"Well, we have to live with it until we start to make a profit again." The editor picked up the list of news stories Cole had put on his desk. "There's nothing here to start a circulation boom, Arthur."

"Its a quiet morning. With luck we'll have a Cabinet crisis by midday."

"And they're two-a-penny, with this bloody government." The editor continued to read the list. "I like this Stradivarius story."

Cole ran down the list, speaking briefly about each item. When he had finished, the editor said: "And not a splash among 'em. I don't like to lead all day on politics. We're supposed to cover 'every facet of the Londoner's day,' to quote our own advertising. I don't suppose we can make this Strad a million-pound violin?"

"It's a nice idea," Cole said. "But I don't suppose it's worth that much. Still, we'll try it on."

The chief sub said: "If it won't work in Sterling, try the million-dollar violin. Better still, the million-dollar fiddle."

"Good thinking," the editor said. "Let's have a library picture of a similar fiddle, and interviews with three top violinists about how they would feel if they lost their favorite instrument." He paused. "I want to go big on the oil field license, too. People are interested in this North Sea oil-it's supposed to be our economic salvation."

Cole said: "The announcement is due at twelve thirty. We're getting a holding piece meanwhile."

"Careful what you say. Our own parent company is one of the contenders, in case you didn't know. Remember that an oil well isn't instant riches-it means several years of heavy investment first."

"Sure." Cole nodded.

The circulation manager turned to the chief sub. "Let's have street placards on the violin story, and this fire in the East End-"

The door opened noisily, and the circulation manager stopped speaking. They all looked up to see Kevin Hart standing in the doorway, looking flushed and excited. Cole groaned inwardly.

Hart said: "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think this is the big one."

"What is it?" the editor said mildly.

"I just took a phone call from Timothy Fitzpeterson, a Junior Minister in the-"

"I know who he is," the editor said. "What did he say?"

"He claims he's being blackmailed by two people called Laski and Cox. He sounded pretty far gone. He-"

The editor interrupted again. "Do you know his voice?"

The young reporter looked flustered. He had obviously been expecting instant panic, not a cross-examination. "I've never spoken to Fitzpeterson before," he said.

Cole put in: "I had a fairly nasty anonymous tip about him this morning. I checked it out-he denied it."

The editor grimaced. "It stinks," he said. The chief sub nodded agreement. Hart looked crestfallen.

Cole said: "All right, Kevin, we'll discuss it when I come out."

Hart went out and closed the door.

"Excitable fellow," the editor commented.

Cole said: "He's not stupid, but he's got a lot to learn."

"So teach him," the editor said. "Now, what's lined up on the picture desk?"

Ron Biggins was thinking about his daughter. In this, he was at fault: he should have been thinking about the van he was driving, and its cargo of several hundred thousand pounds' worth of paper money-soiled, torn, folded, scribbled-on, and fit only for the Bank of England's destruction plant in Loughton, Essex. But perhaps his distraction was forgivable: for a man's daughter is more important than paper money; and when she is his only daughter, she is a queen; and when she is his only child, well, she just about fills his life.

After all, Ron thought, a man spends his life bringing her up, in the hope that when she comes of age he can hand her over to a steady, reliable type who will look after her the way her father did. Not some drunken, dirty, longhaired, pot-smoking, unemployed fucking layabout"What?" said Max Fitch.

Ron snapped back into the present. "Did I speak?"

"You were muttering," Max told him. "You got something on your mind?"

"I just might have, son," Ron said. I just might have murder on my mind, he thought, but he knew he did not mean it. He accelerated slightly to keep the regulation distance between the van and the motorcyclists. He had nearly taken the young swine by the throat, though, when he had said, "Me and Judy thought we might live together, like, for a while-see how it goes, see?" It had been as casual as if he were proposing to take her to a matinee. The man was twenty-two years of age, five years older than Judy-thank God she was still a minor, obliged to obey her father. The boyfriend-his name was Lou-had sat in the parlor, looking nervous, in a nondescript shirt, grubby jeans held up with an elaborate leather belt like some medieval instrument of torture, and open sandals which showed his filthy dirty feet. When Ron asked what he did for a living, he said he was an unemployed poet, and Ron suspected the lad was taking the mickey.

After the remark about living together, Ron threw him out. The rows had been going on ever since. First, he had explained to Judy that she must not live with Lou because she ought to save herself for her husband; whereupon she laughed in his face and said she had already slept with him at least a dozen times, when she was supposed to be spending the night with a girlfriend in Finchley. He said he supposed she was going to say she was in the pudding club; and she said he should not be so stupid-she had been on the pill since her sixteenth birthday, when her mother had taken her up to the family planning clinic. That was when Ron came near to hitting his wife for the first time in twenty years of marriage.

Ron got a pal in the police force to check out Louis Thurley, aged twenty-two, unemployed, of Barracks Road, Harringey. The Criminal Records Office had turned up two convictions: one for possession of cannabis resin at the Reading pop festival, and one for stealing food from Tesco's in Muswell Hill. That information should have finished it. It did convince Ron's wife, but Judy just said that she knew all about both incidents. Pot shouldn't be an offense, she declared, and as far as the theft was concerned, Ron and his friends had simply sat on the supermarket floor eating pork pies off the shelf until they got arrested. They had done it because they believed food should be free, and because they were hungry and broke. She seemed to think their attitude was totally reasonable.

Unable to make her see sense, Ron had finally forbidden her to go out in the evening. She had taken it calmly. She would do as he said, and in four months' time, when she was eighteen, she would move into Lou's studio apartment with his three mates and the girl they all shared.

Ron was defeated. He had been obsessed by the problem for eight days, and still he could see no way to rescue his daughter from a life of misery-for that was what it meant, without a shadow of doubt. Ron had seen it happen. A young girl marries a wrong 'un. She goes out to work while he sits at home watching the racing on television. He does a bit of villainy from time to time to keep himself in beer and smokes. She has a few babies, he gets nicked and goes inside for a stretch, and suddenly the poor girl is trying to bring up a family on the Assistance with no husband.

He would give his life for Judy-he had given her eighteen years of it-and all she wanted to do was throw away everything Ron stood for and spit in his eye. He would have wept, if he could remember how.

He could not get it out of his mind, so he was still thinking about it at 10:16 A.M. this day. That was why he did not notice the ambush sooner. But his lack of concentration made little difference to what happened in the next few seconds.

He turned under a railway arch into a long, curving road which had the river on its left-hand side and a scrap yard on the right. It was a mild, clear day, and so, as he followed the gentle bend, he had no difficulty in seeing the large car transporter, piled high with battered and crushed vehicles, reversing with difficulty into the scrap yard gate.