And: If the parents have nothing to hide then they’ve nothing to fear. That was one of the mantras from the training course.

V, who is the parent in L’s sights (and shortly to be in the sights of the SLT and CHANNEL and possibly even AVERT), has a wide circle of acquaintance (another thing that makes L nervous, though she hasn’t articulated that to herself).

V doesn’t wear a headscarf, but then she’s a more modern, jeans-wearing type. In the training L and her colleagues were told that traditional dress wasn’t necessarily a marker. It could be, the trainer clarified, but not necessarily.

L completes her report, seals it in an envelope and puts it in the SLT pigeonhole.

*

In the last week O has looked at various maps of Xi’an, read up on the political history of Shaanxi province, compared kettles on the Argos site, watched Panorama on catch-up and listened to an old Chomsky lecture. Right at this moment, O is browsing the Snowden archive and downloading a pamphlet by the erstwhile Muslim Council of Britain (which later this morning will catch the attention of M).

(Funnily enough the associate editor of The Spectator registers an identical browsing history – apart from the kettles – but, notwithstanding he is inconvenient, no one thinks he is a terrorist.)

In Bucharest, C, working for the Ministry, reads up on the work of M’s department.

In Phoenix, Arizona, a server records that one of its hosted sites has been accessed by O.

In Xi’an, the Muslim communities organize, via careful use of WeChat.

Classy as ever, NewsGlobal has moved on from hacking the handsets of dead children, and is now hacking the teenaged offspring of the Labour leader.

*

L catches V at pick-up time.

Why should I complete it? says V. Tell me why.

So that we have it on record, says L. Your refusal.

V is shaking the sheaf of papers. It shows contempt, she says – contempt – for a huge swathe of the population. I can’t believe you can’t see that.

Look, we don’t make the vaccine, says L. We don’t even write the forms. We just distribute them. And we just need you to sign them.

And you can’t see the message it sends? says V. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, you can all fuck off.

Well it doesn’t quite say that, says L.

V shakes her head at L. You just don’t get it, do you? This is what started the Indian Mutiny, she says. At L’s blank look she throws her hands up at the ceiling and then shakes them at L: Look it up.