One of the burqa-draped figures pointed up at the building while they spoke in what Jeremy presumed was Arabic. The other one bulged slightly at the right-hand side, as if carrying something under her cloak. Conscious of a slight acceleration in the labours of his tired, smoke-clogged heart, Jeremy remembered a story he’d worked on just before going away: a group of terrorists – how many? Four. Four terror suspects on bail – had escaped the oversight of the law by joining the crowd at their mosque, cutting off their electronic tags and leaving dressed in burqas.

The Beast’s leader column had been incensed by a police spokesman’s offhand remark that, even if the squad cars had arrived in time, they were hardly going to strip-search the lot of them. The column had excoriated ‘a country so enfeebled that its “authorities” are unwilling even to defend it’. The heads of the mosque and various Muslim community groups had been incensed in turn, and ‘vowed’ that they would not stand for this harassment.

And now these two shapeless figures were here, on the Beast’s own doorstep, carrying something under their cloaks.

From deep within him emerged a memory of having been struck by this sort of shock once before. It had been when he was a cub reporter in Margate, long ago. He’d been in the cinema on a date, hypnotized by the huge lights and colours, when, with startling speed and size, a gargantuan black shape loomed across it. The illusion was ruptured and, with a flash of vertigo, he was pulled backwards into his surroundings of movie theatre, Margate, the rustle of hands in popcorn.

He’d flinched in his seat, and his date – one of the assistants on the paper – laughed at him, thinking he was clowning. It was just someone sticking a hand in front of the projector. But he’d been confident then, and young, and hadn’t minded her laughing. He’d actually clowned a little more, amusing them both; and, despite a lingering unease, he’d soon slipped back into the movie.

Now, as he stood outside the Beast’s offices, the two black-clad figures gave him that same vertiginous shock. Around them all was normal: the workaday lunchtime backdrop was going on with its business. But they were here. He kept smoking, trying not to give away that he’d noticed them, and realized that his fingertips were trembling. He’d drunk half a litre of coffee in the car. Were they trembling more than usual?