Extract from Chapter 12 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':

Dr Pratt waved a hand, indicating that he had something to say though it would have to wait until after a sneeze. He sneezed. ‘That’ll be your mobile phone,’ he said in that oh-dear-me tone we all talk in immediately after we’ve sneezed. ‘Nice. I was never given one when I was in charge.’

‘And what use should I have for this?’ asked Woo, balefully, slipping the device out of a plastic bag so that it sat awkwardly in his hand, upside down. He pressed a random key, which set off a whirring sound causing Woo to throw the mobile back down on the desk away from himself as though the thing had bitten him.

‘What’s the bally thing for?’ demanded Woo. ‘What’s it do?’

‘It is what we call a “mobile phone”,’ offered O’Singh, charitably. ‘We could teach you how to use it.’

‘A moveable telephone? I rather think I could work out how to operate it for myself, if I chose,’ sneered Woo.

Dr Pratt picked up the phone, glanced at the screen and turned it round to show Woo. ‘It’s taken a photo of your shoe.’

Woo snatched back the phone and looked for himself. ‘I know that,’ he said, ‘I know my shoes better than you, Pratt.’

Dr Pratt and O’Singh stood patiently as Woo prodded more keys. Each time frustrating himself afresh. He set about punching several keys at a time.

‘Dah-de-dah-dah-de-dah-dah-de-dah-de-dah…’ chimed the phone, sounding like an organ grinder’s version of the William Tell Overture. Dr Pratt prised the device from Woo and stopped it.

Immense thanks to Becky Walker for pre-ordering a copy of the book. Becky is a screenwriter and playwright. She once considered texting The Iliad but found alas that it contained more than 140 characters

Extract from Chapter 11 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':

‘We are expanding our knowledge,’ explained Dr Pratt coolly, looking like he was pulling knowledge from his head.

‘Using connections,’ said O’Singh, emphasising ‘connections’ evangelistically. ‘Dr Pratt and I believe we have struck upon something monumental. It is not just about rooting out a para-usual fact here, another there, but connecting them. What we believe we may be doing is embarking on a journey to knowing everything,’ added O’Singh, magnanimously. ‘And to that end, my suspicions are that we could start anywhere, with any subject. And so,’ he said more hurriedly, tapping the board, quelling a protest from Woo, ‘in our recent meet with the Government we happened to start teasing out what is para-usual about kidnapping.’

O’Singh threw a significant look at Dr Pratt, to gesture reassuringly that he had begun to sell the department and the battle to win over Woo.

‘Body snatching was, then, a natural progression in the thought process – the kidnapping of dead people instead of live ones.’

‘Why would I do that?’ interjected Woo. ‘I kidnap a dead person. I say to that dead person’s relatives, hand me over the money else I send you a body part in the post.’

‘Yes?’ said O’Singh, eager to engage Woo.

‘The transaction therefore depends on a body part precious to the owner being allowed to reside with that owner intact, for a stipulated fee. Mostly illegally, I should add.’

‘The ransom is essentially a retaining fee,’ concurred O’Singh.

‘If you will,’ returned Woo, sniffily. ‘What you absolutely fail to recognise is that the bargaining power of the kidnapper is diminished considerably when the owner of the body parts is dead, when he or she – for I do not make sexist assumptions when hypothesising about the gender of dead people –is inconvenienced by the hacking off of an appendage far less than a live one sentimental to the keeping of body parts.’

‘And what outcome do you anticipate?’ enquired O’Singh.

‘The ransom payer has the luxury of refusing to pay while retrieving the entire body of the dead kidnapped person in instalments. The kidnapper, meanwhile, is left out of pocket.’

‘Oh?’

‘Postage and packaging. Especially if the kidnapper has used the more costly same-day delivery service.’

Massive thanks to Anthony Curtis for pre-ordering a copy of the book. Tony fully acknowledges that his philosophies are borrowed from The Smurfs. He stands on the shoulders of gnomes.

Extract from Chapter 11 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':

Near to hand, set up on the pavement outside a newsagents was a vendor of fruit and vegetables, his wares arranged upon tables in plastic bowls.

‘The Brussels sprout? What do we know about the… Yes, why, we know that the Brussels sprout has to be the most locally grown vegetable known to man,’ said O’Singh, picking up a shining example from one of the vendor’s bowls. ‘A vegetable originating from one particular Belgian city.’

‘Or is it?’ Dr Pratt countered, springing with muted gusto across to another display. ‘Consider the Savoy cabbage!’ he said, holding aloft one of the very same, again tilting his head to take the strain off his neck.

‘Well I never! Are you saying?’

‘The Savoy cabbage is a cabbage that hails not from a country, not from a city even, but a hotel, a single London edifice.’

The academics stood facing each other, momentarily, in mutual admiration, Dr Pratt looking very much like a pet dog that cocks its head in recognition of something it cannot fathom but with which it is familiar all the same.

That was quite possibly the moment, O’Singh would later proclaim, that the men sealed their partnership. O’Singh as Dr Pratt’s accomplice at the IPU. The very idea. The potential. The potential for mass discovery. The possibilities. At last, at this point, we might dare to dream of learning everything – the art of mind-reading, or why a bull’s eye is in the centre of a dartboard but not located in the middle of that animal’s body.

Massive thanks to Julie Fortescue for pre-ordering not one but two copies of The IPU. Suggesting that one copy might be kept somewhere other than the toilet (restroom)

Extract from Chapter 11 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':

‘I have come to dwell on many, multifarious things,’ ruminated O’Singh. He took the liberty to guide Dr Pratt over to a sun-dappled bench under a plane tree and invited him to sit down in the way one might before delivering momentous news.

The professor threw himself onto the bench, wedging Dr Pratt into a conspiratorial corner.

‘Think where biologists have discovered new plant and animal species thus far,’ effused O’Singh. ‘Once upon a time it was the discovery of unchartered lands which might throw up such novelties. Think of the Antipodes, of Australia.’

‘Yes. The wallaby. The kangaroo,’ pondered Dr Pratt, releasing one of his hands from nursing his sore neck to hold it out limply in a begging attitude, à la marsupial. ‘The duckbill platypus… What exactly is a platypus, you know, apart from a platypus without a duck’s bill?’

‘We cannot be entirely certain,’ said O’Singh, with certainty. ‘But the duckbill platypus gives us a remarkably good idea. As the name suggests, we are dealing with an animal that is as platypus as you can get, all apart from the bill.’

‘Which is duck-like. I see,’ said Dr Pratt, flapping one of his elbows while delivering a couple of honks to impersonate an avian species.

‘What was that?’ asked O’Singh, arrested by Dr Pratt’s action.

‘A goose.’

‘Oh?’

‘I said “duck-like”. A goose is duck-like,’ explained Dr Pratt. ‘At least they are kind of similar.’