The following evening I waited at home, watching through the window. And the rain poured, heavy, probing, inescapable. I looked out across the square and saw three figures walking my way, a blur through the rain. I undid the latch on my front door and waited for the knock. I watched the floor and imagined their progress and in my mind I could only see them as a blur, even as they came near, as though my mind were incapable of comprehending what was about to happen. And then the knock sounded. I opened the door and saw only two of the figures. Benedict entered, carrying a black suitcase. He removed his overcoat and hung it in the hall. His companion removed his coat and I saw it was the angry man from the underground. His rage had now escaped him to leave a washed-out expression, as though he were suffering from hypothermia. Benedict placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and gently guided him into my living room, as though he had been here before and knew what to do.
He noticed my large-screen television and said, “Perfect.” This TV had been the last straw in my financial ruin and I came to loathe it, sitting there in my living room like a giant, malicious goblin which, having been invited into my life, refused to leave. I had not switched it on for the past three months, yet still it seemed to possess a life of its own as it sat there watching over me.
Benedict pushed my coffee table aside, opened his case and placed a large plastic sheet over the floor, whistling merrily to himself as he then began laying out his tools. We both watched as he pulled out a piece of cord, a large mallet, a butcher’s clever, a chopping board and then a long, thin knife whose sharp edge glinted like a precious jewel in the blue light of my freshly awakened TV screen which he had switched on. He set up his laptop and a camera, then the TV screen came to life, displaying the plastic sheeting and the tools. I thought I could hear the goblin within it screeching like an excited chimpanzee.
Benedict rubbed his hands and explained, “We will soon go live. It’s very simple. The website has over twenty thousand subscribers who pay a large annual fee. In return they are guaranteed one weekly act of live mutilation or a fatal accident.” He looked at me and slowly said, “This is guar-an-teed—one or the other.” He went on, “Of course, you are both volunteers and do this of your own accord. It will be as if I am not here.”
 

But after carefully considering the matter, the constable decided to leak the description to the press (if only because his name was “Will Grass”—he could think of no other reason, but nonetheless, that was good enough for him), so he phoned The Perception Daily Chronicle’s star reporter, Ivor Longnose, and gave him the description, which was that of a middle‑aged, blonde woman.
This was printed in the early‑evening edition of that day’s paper. And Primrose, a few moments ago, on reading this description, found herself (as I have said) spraying her venom over the newspaper (—Incompetence, that’s what it is, twenty‑one murders and they’re looking for a woman—ha—simpletons! that’s what they are).
She sat on her sofa, clenching her fists vindictively round the petition and eyeing all those back issues of her favourite weekly magazine.
The doorbell rang and she stood—still clutching the petition—and crossed vindictively to the door. She opened it and found a frail, white‑haired old woman standing there in a white lab coat. The woman was carrying a wire basket—which was laden with test tubes—slung over her arm like a shopping basket and had an alarming look of urgency about her. She came darting in through the door, pushing passed Primrose while chanting, “Cogitation! Cogitation!—where is it?”
Her eyes darted round the flat, then she hurried—rattling all the way—over to the goldfish bowl, fiddled inside it with her implements, put a test tube back into her basket, then rattled back over to the door, when Thomas (whom Primrose noticed was limping) and Francis arrived at the door and stood there in the doorway. The white‑haired woman bustled through them all, chanting, “Cogitation! Cogitation!” and then vanished clean away, like some elusive apparition that was eternally sought after but remained ultimately ungraspable.
Thomas and Francis looked quizzically at Primrose, who shrugged back at them, then the three of them made their way down to Francis’s car (Thomas having left his car parked near to Francis’s house, it being so painful to drive with his wounded foot), and they set off for the MP’s house to deliver their attack on the constabulary.