Jeremy waved him away. ‘I went there once on holiday and I’m never going again.’

‘They killed MPs; people forget that now,’ the landlord said. ‘Airey Neave, Ian Gow, Tony Berry. They nearly killed Mrs Thatcher, too, of course. I was there, in Brighton, not in the hotel itself, but on duty.’

‘Putting your life on the line?’ said the chief.

‘I wouldn’t say that, but doing my bit, like we all are.’ The other journalists lifted their glasses to this compliment. ‘But it’s newspapers that are the target now, isn’t it? There were those Danish cartoonists, then that magazine in France and now the Beast.’

Jeremy said, ‘Charlie Hebdo.’

And the chief, thinking of how he was abandoning his newspaper, said in an access of bravado, ‘I hope some jihadis do pitch up here looking for trouble. The Beast will rip them to shreds.’

The shy man asked, ‘Do you think so, because—’

‘Of course! Just look at today’s paper.’

‘Ahm, actually, I did want to ask you something about that.’ And somewhat awkwardly he spread the newspaper on the bar in front of the journalists.

19

‘Oh, sorry,’ said the regular. ‘My name’s Gilbert by the way.’ He paused as if unsure what to do next and, though everyone had shaken hands before, offered his hand to the chief.

Will rolled his eyes at Rosie, wanting it to be just hacks together. But the chief took Gilbert’s hand in both of his with exaggerated bonhomie, declaring, ‘A pleasure to meet you, Gilbert. Always a pleasure to meet a reader. I’m Frank Forshaw, the chief sub-editor, and these are some of my reprobates. What can we do for you?’

Gilbert didn’t quite know how to take this reference to reprobates. He nodded at the other subs and found his place in the newspaper, which was opened to the map of concentric red circles around Copper House. He said, ‘Now, of course there are things you can’t write, as it were, directly, because of slander and things, but reading between the lines’ – he glanced up to check that this had been noted – ‘it’s obvious that this mosque in Acton is teaching Syrian terror tactics to impressionable young men in London. And what I’d like to know is how on earth they get away with it. There must be a huge organization, huge amounts of money, international travel… How has that not been closed down?’

‘Cells,’ interjected the landlord. ‘They’ll be divided up into cells, won’t they?’

‘Cells, my arse,’ said the chief. ‘They probably put a collection plate round at the end of each service, saying, Come on: dig deep for Syria. At least a tenner each. And they pray five times a day, don’t they? That’s a lot of tenners.’