Lord Tim, still no sign of you but I’m sending you this report just in case.
I entered the suspect’s front room armed with ray gun in hand. The flat was an absolute tip and there were highly suspicious photographs pinned onto the wall, even one of my mum, at the bus stop in that black dress of hers, looking quite smiling. I was about to rifle through a chest of drawers I saw open when I heard the door open and so I hid behind his dusty old sofa.

The man walks in, takes off his coat, farts, then looks over the top of the sofa and sees me.
“What the fuck you doin’ in my room, man??

I remained silent.
“You burgling me?”

Still I held my tongue. But then I decided I ought to pretend to be an ordinary boy. So I burst into tears.

“Hey - I didn’t realise it was you – you’re the posh kid from over the road with the nice mum.”
How dare he bring my mother into his fiendish plot.
“Fuck - you freaked me out.”

Then he sat down on the sofa. “Glad you dropped in. Want to take a look around my lair?”

I stood up, confused, took a look around. It was a terrible mess. There was a mattress, the sofa, a pipe in the corner like in Alice in Wonderland, a record deck, amplifier and huge speakers, a poster of I think it’s Frank Zappa sat on a toilet, and a camera with a big lens on it.

I wiped my eyes and decided it was time to confront the villain.
“You were spying on us.”
“You what?”
“I saw you – with that camera, looking at my window.”
“I’m a photographer.”
“Oh really.”
“Take a look.” He picked up a copy of a newspaper, found a page and thrust it at me: a photo of three rather bored women, two of them topless. The paper was ‘it’ - International Times. ‘Photo by B’ it said. ‘That’s me” he said pointing at the words.
“You take sexy pictures? Dirty old man!”
"Oi! Less of the old - I am only twenty! And I take all kinds of pictures: documentary, portraits..”
“Spy ones.”
“Like James Bond? Yeah, reckon. Anyway – whose that bird I see you with? Your older sister?
“Who?”
“Red hair, long legs.”
‘Jennifer”
“Jenny. She’s nice.”:
“Jennifer.”
“What’s she doing hanging out with you?”
“She’s a friend.”
“Yeah right.”

He put an album cover on his lap and opened a little tin box with rainbow patterns all over it. I stood and watched him snap a cigarette in half, crumble it onto a piece of white paper, lick it, roll it, shake it. He lit up and this acrid, bittersweet smoke enshrouded me.
He inhaled with an impressive gasp and held the smoke in his lungs. I thought it was going to start coming out of his ears and eyes.
But he blew it out in a big cloud.
“You mustn’t tell your lovely mum about this.”
I shook my head. Then frowned.

“So when’s your friend Jenny coming round”
“Jennifer”
“Bring her to see me, yeah, man?:
“Okay.”
“Cool. What’s your name?”
“Tim”
“Hi Tim, I’m Barry.”
“Hi Barry.”
“Far out.” said Barry



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