Once he’d toured all the outer desks, he finally came to the centre and said, ‘Enderling, Constantinos, Forshaw. You, too, Max, and you, Underwood.’ Geraldine, Anna, the chief, Max and Jeremy clustered around him as he put a blank flatplan on Max’s desk. Glancing up, he said, ‘Frank, it looks as if every one of your subs is still here.’

The chief tried not to show his pride. ‘They hate their lives anyway. Getting killed by jihadis is a step up for them.’

The Editor regarded him with irritation, his sense of moment too high-flown for newsroom banter. He said, ‘Anna, what do we know? Does it stand up?’

‘Our source is sure they’re terrorists, absolutely sure, but he’s bricking it. He can’t say why he’s so sure.’

‘So we don’t know.’

‘We can have a proper look when our boys catch up to them.’

‘Where are they?’

‘I can’t say exactly. Somewhere near Birmingham.’

The Editor looked at his watch. ‘But by God, if they’re still in the Midlands they might not even get here until after ten o’clock.’

Geraldine understood what he meant and was horrified as she hadn’t been by the prospect of attack. ‘But if they’re not here in time, we—’

‘Anything we print will be hopelessly out of date by morning,’ he said bitterly. ‘While every smug cunt on breakfast television is interviewing the families of the jihadis who’ve been arrested outside our own building overnight, we’ll be sitting there with a front page that says, “Terror bus inbound. Nothing known.”’

‘We could get something in the later editions.’

‘Oh, the later editions! For fuck’s sake, Geraldine!’

Geraldine kept her mouth shut.

‘Cunting cunt,’ said the Editor, gathering himself. ‘Cunting fucking cunt. Cunting fucking motherfucking cunting cunt.’ He breathed out.

Jeremy put his thoughts forward. He was a specialist in this, after all. ‘Um, Charles, why don’t we tip off the police before the bus gets here? They’ll pull them over and arrest them and we’ll get that story?’

The Editor took this suggestion. ‘We might have to, Underwood. But something like that will leak at once and every stringer and snapper in the Home Counties will be there five minutes behind us.’

‘So we’ll have a story,’ said Geraldine in frustration. ‘But we won’t have the scoop.’

Jeremy said, ‘Isn’t this going to leak anyway, though, from one of the people who’ve left?’