The photographers paced careful semicircles around the scene, squatting and snapping and periodically holding their cameras in the deeper shade of their bodies to check they’d got the shots: the mesh curling like a breaking wave, the roundels of chopped wood, the distribution of scuff marks on the other side. One of the reporters walked figures of eight with his phone to his ear, trying to reach a forensics expert they’d used before. As the others urgently theorized in hushed voices about what had happened, the Editor looked and looked and looked. In his presence Will’s feeling of imperviousness approached a frontline euphoria.

Stephen tucked his tie between two buttons on his shirt and draped his suit jacket over the razor wire on top of the fence. As Ben interlaced his fingers to give him a leg up, the head policeman arrived with a posse of his own, their raised submachine guns darting glances through the woods. He marched straight up to the Editor, his face as mottled as an old drinker’s, and demanded, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

The Editor put on the patrician manner he showed to outsiders. ‘I,’ he said, ‘am doing what you have failed to do: protecting this newspaper and this country from extremist violence. What is the use, I ask you, of allowing your men on to this newspaper’s compound if they will not even perform duties so basic as patrolling its perimeter?’

‘That’s ridiculous. The—’

The Editor spoke inexorably over him, his enormous voice not rising but holding the policeman fast. ‘Does it surprise you that the concentrated might of Thames Valley Police, incompetent as its reputation may be, has been beaten to the story by two of the most junior journalists on my staff?’

‘None of you can be here. This a crime scene. There are potentially dangerous—’

‘I, for one, am not surprised. Time and again the police service has demonstrated its inability to keep up with this newspaper. If we had relied on the work of your colleagues yesterday, the plot may not have been uncovered until it was too late. And if we had relied on yours today, perhaps this break-in would have been successful.’

‘The Beast wasn’t exactly speedy with its information yesterday, though, was it? Stop me if I’m getting this wrong, but isn’t it true that no one rang the Met about the bombing until ten o’clock at night? When would you have told us about this – next week? I want your reporters, whoever witnessed this, to give us a full statement right now.’

The Editor measured him by eye, and said, ‘The idea that the information this newspaper gave the Met yesterday was inconvenient because they’d already gone home for the night is frankly shocking. So, here is what—’