‘For fuck’s sake, Stephen. This is the biggest scoop you’ll ever get near and you’re trying to botch it up with this dirty bomb bullshit. Every detail in this story has to be solid enough to build a bloody house on. You’ – she was looking at the Graphics man – ‘draw this up again with much smaller circles based on the information he’ – she pointed at the reporter – ‘is going to give you. The first circle wants to be immediate damage, what actually gets blown up, buildings that actually get gutted. Then the next circle is the blast wave – windows bursting, fallen cornicing, car crashes, that sort of thing. Then, last circle, here you go, health risks from inhaling powdered brick, carcinogenic dust, chronic lung disease, all the 9/11 stuff.’

The Graphics man steadied himself and said, ‘Might that not be quite a small map?’

‘How am I supposed to know? Stephen, you have got us that information, haven’t you?’

‘Um, yes, I do. It’ll definitely be smaller than what we’ve got at the moment.’

‘I know it’ll be smaller. That’s the whole point. How much smaller?’

The reporter sized up the map, held his thumb and forefinger over a small area, then seemed to change his mind and moved them further apart. ‘It’d be about this big,’ he said.

‘What do you mean, about?’

‘He said if it was a conventional bomb – and he really did say a dirty bomb was—’

‘Forget the dirty bomb.’

‘But he—’

‘I don’t want to hear one more word about it. You’ll make this paper a laughing stock.’ She looked at the map again. ‘But bloody hell, even this looks like something that’s been dropped out of a plane.’

Stephen rearranged his thoughts. ‘OK, he said if it was a conventional bomb, he gave me a range for how wide the damage might be. The smaller end of the spectrum would be like this’ – he narrowed the gap to one that was close around Copper House and their end of the High Street – ‘and the bigger would be like this.’ He widened it to again include as far as Notting Hill, Earl’s Court and Kensington Palace.

Geraldine twisted one of her bracelets back and forth on her wrist. She asked the Graphics man, ‘What do you think?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you.’

‘But I don’t know anything about bombs.’

‘Of course you don’t. But how do you think it looks?’

‘Oh. We’d have to bring in the frame.’

‘It looks better bigger, doesn’t it?’

The Graphics man did not want to be asked that question. ‘It depends what you want,’ he said.

Geraldine clicked her tongue at this feebleness.