At a little after eight the following morning, Assistant Commissioner Nigel Willis of the Metropolitan Police slowed his car and turned it carefully over the bump at the entrance to the petrol station where he bought his newspaper. His eyes felt dry and his head tight; he’d been up late co-ordinating raids on the houses of Kayani and his gang, and on their mosque. It had been after three by the time he stopped the interrogations because everyone was exhausted and they were getting nothing. This morning he’d heard the whole story again on the radio, in a discussion that had been running since before he left the house: the Beast’s building was surrounded by armed police; the government had raised the national threat level to ‘critical’; the Prime Minister had convened a meeting of COBRA and declared that an attack on the Press was an attack on the institutions of democracy. But Nigel had an unhappy suspicion and wanted to check the original article for himself.

He parked beside the concrete payment shack appended to the forecourt and walked across to the bank of thick grey plastic cubes that held the papers. Instead of picking up his usual Stentorian, he looked through the transparent lids for the Beast. There was only one left. He lifted it out, the backs of his fingers touching plastic, and went in to pay. As he waited, he read the front page and noticed that the man in front of him in the queue was already reading the inside. When he reached the counter, the attendant, with whom he never exchanged more than or a nod or sometimes, around Christmas or during the World Cup or the Ashes, a ‘Morning’, asked him, ‘Is this the last one?’

‘Um, yes it is.’

The attendant, who was wearing a green BP cap and matching polo shirt, shook his head. ‘Incredible, isn’t it? I’m keeping one as a souvenir – the day the Muslims declared war.’

Nigel gave a non-committal smile, wondering whether he might have to start buying his paper somewhere else, and took the Beast back to his car. He spread it awkwardly on the steering wheel and skimmed through the heavy black type to the passage he was searching for: how the Beast had actually come by this information. He’d already heard how one of their reporters had stumbled on the plot, but there, just as he feared, the article quoted in confirmation ‘an anonymous senior source at Scotland Yard’ with his own words about ‘an attack in the next few days’ and information from ‘people in the terror community’.

Nigel scrunched the newspaper shut and said, ‘Oh, piss on it!’