“Bullshit,” Henry said.

“Maybe.” She eyed him. “But if you want me to act on what you say, I need you to press your case.”

I’m winning, Henry thought. She’s going as far as she can.

He said, “I’ll talk to your superiors, whoever. But that’s not enough. There’s no reason to think this incident is going to confine itself to Edinburgh. Even Scotland. I need to speak to your central government. The US government also…”

Romano arched an eyebrow. “Because you’re the only person who knows the truth. The man who can save the world.”

He closed his eyes. I wish I had some smart way to say this. And I wish I’d tried to get the word out before the shit hit the fan. “That’s about the size of it.”

“And you have to walk into my office.” She was silent a moment, visibly making her decision. “All right, Dr Meacher, we’ll see what we can do for you.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“I’ll make arrangements to get you to London. I’ll talk to RAF Leuchars. Might take a day or two. Do you want to find somewhere to clean up, to rest?” Romano turned to one of her officers. “You’d better get me the Home Office. And I’d better speak to the silver and bronze level commanders again…” And now Romano was distracted by a junior officer who had some pressing message, and with a last nod to Henry, she walked off.

Henry closed his eyes, rested for a second. But all he could see was Jane’s face.

He was still covered in blood and grime, some of it his own. Maybe he ought to find a paramedic.

Ted and Jack were directed to a Rest Centre in Musselburgh.

Musselburgh was a small coastal town a few miles east of the city centre. Ted had only ever been out here for meetings at the race course, and to take the misty sea air, and to walk along the river gardens. The Honesty Town, was the local motto. On the lampposts there were flags to attract the tourists” eyes, garish splashes of colour, mussels and anchors and lengths of rope.

Now, it seemed, the Honesty Town was going to have to soak up half of eastern Edinburgh. Already there was talk, he overheard, of setting up a tent city on the race course, soldiers labouring to install power lines and dig sewers and lay temporary roads on the turf.

The Rest Centre itself turned out to be set up in the Brunton Theatre, maybe the biggest and most modern building here, a 1970s sprawl of concrete and glass that seemed out of place in this small, quiet, respectable old town.

Ted and Jack were directed into the foyer of the theatre. This was dominated by a huge, unlikely sea horse sculpture, around which people, weary and bewildered, were trying to find a place to rest, somewhere to go. The theatre also, it turned out, doubled as the housing department offices. There were signs directing Ted where to go for Payment of Rents, Rates and Accounts, and there was a big notice board for house swaps. Now, the foyer was getting cluttered with blankets and chemical toilets and fold-up cots.

Ted made a discreet choice. He pulled his jacket tighter to hide his bandaged chest, and he hoped there was no blood on his face or hands. He could pass himself off as a “survivor” — at worst a walking wounded who could look after himself for now — and take charge of Jack. It had to be for the best; Christ alone knew what would happen if they got split up in this mess.

They had to queue up, in a long, tangled line at the door, to register. Jack clung to his hand, as he hadn’t since he was a small child, wide-eyed but silent; Ted felt proud of him.

He was surprised by the way the people around him endured this wait with stolid patience, even good humour — remarkable when he considered what had happened to them, the untimely ejection from their home, the catastrophe that was overwhelming the city barely six miles away.

There were mobile phones scattered along the lines of people. He heard people trying to contact family members, offices and business contacts, trying to rearrange meetings, talk about being delayed for the next few days. People didn’t seem to be grasping what was going on. Was this what the trick cyclists called denial?

After more than an hour he reached the front of the queue.

“I’m looking for my daughter. Jane Dundas. Is she here?”

He was speaking to a dumpy woman, no older than thirty, with a WRVS armband. Women’s Royal Voluntary Service. She was sitting in what usually served as the theatre box office. She had a stack of forms, hand-drawn and evidently hastily photocopied, in front of her on a rickety foldaway desk. “I need to take your details. Is this your son?”

“No, it’s my grandson,” Ted railed, “and today’s already been a very, very bad day, and now you have already kept me and the lad waiting an hour to go through this registration bureaucracy gash. Why can’t you just help me?”

The woman looked weak, her face round and soft, and — Ted noticed — she might have been crying earlier. But now she was all cried out, and at Ted’s tirade, she just looked weary. “Right now the only way I can help you is by having you fill in this form.”

Ted leaned forward, ready to attack once more.

Jack touched his arm. The lad looked up at him, solemn, making him think again.

She’s just a volunteer. Not very smart, not very capable, out of her depth. Just trying to do the job she’s given, in impossible circumstances.

Besides, she’s right. Registering here, letting The System know where he was, was likely the only chance he would have of finding his daughter.

He felt shamed. I should be helping here. Not making more trouble.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he bent forward to fill out the form.

The woman nodded, without real reaction. It looked as if she’d had her fill of apologies, too, today.

When the form was done, the woman passed it on to a runner, a school-age girl, who took it over to a bank of pcs for entry at the back of the office. The woman started pointing out features of the theatre, like an air hostess. “You’re in the Survivor Reception Centre. On the first floor there is a Friends and Relatives Reception Centre, in the theatre bar.”

“The bar.”

“Yes. You might find your daughter there. We have a rest area for the emergency personnel, a transit area for people to be passed on to other centres… We’re very busy.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ted again. For being such an arse.

But the woman had already moved on to the next in line, a heavily overweight man with a small, unhealthy-looking dog under his arm.

Ted moved away. “That went well,” he said dismally.

Jack squeezed his hand. “You’ll get used to it, Granddad.”

“Maybe.”

“What do we do now?” Jack asked.

“We find a toilet,” said Ted firmly.

Even that wasn’t so easy. The theatre’s regular toilets were closed up — no running water, and the drains were blocked. There was a single chemical toilet in a Portaloo on the patio outside the entrance, with another immense but patient queue, which Ted joined; at the door there was a Red Cross official, a burly man.

“How about this,” Ted said wearily. “A toilet with a bouncer. Never in all my puff.”

The elderly man behind him grunted. “I hear they’ve got lads digging latrines on the beaches. Just like the bloody war.” And he stared with stolid, resigned patience at the yellow wall of the Portaloo.

When they reached the front of the queue, Ted found the toilet flushing but it smelled clogged, and the floor was slick with drying, dribbled urine. There was a small sink with a faucet that supplied a small amount of very hot, very high pressure water. He used it to get the worst of the blood and dirt off himself, and off Jack: Ted’s own blood, in fact, sprayed over the clothing of his grandson.

He felt newly shamed, that he hadn’t been able to protect the kid even from this.

On impulse he found a clean T-shirt in their single suitcase and got Jack to put it on. He stuffed his bloodied shirt in a waste disposal slot, despite a pricking of conscience. You don’t know how long these clothes will have to last.