Ten minutes passed and still nothing. The frustration inside Gabriel’s guts was turning to a familiar hollowness. Once again, here in this bloody ops room, in front of the dozens of pairs of eyes and ears monitoring the CT room remotely from Gold Command, in front of the whole world, she was overseeing a failure. They had let down the dead and injured, they had let down the thousands of people whose lives had been put at risk and who were still at risk from these two gunmen, wandering out there somewhere. She had known something was coming, she had guessed it would come today and still she had failed.

Her phone rang. She walked into a side conference room and took a call from Tennant. He had called twice so far, leaving short messages each time.

‘Boss, we’ve lost hot pursuit, they are now long gone.’ She could not hide the dejection.

‘Shit.’ There was a pause. ‘And you were right, of course, and we had a warning of sorts – and it was thrown away,’ he said. Gabriel could hear him repeatedly muttering ‘fuck’ under his breath. ‘Listen, keep the team energised, keep it positive. We’ll get them.’

They sounded like empty words to Gabriel. ‘Sure. Boss, I need to get on. We’ve got the photo, so we can build the manhunt. And maybe with some luck, we’ll have forensics from the hotel. But it’s shit. It’s the only word.’ She hung up.

DAY 5

Sunday

Stoke Newington, London

Ray’s car was at the garage, so Gabriel offered to give him a lift to the rugby club.

‘I’ll get the bus, babe, I know you’re crazily busy.’ But Gabriel knew he didn’t mean it. It was a drizzly, shadowy day, a little V-sign from winter, a reminder that while the crocuses may have been out early, spring was still many long weeks away. Even the smattering of snowdrops in their scrappy patch of front garden looked forlorn, heads drooping to the bark mulch, buffeted by an easterly wind.

Ray picked up the stack of Sunday papers that his wife had left on the passenger seat, settled in and leafed through the pages. He read for a minute, then threw the pile on to the rear seat with a grunt of disgust.

‘What?’ said Gabriel.

‘Just the usual hack crap. They’ve dug up the Isobel Harris stuff again.’ He paused, fiddling with the radio, then looked up. ‘And there’s a lovely mugshot of you. You going to be all right?’

‘I saw it. It’ll be fine. Tennant’s got my back.’

She had bought the papers from the corner shop at six that morning, and the coverage was merciless. Police under fire for Pall Mall massacre screamed the Chronicle. Manhunt was the splash in The Eye. There were acres of speculation about the NRF and acres more on the missed opportunities of the police. The Globe was claiming the police knew about a second attack but failed to take action. The story Ray had spotted was in the Herald. It was a small article, no more than two hundred words, under the headline: Questions raised over Met blunders. It appeared to be based on an interview with the Shadow Home Secretary and comments by Ishmail Sherif on Twitter. It named Gabriel as the officer responsible for letting the killers escape, and reminded their readers that she had been in charge during the Isobel Harris business. Gabriel had read it more with sadness than anger. It was a tiny story, and came across as desperate, rather than dangerous to her career. She was feeling so low after yesterday that another wound made little difference.