‘You are beyond time. Outside time. You wrote something about it in your load of old bollocks. About Christopher Mayhew. When he took mescalin. When he said that there is no absolute time, no absolute space, and when he said that within the span of a few moments he had experienced years and years of heavenly bliss. When I take my pill, I will experience eternity, all in a single second. For me the second in the real world will never pass. I will be immortal. Eternity within a single second.’

‘And what if it doesn’t work?’

‘Oh, it will work.’ The Doveston patted at his pocket.

‘You have this pill with you?’ I asked.

‘Of course. In the silver coffin-shaped snuffbox that Professor Merlin gave to me. When my time comes, when I am dying, then I will take the pill.’

‘And you’re sure that it really will work? That you will experience eternity? Enjoy eternal bliss?’

‘There is no doubt in my mind.’

I whistled. ‘Do you want me to put that in my book? It might make the end a little bit more exciting.’

‘Your book.’ The Doveston spat. He spat down upon the scattered pages of my book. ‘Your mockery of a book. Your load of old bollocks. That to your book and that again.’

And he spat again.

‘That’s not very nice,’ I said.

‘You betrayed me,’ he said. ‘Writing that rubbish. You betrayed me. Why?’

‘To get you here, that’s why. If I’d written the whitewash you’d hoped for, you never would have come. But I knew that if I wrote it the way I saw it, the way I felt it, the way it really was, I knew that would really piss you off. That you would come tearing around here to fling it in my face. When Mr Cradbury made me all those offers that I couldn’t refuse, then I knew for certain that you were alive. That you were commissioning the book. And I just had to see you again. Just the one more time. To say goodbye.’

‘Goodbye?’

‘But of course, goodbye. If you’d read the book carefully, you’d know what I’m talking about. Take this page here, for instance.’ I reached down to pick up a sheet of paper. But as I did so, I slipped upon the Doveston’s spittle. Or at least pretended that I did. Just for a moment. Just for a second, actually. Sufficient to stumble; to reach forward.

To snatch away his pistol.

‘Matters adjust themselves,’ I said.

He quivered and shivered.

I twirled the pistol on my finger. ‘Goodbye,’ I said.

‘Goodbye?’

‘Goodbye to you, of course. In the first chapter of the book, I promised the readers something special. Something different. And I promised how I would write of your terrible end, as I alone could. I wanted the biography that I wrote to be different from any other biography that had ever been written before. And I’ve come up with a way to achieve this end. This will be the first biography ever written which ends with the subject of the biography being executed by his biographer. Now, is that an original idea for a book, or what?’

‘What?’ the Doveston cowered. ‘Execute me? Murder me?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘I’ve been planning it for years.’

The Doveston’s lips trembled. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why? All right, so you went to prison. But didn’t I make it up to you? Didn’t I leave you all that money?’

‘Only so I would praise you in the book. And the money was really nothing but a short-term loan, to ensure the Great Millennial Ball went ahead. And you knew that money would be useless after society collapsed.’

‘So I left you all the food in the cellars.’

‘Just to keep me alive, so that when you were fully in control, I would write your damn book.’

‘So why?’ The Doveston’s eyes went every which way. ‘Why do you want to kill me?’

‘Because of something you did many years ago. Something that seemed trivial to you at the time. A bit of a laugh. Ajoke. You took away something from me. Something that I loved. I mentioned it in the book. But I didn’t make a big thing out of it. I didn’t want to warn you. I wanted you to come here, so that I could kill you, because of what you did.’

‘I don’t understand. What did I do? What did I take from you?’

I leaned close to his ear and whispered a single word. A single name.

‘No!’ His eyes rolled. ‘Not that! Not because of that.’

‘That,’ I said. ‘That is why you are about to die.’

‘Please ... please...’ He wrung his hands together.

I cocked the pistol. ‘Goodbye,’ I said.

‘No, wait. No, wait.’ He fumbled in his pockets and drew out the little silver coffin-shaped snuffbox. ‘Don’t deny me this. Don’t deny me my lifetime’s work. Let me take the pill before you pull the trigger. It will be but a second for you. But for me it will be an eternity. I will be immortal. Please.’

I nodded thoughtfully.

‘No,’ I said, snatching the snuffbox from his hand. ‘I deny you immortality. I condemn you to death.’

He begged and pleaded and rocked in the chair. But I shook my head. ‘It’s a pity you were sleeping when the helicopter landed. Had you looked down and seen the pattern of the trees, you would have known what was coming. You would have read the name that the trees spell out. I gave you that chance. A chance to cheat fate. Because when I was under your drug and in my kitchen, I saw the future. This future. This moment. I put it in the book. You didn’t read it carefully enough. Goodbye, Doveston.’

I put the snuffbox into my pocket.

I threw aside the pistol.

I put my hands about his throat.

And I killed him.

And now we really have come to the end. And if you are studying this manuscript in the New State Archives, you will notice that the script has changed again. That once more it is written in longhand.

Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? They don’t let you use the typewriter to whack out your final words while you sit in the new-fangled electric chair, waiting for the arrival of the executioner.

You are given a pen and paper. You are told that you have five minutes.

I must have gone a little mad, I suppose, after I killed him. I realized what I’d done, but I couldn’t feel any guilt. I had behaved very badly. But I had not killed an innocent man. After I’d strangled him, I picked up the leather bondage teapot. The one with all the spikes, that had once belonged to Chico’s aunty, and I smashed his brains out with it.

I must have made a lot of noise. The helicopter-pedallers rushed in. They beat me most severely.

The magistrate was not in the mood for mercy. He was a young fellow and he said that his father had told him all about me. His father had been a magistrate too. His father had once sent me down for fifteen years.

The New World Order had no time for people like me, he said. People like me were a waste of time.

He condemned me to the Chair.

I don’t remember too much about the trial. It was held in private and the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

I don’t really remember too much about what happened after the pedallers beat me up and dragged me into the helicopter.

Although there is one thing I remember and I will set it down here because it is important.

I remember what the pedallers said to each other as they got their legs pumping and the helicopter into the air.

‘Senseless, that,’ said one. ‘A truly senseless killing.’

And then he said, ‘Here, Jack, look down there. I never noticed that when we flew in.’

And Jack said, ‘Oh yeah, the trees. The trees are all laid out to spell letters. Huge great letters. What is it they spell?’

And the other pedaller spelled them out. ‘B,’ he said, ‘and I and S and C—’

‘BISCUIT,’ said Jack. ‘They spell BISCUIT.’

Yes, that’s what they spelt. Biscuit. My dog, Biscuit. He murdered my dog, so I murdered him.

Was that wrong?

When I wrote that passage about being in prison, the one about bad behaviour and about the bad man who kills. Kills an innocent man. Remember? When I asked whether there really is such a thing as an innocent man?