‘We had a follow-up as well, while you were away.’

The chief said, ‘How long was your ordeal among the bogtrotters, Jez? It’s been so long I’d started to forget your face.’

‘I left last Monday, a week yesterday.’

‘Don’t go for so long next time; you’ll come back and find yourself working in the canteen. But Maxi-pad here’s right. While you were off, we had Baroness Ahmad saying she was going to have an inquiry into why poor old Plod didn’t take them all to Heathrow to be searched by women border guards.’

Max interjected. ‘And there was something else in there, too.’

‘There were lots of things in there, little Max. That’s why it’s called a story and not just a headline. Which one are you thinking of?’

Max’s face did not betray whether being spoken to like that annoyed him. ‘We quoted someone in the Met saying there was no reason the terror gang couldn’t use the burqas to disguise themselves for a bombing.’

‘Did that definitely come from the Met and not just Newsdesk’s overheated imagination?’

‘Yes, it did,’ said Max, albeit that, ever meticulous, he provided the caveat: ‘It was a Blundering Plod story, though, so we might have just been asking them to imagine the worst possible repercussions they could.’

But the word ‘bombing’ reverberated unsettlingly, and the chief spoke to himself out loud, no longer being facetious: ‘Still, someone in the Met. Jez, did you hear these two say anything?’

Jeremy felt that this was all being taken far too seriously. ‘You know, I’m really sure it was nothing to do with that gang. The point is it was just a strange moment.’ He tried to think of a way to bring up his demotion again.

‘Maybe not, but humour me, young Jezza. I haven’t just been on holiday and had my brain softened up. Did you hear them say anything?’

‘Well,’ Jeremy said reluctantly, ‘the one who was pointing was talking the whole time, but it was in Arabic.’

‘And was it a man’s voice?’

Jeremy raised his hands helplessly. ‘To me it sounded like a woman.’

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean a thing nowadays, though, does it,’ the chief said pensively.

Jeremy added, ‘Well, it could have been a girl.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Not a woman – a girl, a teenager.’

‘An adolescent?’

‘An old adolescent.’

The chief looked at Max, who didn’t need to hear the question, and confirmed: ‘One of them was eighteen or nineteen.’

‘And voices are all over the place at that age, aren’t they?’ The chief turned back to Jeremy. ‘Did you get a look at their build? Did they look like men or women?’

Jeremy raised his hands again. ‘You can’t tell, can you? Isn’t that the whole point of a burqa?’