She rang his office and left details with his duty PA, stressing that it was urgent and linked to recent terror attacks. Eight minutes later, her phone rang.

‘Peter Holsworthy here.’

‘Thank you, General. One of my team has been attempting to identify a rifle found at the scene of yesterday’s terrorist attack in Leeds – which we believe is army issue – and has just been fobbed off by one of the junior weekend team at the Ministry of Defence.’

‘I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what this has to…’

‘Please let me finish. I’m sure this wasn’t the intention, but it did feel rather like the army obstructing the police investigating a major terrorism incident, which would be embarrassing if it became public, which neither of us want.’

There was a bristling silence at the other end. ‘Go on.’

‘What I need now is your best man, or woman, available for my team first thing to look into the source of this firearm. Would you be able to sort that out? Please.’

The second she dropped the handset onto the cradle, it chirruped again.

‘Sophie Gabriel?’ It was a man’s voice. ‘It’s Tom Crowther from the Herald. Sorry to bother you, but I wondered if I could have a quick word? Just two minutes.’

She swore in her head. That was stupid – answering without checking who it was. She knew Tom. A languid, floppy man with a public-school haircut and a taste for expensive, ill-fitting suits.

‘Sorry, Tom, you’ll need to speak to the press office.’

‘Actually, it’s something that you might want to deal with yourself, Sophie. We’re working on a story that your team had strong evidence of a second attack by the NRF after Chilton Park, but despite that, failed to put out more police to protect the marches. Any truth in that, and was it Steven Tennant’s decision?’

And for a whirling moment, she was half-tempted to go off the record and tell Crowther to fuck right off. It was a tiny, half-glimpsed moment of recklessness that would never come to pass.

‘Sorry, Tom, press office.’ She put down the phone. Where had they got that from? It was half-true – distorted, of course, but with a grain of reality. Her instinct was to ring Tennant and warn him that the Herald were sniffing around, but she held back, fearful of showing weakness to him. If they ran with the story, she would need to deal with it herself. And not for the first time since Tennant’s refusal to take her warning about Abu Mujahid, she felt terribly alone.

#

Kendal, Cumbria

Abu Mujahid found a space in a car park five hundred metres from the shop. It was an unlikely venue for an Amazon pickup. One half of the store was a grocers and newsagents, the other was devoted to souvenirs. On the wooden shelves, lopsided china panthers stood guard among the crystal skulls, flimsy selfie sticks and boxes of fudge made in Birmingham with postcards of the Lake District stuck crookedly to the front. A stack of papers by the till were plastered with headlines about yesterday’s terror plot in Leeds. Abu Mujahid picked up a copy of the Guardian and asked for his package, handing his fake ID to the cheery woman behind the counter.