Jed Thomas stood defiantly at the podium, through a stunned silence that lasted longer than anyone who hadn’t experienced the earlier two-minute version would have believed possible. Then, as the room erupted into shouting, booing and even a few calls of “Hear, hear!” he turned and bolted, not down the stairs and into the body of the hall, but down the side of the platform, towards the doors at the rear.

“What the hell was that all about?” Sophie asked. “I’ve never heard anything like it in my life.”

“I’ve no idea,” said Lindsay. “But I’m going to have a bloody good go at finding out.”

Lindsay and Sophie’s attempts to catch up with Jed Thomas were thwarted as soon as they emerged from the side exit into the corridor. One of the delegates who had missed the outburst was hurrying back towards the hall clutching a handful of the now familiar flyer sheets of Conference Chronicle. When he saw Lindsay, he stopped short and said, “Lindsay Gordon, isn’t it? Charlie Dominic, Sunday Trumpet. I’m really glad they saw sense and released you. Have you got a minute?”

“No comment,” Lindsay said. Turning to Sophie, she added, “You can have no idea how much I’ve longed to say that to a journo.”

“Aw, Lindsay, just a word,” Charlie pleaded, eager beaver from head to foot. “Unless I get something to myself, I’m going to look a real dickhead to my newsdesk. I mean, here I am, right on top of the best trade union story of the decade, and the daily boys will have left me not a sausage.”

Against her better judgement, Lindsay relented. She could still remember the pressures inside the hothouse of national newspaper journalism. Besides, Charlie was one of the few Fleet Street hacks at the conference who hadn’t tried to give her a bad time; and it was already too late to catch Jed Thomas.

“Just a word it is, then. And if it makes you any happier, I won’t talk to the rest of the pack. All I ask is that you keep quiet about me saying a dicky-bird to you until I’ve left Sheffield. Deal?”

“Deal!” he agreed fervently. She wondered how long it would take the hammer of newsdesk attrition to beat him into the cynical mold of his colleagues.

“Five minutes, then,” she said. Sophie stifled a sigh and leaned against the wall. Lindsay threw her an apologetic look.

“Who do you think killed Tom Jack?” he began, inevitably.

“I don’t know that anyone did. I only know for sure that I didn’t. I arrived back in my room to find the window broken and Tom’s body lying in the car park below. It was one of the worst moments of my life,” she said, unconsciously slipping back into the tabloid prose that had earned her living for years.