Or … well, that was what they kept saying to other people and to each other. It was more that the presence of him and his colleagues made the fucking Tories even more like the fucking Tories, because they had to keep proving themselves to be so damned hardcore. He kept finding the images coming unbidden into his head: people dragged out of shops and put into vans; Orwellian signs about reporting illegal immigrants; reporters being told that they had no right to know. Wasn’t this exactly what he’d campaigned against, not very long ago?

He wasn’t going to let himself give in to hopelessness. If he could reveal what he’d discovered in the last few weeks, those ‘Toff’ protestors in the masks would be glad he was still in government. Then maybe the Coalition would mean something. Then maybe he would mean something. Because he was actually on the point of demonstrating that there was something much, much worse just under the surface – something he could root out and bring into the light.

Yes, in the last few days he’d made up his mind about this. He was going to act, and he was going to do it soon. He found his hand going to the inside pocket of his jacket, as it reflexively did when he needed to be reassured about what he had there. He stopped it. He knew what he had. Now he had to act on it.

They had turned left and were now heading slowly along a backstreet: residential, nice window boxes. That smell was getting stronger, and now he could hear something in the distance: drums and rhythmic shouting. They passed a crowd outside a pub with people in suits enjoying the sunshine, all looking in one direction – the direction they were headed, towards where the sound and the smell were coming from. They weren’t looking nervous, but interested, laughing, raising their glasses. Here it comes, say the British, we love a comfy disaster, spices things up, doesn’t it? The fuckers. Why was it so hard to get any of them to believe in anything positive?

‘Brian?’

‘We’re heading towards the demo now, but we’re going to turn off down Horseferry in a second.’

‘Okay.’

How would it be if he told Tunstall to stop and open the door, and if he got out and followed the sound of the drums and the smell of the smoke and went and joined in with the protest? Or he could find a box and stand on it and orate to the crowd and say, We’re actually you, we’re the opposition and the government at the same time! Can’t you see that?