‘The unknown man has been cut up into a large number of pieces and scattered over a large area of the county,’ said Detective Bob Dicks. ‘As the wife will tell you, I’m useless at jigsaw puzzles, so I’ve called in an expert.’

Jim Pearce, 23, who has won several national jigsaw competitions, said he wasn’t anticipating any problems.

‘Basically,’ he said, ‘it’s best to start with the straight-edged outside pieces and then fill in the middle bits.  Of course, matching a large number of pink pieces is a problem. I’ve seen easier puzzles, but in those the subject was wearing clothes and the pieces were made of cardboard.’

Mr Pearce said it helped if you knew how many pieces there should be. ‘If there are any pieces missing, I shall be really upset,’ he said.

After a mad scramble through their house Alan, 44, eventually found a ten-year-old picture taken whilst he and Jan were on a weekend break in Rome. ‘I thought the shot would be OK, despite the fact that Jan had since changed her hair style and colour,’ said Alan, ‘but when the local newspaper published the picture they edited out the Colosseum backdrop and printed an out-of-focus head-and-shoulder portrait which even I didn’t recognise.’

Brian King, editor of the Manchester Evening News said that Alan’s distress was an increasing trend. ‘People just take poor quality snaps on their mobile phones these days, usually when they’re half cut, and don’t ever consider what might happen if they have a fatal accident or are murdered horribly.’ Mr King urged the public to carry a good quality and flattering photograph with them at all times. ‘I liken it to having clean underwear when you leave the house. You never know what might happen and you will save your loved ones a good deal of grief,’ adding ‘and if it is a bikini shot it makes it easier for us to sell the story to the national press.’

In response to the new appeal, film processors have agreed to produce an additional advice sticker to put on faulty photographs. ‘People are used to the little labels pointing out that they left their fingers in front of the lens or failed to use a flash in a dark room. The new sticker will simply say ‘Warning: subject of photo is blurred and wearing unfashionable clothes. Likely to be murdered in near future’.’

10 November 2011

‘We found the bodies, and the police are abusing our goodwill by holding on to them for an unacceptable length of time,’ he said. ‘Sometimes we don’t get them back at all, and when we do get them back they are often not in the condition that we found them in.’

The law states that anyone who finds a body must declare it to the coroner within 14 days. The coroner can then choose to bring in the police, but many dog-walkers are increasingly tempted to keep the find to themselves. ‘Nothing beats making a really good find’ said Bert Perlman, of Leicester. ‘But all the pleasure is being sucked out of it with the job’s-worth mentality of the police.’

Many police forces admit that the whole business of processing dead bodies is not as fast as they would like it to be, but claim they are setting new targets for returning the finds before they are fully decayed. ‘Frankly our hands our tied by petty government regulations and endless red tape. These days you can’t even dig up the body of a missing kidnapped heiress without some busy-body wanting to get the police involved. The problem is that with so many corpses being passed over the police station counter, it’s difficult to process them all what with with all the lost keys, empty wallets and wheel-less bicycles.’

In order to reduce the workload of the police, a number of forces have issued new guidelines to dog-walkers. Henceforth, any ramblers that find severed body parts in the woods or on waste ground, are requested to just put a home-made notice up on a nearby lamp-post. ‘That way, anyone who has lost an arm or a leg can claim it back directly from the finder without the police having to get involved.’

Calls are growing for the police to abandon the use of Method actors in crime re-enacments after a Cambridge man was killed in an identical murder that occurred on the same spot one week earlier.

Actor Chris Noakes, 34, of Impington, Cambridgeshire, was standing in for murder victim Dennis Rooden, who was viciously bludgeoned to death with a blunt instrument seven days ago. But in a chillingly accurate reconstruction of the original crime, a fellow thespian emerged from behind a bus shelter and battered Noakes to the floor, killing him instantly. ‘This is a truly shocking development,’ said Chief Inspector Colin Lewis. ‘We now have a second murder on our hands and we are not even sure if the crimes were committed by the same bloke.’

Health and Safety Officers have criticized the use of Method actors in murder reconstructions as their devotion to realism can result in a failure to hold back at the crucial moment. But many respected thespians have paid tribute to the utter professionalism of the actors who took part in the tragic re-enactment. ‘Chris loved acting and literally gave his life for his craft,’ said an Equity spokesman. ‘And all credit to his assailant too; he now faces lifetime imprisonment – but that is the price he was prepared to pay for this utterly convincing performance.’

The name of the method actor who killed his colleague remains a mystery, and police are now looking for a Caucasian male of medium height in his mid-thirties. In order to help jog people’s memories, some of the victim’s Method acting colleagues have been persuaded to stage a re-enactment at exactly the same time next week.