It was his turn to do the school run this morning, and once John had been abandoned to the last miserable few yards with the bell already sounding and Josie had vanished to the coffee shop she called her “office,” he had time to catch up with work. Working from home two days a week seemed an odd luxury for someone in the Service, but he had a secure phone, and so long as he didn’t leave his encrypted laptop somewhere, it wasn’t a problem. Julian considered that 007 would not be on Her Majesty’s Secret Service wearing yesterday’s joggers and a faded Marillion T-shirt. However, 007 was foreign service rather than home. Probably they had different standards.

There was a stack of reports waiting for him on one Billy White, including one from Alison. She hadn’t flagged it as urgent and he knew how thorough an analyst she was, so he decided he’d skim everything else first, then give it the time it deserved.

Billy White, born William Tams Wellish, should have been small fry, but somehow he’d found a pond to be a big fish in. There was the usual police record, plenty of wrist-rappings for criminal damage, a little ABH, threatening behaviour. His wife had also suffered suspicious injuries including a broken arm, but she’d insisted she was just “clumsy.” These days he had lawyers, which meant that his appearances at the nick and in the dock had ebbed, even if his actual activities had only grown. Right now, White was the darling of greatgeorgengland.com—the missing e a constant visual stumble every time Julian saw it written down. The website greeted visitors with a wealth of St. George regalia surrounding a sensationalist news feed which collected every conceivable scare story about how England was under threat from…just about anyone whose ancestors had come over post 1066.

Alison’s initial intel gathering had already followed White through two dozen websites and message boards, highlighting links with the already radicalized, both here and abroad. White had never been stupid enough to make one of the dangerous lists; his involvement was always just second-hand enough to keep him from the spotlight. Julian had monitored several far-right potential troublemakers in his career, and he knew White wasn’t quite in the elite of those circles. He’d never made it to a local council seat either, though he’d stood in the last election, and he wasn’t smooth enough to wrangle a mainstream media platform outside of the usual websites. Julian reckoned he knew the signs of someone making that transition, though, going from foot soldier to commissioned officer in the nationalistic war. All of which would have been entirely a problem for the regular police and outside Julian’s remit, had not Billy clashed with an individual on a very different government watch list.