Jeremy didn’t let his eyes touch the wounds themselves; but, as he watched, a red puddle seemed to gather from beneath the body, seeping quickly out of his suit and advancing across the newsroom’s slick concrete.

Then the Editor clattered in and was pushing two strong fingers into the side of the dead man’s neck. Geraldine had dragged the other one from the meeting room and was yelling at him, ‘Who are you? Who do you work for?’

The Editor stood up gravely, the fatal metal still in his hand. ‘He’s dead.’

The terrified young man moaned, ‘We’re journalists.’

‘Journalists?’

‘From the Thatcham Echo. We wanted to get the scoop. We broke in; I’m really sorry. He’s…’ Gavin went to point at his boss and dropped his finger as if burnt. ‘He’s the editor. Adrian Trent. I’m just a reporter. I’m just a trainee really; Adrian keeps saying I don’t know anything.’

The Editor looked to Geraldine and said, ‘Good Lord.’

‘Charles…’

Brython held up a hand to stop her strategizing. He was suddenly very weary. In a flat voice, he said, ‘I’m finished.’ He was finished. There was no doubt. And it was just. He’d made this error and an innocent man was dead. He’d taken a risk, many risks, over the years and this time things had come out against him. A man was dead. Geraldine turned her face away from him. Brython was right: he was finished, because of this idiotic nobody bleeding out on the floor. Frustration urged her to kick the corpse. And already Brython was looking around the tumultuous newsroom like someone about to leave it for ever.

Amid the remorse and the pain of sudden loss, a small part of him was pleased. His many enemies – lords, tycoons and ministers of state among them – had been trying to bring him down since he was in early middle age; he was glad that the one to succeed should be a journalist. But even now his feel for the mechanisms of public life had not deserted him; and he said, ‘Anna, we need a shot of me standing over the body.’

Anna, who’d been bottling in her words, shrieked, ‘I’ve got a scratch!’ She pointed at the back of her left hand, where the chair had drawn a thick red line. ‘From the man you’ve killed, you fucking psycho. You said anyone who got so much as a scratch—’

‘Yes,’ said Brython with dignity. Geraldine was looking at Anna as if she’d lost her mind. But money didn’t matter now. ‘A million pounds. You’ll get it. I keep my word. Now take the picture.’ He arranged his features to demonstrate the great grief he wanted the readers to see he felt, and let the fatal pistol hang by his side. Jeremy looked down at his own forearm: it, too, was bruised.