The chief said, ‘Leave it with me. You go get some pages out of the way as fast as your addled brain can type.’ And he bounded off to talk to the Editor.

11

The pod had fallen a little way behind without him. He could see it in how Max was hunched towards his screen, his chin over the keyboard as he chewed his pencil, and hear it in the tightness with which he spoke, not taking his eyes from what he was typing: ‘Jez. Nice you’ve decided to come back.’

Jeremy leant towards him and dropped his voice so that Will and Rosie couldn’t hear. ‘Max,’ he said.

Max kept typing. ‘What?’

‘The other story.’

Max blinked as if to detach his thoughts from the copy, then looked up at him.

‘It’s real. It stands up. There’s another source. And Jesus Christ, I almost didn’t say anything – I almost didn’t believe it myself.’

Max was blinking as if again trying to clear his vision. He ran his palm over his hair’s furrows, keeping his cool, and asked himself what a future chief sub would do. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘what show is it getting?’

‘They haven’t decided yet, but they’ve got graphics, quotes, comment. A clear spread at least, I’d guess.’

While Jeremy was talking, Max tried to keep his gaze on him, but it flicked involuntarily, as Jeremy’s had done, to the entrances. A panic alarm started going off in his brain as it hadn’t since he’d first started out as a sub. He saw it now in trainees, in Rosie, the brain jangling so hard all it could think was Alarm! Alarm! But he was not a trainee. And as he reasserted control over himself, overcoming this uncharacteristic inner wobble, he scorned the danger. He would be writing headlines even with bombs going off around him.

With conscious calm, he shifted the pencil to the other side of his mouth and said, ‘Who’s the other source?’

‘Someone inside the Met.’

Max had many more questions, but this was not the time. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘There’s no copy in yet is there?’

‘No, it’s only just starting to come together.’

‘And we’re already behind. Are Newsdesk going to want you again? We’re short of bodies as it is.’

‘They’re going to email me the copy as it comes in and I’m going to read through it.’

‘So you’re going to spend half your time doing their work for them?’

‘I’m just going to skim it, see if I catch anything.’

‘Well, that Tragic Schoolgirl’s taken another re-draw. Get it out of the way as soon as you can and I’ll load you up with some more.’