To everyone’s surprise, Rosie, who felt that this was getting surreally unpleasant, spoke up, ‘But he couldn’t be a fundamentalist even… even if we had any reason for thinking he was, which we don’t. Strict Muslims are against alcohol and he works in a pub. It’s completely… It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘That’s right,’ said the landlord, as if that settled it.

The chief saw the angles as he would on any story. ‘Bit suspicious, that, don’t you think, grubling, a fundamentalist Muslim working in a pub?’

‘Oh, bloody hell,’ said the landlord.

Gilbert looked up from his now-empty pint glass, which he’d been rotating on the bar. ‘Now come on, Barry. It’s not unreasonable to ask a few questions. These men were almost killed yesterday and—’

‘Don’t you start with this.’

Gilbert, abashed, let go of the glass, but went on: ‘I just don’t think it’s—’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Gilbert’s mouth worked with suppressed speech and, as it did, the chief bellowed, ‘Oi, Ayoob! Come out here!’

The landlord banged the flat of his hand on the bar. ‘Oi! If you shout at my staff again, you’re out, standing together or no standing together, you hear me? Actually, you know what…?’

But behind him, the kitchen door was pushed ajar and Ayub leant out of it. His double-breasted chef’s jacket hung loose as an empty sail and he’d put on his round white cap, which pressed down on the black locks that escaped from under it. He asked, ‘Hello?’

‘Get back in the kitchen,’ ordered the landlord.

Ayub stiffened and his long black brows rose into two ridges, pushing a vertical furrow into the light brown skin between them. ‘Didn’t someone just ask me to come out here?’

‘No,’ said the landlord, but the chief said, ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Ayub showed no inclination to retreat into the kitchen. The landlord said, ‘These gents are from the Daily Beast.’

Ayub’s features contorted. ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.’

The journalists and the regulars all twitched up to a new degree of alertness. The chief asked, ‘What do you mean?’

Behind the journalists, in the corner of the room, Adrian was on his feet, frantically signalling to Ayub, cutting his hand back and forth across his throat.

Ayub shook his head. ‘I hate journalists.’

Jeremy’s cigarette fingers trembled and Gilbert stood up off his stool, becoming a little shorter. The chief, as immaculately calm as a police marksman, asked, ‘Why’s that then?’

Ayub stepped out fully from behind the swing door. ‘Same reason as everybody else: they harass people for money.’

‘Like Muslims at the moment.’

‘Yeah, like Muslims.’

‘How long have you worked here?’