Ted sighed. “We always assume people are going to panic, and have to be herded and registered. Bullshit. I tell you, if you bottle people up here you’ll have a riot on your hands, Billy boy.”

As if on cue, there was a tinkle of glass somewhere. Raised voices. The coppers around Ted straightened up further, peering out like meerkats. Some of them bustled off towards the disturbance.

“I mean it,” Ted said gently.

Billy MacEwen was thinking hard. Evidently this wasn’t the first time he’d had advice like this. “Ted, you know how the command structure works. I’m only a silver commander. Gold says—”

“Gold isn’t here,” Ted said wearily. The blackness was closer, like a curtain closing. “Just do it while you still have control.”

MacEwen didn’t respond.

Ted closed his eyes, and let himself lean a little harder against the young copper, Murphy.

“I think it’s the Rest Centre for you anyway, sir,” Murphy said.

Christ, he could barely see. Taste of iron in his mouth. The sunlight seemed remote, and at least the pain was gone. The vertical, marked out by these pillar-like young coppers, was tilting sideways.

Where was Jack? Still here. Safe.

He didn’t fight it. He’d made his point. MacEwen wasn’t going to lose face by changing his strategy in front of him. Not a bad time to pass out.

Not Billy’s fault anyhow, he thought. They just weren’t ready for this. None of them were. How could they have known?

Time to leave the stage for a bit, he thought, and he smiled, and gave himself up to the darkness.

The policewoman gave Henry directions to the police authority headquarters in Fettes Avenue, on the north side of the New Town.

Traffic was snarled everywhere, and Henry had to walk. So he stomped his way north along the Mayfield Road towards the city centre.

Close to Arthur’s Seat the smell of smoke, the wail of sirens, the clatter of helicopters filled Henry’s sensorium, masking the outlines of the familiar world. But away from the zone of the immediate disaster — just a few hundred yards — normality seemed undisturbed. True, the traffic was clogged, but there were people walking, coming to and from work — they were even carrying shopping, for God’s sake. In his torn and bloodied clothes, he felt out of place. Ill-mannered. People stared at him.

Only the smoke rising from the east of the city served as a reminder that all was not well, here.

It took him two hours to reach the Lothian and Borders police authority headquarters.