Police net closing on London bus arsonist

The head of the Metropolitan Police's Needless Publicity Squad has announced that the force is "closer than ever" to identifying the dangerous criminal who has apparently set fire to several London buses over the past few months. Following the latest incident, the entire bendy bus fleet has been withdrawn from service for "safety reasons".

Last night, reporters were told of crucial new evidence linking the attacks to a man based in the capital who has a record of involvement with bizarre assaults on London's transport infrastructure.

"It appears he is operating from two separate bases," explained a spokesperson later. "Here," she said while pointing to an area on a London map in the vicinity of Cricklewood, "and here," indicating some roads around the Tower Bridge area. "The number of people who conduct business in both these locations is limited and we have been able to narrow our hunt down to one particularly unsavoury individual. Our records show that in the past he's targeted taxi drivers and private motorists and inflicted cruel and unusual punishments on them. For whatever perverted reason, he now seems to be concentrating on bus users and making their lives hell. If he's not stopped now, God only knows what he might do next."

Various photofits of the prime suspect — known to the criminal underworld as "Red" — have been released to the media. Unfortunately, although police have had a large response to their appeals for sightings, reports offer conflicting descriptions of the man. Indeed, some insist he has a small moustache and "looks like a train-spotting accountant", while others assert that he haunts the banks of the Thames "clean-shaven, besuited and talking excitedly into a mobile phone with a Labour Party clip-on cover". However, he does always wear a trademark cruel, Blofeld-style smirk which bears witness to his merciless reign of terror across the M25 area.

The facts are so shocking that they do not require more than slight embellishment. Over a two-month period, screaming passengers have evacuated no less than four hundred and seventy-five of the much-hyped bendy buses when they suddenly spontaneously combusted. At the same time, and in what now appears to police to be some form of co-ordinated action, the more reliable - and much-loved - Routemaster buses are being pulled from the streets and dismantled.

"Who would do such a thing?" sobbed one photogenic little old lady who witnessed the latest incident at Marble Arch and who now lives in constant fear of being asked to appear in the Evening Standard. "I lived through the Blitz and I never saw anything like this. I'm 83, you know.

Officials for Transport for London, which operates the bendy buses, denied that there was anything amiss and insisted that the fires were the actions of "a few disgruntled remnants of the old regime," which had only "killed a few temp secretaries". Nevertheless, astrologers have warned that the position of Mars relative to the Moon over the Easter period coupled to impending mayoral elections presage further violent assaults on London's transport system.

But even if the police are able to track down the ringleader, many believe that he cannot be acting alone, and must have the backing of a wide network of accomplices. "How on God's earth he ever got support for this kind of criminal insanity we just don't know," admitted a visibly-shaken bus driver next to the smouldering remains of his No.16. "To simultaneously withdraw hundreds of tried-and-tested Routemasters that have functioned for 50 years with no major problems and to replace them with mobile, flexible barbecues suggest an infrastructure of evil on a massive scale. He must have many collaborators."

Meanwhile, scientists working at TfL's research laboratory in Dalston have proved that the difference in temperature inside a bendy bus which is on fire and that which is not actually on fire but sitting in traffic in mid-Summer with all the windows welded shut and the air conditioning turned off, is less that one degree C. "Therefore," one white-coated man with stringy mouse-coloured hair and a clipboard told The Rockall Times, "you're just as likely to pop your clogs on a number 73 during normal operations as when it's burning like a Kuwaiti oil well."