A sudden thought struck Edward. ‘Is everyone in the pizza parlour in danger? My friend Stevie Mason was there.’
‘I don’t know. I am still taking this in. Maybe we’ll have to get everyone tested. Me as well.’
The musicals show would end an hour early, at four p.m., despite Crispin Desmith threatening to resign over the schedule change. Aspinall told Edward he would be on the air for fifteen minutes at a time – from four till quarter past, from half past till quarter to, etc. During each period of downtime, he would try to get more information on what was going on.
‘Speak to your source, get the latest. Who’s your researcher?’
‘Melody.’
‘I’ll get her in. You have a police source too, right?’
‘Yes. But he’s cheesed off with me.’
‘Why?’
‘The entirety of that broadcast was news to him.’
‘Okay. Then do your show as questions. The whole show as questions. “What do you want the police to do?” “Why would someone spray nuclears around a café?” “If it was an attack, why did the motorbike rider die?” “Was Toppings the target?” All of that. Lots of questions, lots of calls.’ Douglas looked at his phone. ‘I had an alert on, and … hmm.’ He swished at the screen. ‘Well, events are moving.’
Andrea Lopez had posted on Instagram again. Her profile was now just a black rectangle and said MOTHER OF NINA, all in capitals.
Thank you for your prayers and love. Gabriel and myself gone in hospital because radiation. Being tested now. Can’t see darling Nina and hold her body. LOVE YOU NINA DARLING YOU ARE WITH GRANNY GRANDPA NOW. She thought they were sweeties.
‘She thought her granny and grandpa were sweeties,’ Douglas repeated. ‘It breaks your heart.’
‘No,’ said Edward, staring at the words. ‘No, the sweetie reference is something else. She ate some items she thought were sweeties. So not just one of them.’
‘Good God!’ Aspinall exploded. ‘How vicious are these Russians, doing that to a child?’
Edward sat for five minutes and thought about how to move things on. On the TV broadcast that they’d watched at Barbara’s house, Callintree had said only: ‘There is no evidence as yet that anything happened to Nina Lopez as a result of her presence in the pizza parlour.’ He texted Callintree:
How many ampoules did Nina eat?
The reply came straight back.
Two. Kept another two.
So four had been removed from the pizza parlour? It was incredible. Edward began his broadcast. Melody came in. They took calls. He now had a lot of information, most of it not officially released, and the station was being bombarded by enquiries from media in London: BBC Radio 5 Live, Sky News, newspapers like theSunandMirror. Douglas came in with a scribbled note telling Edward to STAY IN THE STUDIO. Melody would act as producer/reporter. Edward got into a rhythm of facts, where he became familiar not just with the substance of what he was saying but with every syllable:
The accident at Sidmouth Pizza Parlour may have been a terrorist attack.
It is not clear if the pizza house was the intended target.
The motorbike rider, who had Russian/Ukrainian connections, was killed at the scene but his bike spilled a radioactive substance.
The police need to speak to every single person who was in the pizza parlour and it is urgent, urgent, urgent that if you or your family members were present when the crash happened that you get in touch with Devon Police immediately on the special hotline number which you’ll hear in a moment.
The radioactive substance was contained in small ampoules. They spilled on the floor. Nina Lopez ate two and died. She kept another two which are being tested. Ampoules left in the restaurant were destroyed by fire.
The Home Secretary will make a statement. Please stay away from the promenade in Sidmouth.
Edward’s moment of exposure lasted ninety minutes. Longer than he might have expected. He spoke almost continually. Occasionally Melody would rush in with an update. They had also got a freelancer, Alfie Burton, who sounded like a child when he spoke on the phone, to get as close as possible to the burnt-out pizza parlour and give updates. He did it very well, even if he tended towards melodrama – ‘You sense even the seagulls are aware, coming in low over the cliffs, squawking with their usual merriment but turning abruptly, silently, as they see the yellow and black of the police tape below them.’
The exclusion zone was now a hundred yards in all directions.
Listeners rang in tears. The vicar at Nina Lopez’s church rang to urge prayer and said he was fasting in support of the Lopez family. ‘The child not even five, it is so wicked, so wicked!’ Then he was crying too. ‘And in pursuit of what, victory in a foreign war?’ People were jumping to all kinds of conclusions about why Russia might have launched the attack. The most obvious was that there had been a different target, but the motorbike rider had slipped on oil and crashed early. ‘I am fasting,’ said the vicar, as if that could stop a war or bring back a child.
Edward knew his moment of exclusivity was ending when Alfie, speaking live on his mobile, was suddenly drowned out by a helicopter in the air above him. Edward looked out of the window and saw a second chopper pass so close to the building that he stepped back. Alfie had stopped speaking in the racket. Edward could not hear himself think. The livery on the helicopter looked military. Now Alfie was shouting. ‘The police, the police in the air above me – two of them. No, more.’
