As Dan was handing it over, the Editor said to Geraldine: ‘Have one of your people ring Oxfordshire Police and tell them to expect a call from the Met about a top-secret incident outside Banbury. You get on to our man Willis in the Met and tip him off so that he brings this under his counter-terror operation. Tell him we don’t know exactly what’s happened and can’t yet say for certain whether there was a hijacking.

‘Ken? Yes. What we need you to find out is… Yes, I understand people have been killed, and I want you to help the survivors, but first I want to know: are the terrorists alive and able to talk? And is the driver alive?… Ken? Ken! Stop fucking snivelling, I thought you were a newsman… Alright, good, now get over there and find out: are the terrorists alive or dead?’

27

When it rolled down the verge, the bus had gouged a great brown swathe out of the ground above where it now lay. The corner of the roof that had plunged briefly into the soil had been crushed almost flat, bursting all the windows along the side that now faced the sky. Some passengers had been thrown clear and, as Ken slipped and stumbled down the steep slope from the car, he saw these figures lying in their own little elongated pools of shadow. Some rolled listlessly, others were still; and Ken inadvertently let out a soft moan. Even if he’d thought his first aid would do any good, there were too many for him to know where to begin.

He jogged clumsily across the grass, his limbs misbehaving, his tie flapping, towards the felled metal creature, and wished Dan had not hung back for wider shots, letting him go on alone. It was incongruous to see a bus on its side; it seemed larger than they usually did, like a dinosaur brought down in mid-stride. From the movies, he half-expected it to catch fire and explode, but in the tangled, broken black mess of pipes and shafts on the undercarriage he could see no spark; only a reserve of thick oil gloopily emptying itself into the scraped earth.