Jeremy thought to himself that it was lucky decades in the newsroom had inured him to that sort of talk; otherwise he might have felt a little humiliated.

‘Come on, out with it.’

He said, ‘It’s just that I think this is all being taken too, um, definitively. The descriptions, the packages, there are—’

‘You’ve got some caveats.’

‘Yes!’ Jeremy was startled into exclamation by this sudden ease of understanding. Caveats were exactly what he had.

‘That’s fine. Ben,’ Geraldine pointed at the doughy-faced reporter who’d spoken before. ‘Take his caveats. Tell me if there’s anything important.’ She did not look at Jeremy again before carrying on, committing reinforcements to the work already begun by the two reporters she’d sent out even before news conference.

*

Five long London miles away in a Muslim part of West Acton, the first of these was kicking through the heaped contents of the Kayani family’s bin: curls of onion peel; cardboard egg boxes; desiccated tea bags; hard black banana skins; orange plastic bags with loo roll and pink Tampax wrappings peeping from under the knot. The heap gradually spread across the pavement as the reporter prodded his shoe through it. It was lucky that this was a residential street and there was hardly anyone about. In any case, Geraldine had said this story was big enough for him not to worry about producing complaints; Newsdesk would deal with them after the story was in.

The Picture desk had also sent a skinny, tracksuited snapper with thick glasses, who was crouching behind the low wall at the front of the house, his camera cocked. He made an ungainly shuffle sideways as a warm, fermenting pong wafted up off what had been the bottom of the pile. A shiny streak of bin juice spilt itself across the reporter’s shoe. He swore and started flicking his foot in midair.

As he did so, the house’s suburban door, painted dull green around a panel of frosted glass, was torn open. A youngish man whom the reporter recognized from his Facebook pictures as Kayani’s elder brother rushed out with his fist raised. ‘Hey,’ he shouted. ‘HEY!’ And the snapper popped up from behind the wall, the camera coming to his eye even as he rose. His immediate hyper-acute concentration slowed time to all but a standstill. Bam. Bam. Bam. The camera recoiled infinitesimally as it stamped those instants into the pictorial record.

The elder Kayani dropped his fist in shock and stared at the ferrety man in the thick glasses and black tracksuit, while the reporter covered the space between them. Bringing up his Dictaphone, he said, ‘I’m Martin Harris from the Daily Beast. What does your brother Atif think of our newspaper?’

‘You’re a bunch of—’

*