‘Then get the reporter over. Unless you want the reader to think we can’t even get that right.’

Rosie flinched and spun out of her chair towards the Newsdesk.

The lawyer was saying, ‘…and in particular some of the details in the Interrogation story, where we’re talking about Choudry’s injuries.’ He read highlighted phrases from the printout. ‘“One bullet clipped the bone in his upper arm, spraying chips through the surrounding tissue” or, here, “punctured his liver, leading to internal bleeding that—”’

Geraldine interrupted: ‘Sounds as if he’s got off pretty lightly.’

‘The point is that this is obviously confidential medical information. I just – how did we? – there’s nowhere this could have come from except his doctors and medical records.’ He despairingly held up a sheet on which paragraph after paragraph had been orange-highlighted. ‘It’s not even just that it’s confidential, and the potential for fines – I don’t know how we got it, but it’s not just that; there might well be grounds to argue, when it comes to trial, that all this would be prejudicial. Printing this could mean that when this guy’s in court, the case is thrown out for—’

The Editor’s voice went off like a depth charge: ‘For FUCK’s sake! Keep the fuck up. The same news lines are all over the BBC. This isn’t a moot you’re in now. We will print the truth, and if our justice system turns out to be so catastrophically mismanaged that this murderer goes free, we will hold them to account.’

The lawyer looked up at him doggedly, as if about to make another objection. But then the tension went out of him as if out of a rope gone slack. He rotated very slowly, as though he might fall, and reeled away between the desks.

The Editor said, ‘Good.’ He would concern himself with legalities tomorrow. ‘You men’ – he included Geraldine in that – ‘haven’t you written the front page yet? And why haven’t I been shown the other pages?’

One of the pairers hurried across with a loose sheaf of printed A3 drooping over his arm. ‘Stand there!’ commanded the Editor, and the pairer held up the sheets as if on a tray. The Editor inspected each at arm’s length while beside him his advisers tried to write the front-page headline. ‘16 dead in terror crash’; ‘16 killed in terror hijacking’. The pages to which the Editor had no objection he let fall, and they draped themselves like loyal hounds over his feet. But, on the others, he reworded headlines, swapped pictures and adjusted the text with his unerring ear for the true voice of the Beast. Each time he did, the chief shouted ‘Kill twenty-four!’ or ‘Hold eighteen!’ and the pairers picked up the direct phone to the presses and said, ‘Kill twenty-four! Twenty-four is coming again. Twenty-four, V-one.’