“Maybe you are right,” he said simply. “You will not have to wait your turn, Miss Next. I will deal with your case personally. Is this your son?” He bent down to look closer. “Cute fellow, isn’t he?”

“Eiusmod tempor incididunt adipisicing elit,” said Friday, glaring at Jack suspiciously.

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘If you touch me, my mum will break your nose.’ ”

Jack stood up quickly. “I see. Goliath and myself offer a full, frank and unreserved apology.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. Have it on account. Would you care to come to my office?”

He beckoned me out the door, and we crossed a courtyard with a large fountain in the middle, past a few suited Goliath officials chattering in a corner, then through another doorway and down a wide corridor full of clerks moving backwards and forwards with folders tucked under their arms.

Jack opened a door, ushered me in, offered me a chair and then sat himself. It was a miserable little office, devoid of any decoration except a shabby Lola Vavoom calendar on the wall and a dead plant in a pot. The only window looked out onto a wall. He arranged some papers on his desk and spoke into the intercom.

“Mr. Higgs, would you bring the Thursday Next file in, please?”

He looked at me earnestly and set his head at a slight angle, as though trying to affect some sort of apologetic demeanor.

“None of us quite realized,” he began in the sort of soft voice that undertakers use when attempting to persuade you to buy the deluxe coffin, “just how appalling we had been until we started asking people if they were at all unhappy with our conduct.”

“Why don’t we cut the cr—” I looked at Friday, who looked back at me. “Cut the . . . cut the . . . nonsense and go straight to the place where you atone for your crimes.”

He sighed and stared at me for a moment, then said, “Very well. What did we do wrong again?”

“You can’t remember?”

“I do lots of wrong things, Miss Next. You’ll excuse me if I can’t remember details.”

“You eradicated my husband,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Of course! And what was the name of the eradicatee?”

“Landen,” I replied coldly. “Landen Parke-Laine.”

At that moment a clerk arrived with a pile of papers and laid them on his desk. Jack opened the file, which was marked “Most Secret,” and leafed through them.

“The record shows that at the time you say your husband was eradicated, your case officer was operative Schitt-Hawse. It says here that he pressured you to release operative Schitt—that’s me—from within the pages of ‘The Raven’ by utilizing an unnamed ChronoGuard operative who volunteered his services. It says that you complied but our promise was revoked due to an unforeseen and commercially necessary overriding blackmail-continuance situation.”

“You mean corporate greed, don’t you?”