Halford looked at her, unblinking. He was in uniform, his cap occupying the space on the table in front of him. Perhaps he thought it made him look more powerful. Instead the effect was the opposite. The starchiness of his tunic and the way that the collar rode rather high round his short neck gave him the air of a schoolboy whose mother had got him a too-large blazer to ‘grow into’. Hired by her predecessor, he had never once said anything she agreed with.

Clements’s eyes darted towards her and away again as he attempted to regain control of the room. ‘Ah, we were rather expecting to focus on civil security, Home Secretary. There are a number of pressing decisions regarding co-ordination, deployment and resources.’

Garvey, knowing exactly where this was leading, waved his words away. ‘We’re not putting troops on the streets, Alec. You can forget it.’

‘We’re just talking about a visible presence. To send the message that—’

‘The only message that’s going to send is that we think we’re at war.’

Delamere, the army chief, pursed his lips. ‘Just for the record, if matters deteriorate, there’ll have to be a rethink about the PM’s plans to cut troop numbers.’

She brought him to a halt. ‘You can go on the offensive with the Treasury later about that. What I want to hear from the commissioner is where we’re at with how all this started.’

Clements wasn’t ready to give up yet. ‘We, that is the commissioner and I, feel strongly that there should be national co-ordination to the policing—’

‘Yes, good idea, sort it.’ She smiled. ‘There – that wasn’t so hard.’

She turned back to Halford. ‘So, John, who fired the shot that started all this?’

He moistened his lips with a small serpent-like tongue. ‘Sarah, I really think that at this stage it’s too early to—’

She cut him off with the sweep of a hand that had the makings of a karate chop to his Adam’s apple. ‘If we don’t bottom out how this started we’re never going to get a proper grip on it. As far as the public’s concerned, an unarmed British Muslim, a popular community worker with no criminal record or terrorist connections, who was trying to build bridges with the wider community, has been shot by the police.’

‘Which, as I’m sure you are aware, is complete and utter—’

‘But, nevertheless, a popular view, which we have yet convincingly to counter. Meanwhile the entire Muslim community comes onto the streets and here we are.’ Halford straightened up, as if to launch into a long speech. ‘I’ve put the head of Homicide and Serious Crime Command in direct control. He’s confident that we’re going to find our man in the drug world.’

‘Well, that narrows it down.’