‘This vote to strike has no weight in law, but what it does is bring this government up short, faces them with the idea that they might actually, amid increasing riots and protests, have to declare that officers who mount wildcat strikes have taken illegal action and have them suspended or even arrested.’

‘One less. That’s it.’

‘These people don’t speak for us or our movement. We do not advocate violence. Many of us who were here at the start are desperately trying to discourage the use of the Toff costumes, which are now widely seen as a sign of violence. There is no leadership structure, we’re not a hierarchical organization, no, so … let me finish … no, we have no power to enforce that…’

‘Britons, Londoners, we implore you – the police won’t protect you, the urban rioters seek to burn your honest businesses, the work of centuries – get out onto the streets and stand up for what is yours. What’s the face behind that mask, the killer of police officers and those who’ve worked hard all their lives to make good? I think we all know the answer, but so few people are prepared to say the words out loud. International financiers are looking to see this city burn, and then step in to plunder what’s left at knock-down prices. Don’t let them. Secure your own streets.’

The riots were actually ramping up now, drawing in other police forces like a fire draws in oxygen. Those forces and the protestors were waiting for the day of the strike, when the Met and all the other police forces would retreat and, presumably, strike the spark of the inferno. The owners of small businesses had now taken on a sort of costume of their own, a towel wrapped round their faces, a cudgel of some kind over their shoulders, and were filmed in lines and marches. Drain the colour from the picture and you could be in the thirties, Sefton thought, looking out of the car window at distant smoke. The banks had now shut their branches in almost half the boroughs. People were talking about not being able to pay in their wages, economists about the possibility of a never-ending recession.

It felt as if now Jimmy had ended, the world was ending with him. Sefton had to do something. But what?

*   *   *

When they got to the Portakabin, they saw the mirror they’d brought back from Vincent’s standing there, and as one went to grab it. They heaved it through the door and finally left it standing outside on the grass. Whatever Sefton had said about it seemingly being bereft of power, they all still felt better without it in the room.