Jeremy did not dance and did not want to. He found a stumpy bottle of Glengarry whisky and sat down heavily with his back to a tree. When the song finished, Max came over and carefully sat down on the ground next to him, panting a little. Neither spoke but, by the time the bottle had gone to and fro between them, Jeremy felt that it was alright; he was no worse than anyone else, maybe even a little better, and Max was the most loyal friend a man could ask for.

*

Back in the bunker, standing truly alone but habituated to his solitude, the Editor inspected himself in the mirror. He was stripped to the waist and rubbing Vaseline into the livid marks that the underarm holster had chafed into the side of his ageing chest. The pistol itself gleamed dully on the porcelain backboard of the sink. Folded up beside it was a water-spotted print-off of the Brute’s front page; they’d got an exclusive interview with the tart forced into a burqa. His own paper was so far ahead that he could be pleased there was life in the old Brute yet.

He’d read the interview through while on the phone to the prime minister, whom he’d counselled to take firm action and reassure the frightened populace – but not to violate the Englishman’s ancient liberties. After all, this wasn’t Germany, or Russia. Upon hearing this warning, the PM had called him ‘statesmanlike’ and asked whether he would consider accepting a peerage; Brython wondered whether this slick little City boy had ever seen a real statesman.

He worked the sticky jelly into the mottled red outline of the holster straps and asked his conscience about the ‘hijacking’. Had those women really been about to hijack the bus? Perhaps the police now interrogating their families would discover something but, in truth, he doubted it. No one would ever know for sure. But he was sure that the crash had been precipitated by the Beast. He asked his conscience: had he done wrong?

The answer came straight back: no, he had not. There was a war on, between Christian England, the Christian West, and the forces of barbaric Islamism. The attacks were only the most obvious aspect; there were the burqas, the child brides, the oriental ghettoes, the honour killings, the fanaticism – all that was not the real England. Those foreign horrors had to be kept out, along with those who bore them. Shakespeare had said it best: that the English Channel was supposed to serve as a wall against the envy of less happy lands.