Esteemed ReadersI'd like to begin by apologising to those of you who stuck with Harry McFry through the ups and downs of his investigation during 2007. Anyone who ploughed their way through the 150,000 words that were posted last year might have had every expectation that the story would, by now, have reached its conclusion. So what went wrong? Well, from a technical point of view writing a

   

Well, it seems like Harry has been in Lillian's kitchen for an age. Apologies to readers who have been waiting for Chapter 155. There's an apologetic explanation here. I'm crossing my fingers that there'll be some space in a few days in which I can draw the story to its close.

Thanks for your patience.

THJnr

   

In just a few minutes, Harry and Danny had established that Dacre Lawrence had assembled a collection of certificates that were almost a perfect mirror of the ones they’d ordered from their contact in Southport. With the kitchen door firmly closed, they were comfortable to leave the rest of them to get on with things in the lounge. They knew they had the key to this mystery in their hands.

   

While Dave Morris and Jane Tobias were wrestling with what to do about the certificates, local journalists and fancy-coloured cake covered in marzipan, those of the party still sitting in the lounge had been contemplating weightier matters. Harry McFry remained loathe to speculate too much about the news they’d just received. Harry’s favoured form of speculation was, anyway, linked to the...

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The bodies hadn’t been discovered until breakfast time on Tuesday morning. A subsequent hospital inquiry, quite separate from the police investigations, blamed a shortage of staff on the delay, and (some thought, unfairly) castigated two nurses on duty the previous evening for leaving the scissors in the room in the first place. After all, Galloway’s death was