Welcome to the CPS / and many congratulations on your awful success / you’ve all been selected for your creepy credentials / your dour demeanour evilly evidential / loads of lovely shocking potential / so it’s a very chilly welcome to this three week residential

Week One is dedicated / to murder premeditated / how to keep a journal / that’s suitably infernal / close, spidery writing / crazily inviting / red and green and black and exciting / madly mixed in with collages / polaroids of garages / celebrity marriages / with heads transposed / grudges disclosed / that kind of thing / but don’t worry – we’ll give you guidance on everything / help you find your style / the kinds of things that’ll read well at trial / and give you ammunition for your enigmatic smile

Week Two we like to call ‘Nailing the Look’ / working from the book / of the same name / because psychopathic style isn’t a game / it’s a very serious business / it takes more than hair gel and an off-the-peg grimness / to terrify both victim and witness / we’ll help you shovel out your inner psycho / whether that’s Backwoods Ohio / Highrise Tokyo / Classical Stucco / or Stetson Bucko / we’ll find the look for you / you might have a cleft palate / only eat salad / work as a valet / whack people with a mallet / you might be criminally beautiful / have a family that’s dutiful / be very musical / you might be squinty / unyielding and flinty / you might have a whispery voice / wear a patch like James Joyce’s / make a feature of offering despicable choices / – the point is / you should enjoy this / because it’ll come out in the twist / when the dogged detective gets the gist / and realises the murderer was the podiatrist / and you end up fighting in the dark by a cliff / and you go over – or do you? / none of this is voodoo / it’s what we do / do you understand what I’m saying to you? / your psycho style is everything / and this is what you’ll be studying

Week Three is key / knowing your psycho intimately / primarily / how the stairs and doors are creaking / where the taps on the frightful baths are leaking / everything should be shrieking / danger! psycho! environmentally speaking / IKEA won’t cut it / if you have an IKEA catalogue, shut it / forget it / if your sense of propriety shrieks notoriety – let it / it’ll only enhance your psycho credit / and by the way / I have to say / your knowledge of the bible / must be unrivalled / so you can quote for any occasion / and paper the windows with Lamentations

Here’s a list of the basics you’ll need / to hit the basement running and get up to speed / some night vision goggles and a bag of restraints / surgery for dummies and a tin of red paint / a creepy clown mask and a burner phone / a hatchet and a sharpening stone / a photo of your granny in a frumpy frock / some high explosives and a digital clock / a Magnum / a forensic report on the antiseptic properties of sphagnum / a plastic facsimile of the skull of a cro-magnon / and so on / at least it gives you something to go on

Mr & Mrs Runcible / the criminal principals / will now show you down to your cells / for a dispiriting meal and a box of shells / any problems, yell / first lesson tomorrow promptly at eight

can’t wait