In a twist that would make a soap opera blush, the body of a missing lab worker has turned up in the New Mexico desert, and Her Majesty's finest forensic minds are being shipped across the pond faster than you can say 'special relationship.' The deceased, one Dr. Penelope Prism, a biochemist of some renown, vanished three weeks ago from a government research facility in Wiltshire, leaving behind nothing but a half-empty bottle of Bombay Sapphire and a cryptic note that read: 'The cure is worse than the disease.
' Now, the Yanks have found her mummified remains near Roswell, naturally, and the British Embassy is in full scramble mode, which in diplomatic terms means they're arguing about who pays for the extradition of the corpse. The whole affair is a masterpiece of bureaucratic absurdity: our beloved Whitehall mandarins are insisting on a 'joint forensic protocol' while the FBI is demanding a copy of her Tesco Clubcard statements. One can only imagine the culture clash as Scotland Yard's finest sip Earl Grey over the desiccated remains, musing on the quality of the local gin while their American counterparts wonder why the Brits are so obsessed with tea at a crime scene.
The question on everyone's lips, however, is what the hell was Dr. Prism doing in New Mexico? Was she chasing UFOs?
Testing a new chemical weapon on cacti? Or simply fleeing from the horror that is the British railway system? The truth, as always, is more prosaic: sources whisper that she was involved in a project to create the perfect hangover cure, a venture so monumentally misguided it could only be funded by the Ministry of Defence.
The Americans, of course, are spinning this as a triumph of international cooperation, but anyone with a functioning cerebrum can see that this is just another chapter in the ongoing farce of transatlantic forensics. Meanwhile, the lab remains sealed, the staff are being 'counselled' (read: told to keep their mouths shut), and the papers are speculating wildly about everything from alien abduction to a rogue badger. But let's not kid ourselves: this is a story about a very British disaster wrapped in a very American landscape, with a dash of government incompetence and a generous splash of gin.
More as it happens, but don't hold your breath.
