2000

Competition No 3616

Ken Livingstone said: “I’ve met serial killers and professional assassins and nobody scared me as much as Mrs Thatcher.” We want a rewrite of a famous thriller in which this frightening figure made an appearance.

 

A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. I thought it was a hound howling, till I deciphered the words: ‘Enemy within; enemy within’.

Looking towards Grimpen Mire, we saw her. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.

The howl became a vicious bark: ‘Argy! Argy!’ With staring eyes and flailing finger-nails she bounded towards us; I could smell the gin on her breath, when Holmes drew his revolver and emptied five barrels into her flank.

She lay there, gaunt, savage, large as a lioness. Even in the stillness of death her cruel eyes were ringed with fire. Holmes touched her face and his own fingers gleamed. ‘Phosphorus,’ he said, ‘no wonder the ignorant folk of the countryside were taken in.’

That evening Holmes was in sombre mood. ‘The monster is gone, but she whelped before she died. The son is a very different creature – he looks more like a young deer than a dog. But the same murder’s in the blood. There’s more deviltry to come.’