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Adam, thanks. At least I’ve got enough to put something sensible in my report.’
    ‘One more thing you should know Dan. The man the IPCA are sending is notorious in police circles. We call him the Smiling Assassin. Be wary.’
    He cut the call before Dan could ask anything else. Who the hell was the Smiling Assassin? It sounded like something from a film. And Adam’s voice when he said it, those words spat out as if he’d tasted something rank.
    He rang the London newsroom and passed on the information. As Dan had suspected, it wasn’t enough. Nowhere near. They demanded a report, right now, on the phone. The pressure to be first with any breaking news was intense. They’d use a photo of Dan and a map of where the shooting had happened to cover his words.
    ‘With you in two mins,’ came a voice. ‘After this package on NHS reform.’
    Dan scanned around him, tried to work out something sensible to say. When you didn’t have any pictures to show the viewers a TV reporter had to think like his radio colleagues and create the images with words.
    ‘One minute, standby.’
    Dan scribbled a couple of notes on his pad. Even with Adam’s information, he knew very little. Some padding was called for, and a little drama.
    ‘Breaking news now,’ came the presenter’s voice down the phone. She sounded animated. Breaking stories were the very soul of the 24-hour news channels.
    ‘A man’s been shot dead by the police in Cornwall. Our reporter Dan Groves joins us live from the scene, in the town of Saltash.’
    ‘Cue!’ came the director’s voice.
    ‘Around me here is a scene of intense police activity,’ Dan began. ‘The house where the shooting happened is in a quiet residential neighbourhood of the small Cornish riverside town of Saltash. Tonight, its usual tranquillity has very much been banished. There are scores of police officers here, and the scene has been cordoned off while forensics tests are carried out. Armed police were called here at around nine o’clock this evening after reports of an assault in a house, probably involving a weapon. A senior police source tells me the marksmen were denied entry to the house and had to kick in the door. Following that the man was shot dead, but the circumstances of that shooting are not clear. An independent investigation is already getting underway.’
    Dan was thanked and the bulletin was on to the next story, something about a hunt for whales in the Far East. They would have recorded his report as it went out, could replay it for the next few hours. That would keep them off his back for a while. Precious time to get on with the story.
    The press pack was gathering, a couple of newspaper reporters, some photographers, a TV crew and a radio reporter, fiddling with her microphone. Dan tugged Nigel away and they walked over to the onlookers to do a couple of vox pop interviews.
    They gathered wherever there was trouble. Sightseeing ghouls, human vultures unable to resist the sweet lure of death. Their replies were always the same, ‘Oh, it’s terrible … shocking … who’d have thought it … in such a lovely quiet area as this too …’ But they could never quite disguise their enjoyment. Still, their interviews added useful colour to pad out his report.
    ‘What next then?’ asked Nigel. ‘I’ve got as many pictures of the area as you’ll need.’
    ‘We wait,’ said Dan. ‘At some point, someone official will have to come out and give us a statement. When we’ve got that, we’ll have enough to fill a report for tomorrow’s breakfast bulletins. Then we can go home and get some rest, though it’ll be back here early for more of the same.’
    Dan kicked at a stone, thought his way through the story. People and pictures were the golden keys to TV news. Their interviews with the onlookers would do for the human element. Officialdom would comment when it finally deigned so to do, as was its way. They had plenty of shots of police activity, but needed to