She threw up her hands in disbelief, jangling her bracelets. ‘And this place is still messier than a Turkish bordello! I hope you’re better subs than you are femmes de chambre or there’ll be no point filing any copy at all. Now hop to it, back to the newsroom.’

Adrian and Gavin glanced at each other. They went through the door and into the corridor. Geraldine stepped back to let them out. They looked at her expectantly. ‘For the love of Pete, I’m not going to walk you there as well. You’ll have to manage that on your own.’ She shooed them in the right direction. ‘Go on then – chop-chop – start walking.’

32

Will flinched when he noticed Gavin and Adrian near the centre of the newsroom. Among the thronging, hurrying hubbub, they drifted across its lines of motion. The younger, his suit stained, was limping, and Will’s mind flashed from recognition to a reflexive guess: they were the men he’d seen in the pub; it was probably them who’d tried to climb the fence; the younger one must have fallen and injured his leg.

This intuition set him trembling with excitement. His heart murmured and he had to grip his mouse and keyboard so no one would see his hands shake. This was a career-making catch, if he could bring it in. And all around were dozens of as yet oblivious reporters who would like to bring it in themselves.

The intruders were trying to appear as if they belonged there, pretending to discuss some print-offs the older man was holding while their eyes travelled all over the inside of the newsroom. For jihadis they didn’t look very fanatical. It seemed so unlikely that they were terrorists. Of course, Will had never seen any before, but these just did not look like men about to start killing. Keyed-up, yes; tense, yes; but not murderous. In a few years he could be the youngest editor in the country.

Max was the wrong person to go to this time; it would become a catch from his pod, ergo his catch. And the rewards Max could give were still small. Will would go straight to the Editor. He would talk to the Editor himself and tell him – but who were they? The older one looked like the manager of a provincial supermarket. He was taking the pretence more seriously than the younger one, splaying his fingers to the surface of the sheets he was holding as if explaining something. The younger one, who stood taller than his boss, was openly glancing around. They might be saboteurs, or undercover policemen who were testing their colleagues, or some kind of protestors. But surely not jihadis.