Those ‘people’ had actually just been Dan Felsenburg, who was subordinate to him but with whom he ate lunch. Dan had rung just before that bloody reporter from the Beast, to ask whether he’d heard anything about an attack like this. When he’d rung Dan back after the story broke, to ask where he’d heard about it, he said that he’d got it all from questions put to him by a reporter at the Beast.

Nigel scrunched the paper into a tighter bundle and closed his eyes so as not to see it. He could sense the nearness of absolute humiliation. Already he could imagine going into his next quarterly appraisal carrying a mistake that had been front-page news; actually, he wouldn’t even make it to the appraisal; he would have to resign. And then what? Private security consultant? He was certainly senior enough to find something – he’d been sounded out at a conference just a couple of months ago by a firm in Dubai – but the thought of it was obscurely degrading: taking money from a rich man or a corporate manager and having to act as though their concerns were important.

His mind automatically teased apart layers of possibility and laid them out separate: just because he’d misinformed the Beast, that didn’t mean they weren’t right about this plot. The prime piece of evidence, after all, wasn’t from him: one of their reporters had seen what he believed to be bombers and, for what it was worth, there was nothing about their burqas that violated the Kayani group’s descriptions. In that case, he might be safe. He needed to identify which possibilities were true before anyone else did. If the self-important odd bods from MI5 got there first, it would be out of his hands for good.

As he drove off the forecourt and in the direction of the Yard, another layer of possibility occurred to him: that there was a bombing planned, but not by Kayani. He tapped the car’s little touchscreen to call Dan, who picked up at once. ‘Morning, Nige.’

‘Morning.’

They spoke over each other, Dan’s voice louder: ‘Are you on the way in?’

‘Yep, I’m just in the car. Is there anything new from the cells?’

‘We’re just about to get started again. They’re just getting fed. I think we should be back in there in the next half-hour. Was there an angle in particular you wanted us to work?’

‘No, no new angle. But just to make sure I’ve got this right – has any of them given us anything that indicates they had prior knowledge of the attack?’

‘About where the bombers might have been preparing?’

‘No, just anything that indicates they’d heard of it before we arrested them.’