Max didn’t know whether the chief meant Max or himself. He carefully said, ‘Yes,’ and diverted the chief back to safer ground: ‘But it would probably be Health and Travel that get blown up, since they’re closest to the door. It wouldn’t be a great loss to British journalism.’

‘Hold on – HOLD ON there just a minute, Little Miss Hoity-Toity. The softer sections are keeping us all in jobs. How many full-size British Airways ads do you see in the news pages? Right next to a cheery little story about tourists getting machine-gunned in Sharm el-Sheikh?’

‘I thought all our jobs were safe for now.’

The question of whether the chief was leaving hung in the air between them.

He said, ‘We won’t need jobs when we’ve all been blown up. And tell Jez not to shoot his mouth off until those loafers on Newsdesk have found out if there’s anything there. Because if there is…’

He and Max looked at each other.

‘I’ll tell Jez to keep schtum.’

The chief nodded and returned to his seat. Grasping the edge of the desk with his thick fingers, he swung himself back into position. If the terror gang really was planning to attack the Beast… The idea of getting the paper out while bombs were going off on the doorstep flattered his sense of himself as a tough old hack. If you’d lived in the newsroom as long as he had, he thought, it would take more than a few bangs to throw you off. But he would need to stop anyone getting in, send the non-essential staff home, then also – plans and contingencies branched in his mind and only after several minutes’ thought did an instinctual shudder pass across him. He dismissed it.

Max was thinking it was typical of Jez to get snagged up in this sort of mess. By the time Newsdesk had found that there was nothing to the story, it would be late in the evening, which meant things would be hectic on deadline. Maybe very hectic. The team was light because of the summer holidays. Everyone already in – the middle bench – was solid, hardened, load-bearing. Those coming in at half three, however, were casuals, old-timers and new grunts, who might disintegrate in the intensity of first edition.

Max had two of these grunts allocated to his pod: Rosie, who was probably a nice girl but far too timid to get her teeth into the copy, and the boy who’d been sacked by the Stentorian, Will, who had all the piss and vinegar he’d ever need but was still just a greenhorn and couldn’t be trusted. They’d be in soon enough, but Max would have to get moving.