During the early hours of Tuesday morning, the mutilated body of 31 year-old explorer, philanthropist and trailblazer, Thatch Herringbone, was found on the banks of the Hicksbow canal.

Police believed that the young adventurer had initially escaped from the St. Christina the Astonishing Hospital for the Regretfully Insane; although upon further investigation it was found that Thatch had never been a patient there. The Head of Therapies, Dr. Dymphna had this to say: “We were contacted by the local police department with reference to a supposed patient of ours; but upon checking and double checking our records we found that a patient by that name and never even been admitted, nor had ever been referred to this hospital at any point in its history.”

We have subsequently discovered that it was this blog post that led the police to the imposing doors of St. Christina. When pressed on the issue, Dr. Dymphna denied that any of the accusations made in the blog were true; he also refused to answer any question relating to his wife’s name….which does indeed turn out to be Mary.

Any followers of Thatch’s blog will know that his last expedition was quite a fraught one; what started out as merely a scaling of Tooting High Street turned into so much more. Whether he reached his final destination of the Sajna Hair and Beauty Institute is not known from simply reading his blog, as it stops at the point where he escapes Tooting Dental Care; although this in itself is highly ambiguous as the actual ‘escape’ is not explicitly mentioned.

Our attempts at gleaning any information from his expedition team were rewarded with more questions than answers. His cameraman, Cameraman Cameraman, had, among other things even less coherent, this to say: “It was a time of great upheaval in the group; we were each standing on our own level trying to understand whether or not it was any better or worse than any of the others’, we couldn’t tell whether the level we each were on was physically any higher or lower than any other, but I for one would not have trusted that kind of arbitrary measure as a reflection of a moral comparison, which ultimately was what we were striving to formulate in our own minds.”

The archaeologist, Edwin Spackleton, seemed somewhat unaware that the trip had even taken place, until we mentioned his extraordinary stroke of luck in discovering their escape route using a map of the Dordogne: “Ah yes! Of course! My my what an extraordinary stroke of luck that was! I just had the strangest idea that the answer would simply be there….and it was….extraordinary….all the street names, just where the map said they would be. Always fancied going to the Dordogne…not now though.” “Why’s’at?” I asked, thinking I’d get at least a snippet of an alternative perspective about what went on. “I’ve recently discovered that the Dordogne River exhibits a tidal bore; and I simply don’t trust them. Ever since the….incident on the Qiantang River in China………” He then excused himself and went to his bathroom, where I then heard him sobbing; sobbing like a bereaved child. I placed my card and a note on his kitchen table and left.

Juliet Hamstring was my next and final call….I held out little hope of learning anything about the events following the Dental Care escape, let alone a state of mind that would account for Thatch’s final blog post.

Juliet lives in a modest, London apartment with her flatmate and friend of many years. She works for an auction house specialising in violins; it affords her some extremely glamorous travel, and the rubbing of shoulders with the very many weird and wonderful characters who adorn the classical music industry. She is an enthralling and captivating human being, whose most simple movements echo those sublime notes which emanate from the most exquisite Stradivarius. And her taste for red wine rivals that of Gerard Depardieu. Her body is curvaceous and, in keeping with her own views of it, should be shown off.

She leads me to two scuffed, leather wingbacks in front of a dwindling fire; plonking the glasses on the table between them she hands me the bottle and corkscrew and asks, “Would you mind? I’m all out of scewtops.” It is at this point where I simply forget why I’m there.

“So you want to know about Thatch?” In a manner of speaking….I nod. “He was a twat, and I fucking adored him.” She told me how they met; how they eventually got together; how they made use of every nook and cranny of the delicatessen she owned at the time, and of the art gallery that he worked for located in the same home county village; her subsequent split from her long-term boyfriend, and her assumption that Thatch would be her next; her ignoring the fact that it was never going to happen, not caring simply because of the vast amounts of pleasure he gave her both sexually and mentally; his stupidity in lying to her about things she’d have undoubtedly forgiven at the time, but their concentration became too great and there was nothing left in her with which she could dilute them.

“He was frightfully clever. Not in retaining information or learning things exceptionally fast or anything like that. He looked at things differently; he could take an everyday situation and relate it to something you’d never dream of; his turns of phrase were ludicrous to the point of genius….and genius to the point of stupidity. I did so many firsts with him….we could have done many more if he’d only let me in.”

I slowly managed to regain my composure: “This seems to be in stark contrast to the mention he makes of you in his blog. He writes like that last expedition was the first time he’d met any of you, or at least that the relationships were a far cry from what you’re describing.”

She smiled…I felt myself being totally and utterly pitied. “He didn’t recognise me. I turned up to our first meeting, everybody was there, and I expected either a big loving, loud greeting or a stunned silence….I got neither….I got a, ‘Hello, you must be Juliet, I’m so glad you agreed to join us, welcome, please sit down.'”

She finished her glass; I poured her another and topped myself up. She continued: “He’d changed, in himself. He was still there, his personality was still the same, he was still confused and looking for something that he knew may very well not exist; but this time he was actively searching for it, and had been for some time; it was compelling, he convinced me, and I fell in love with him all over again…he didn’t have a clue who I was.”

“And you didn’t try to tell him?”

“What was the point? I kind of saw it as another chance at something. Maybe a validation of my worth; if this Thatch fell in love with me too then maybe there was something to me….something to us.”

After meeting the first two members of the team, I was beginning to think that the four of them just locked themselves in a room, together with a big box of mind altering drugs and had at it. But Juliet’s account was succinct, detailed and left me in no doubt about the validity of Thatch’s blog. I was eager to get to the post-Dental Care part of the recollection but was in no mood to hurry her, and I was also acutely aware of the state she was in as they all scurried through the alternative streets of Dordogne: ‘a girl at the end of her wits…….who could still barely stand’, so I wasn’t holding out too much hope.

“I woke up in hospital. My flatmate was there. My mother. The last thing I remembered – and still do, nothing after has come back to me – was sitting up against the wall of the Rue de Varsovie, watching the boys – but Thatch in particular – fight that horrible thing, and using my last available strength to masturbate to him; matching him, thrust for thrust.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. I stared at her. She stared right back. Her body shone. She finished her glass and placed it heavily on the table. She rose, smoothed down her dress, leaned towards me and kissed my cheek. She whispered, “Please see yourself out….whenever you like……I must lie down.” I watched her pad barefoot across the carpet and quietly close the door behind her. I released the breath that I’d held when she rose out of her chair. I shivered; the fire was as good as dead.

At the point of publication no additional details are known about the circumstances leading to Herringbone’s grisly, untimely end. He was found by the canal, a series of deep, penetrating cuts and slashes covered his body; the absence of anything that would suggest a second party’s involvement led the police to the disturbing conclusion that the wounds were self-inflicted.

Having read his last post and then discovering that he was never writing from any hospital in the entire country, it does not take a great leap of the imagination to accept the initial cause of death as that of ‘misadventure brought on by severe psychotic episodes due to large amounts of unspecified narcotics in the victim’s system.’ It is however, seemingly impossible to understand how no-one knew of his struggles with mental health; our investigations have met with a wall of ignorance in this regard, and the only other emotion that comes close to the sadness felt by all who knew him, is that of guilt.