Behind the facade of a Soho shop selling dubious merchandise lives Verloc with his wife Winnie, her mother and her retarded brother, Stevie. Verloc is an overweight, indolent anarchist who conceals his political activities, such as they are, under a veneer of domesticity and family life.

          According to the First Secretary, Mr Vladimir, Verloc has done little to earn his money in recent years and it is time for a "dynamic outrage" to provoke the middle classes. So Verloc, accepting his duty, plants a bomb at the Greenwich Observatory.