I glance at Jess, and we share a knowing look. Among our captains of industry, you can count the number who are openly gay on the fingers of one hand. One of the few is Sean Lanchester, who happens to be tall and thin, and is the chief executive of Capital Television.

‘Gotcha,’ I think.

A black Range Rover with tinted windows swings around the corner and pulls up on the kerb. Elliott gets in the back, not bothering to glance behind him.

‘I knew it was true,’ says Jess. ‘I bloody knew it.’

‘He’s a cock,’ I observe, with all the insight lent by what I’ve been drinking and sniffing. ‘And Crowther. And Munis. They’re all cocks.’

On Oxford Street, we flag down a cab with its orange light on. ‘You go first,’ I tell Jess, ‘I’ll get the next one.’ But she’s in charge. She pushes me in, guiding my head under the door frame, and instructs the driver to take me to Highbury.

‘See you, Gil.’

*

Thirty minutes later I am turning the key in the door of my North London flat. It’s the ground floor of a grand late-Victorian house that implies an income I don’t earn. I bought it for a bargain in the housing slump of five years ago, from the keyboard player of a two-hit-wonder synthesiser pop trio of the 1980s. I was lucky. It has high ceilings, white walls, and windows the size of church doors, which in daylight look on to a communal garden at the back, and the expansive green of Highbury Fields at the front.

I perform my little ritual, laying out the two Nokias, the pager, my notebook and pens on a battered white Scandinavian side table that’s next to my bed. Then I pour myself a glass of white wine from the fridge, flop on to the sofa and switch on Sky News. I don’t pay it much attention, but it’s nice to have something to ignore. I’m physically shattered; but my brain refuses to quieten. I’m still angry and that drives my thoughts in circles.

I am resentful of Wilkinson for writing the scoop I should have had. I am furious with my editor, Lorimer, for spiking the story I did have. I am contemptuous of Alex Elliott for being a lying bastard. And don’t get me started on Frankie Crowther.

Most of all I hate Clare for stupidly getting herself killed.

I fumble inside my rucksack. There’s the envelope I stole from Alan Scott, forty-odd pages of a defunct pensions policy that no one cares about.

I flip through it, reading it again by the flickering light of the television. Not that there’s any chance that in my current state I’ll spot anything that Vulcan Jess missed. The page becomes spotted and damp. From out of nowhere, I am weeping.