The voice went off again: ‘Damn it, man, write it. What the fuck’s the matter with you? Can’t you do at least some of the work? Delete that; it’s gibberish – I don’t even want it on my fucking screen. Now type:

THE PRIEST, THE PRINCESS AND

THE DRUG-DEALING BODYBUILDER’

There was a pause, then: ‘Of course it fucking fits.’ For once, the Editor did not seem soothed by doing the work. ‘So what the fuck are you waiting for? Send the cunting page.’

The chief checked the headline for typos and shouted, ‘Page sixteen coming again now. Sixteen V-three.’ The pairers called, ‘Sixteen V-three,’ and at Max’s pod, the Editor broke on them like a storm.

‘Why the fuck has no one seen fit to show me the splash pages? Have you all forgotten that this is still my newspaper? You,’ he pointed at Max.

But before he could carry on, the chief was there, saying, ‘Max here is subbing the splash copy, so perhaps Jeremy could show you the pages?’

The Editor turned to Geraldine and said, ‘Don’t stand there gawping, fetch me a chair.’ The chief was already back at his desk, a zigzag vein in his temple pulsing as he speed-read the pages being sent.

Geraldine, with mutinous ill-grace, commandeered a chair from the nearest Sport sub, who went on typing at a crouch, and pushed it awkwardly into position beside and slightly behind Jeremy. The lawyer, whose nerves could not withstand addressing the Editor except through an intermediary, looked supplicatingly at Geraldine, who said, ‘Charles, the lawyer’s got some concerns about naming these terrorists, specifically…’

‘Of course he does. We’ll get to the nit-pickery later. Now I want to see whether these pages are halfway in order.’

Jeremy, who’d been rearranging the Blind Bulgarian even as Geraldine brought the chair, hit ‘OK’ and opened PagePlanner. It was exhilarating to be beside the Editor, the source from whom all power radiated. He said, ‘This is the first splash spread, the map, the four terrorists, the brother.’

The Editor sat forward in his chair, his forearms resting on his thighs and his large hands dangling between his knees, and assessed the page. He said, ‘Why are there no rag-outs on this page? For Christ’s sake, you can’t expect people to remember every story we covered two weeks ago. Why is there no one here from Pictures?’

At that, Turkish Anna shot from her seat like a hare from its hiding place, her hooked nose sucking in air for acceleration. As she appeared, the Editor said, ‘I want two headlines ragged out from previous editions and put on this page, one from the story about their escape from bail and one from the leader column that set them on to us.’

She nodded sharply, her lips bunching.