They stopped off at the minimart for some specific things – bananas, muesli and a sweet treat after a visit to a local park. They spent some time looking at different things, but it took a while. For example, they thought they might go for an almond croissant each. But there were tiny flies crashing around in the warm pastry display, so they passed on that. They thought they might get something dairy, a fancy yogurt maybe. But they didn’t have a great selection in the chiller cabinet, and anyway, that felt more like an evening thing. You can go too fancy too early. In the end they thought they’d get a chocolate biscuit to have with a cup of tea. They found the cracker and biscuit aisle, and eventually settled on a packet of Choco Leibniz – Swiss, they thought. European anyway. Classy rectangles of thin butter biscuit with a generous slab topping of milk chocolate. 

On the way home he thought about the name. Choco Leibniz. It was perfect. He thought that if he decided to become a serial killer (because it would be a decision – every serial killer had, at some point and pretty early on, decided to stop being a regular citizen and move instead into the murderer category, which was by no means a small change, one that would require a great deal of planning), if he absolutely committed himself to become a serial killer, not only would he need to buy lots of equipment like gloves and maps and nightvision goggles and maybe a gun or the very least a knife, then he would also – if he had a mind to make a splash in the papers and really get a buzz going – then he would absolutely be advised to choose a catchy serial killer name. One with a hook. Something weird, both homey and perverse. Something sweet undercut with the controlled violence of a baked buttery biscuit. An everyday name, something you saw all the time but never really thought about – but would then become obsessed with the moment it all became public. 

The Choco Leibniz Killer.

The reporters would demand of the Chief of Police at the press conference if the murderer was a foreign national. A confectioner. Amongst a fury of lights and waving hands, the Chief would appeal for calm. 

‘Please! Please! We have no other information about this suspect at present. All we know is that they have adopted the name of a popular German biscuit. Our team are liaising both with the supermarkets and the manufacturer, pursuing every feasible line of enquiry to apprehend this individual and bring them to justice….’

Choco Leibniz. 

He’d feel a twinge of awkwardness that the brand would be ruined for the manufacturer. Supermarkets and other stockists would be forced to pull their stock from the shelves, return it to the distributor, who would no doubt make a fuss because it wasn’t their fault, there was nothing wrong with the product, it was still in saleable condition, etcetera. But you couldn’t associate a premium product biscuit that had become so linked in the media and the public’s eye with a serial killer – whose signature, by the way, was to leave a single Choco Leibniz biscuit on the victim’s forehead, like a calling card. It would signal the end of the Choco Leibniz brand. And years later, on antique roadshows, when a pack was drawn out of a tote bag, the valuations expert would say that an unopened box in mint condition would – for insurance purposes – be worth X number of thousands, and the person who brought it along would raise their eyebrows and say ‘Really?’ but follow it up with ‘Of course we’d never sell it.’