had programmed the computer to print out this map, dotting the last known addresses of the listed missing persons, along with the dates of their disappearances. The map made for interesting viewing.

Most of the disappearances appeared to have occurred during the last fourteen days. And there was a definite pattern. There were no dots in Brentford, which meant that Dr Druid had not as yet made a report to the police. But a trail of dots led directly to the borough. It was one of eight such trails. They spread over the map like the legs of some titanic spider, the body of which was splattered black with dots. And appeared to cover most of an urban conurbation known as Mute Corp Keynes.

'Mute Corp Keynes,' said Kelly to no-one but herself. 'The new town Utopia built in 2002 by Remington Mute the computer billionaire. 'The town of tomorrow, today', if I recall the advertising slogan correctly, and I do. Turned out to be not so much a Utopia as a dystopia, a regular ghetto. He never invested in any more new towns after that. Significant? Perhaps.'

'Hello,' said the voice of Derek. 'Fancy seeing you here.'

'Thank God you've arrived,' said Kelly.

'Oh,' said Derek. 'Is it something important?'

‘I’ll say it is. Take a look at this.'

Derek looked. 'You're pointing to your stomach,' he said.

'I am,' said Kelly. 'It's empty and you're just in time to buy me lunch. They've got a special up on the blackboard. A surf and turf. I'll have that and I'll have a glass of red wine too.'

Derek smiled somewhat thinly and took himself off to the bar counter.

'Barman,' he was heard to call. 'Barman, excuse me please.'

Somewhat later, Kelly pushed away her empty plate and dabbed at her Cupid's bow with an oversized red gingham napkin. 'That hit the spot,' she said, smiling. Derek had just watched her licking clean the plate. 'You certainly enjoy your food,' said he, in 'what is known as a 'guarded fashion'.

'I have two stomachs,' said Kelly. 'My dinner stomach and my pudding stomach. My pudding stomach's still empty.'

'I really couldn't face another wait at the bar,' said Derek. 'That old boy nearly had me insulting the barman again. It was a close-run thing.'

'I'll just have a Mars bar later then. How are your investigations going?'

'What investigations?' Derek asked.

'Into the missing patients.'

'I told you I was dropping that. And that sample I took from the bed in the ward turned out to be KY jelly. If it turns out that Dr Druid's butchered the patients, I'll cover the trial. I'm doing an article on the floral clock today.'

'You don't think that the bus crash and the vanishing patients might merit a bit more column space?'

'Mr Shields is dealing with that himself.' Derek now whispered. 'A little bird told me that the police raided his office last night. They confiscated all that computer equipment.'

Kelly teased at her golden hair. 'Why would the police raid his office?'

'I've no idea. But that's a news story in itself. But somehow I don't think he'll let me write it up. What are you doing today? What are all these computer printouts?'

'Just research. What do you know about Mute Corp Keynes?'

‘It's a dump,' said Derek. 'An urban wasteland. Crime City UK. I've got an aunty who lives there. She doesn't dare venture out at night without wearing full body armour. It's the only town in England where you can put up a sign on your house that says intruders will be met by armed response and do it legally. It's a police no-go zone. It's…'

'Not a very nice place, by the sound of it.'

'I wouldn't know,' said Derek. 'I've never been there.'

'Your aunty's going to get a real surprise when you turn up outside her door this afternoon then.'

'What?' said Derek.

They actually had a border post with barbed-wire fences and all. A guard with a clipboard waved down Derek's car. His car was a Ford Fiesta. It was a collector's piece.