The shaking of her head was observed by a shadowy figure who peered from a high window in the building opposite.

The shadowy figure lay all crouched down in hiding. He was a male shadowy figure and his name was Hildemar Shields. He was the editor of the Brentford Mercury and he was hiding from Kelly Anna Sirjan.

Hildemar Shields was sniggering. The sounds weren't pretty at all.

Behind Mr Shields stood a young man called Derek. Derek wasn't sniggering. 'This is all very childish,' said Derek. 'All very childish indeed.'

Mr Shields turned his head. 'No it's not,' he snarled fiercely. 'It's tactics.'

'She'll find the office. She's not stupid. Anything but, in fact.'

'I've taken down the sign and changed the number on the door. She won't find us, she's only a woman. She'll get all confused and give up.'

'You don't know much about women, do you? And as to being only a woman, she's better qualified to do your job than you are.'

Mr Shields turned his head and made an extremely fierce face. It was a fierce face anyway, very red. Bucolic, the word for it was. It had fierce black eyebrows, that bristled out like the spears of two advancing miniature medieval regiments. The eyes beneath were all red-rimmed and the pupils were purple for certain.

There was a great deal of fierce face to be had. Some covered by fierce black sideburns. A goodly portion taken up with a fierce and fiery nose. This was a seriously angry face and its owner was seriously angry.

'Lock the damn door,' said Mr Shields. 'Just in case she does find the entrance.'

Derek shook his head and tut-tut-tutted. 'This is quite absurd,' he said. 'Head office has only sent her here for three weeks. Surely you can weather that out.'

'No, no, no.' Mr Shields dragged himself away from the window, rose to his full and most impressive height and shook his fierce and bristly head in a fierce and bristly fashion. 'She'll change things, Derek. She'll report back to head office that we're not doing things the way that things should be done. She'll make us use that stuff.'

Mr Shields made fierce gestures towards several large boxes that stood in the corner of the office. These boxes bore the distinctive logo of the Mute Corp computer company. These boxes had a rather dog-eared quality to them; they had all sorts of coffee-cup rings and cigarette burns on them. They were clearly boxes that had stood unopened in the editor's office for a very very long time.

'I think she'll probably make us change that stuff,' said Derek. 'It's five years out of date now and computer technology speeds right along.'

'I should have thrown it all out,' declared Mr Shields. 'Car-booted the lot of it! Perhaps I could drop one on her if she comes in this direction. We could say it was an accident. You could back me up.'

'Not me,' said Derek and crossing to the window he peered out. 'She's a very attractive young woman,' he said.

'They're the worst kind,' said Mr Shields, sinking into his chair. 'Attractive women with brains. Whatever was God thinking of when he came up with that idea? Women should be obscene and not heard, that's my view on the matter.'

'So you constantly let it be known.'

'Is she still there?' asked Mr Shields.

'No, she's moving off.'

'Thank the Lord Most High for that. So what's on the calendar for today?'

'Not much,' Derek shrugged. 'It's another bank holiday, as well you know. Another bank holiday that I could have had off.'

'The news never sleeps,' said Mr Shields. 'A story could break any moment.'

'A story hasn't broken here for nearly a quarter of a century. Not since Brentford got to officially celebrate the millennium two years before the rest of the world. And that was before I was born.'

'Today might be the day then. Something really exciting might happen.'

'Yeah, right,' said Derek.

'Ah but it might,' said Mr Shields. 'Something unexpected. Something really big.'

Knock, knock, knock came a knocking at the door and then it swung right open.

Framed in the portal stood Kelly Anna Sirjan. 'Good day Mr Shields,' she said.

And it was a good day. Such a very good day. Such a very good and joyous and sunny kind of day. Good day.

Five tourists on the top deck smiled and chitchatted, the tour guide went through his spiel.

'If thou lookest to the right,' came the voice of Big Bob through the proper public address system. 'Thou wilt see the Waterman's Arts Centre and beyond that in the middle of the River Thames, Griffin Island. Haunt, so legend has it, of the Brentford Griffin. Many claim to have seen the beast. Mostly after the pubs close, of course.'

Periwig Tombs changed down a gear, but his brain was now in overdrive. Your week in Suburbia World Plcwould not be complete without a boat trip to Brentford's ownFantasy Island, went the thoughts of Periwig Tombs, translating themselves into the World Wide Web page that he was planning to set up to advertise his money-spinning venture. See the creature of myth (you could knock those up out of polisynthafibreglass) that onceinhabited this enchanted realm in the dream world days of the magic distant past. (Brentford's take on Jurassic Park. That was done and dusted!)

Oho! went the thoughts of Periwig Tombs. And then Aha! And oh yes! You really could add some wonderful attractions to this historical theme park. It didn't have to be all conservation and leaving things as they were. That had been the way Big Bob saw it. But he, Periwig Tombs OBE, could do it better than that. Much better. There was all that holographic technology about today. The stuff they used in all those Disney Worlds that dotted the continents. You could employ that. It might be getting away from the original spirit of the thing, but used in the right way…

The wheels on the bus went round and round and Periwig Tombs smiled on.

Kelly Anna Sirjan wasn't smiling, although with the natural curve of her mouth it might have appeared that she was.

'Some joker', she said, 'has removed the sign from your door and changed the number.'

Mr Shields blew out his cheeks. 'I wonder who might have done that,' he said. 'So how can I help you, young woman?'

'I am Kelly Anna Sirjan and I have been sent by head office. You were expecting me, I believe.'

'Somewhat earlier, but yes. Would you care for a cup of tea?'

'I would.'

'Splendid. Well Derek here will show you where the tea things are and you can make us all one.'

Kelly Anna shook her head. 'I don't make tea,' she said.

'Well, never mind. We have coffee.'

'Nor coffee.' Kelly Anna shook her head. It was a definite bit of head-shaking. It signified that she definitely didn't make either tea or coffee. Definitely, absolutely, not.

'Ah,' said the editor. 'Ah, well indeed.'

Kelly Anna gave the office a thorough looking-over. It was not a thing of great beauty to behold and she beheld it with distaste.

Beside the window stood the editor's desk, with.the editor behind it. The editor and the editor's desk both looked most untidy. The editor was shabbily dressed in the ruins of a once tweed suit. The desk was a mayhem of papers and books and paper cups and ashtrays and old-fashioned telephones, mostly off the hook. There were pictures on the walls, group shots, framed front pages, yellow with age. And these hung at angles just untrue enough to annoy the fastidious. The carpet "was grey and bare of thread. Filing cabinets were open and most looked empty within.

'Has there been a robbery?' asked Kelly Anna Sirjan.

'Sorry? What?' The editor glanced all around.

'A robbery,' said Kelly. 'Perhaps someone broke in to steal those unpacked boxes of Mute Corp computer parts. Perhaps they were disturbed during the process and only managed to ransack the office.'