Sergeant Doyle had his feet up on a stool. The station was quiet and he wasn’t anticipating trouble. Football was on the telly so the hordes would be indoors. He’d nicked a danish from the canteen and had been looking forward to it all day.

He opened The Sun and was about to bite into the danish when the phone rang. He took a fast chomp and picked up. A man’s voice said:

‘Might I suggest you tape this call?’

‘All calls are taped as a matter of form.’

A piece of the pastry had lodged in his bad back tooth and he used a finger to try and move it. The man said:

‘I don’t feel I have your full attention.’

Doyle sighed and said:

I’m fascinated, trust me.’

‘You will be. A bomb is due to go off in… three minutes.

This is not really a warning, more of a wake-up call. Do you know the Paradise Cinema?’

‘Off Waterloo Avenue? Is that where the bomb is?’

A loud bang went off in Doyle’s ear and he instinctively pushed the phone away. When the noise had subsided he asked:

‘Was that it?’

He heard a low chuckle, then:

‘Whoops, the timing was a little off but we’ll be working on that. What you have to work on is getting three hundred grand together to make sure we don’t bomb again. I mean, that’s not a huge amount, is it? So you get started on that and we’ll try not to blow up anything else in the meantime. We’ll give you a bell tomorrow and see how you’re progressing. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the movie playing at the Paradise was a Tom Cruise piece of shit so we kind of did the public a service. You be good now.’

Click.

Doyle kept the phone his ear, clicked the connection and set about alerting the necessary departments. The pastry had already caused his tooth to hum and he said aloud: