Back at Copper House, Maurice Lennard, an ageing and pudgily sexless reporter with fishy lips and floppy white hair, leant against the barrel of the revolving door on to Usk Street. It was going to be a long evening for him, smoking cigarettes, trying to work the BBC News website on his phone and guarding against the off-chance that the terrorists came back today. He’d not been on a stakeout for years, but had been chosen because he would not, by panicking, draw the attention of either the building security or the swarms of story-hungry reporters inside Copper House. Despite the danger, it made him feel like an old hand for once, rather than just old.

As Geraldine’s other reporters, given their missions, pushed slowly through the doors and then burst out on to the street and away, they saluted him with a raised hand or a grim nod. With the first couple, he was unsure how to respond and sort of waved. But soon he realized that the grim nod was best, and then he felt that he was doughtily sending them out one by one like fighter pilots to do battle above the skies of Britain. Good luck, Davidson. Off you go, Jacobs. If an attack did happen, it wouldn’t be members of the public who were killed; it would be journalists, his own colleagues.

He ran his gaze along the hundred yards of street. There were a few expensive cars parked, a stub-nosed Bentley and a wide, flat racer that he thought was a Maserati, not the sort of thing West Acton terrorists would have the funding for. A few girls in short dresses and young men in suits were already queuing for the rooftop bar on the building opposite. He guessed that when the terrorists came it would be from the High Street and not from behind Copper House, where a quiet square with no big access roads lay under a canopy formed by giant plane trees. He could see their upper strata glowing a fresh translucent green as they were caught by the late-afternoon light. At the High Street end, the gap between the buildings flashed red and blue and black as traffic shot past. Pedestrians strolled or hurried past the aperture. The terrorists would be in black cloaks.

He was under strict instructions from Geraldine to call as soon as he saw anything, so that she and the Editor could decide whether to tell the police and the building security. But Maurice had realized even as Geraldine was saying this that there would never be enough time for a phone call. He now decided very easily that he would stop them himself. He’d lived long enough to know that from this point life was mainly a story of decline. He was not fast or strong, but he had a flaring of bravery left in him. He readied himself, and waited.