AC Chen, recognising a kindred spirit, stepped aside with a tight smile. Then advanced into the room under full sail, a hard-eyed suit in her wake. Mickey vaguely recognised the man, a DCI. Her current bag carrier. Hand-picked, hatchet-faced. Known to lack any sense of humour. The perfect match for Our Jasmine. He closed the door.

‘Good morning, Sergeant. You’ll have to forgive me for not waiting until you’re a bit more compos mentis, but this really won’t wait that long.’

Mickey nodded wearily. ‘Get the story straight before the press start digging?’

A firm nod of her head. ‘Press coverage of last night’s incident will be on the Met’s terms.’

‘A dozen dead officers. How do you control that?’

AC Chen looked down at him for a moment. Her regard not quite as friendly as might have been expected, under the circumstances.

‘We couldn’t stop the footage that was shot by a small number of witnesses to the attack from going viral, of course. Thankfully they were sufficiently far away and shit-scared that it isn’t too graphic. Although the camera phone film of Constable Blake returning fire and being cut down is powerful stuff. When the Trojan units got to the scene they managed to stop any further recording, and got the bodies covered up. And since nobody managed to get any footage of what happened in Fulham Palace Road itself, we can present the press with the best version of events.’

Mickey nodded, wincing at the pain. ‘The sanitised version.’

She shot him a jaundiced look. ‘Well of course the sanitised version. You saw the mess that those bastards made of the Special Escort Group. The commissioner is determined that the press will be fed only the images we want them to see. Wrecked vehicles. Constable Blake’s bike riddled with bullet holes. The damage caused by two suicide bombers. But not the men and women who died. Dead heroes will be mourned, but their bloodied corpses will not be put on display by the media. And everyone will breathe a sigh of relief that by some miracle no civilians died. Although there are still seven of them in hospital. Three of them in ICU.’

‘Who were they?’