The Walking Dead

Chapter 14

The ceiling light had been on, dull behind its mesh, since they had brought him back from the last session of questioning, but it was the cell door opening that woke Ramzi.

He jolted up on the mattress. For moments he did not know where he was, then the clarity came. A uniformed man stood in the doorway, eyed him with withering distaste, then tossed a bundle of clothing and a pair of trainers on to the end of the bed. He blinked, wiped his eyes. He realized his home had been raided, searched, and the clothing had been brought from there. For a few seconds he thought of his mother and sisters, of the violation of their home by men with cameras and plastic bags, and their sifting through his family's territory. Confusion wafted in him…Why? Why had he been brought clothing and shoes from home? He- looked for an answer from the man, but there was none, only a grim, sour face staring back at him. He pushed up off the mattress and felt the stiffness in his muscles.

Under the man's eye, Ramzi peeled the paper suit off his shoulders. Slowly, he dressed in the new gear given him, and he did not understand. When he was dressed, the man's finger beckoned for him to follow. He was led out of the cell, and the paper suit was left behind.

He did not know of the bitter row in the small hours, between a superintendent of the Anti-Terrorist Unit and an assistant director of the Security Service, that had raged in a corridor of New Scotland Yard's tower building. He did not know that an assistant director had won the hour. Or how.

In the corridor outside his cell's door, a clutch of men formed up round him, and none had a word for him. The echo of metal-tipped toecaps and heels played in his ears, but his arms were not held as they had been on each of the times he had been taken from his cell to the interviews…He had said nothing. He had followed every instruction given him when he had been recruited those many months before. He felt pride in that silence. Truth was, if lost hours could have been regained, if actions could have been undone, he would never have left the cottage — would have stayed in his bed and not disguised it. But Ramzi could not retrace those steps and all he could offer to the family — Syed, Khalid, Jamal and Faria, the Leader and the bomb-maker — was his silence, was the places at which he had focused on the floor, walls and ceiling. He had a small stirring, but growing, pride in his silence. And he walked, in the corridor, then through barred gates and up the steps, the better for his pride. Another door, steel-sheeted, was opened when numbers were punched by the head of his escort into a sunken panel. He was led left, and there was more uncertain chaos in his mind…They had used two interview rooms to question him — and to listen to his silence — but they were off, through a set of swing doors, to his right. He was brought to a counter on which were laid two plastic bags, and he hesitated.

He did not know that the two teams of detectives who had posed those questions were now stood down, asleep in their beds. He did not know that the assistant director had produced a single sheet of paper, headed with the printed address of a Home Office-sponsored forensics laboratory. He did not know that the superintendent had sworn out loud as he had read, 'I confirm that an initial examination of the swabs taken from the hands of the suspect RI 01 I 18.04.07 was flawed. Further and more detailed tests have shown conclusively that no, repeat no, traces of banned explosive materials were present on the samples given to us. No indications exist that the suspect handled or was in direct proximity to such materials. My department apologizes for the earlier false analysis provided to you, and trusts you have not suffered inconvenience. Faithfully…' There had been a scribbled set of initials over the typed name of a professor of Forensic Studies. He did not know anything.

Around him he felt a wall of hostility. Nothing was said, but it radiated. The plastic packets were pushed towards him and he reclaimed his watch from one, his wallet from the other. He stood to his full height, heaved back his shoulders and believed he had destroyed their best efforts — and the disgust and shame that had swamped his mind when on the bench bed were gone. A form was handed to him — which listed his watch and his wallet — with a biro, and he made an unrecognizable scrawl to acknowledge receipt.

He did not know that a whole chain of uniformed policemen, those close to him in the prisoner-reception area and those who wore suits to question him and were in their beds, had been kept in absolute ignorance of what was planned for him.

The pride veered towards conceit. His silence had beaten them. He said, 'It is always the same. You persecute us. To be Asian, a Muslim, is sufficient for us to be persecuted. Innocent people, as I am, are abused, imprisoned without cause…I am free now?'

He had thought he faced fifteen years or longer. There was so much that Ramzi did not understand. In a moment of idiocy he had handled the sticks that were in the waistcoat pouches, and the dog had found the traces that the rain had not washed off. Then he blanched, and his shoulders fell. Why was he released, freed?

But a voice, behind him, wiped the confusion. Quietly snarled, 'That's right, chummy, free to piss off out of here.'

He spun, did not know which of them had said it.

He looked down at his watch. 'What am I supposed to do at this time in the morning, five o'clock?'

Another voice, again behind him: 'Don't bloody complain, you don't have to walk. There's a car waiting for you — will take you where you want to go. Goodbye, friend, and goodnight.'

He smelt the staleness of their breath, and the whiff of whatever fast-food they had swallowed in the night hours. They made a little aisle for him, and he walked through it to the door gaping ahead. He did not look back.

When the cold was on his face and the rain cascaded in front of him, a hand snaked past his body and pointed down the street to his left. He saw the rear lights of a car parked against the pavement.

He imagined the faces beading at his back.

He went fast down the steps, past a drenched policeman who stood guard with a weapon slung against his chest, hit the pavement at speed. He ducked his head to keep the rain from his eyes, the car's tail-lights ahead. He ran, did not slow to see the car's make or its registration. As he charged towards it, the rear door on the pavement side was opened — but the rain sluiced on the rear window and he could not see inside it. He fell into the car, sagged down on to The back seat, and an arm came across him and pulled the door shut. At the same moment the driver raced the engine and they screamed out into the empty, glistening road. He wiped the water from his face and heaved a sigh of relief, and the sigh hung on his lips…Pain flooded him, then darkness.

It was done so expertly and so fast. The pain was when his arms were wrenched behind his back, then pinioned. The darkness was from the hood, with the smell of cold sacking, that covered his head. He lashed out with his feet but caught only the back of the front passenger seat, and there was more pain from a blow across his face, and more darkness as he screwed his eyes shut in response. Then tears came through his closed eyes, and the fight fled him. He subsided.

From the front, a voice asked calmly, 'Everything all right back there, Donald?'

From beside him, a voice replied softly, 'Everything's fine here, Xavier, and I'm confident the gentleman's going to be sensible.'

Then, quite gently, as the car sped into the night, he felt a force he could not struggle against, pushing him down on to the floor, wedging him between the seats; boots lay across his spine and the back of his head.

'Does it ever stop raining in this country? Describe this place to me, Dickie. I feel the emptiness, but paint me a picture.'

They stood under the umbrella that Naylor held. He favoured Hegner with it but could not protect the American's legs. Unnecessary, really, to have left the car hidden in the only one of the wide Nissen huts that had survived. They were on old Tarmacadam, beside a single-storey building's open doorway; its iron window-frames had long lost every pane of glass. In the dawn light, a red flag flew limp on its pole. The approach road, a taxiing run for the aircraft, had become obsolete sixty years back.

Naylor said, 'There's one runway left, the others were dug up by the landowner for urban hardcore. One Nissen remains, probably would have been a workshop for damaged aircraft, and the rest were dismantled after the war and sold off. About all that's left is the Tarmacadam, the Nissen, and a single building that was once the station's armoury, too solidly built for easy demolition. This part of England was thick with bomber stations, and most are in this condition — desolate and forgotten. As far as the horizon there are flat, ploughed fields and it looks to me as though the crop will be peas, for the supermarkets, and there's a red flag flying. It's used a couple of times a year for live firing by the local police, and the flag's hoisted so that the locals know to stay clear…So, I had it run up last night. They're very good, the locals, not at all inquisitive. We use it every two or three months for A Branch, open country, surveillance exercises — and it is, I promise you, damn difficult to get a mile from here and not be seen. So peaceful now. Sixty years ago it would have been a base for a heavy-bomber squadron, twenty-two Lancasters if they were at full strength, some limping home with flak holes, and others belly-flopping down with their casualties. So quiet now…I'd say it's a place of ghosts.'

'I have that picture. You chose well, Dickie,' Hegner said, and Naylor saw a slow, sardonic grin cross the.American's lips and he thought the man had not the slightest sprinkle of charity in his soul. 'It seems to be a real good place for a new ghost — know what I mean?'

Naylor did. At Riverside Villas there were enough, mostly from the recent intakes and young, who derided the Agency's tactic of shipping detainees, known as ghosts, off to the remote military bases of the willing Polish, Romanian or Albanian allies, or to Uzbekistan and North Africa. No information was given on them. They disappeared without a trail of paper. They were exposed to brutality, to the extremities of agony, and an American from the Agency would sit in an outer room and wait to be passed tapes of the interrogations. Naylor felt the damp that had gone into his shoes. He, too, dealt in ghosts and had done so since service in Aden, during time in Northern Ireland and in the worst days of the bloody Balkans affair. Naylor valued them, and had less than two working days to exploit the latest ghost to cross his path…But it was war, wasn't it? It was as much a time of war as when the heavy-laden bombers had trundled on the triangle of runways and lifted off, had flown to targets where civilians cowered in shelters, where firestorms had raged — wasn't It?

'Dickie, you've gone quiet.'

'Just thinking of ghosts.'

'I reckon this ghost's on his way.'

Naylor hadn't heard it. He peered into the mist and low cloud above the runway that had run west to north, saw nothing and heard nothing. A full minute after the American had alerted him, he caught a first glimpse of the grey shadow that was a car, and it was not for a half-minute more that he heard its engine.

'I think I'd like to sit in, Dickie.'

'I'd expected that you'd want to,' Naylor said drily.

'See that the right questions are asked.'

'They know what's required of them. I won't be there.' He followed with what he hoped was irony. 'I wouldn't want to be in the way.'

'My experience, Dickie, is that in these circumstances it's easier to give orders and not get dirty — easier on the conscience.'

He thought a dart speared him. The car had stopped. He recognized the two of them. They reached inside a rear door and dragged out their ghost. Both were heavier in the body and thinner in the face than they had been when he had last seen them. The ghost tried to shamble between them, but then his feet were kicked out from under him and they dragged him as if that would augment the wretch's fear and humiliation, his helplessness. The taller one, his hair greyer than Naylor remembered from the Bosnia-Herzegovina assignment, had the rucksack hooked on one shoulder. The shorter one was balder, his head shinier than when a Serb warlord had been the ghost — and the answer required had been the location of a kidnapped aid-worker, being held by Arab fighters, whose life was in extreme jeopardy. He was seen; the shorter man — Clydesdale — tapped his chest, as if to indicate that the envelope delivered to RAP Northolt was secreted there. He was noticed; the taller man — Boniface — raised his spare fist and gave him a thumbs-up. They were as unconcerned as the pair of jobbing gardeners, father and son, who came to his home every month and always had pleasant small-talk for Anne.

Holding the umbrella, he guided the American towards the door of the building. He reached the entrance, saw a torch beam roving and heard their surprised pleasure.

'Oh, that's good, Donald, there's a new power point. Oh, gets better! There's a tap and all.'

'Excellent, Xavier — water and electricity, couldn't be better.'

The hooded figure cowered against a wall. For a moment Naylor was a voyeur and could not take his eyes from him. On an A Branch night exercise, a generator was run off the power point — the cable laid at the Service's expense — and the water supply had never been cut off after the war; then and now it was used for brewing tea.

Naylor said brusquely, to assert his authority, 'Excellent to have you both on board. Time is of the essence, and we don't have much of it. My colleague will be with you, and he has my full confidence. Myself, I've calls to make.'

He stumbled away, the lie ringing in his ears, back out into the rain. His age caught him, and shame, and he shook, could not control the trembling. He left them with the American and the ghost, and thought himself damned.

She was alone. Groping her way through the house, Faria was guided only by slivers of light that came through the boarded-up windows. Around her was the smell of old, dried filth, but it was old…The yobs who had wrecked the interior had not been inside for months, no vagrants had slept there for weeks. It would do for them.

She checked the dismantled kitchen, the back room, the front room and the hallway, but not the stairs. She heard the scurry of the mice as they fled ahead of her and her face brushed against thick spiders'

webs. She was alone but trusted. After their flight from the cottage and after being told the schedule they now worked to, she had said that she knew of a house out to the west of the town centre, behind Overstone Road, that was owned by the cousin of a friend of her father, that was derelict, that would not be put up for sale until there was improvement in the property market. Faria lived in the ghetto fashioned by the ethnic minority to which she belonged. Inside it, she was isolated. It shaped her. Within it, her feelings of revulsion for the society around her, beyond self-created fencing, spawned spores…Meandering through the grey darkness of the house's ground-floor, she could recall each insult that had been offered her. She believed she had the strength to earn the trust. His fingers had been on her stomach, in the crevice of her navel, and she would do what was required of her — that strength had been given her.

She used her arms, extended, to warn herself of obstructions— the toppled, legless settee, broken chairs, torn-up carpeting — went back into the kitchen, and stepped over the fallen cooker. She went down on her knees and pushed back the bottom plank that had been nailed against the outside of the door and that she had prised away with a half-brick. She lay on her stomach, in the dried filth, wriggled through the gap and emerged into the light. She gasped down the cleanness of the air, then crouched in the rain and replaced the plank.

She crossed the garden area, overgrown with grass and weeds, ignoring the rubbish scattered there, and went through the broken fence on to the waste ground. Faria retraced the way she had come from where she had left them, went to tell them that she had found a safe-house, that the trust in her was well justified.

'The prosecution's case, members of the jury, is a concoction of innuendoes, half-truths and — believe me, I get no pleasure from stating this, but it must be said — slanders against the good names of my clients. I am asking you, most earnestly, in the name of justice to reject that concoction.'

Banks listened from the public gallery, and thought he despised the barrister.

'Much has been made by the prosecution of the supposed identification of my clients by that conveniently produced eye-witness. I urge you to reflect on how much weight you can place on the word of a young woman, scarcely out of her teens, who has lived for months cheek by jowl with police officers, who, of course, are anxious to obtain a conviction. I am not saying she lied…I am saying that she was influenced — I am prepared to believe in her innocence — by those officers. I put it to you that this simple young woman, without education, has sought to please. Can you say, in all honesty, that her evidence was not doctored, was not rehearsed under the supervision of the officers? I doubt it.'

He had not, of course, seen the witness give her evidence, but he had Wally's description of her. The inspector was beside him, his body tilted back and his face impassive. What David Banks thought, as the barrister droned, was that the previous evening — for a mature adult, who'd been given responsibility, had been issued with a killing weapon — he had made a complete and utter idiot of himself. It had gone on too long.

'You find yourself, members of the jury, asked to convict two businessmen whose sole interest in life — other than caring for their sick mother — is trading, buying and selling. I cannot tell you that their dealings with the Revenue are totally transparent. Nor can I say that their returns on VAT demands are wholly satisfactory…You are not, and I emphasize this, judging my clients on matters of taxation. You are hearing a case that involves a quite desperate and reckless attack on a jewellery shop, and the prosecution's efforts to vilify my clients — in respect of it — have failed.'

The barrister's voice had an oiled sincerity. Never could tell with a jury, Wally had said. Unpredictable, they were. Could be swallowing what was served up to them — not one of them, his Principal. His Principal, for what it was worth, had played hero. What happened to him, weeks and months ahead, was not Banks's concern. What was his concern, it had gone on too long. He squirmed in his seat.

'I will say what I can on an area of extreme delicacy — and you will receive further guidance on this from our judge. There are now restrictions on your movements and freedoms, and I regret them. You should, however, understand, that no connection exists — I repeat, no connection — between my clients and such restrictions. You will, and I rely on you, as do my clients, ignore the circumstances under which you are hearing this case.'

He thought of them in London, in the capital under lockdown, the men of Delta, Golf and Kilo, doing what he should have been doing. Sitting in court eighteen, he realized he did not care a damn whether Ozzie and Ollie Curtis went down, whether they had an arm long enough to reach from a gaol cell and hit Julian Wright, his Principal. He had short-changed himself…It had gone on too long, and he would grovel, whatever it took. He imagined the racks behind Daff's counter — emptied, the ammunition issued — and heard the Welsh lilt of the armourer: If you're in shit, get clear of it. If you're in a quagmire, crawl out of it. Banksy, don't let the bastards destroy you. Always believe it, something'll turn up. He seemed to hear the gallows humour around him, and rough camaraderie, and his isolation from his team ate at him…and he craved it. He stood up, bobbed his head at the judge.

He walked out of court eighteen.

He crossed the forecourt and strode towards the centre of a great expanse of grass. Ahead of him were the lake and the geese. The rain was in his face.

He took his mobile from his pocket, and dialled.

He didn't call him the Rear Echelon Mother Fucker, but said, 'I'm hoping, sir, that you've got a moment. It's Banksy, sir.'

The reply was dismissive. 'Only a moment.'

'What I wanted to say, sir, was…well…it's…' His voice died and he stumbled for words.

'If you didn't know it, Banksy, I have better things to do than listen to your breathing.'

'It's just that I've been thinking…what I should be…' Again he was caught out and could not find them.

'Christ, Banksy, you sound like a teenager asking her mother if she can go on the pill. Don't you know things are quite busy back here? I've another phone going, do I pick it up?'

'Thinking what I should be doing and where I should be.'

'Think a bit harder about your orders: what, is looking after jurors — where, is Snaresbrook Crown Court. All right? Is there anything else?'

He heard that second phone answered, and a second caller was asked if he could wait a minute, no longer. Banks let the hesitation go fly. 'I realize now, sir, that my attitude to colleagues was out of order. I am prepared, absolutely, to make a fulsome personal apology to the rest of Delta for my behaviour.'

'Wouldn't that be nice? Quite touching.'

Banks swallowed hard. 'I want back in. I need, sir, to belong again.'

'Am I hearing you right?'

'I want to come off this crap job and rejoin Delta. I will, sir, apologize with no strings. I admit that my behaviour to colleagues was unacceptable. Do I, sir have your support? Please, sir.' The rain mixed with the sweat on his forehead and the damp seemed to shrink the collar round his throat, and his jacket clung tightly to him. 'That's what I'm asking, sir, for a chance to get back to Delta. It's where I should be.'

'You're a bag of laughs today, Banksy.'

'I know that Delta's doing a proper job of work, and I reckon I should be with them. Sir, I've learned a lesson and will not speak again out of turn. I don't see that I can do, say, more…' A hand was over a phone, but he heard the muffled request for the second caller to continue waiting, and the quip: 'It's just a little administrative fuck-up to sort out, but I'm about there — give me thirty seconds.' Banks knew now what he was: an administrative fuck-up…and knew his value. He listened.

'You want to come back in, want everything forgotten…I'm not enjoying this, Banksy. I have every man and woman capable of carrying a firearm out on the streets, and some who are so ropey and stale on their training I wouldn't want to be within a half-mile of them. They're all doing double shifts, sixteen hours a day, while you're joy-riding round the Home Counties in your jury bus. God knows how many of them are popping pills to stay awake. Why? Because this city is under threat, real threat. They are looking for a suicide-bomber — not possible, not probable but actual — and if they see him, and I pray to God they do, they'll slot him. They're the front line in the defence of London. Oh, wait a minute, good old Banksy — superior bastard but we'll forget that — wants to rejoin the team. But it's not as easy as that, Banksy, not any more. You see, the doubt exists as to whether you're just a square peg that won't slot down into the round hole, whether you're up to the standards demanded of the job. That's the feeling, and whining about apologies won't change it. Sorry and all that…My advice, go back to jury nursing and leave the real work to those who've the bottle to handle it. In the pleasantest possible way, Banksy, get fucking lost.'

He switched off. His jacket, heavy and sodden, with the notebook in the pocket, slapped against his hip.

He walked through the smokers on the building's outer steps — they skipped aside to let him pass — and flashed his card at Security. In his wake the corridor floor was sheened with the wet off his shoes and the mud. He went into court eighteen and took his old seat. He looked across the court at the brothers, at the barrister who was on wind-down, at his Principal.

Wally leaned close. 'You all right?'

'Never been better, ' Banks said.

'Sure?'

He heaved a sigh, and murmured, 'I did something I shouldn't have, and from it I learned some truths. Not to worry now, because I've unravelled that problem and it's behind me. I'm fine.'

He was a traitor to two men, one in his mind and the other across the width of the court. He caught the eye, saw the wink directed at him, and stared back at the juror.

'Did you see that?' Ozzie Curtis rasped the question to his brother. 'See what?'

'God, you're so dumb — don't you see nothing?'

'Seen nothing.'

Ozzie Curtis's mouth was against his brother's ear. 'The bastard's doing eye contact, winks and all, with that 'tec in the gallery.'

'Which one?'

'The one that's come back like a drowned rat.'

'How'd you know he's a 'tec, Ozzie?'

'Because he has a shooter on his hip — haven't you seen it?'

'Haven't.'

'Well, start looking at the bastard. See him, he's all smug and comfortable, and the bastard thinks he's safe, with his shadow We're going down, Ollie, and — '

'You reckon it, definite, we're going down?'

'- and, I promise you, we're taking bodies with us,' Ozzie Curtis growled, savage and feral. His face twisted as his tongue rolled on the words. 'Plenty of bodies — Nat bloody Wilson's body, and the Nobbler's, and that bloody bastard's. He's going first, and that's my promise.'

'Yes, Ozzie, if you say so.'

'I say so.'

Ozzie Curtis gazed over the shoulders of Nat bloody Wilson, past the robed back of the bloody barrister, to focus hard on the bloody bastard…but the eyes didn't meet his. He had that gaze, cold and threatening, that would empty a bloody bar in bloody Bermondsey when he used it, but the bastard never looked at him. Looked instead at the drowned rat in the public gallery. He vowed it then — didn't matter how much of what he had was taken by the Assets Recovery crowd — he would use his last penny to take that bastard, above all others, down with him…his last penny. What made his anger more acute, the bastard seemed so calm, and kept eye contact with his shadow.

A wan smile was returned to him. He listened to the barrister and wondered how much longer the peroration could last, scratched hard in his beard and tried to think of Hannah. Tried, but not with success, and tried again.

Jools did not have Vicky, close up and pressuring his hip and knees, to fall back on for thinking of. He'd been late into court, the back-marker as they'd filed into their seats with their escort pressed round them. Vicky had Corenza on one side of her and Fanny on the other — he didn't know whether purposely or by accident. As the last one in, he'd had the choice of sitting between Rob and Peter, or between Baz and Dwayne…Some damn choice. He had ended up with Baz and Dwayne.

He missed the press of Vicky against him. A silent chuckle rumbled in his throat. Babs and his daughter, they were never there. The weekend and Hannah, Jools decided, was about building bricks: like they did in a nursery. Bricks were put together. Bottom of the pile was the protection officer, Mr Banks, the starting point. Hannah and his weekend would be built on the leverage he had on the armed detective, and confidences given. Big enough confidences. With such confidences having been turfed out at him, he couldn't see that a weekend liaison with Hannah would be too difficult to achieve…Jools felt good.

The brothers' barrister was obliterated from his mind — and why his protection officer had been out in the rain for a half-hour, had had a soaking and looked so damn mournful, and useless — and he was between Hannah's thighs and she squeezed on him, and…He was there.

The cottage lay empty abandoned. So clean. The beds were stripped of sheets and blankets, and had been loaded into black bin bags. Every surface was wiped down, had been scrubbed, and the smell of bleach, toxic and sweet, permeated each room. Carpets and rugs had been vacuum-cleaned three times, and the mess of dirt and hairs had been extracted and dumped in the bags with the bedding. Piping-hot water had been run from the kitchen and bathroom taps, and from the shower, to flush down the pipes leading to the cesspit. Gone from Oakdene Cottage were all traces of a 'family' gathering. Not just their fingerprints, but also the body hairs and body fluids that carried traces of the cell's individual deoxyribonucleic acids — the DNA samples that could have identified them. It had been done painstakingly and with rigour. Windows had been left open, not to allow rain to spatter inside the rooms but to let out the trapped air contaminated with explosives molecules. Quiet hung in the cottage, and its new-found cleanness.

Across two fields, an upstairs window opened.

On any morning, when it was not raining, the farmer's wife would have shaken her sheets from it, as her mother had.

The window was opened because the old mullioned glass, set in leaded diamond shapes, distorted decent vision.

The farmer's wife had at her eyes the binoculars most often used for following the flight of birds over their land.

She called down, stentorian, 'Just my imagination, I'm sure, but it's not right at Oakdene. The car's gone, the lights are off, but the windows are all open. Am I being silly?'

'Probably gone out for the day,' was the answering bellow. 'You fuss too much, love.'

'Maybe — but there are too many of them for one car.' She frowned, then lifted the binoculars again. 'There's a fire burning by the Wilsons' barn — you know, the one past our Twenty-Five-Acre.'

'Can't be, they're away. Aren't they on a cruise? Where is it, Madeira, Tenerife?'

'Come and see for yourself.'

She heard his grumble, then the tramp of his feet up the stairs. He stood beside her, took the binoculars from her.

'Haven't they hay in the barn?'

'I'll take a look at it,' he said. 'And I'll take a look at Oakdene as well — when I've had my lunch.'

The screams were past, long gone.

The prisoner whimpered without sound.

'I don't like it when they're so quiet.'

'Means we're not getting through to them.'

They'd made a hole for a hook in the concrete of the ceiling. The hook was big, heavy and had been given to them by McDonald in their second year at Ardchiavaig, because he was no longer permitted by regulations to slaughter his own stock and then to hang carcasses. It was Xavier Boniface who'd recognized that the hook might — one day — be of use, and it had done service for them in County Armagh and in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Donald Clydesdale had packed it in the Bergen with the galvanized bucket, the truncheons, the wires and all the other kit they carried when they went to work. Their prisoner was bound at the wrists, the binding looped over the hook, and suspended high enough for his toes just to touch the floor, but not his heels or soles. They'd started — as they always did — by allowing the prisoner to view the kit, and they'd explained graphically how they used it. Then Boniface had asked the first question on their sheet of paper. Their gentleman's head had tossed back, the loose hood had ridden up, his mouth had been exposed and he'd spat into Clydesdale's face. Not a good start, Boniface had said. Not being sensible, Clydesdale had said. Had hit him with the truncheons — in the small of the back, in the kidneys, and had let him scream. Had had his trainers off, and belted him on the soft soles of his feet. It was good when he screamed because their experience was that a screaming man was close to breaking. Then he'd gone all quiet, which was not so good. They'd done the beating. He'd coughed up blood — they'd seen it in the sputum dribbling down under the hood's hem. Then they had returned to that first question, and had not yet been answered.

'What about a brew-up first, before the bucket?'

'Good shout, Donald, my mouth's proper dry…Mr Hegner, would you like a mug of tea?'

They'd brought everything in the Bergen: the collapsible chair on which the American sat, a tiny camping stove that ran off a small gas canister; four plastic mugs and plates and, of course, the canvas bucket that was used most days for the grain they scattered for their fowls.

Hegner nodded; would appreciate a mug of tea. The American had a miniature tape-recorder on his knee, what a company executive might use for dictation, and his thumb had hovered on the depress switch when the prisoner had screamed, ready to hear him. But his thumb was off the switch now, as if he sensed they were still far away from breaking their man. They were both hot from the efforts put into the beating, maybe showing their age, sweating more than they ever had in the stinking, fly-blown heat at the gaol in Aden. The camping stove was lit, water was poured from a plastic bottle into an old and dented mess-tin that was then laid on the ring.

Clydesdale crouched beside the stove to watch the water rise and begin to bubble, then made ready the tea-bags, the mugs and the little carton of milk. Boniface stood behind the man and hit him some more in the kidneys but did not get a scream as a reward.

Clydesdale said, 'Won't be long, Mr Hegner.'

'Would that be answers to questions, my friend, or that cup of tea?' Boniface said, 'You're very droll, Mr Hegner…A sense of humour always helps with this work.'

They didn't take a mug outside to Mr Naylor, thought he'd probably have his own Thermos in the car.

'You got a moment, Banksy?'

'I was just about to bring them through from their room and on to the coach. Can it keep?'

'Don't think so, just a moment will be enough.'

Banks turned, faced the inspector. There had been nothing in the voice behind him that offered warning. He was led away from the jury-room door out into the corridor and was manoeuvred so that his back was to the wall. The inspector closed on him and the smile was gone.

'Just hear me out. I'm surprised that an officer of your experience is unaware that codes of honour, omertà, silence, are not strictly the preserve of the criminal class. You've been snitched on, Banksy, grassed up. I had a call this afternoon from your former guv'nor, who was anxious to put the knife in and twist it. To say that I'm disappointed in you is my personal understatement of the year. You may think that what we're doing is second-rate, beneath your bloody dignity. You may wish you were poncing about in London in a fat cat's detail. You may hope that you can be shot of us soonest. Well, Banksy, think and wish and hope again. You're staying with me…I understand from your man that, back where you came from, they don't reckon you're up for it, that you're short of the necessary dedication, haven't the bottle for it. So, get it into your head that you're not wanted. It may have escaped you, but ordinary people worry a damn sight more about coming face to face, which is terrifying, with organized-crime barons waving guns — they will use guns — than about the remote possibility of being alongside a kid with a rucksack on his back. Ordinary people, sometimes, have the guts to stand up and be counted. Like my witness. Like Mr Julian Wright in there. Especially like Mr Julian Wright. So, come down from the clouds, get fucking stuck in and walk alongside those people. Forget about your own bloody importance. Got me?'

Winded, as if he'd been punched in the solar plexus, Banks nodded. Humiliated, he went to do the escort bit to the coach.