The Walking Dead

Chapter 17

Banks read a newspaper, learned the ground. Big print screamed at him:

SAVAGES! A Man's Face Has to Be Rebuilt After Horrific Attack by Yob Gang'.

And 'Date Rape Warning on Drinks'.

And 'Drunk Yobs in Street Battle'.

Nothing here that was remarkable, that was not ordinary.

And 'Woman Victim of Daylight Robbery Near Bus Stop'.

And 'Teen Yob Terror Hits Shop and Doc's Surgery'.

The same as anywhere. The streetlight above him blazed into the car.

Lucky, really, to have seen him in the mirror before he was past the car. A kid had bicycled up the pavement and had had the big bag on his shoulder with the town's News/Gazette logo on it. He'd lowered his window and asked if there was anything local. He'd been given a News/Gazette from the bottom of the bag, two days after publication. He'd given the kid a pound coin for it, when the price on the masthead was thirty-four pence. He'd sent him off happy.

He could have gone up the road to the pub, where live music played. Instead, he turned pages, moved on from crime, found another issue. The News/Gazette was big on race: 'Fresh Race Hate Probe' and 'Police Chief in Race Plea' and 'Town Muslims on the March for Moderation' and 'Live Together or the Radical Groups Win', and he gutted the articles.

His man had rung the doorbell, given him a last glance and a grin, like the deceit was enjoyed, and a woman — attractive, middle thirties, bobbed brunette hair, strikingly similar in appearance to the Principal's wife — had opened the door. Wright must have given some sort of a curtailed explanation of a car in the street and a man left in it, and she'd gazed from the step at him, shrugged, and the door had closed on them. It was part of his life — a part that had less than seventy-two hours to run — to be left in cars outside doors. So, Luton had a crime problem with a race problem thrown in — so, Luton was pretty damn ordinary. He read about street muggings and the arguments over the appropriate dress for Muslim girls at school, and about a campaign to deface advertising nudity and about drug-addiction clinics that had opened in the town and were swamped. He wondered why the good folk who weren't thieves, activists or addicts bothered to shell out thirty-four pence and face that litany of misery, of hate. He turned the pages in search of something else.

Banks found another 'Overdose Death' and skipped on. Better, so much better, 'Citizenship Classes' were fully subscribed: 'New Citizens Queue Up to Take Oath of Allegiance'. The football team was challenging for promotion, 'The Hatters March On'. Most of what he knew of two dozen towns and a dozen cities had come from sitting in cars reading local newspapers. He'd gone through the misery of the first handful of grim news pages, and it was like the sunlit uplands beckoned him. A 'New Crèche Opens', three bloody cheers. An 'Extra Budget Available for Town Square Clean-up', hip, hip bloody hurray. 'All Welcome at Saturday Town History Walk'—worth throwing a cap into the air. Couldn't abide the small ads — dating agencies, televisions going cheap, rooms to let — and scrambled through them. Last was the two-page spread: 'Bargains, Give-Away Prices, Monster Sale, Come Early, Doors Opening At Nine, Shopping Centre Bonanza'. It did not affect David Banks, but it humoured him as he sat in the car and the dark closed round his windows. He thought, at last, he had found a trifle of cheerfulness, and he pictured crowds gathering on a warm morning, tomorrow, with the forecast optimistic, and a lightening of the dreariness imposed by muggers, zealots and junkies.

The trouble with having the warrant card was that it placed a man outside the loop of normal life, and the Glock, 9mm calibre, in a pancake holster, at his hip was even further outside it. When the letter was in, with the card and the firearms authorization, and most of his possessions from the bedsit were gone to a skip or a charity shop, the rest to his mother's garage, and he was at the airport for the flight to Auckland, Sydney or Toronto, with a rucksack on his back, he would need nothing that a shopping centre, Prices Slashed, could offer him. He seemed to see those valleys and the tumbling streams, the endless expanses of desert, great inland seas, and he chucked the newspaper behind him. There, somewhere, he might find peace.

He reached into his jacket pocket, where it hung loose over the holster. His hand fastened on the notebook.

He lifted it out, felt the worn, roughened leather of its cover in his fingers. Only three pages remained to be read. He turned one.

David Banks, the streetlight spilling inside the car, saw that the writing was looser, a tiny scrawl — as if more laboured — and that the paper was tainted with a dried dark stain.

The newspaper had been an excuse, a diversion, a palliative as temporary as an aspirin. He was drawn to the page, a moth to a damned flame.

He read.

There was one page remaining. He closed the notebook, slid it back into his pocket.

Stunned and quiet, not moving, David Banks was not aware that the outer door of the block had opened. He did not see the wash of light on the step and the pavement.

The window was rapped. He was jolted. His hand, instinct, dropped to the pistol's butt and he had half drawn it.

'Steady, you silly bugger, don't bloody shoot me.'

He loosed his grip.

'You hardly need that damn thing here. Where were you — Never-never Land?'

He shrugged.

'Put it down to my lady. She says it's ridiculous having you sat out here in the bollocks-numbing cold. She says you're to eat with us.'

'My thanks to her and to you, Mr Wright, but I'm fine.'

'She won't have any of that. And I'm to tell you that there's enough cooked for an extra plate.'

'I get an allowance for food, and I buy it.'

'God, Mr Banks, you make a virtue out of awkwardness. She also says that I'm not permitted back in her bed if you're stuck outside in a bloody car. Come on, shift yourself.'

'I suppose that tilts the argument. Just remember what I've said. I'm not a friend.'

'Made a good imitation of one this evening. I'm grateful.'

He checked his pockets, then the holster. Thought of the yob gangs of the News/Gazette. Climbed out and went to the boot, lifted out the holdall with the kit in it — magazines, the thunderclap grenades, the ballistic blanket and the first aid…Not making it easy for the yob kids to get a bonus from a stolen joy-ride vehicle. He crossed the pavement, went up the steps and inside, heard soft music and felt the warmth.

Said, side of mouth, 'What does she know?'

Had the whisper back: 'There's been a jury scare. All of us have a Protection Officer, nothing particular about me.'

'Are you always so economical with the truth?'

'Offer it up when there's no alternative, only then. Story of my life, and it's worked so far.'

She'd had careful makeup on her face when he'd first seen her, her hair had been neat and brushed, and her blouse had been pristine.

In the living area, from the kitchenette alcove, she smiled with warmth and held out her hand. 'Good to meet you. I'm Hannah.'

The cosmetics at her eyes, the lipstick on her mouth, were smudged, the hair less neat. The white blouse was creased, and fewer buttons were fastened.

'My name's Banks. Detective Constable Banks.'

Wright grinned. 'Or, love, you can call him Mr Banks. In these matters we retain formality and he is not a friend, better believe it.'

'I've done a lasagne, there's plenty. A drink?'

'No, thank you.'

'He's on duty. Mr Banks is working.'

Her laughter trilled. 'I doubt organized crime — desperadoes — reaches this dump. Are you going to take your jacket off?'

He did, and gave it her. She hung it on a hook. She was staring at his waist, at the pancake holster and the butt of the Clock. 'But not that, you don't take that off?'

'No.'

She frowned, and mischief twinkled. 'I suppose you get asked it often — have you ever fired it, gone serious?'

'I get asked it very often. I haven't.'

A place was laid for him. They ate. The lasagne was excellent, and Banks told her so, felt a shyness. There was white wine on the table, Tuscan, and Wright drank but she drank more. Banks sipped a glass of tap water. They talked among themselves, the weather and the politics at her office, some more about the weather, heating problems in the block. He had no place there. Maybe he should have stayed in the cold of the car. Black coffee was brought him.

She leaned forward. Because of the undone buttons, he could see the shape and fall of her breasts. 'Jools said you'd told him your colleagues in a unit thought you were useless, that they'd bumped you.'

Banks wondered whether he'd been discussed before, during or after sex.

Wright flapped a hand. 'A bit below the belt, love. Christ, I was only—'

Banks said, 'Shouldn't have told him. But it's about right.'

'Why did they say it?'

Wright drained the last of his glass. 'You can't ask him that — God…'

'Why?'

When would he speak of it again? Never. When would he meet with this woman again? Never. He struggled to articulate the words that jumbled in his mind. He said quietly, 'I don't think it's anything covered by the Official Secrets Act. The team I was with guarded the elite, the principal figures of the state. They're not important in themselves, but as symbols…It's a sitting-on-your-backside job, not one when you can judge whether you've done well or badly — nothing happens…So, we talk. We talk about the threat on the streets, talk about it every day since Seven-Seven. We talk about suicide-bombers, have done every day since Twenty-two-Seven and the tube killing. We talk about what we would do if confronted with the reality, a bomber, face to face — or a supposed bomber.

'If you're going to shoot a man, take his life — do something you've never done before — you have to believe that your cause is good, that his is evil. We talk about indoctrinated scum-bags and fanatics, and put horns on them, scales and tails. We're in cars and canteens, hotel foyers and restaurant kitchens, and we talk about us being right and them being wrong, us being brave and them being cowards and we think that having doubt is weakness. To be weak is to be useless. If you pause, the half-second, and lose sight of scum-bags and fanatics and cowards, the shot hasn't been fired and the street is full of casualties. To doubt is unacceptable…I doubted. I spoke the heresy, said that it was perfectly possible for a suicide-bomber to be brave and principled. If the world hadn't caved in then, I would have added, "But wrong." The caveat was never said. I lost the respect and trust of my team, and didn't fight hard enough to get it back. There you have it — I'm bumped and I'm going and I regret nothing.'

'Are you running away from making that judgement?'

'You could say that — going where I don't have to make the judgement, ever.' The silence hung round him, and he thought he'd screwed their evening, but she poured him more coffee.

Many thoughts jangled in Dickie Naylor's head as he oversaw the digging of the grave. He needn't have. He had waved a flashlight and chosen a place a dozen steps behind the Nissen hut, but his men had gone to it, had rejected it, had pointed out politely that there would be concrete foundations skirting the building, and they wouldn't be able to go deep. They had moved further away, in an opposite direction, and the chosen place was where the weeks of rain had made the ground soft in the angle between the last surviving runway and the old aircraft stand. They had told him, again politely, that they did not need the flashlight. They were two indistinct shadowy figures. They grunted with the effort of their work, and talked quietly between themselves, as if he were not present.

He could have spewed up, bent, and coughed bile from his belly. A man had died under the excess of inflicted pain. His men, he believed, would go back to their island without a second thought.

Did the ghosts hear the two men, both in the pit — only their shoulders now visible in the half-light thrown down by a quarter-moon — hear them as they watched? The ghosts would have been of the young. There was a stone beside where the old camp gate had been, where the woman had walked her dogs and not known that what was done was in her name, and they'd gone past it fast, but he had seen the faded print of names carved there, and had not thought of them. Perhaps a bomb, a five-thousand-pound grotesque canister, had exploded as it was loaded into the undercarriage of a Lancaster. Perhaps an aircraft, cruelly damaged by the flak artillery on the way back from its target, had not been able to set down its wheels, belly-flopped and caught fire. Perhaps a pilot, navigator or rear-gunner, shattered by the stress of a never-ending tour, had drawn a Webley pistol from the armoury, walked to the trees and put the barrel into his mouth.

He thought the ghosts watched as dirty work was done under the cloak of darkness. Would they have approved? Naylor had been told long ago, by a one-time squadron leader who had transferred in the peace years to the Service, that the crews were always briefed on the military importance of targets, never told of the civilians who would be in the cellars when the bombs fell and the firestorms were lit. Had they cared about the civilians, now called 'collateral damage'? Would they have said, 'I just obey orders,' as he had? Would the ghosts have said that the firestorms were justified in the interest of ultimate victory, as he had?

'You happy with that, Xavier?'

'Very happy, Donald.'

'It's a nice job we've done.'

'The best that was possible.'

They came out of the pit, helping each other clear of it. He thought it meant about as much to them as digging down to a blocked sewer drain, and gulped again to hold back the bile. They left him. Naylor shivered. They tramped away, were lost to him. He thought of the American. When he had last seen him, the man who'd usurped Dickie Naylor was sitting in his chair, impassive like a sphinx, the body at his feet, wrapped in old, tossed-away plastic agricultural sacks. His phone rang.

He saw the lit screen, saw the number that called him, put it back unanswered in his pocket.

They brought the body, labouring under its weight, and tipped it into the pit. An animal would have been buried with greater dignity. They heaved sections of concrete on top, then refilled the pit with earth, relaid the turf and smacked it down with the spade, then carried away the rotting plywood on which the excess earth lay and scattered it among the growing pea plants.

'Done nicely, Donald.'

'Done a treat, Xavier.'

'I think we'll make good time.'

'No problem. Clear roads, and we'll have a decent run.'

The two cars, on side-lights, drove down the runway at speed. He saw the memorial stone where the gate had once been, but he did not slow and swept past it. Naylor had no more business with ghosts and their place. On the main road, he snapped on his headlights and saw in his mirror those of the car behind him.

'You all right, Joe?'

'You bet I'm all right. And in the next several hours it'll get better, believe me.'

On the dashboard was the lit clock. He knew where he should have been and would not be.

As an assistant director, Tristram was host to the party.

It was a wedding without a groom, a play without Denmark's prince.

He thought her magnificent — she was the bride and Ophelia in one. More to the point, Anne Naylor was a trouper of the old school. He eased towards her. If her temper was foul, if she was bottling her anger, she guarded it closely. Canapés were being handed round on plates, and little sandwich triangles. It was a fine dress she wore, obviously new, purchased for the occasion, and if she was mad with fury she hid it successfully. What he would have expected from the daughter of a Cold War legend: the woman had pedigree. He thought they could make do with two glasses of wine each — maybe a splatter of a refill for the toast after his speech, but there would not be much drinking done. As soon as was proper, he would escort Anne Naylor to the Embankment entrance, with the envelope of vouchers in her handbag, see her into the car and wave her off…There was still work to be done that night.

And quite a good turnout, considering the pressure of that work. An older group of Dickie Naylor's contemporaries, and the younger ones who sat in his office…Mary Reakes among them. Within ten minutes of Anne Naylor leaving, the car barely over Lambeth Bridge, the room would have emptied. Would he have walked those last miles, trudged through those last hours, up to the last chime of the damned clock? Would he hell. Damn right, he would not. But it was in his speech: Dickie Naylor was 'a shining example to all of dedication and commitment and duty, a safe pair of hands'. It was not in his speech that the man was, in Tristram's opinion, a bloody fool and a pliant one.

He was at the wife's shoulder. His hand on her elbow, he eased her from the group. He led her to a quieter corner. 'Anne, you're putting up such a terrific show.'

'I'll bloody well murder him.'

'And taking it so well.'

'He'll regret the day he was ever bloody born.'

'It's a moment when he, dear Dickie, has more to contribute than any of us.'

'Bullshit. I'll bloody swing for him.'

'There's a heavy flap on, Anne. Dangerous times, you know, and all that. Right now, he's rather a crucial cog in the works — can't say where those wheels are turning. He'll be home in the morning.'

'Likely to find the bloody locks changed.'

'Then you can go out together, everything forgotten, and buy that greenhouse.'

'Then barricade him into it.'

'I knew you'd understand, Anne. Well done.'

He slipped away. Tristram was now in hourly contact with Dickie Naylor and the motley elements he travelled with — the increments from the Inner Hebrides and the Riyadh agent. There were, of course, no written records of past conversations and he thought of Dickie as a kitchen rag hung out on a line at the mercy of the elements. Himself, no damn way would he have offered up so many hostages…Himself, he was near completion of an illustrious career, not one of mediocrity. He saw glasses being refilled, but not liberally, and moved to the side. He looked around, at the table from which the wine came, checked that the envelope was there, searched for a spoon with which to rap a glass and win attention…and saw Mary Reakes advance on him.

She said, as crisp and cold as frozen snow, 'At a personal level, I want you to know I'm not happy with our handling of events. I'm asking, which is my privilege, for a one-on-one with the director general.'

'It's not the time, Mary, and not the place for us to discuss your happiness.'

'Just thought you should know of my intentions before you dig yourself deeper into this cesspit.'

'Always better if we stay on the same song sheet…Because of the nature of things, the DG's in tomorrow morning — I'm sure he'll fit you and your conscience into his schedule. Thank you for taking me into your confidence. Please excuse me, I've a speech to make.'

He lifted a spoon off the table and rapped the glass.

She laid out the clothes he would wear, placed each item on the plastic bag that held the waistcoat.

His eyes were on her, duller and without the brightness of the low candle's flame.

Last on the pile was the white T-shirt with the spitting swan on the front, where he would see its anger and defiance.

She sensed his weakness and knew what she must do.

She bent, cupped a hand on the flame, blew once, sharply, on it.

The flame wavered and was gone. She groped across the floor and crawled over the rumpled roll of the carpet, smelt it and gagged. Her fingers touched him. He flinched from her. It must be done or the weakness would overwhelm him.

It was where Faria had never been before, and she thought neither had he.

Her fingers were on his face, then caught at the back of his neck and she eased a knee over his legs. He did not struggle against her. She kissed him, his mouth against hers, his lips moist against hers. She pushed her tongue on to his teeth, forced his mouth wider. Her tongue licked the inside of him and she tasted the food she had brought back with the bucket. She wriggled tighter against him.

If it were not done, in the morning he might turn, or freeze, or run. It was to strengthen him.

Her hands came from his neck and slid down his body, so slight and frail, and across the bones that made the cage of his ribs, and came to his belt. She unfastened the belt, then the upper button of his trousers and drew down the zip. Her hands climbed again. She pulled the jersey off him and the shirt. She had to lift each arm because he did not help her. It was done so slowly, but the layers came off and then she could touch the expanse of the skin, and she sensed his heart pounding. She used her nails to make patterns on his now hairless chest — the same patterns that had been made on her skin by the man, and into the navel, as the man had done. She had said then: It is never the leaders who make the sacrifice. Had said in anger: He is the one with true courage. Her breath came faster, as the man had made it.

She broke the patterns. Faria took his hands and guided them under her upper clothing to her breasts. She bared herself and led his hands to the fastening clips on her back. He did not know how to do it. There were girls, white girls, on the streets near to the Dallow Road, not aged fifteen, who knew how to undress for a few seconds of writhing, and boys from near to the Dallow Road, not yet at their fifteenth birthday, who could have stripped her and unfastened each clip and each stud within moments…and she was twenty-four and the boy, she thought, was past twenty…and neither of them knew how. So they learned.

They learned. Her purpose in learning was that he would walk better in the morning — not stop, not cringe, not reject what was asked of him…They fumbled, the one as inexpert as the other.

Clothing was taken off, dumped beside them. Her weight on her knees, her hips rose so that he could ease down her jeans, then her knickers. She took him in her hands, stroked him, felt the hardness grow, then pulled down his trousers. He was so hesitant, but so gentle. She guided him, placed him at the lips, then thrust down on to him. He gasped. He had his hands up now, on her small, shallow breasts, and they found the nipples and squeezed softly. He was deep in her and moved slowly under her. She felt the confidence, his and hers. She thought he moved slowly so as he might prolong the glory of it, make it last. She squirmed to tighten her muscles on him…It could not last for ever, not beyond the morning. He spoke words — little guttural cries — in a language she did hot understand. She panted louder, abandoned the shyness that had been drilled into her youth, gasped and yelled. He drove up into her, heaved her body UP, and she felt the strength, knew she had given it to him. At the end there was a shout. Faria could not have said if it was his or hers. Then a long sigh, hers and his.

She held him close. She felt his hands locked round her back. His sweat was slick on her body, and hers on his.

It played in Faria's mind. Was it merely a mechanism to give him strength? Was it the same, the equivalent, of making a speech that inspired, as the recruiter had to her? She did not know…She heard his breathing soften and calm. She felt, inside her, that he shrank. In the morning, as she had been told to, she would walk with him and lead him to the place of his death — she would not see it. She would have gone from his side as he took the last several paces, and would head for the Dallow Road, and her home. Long before she reached the side-street off that road, she would have heard the explosion, the silence, then the scream of sirens. She would open the front door, greet her father — and tell him nothing. She would start to prepare lunch for her parents — as if she had not been away for sixteen days. She would tell them nothing and they would ask nothing, and she would go upstairs, sit with her mother and concoct lying anecdotes of days spent on the computer course. She would ask dutifully if there was news of her brothers, in Islamabad, students of religious studies. From the kitchen, she would hear the television baying out the news of an atrocity, and she would have returned to her sleep…She did not know if, ever again, she would be woken. That day, and the next, and the next week and the next month, she would be back at the drudgery of caring for her parents and perhaps, one dawn, when she was in her bed and alone, she would hear the door cave in below her, and her room would be filled with masked, armed policemen, and rifles would be aimed at her, or. perhaps she would be left to sleep.

She lay on him. His breathing was even and regular.

She could not stop the coming of the morning when she would help him to dress. Would she be damned by God, or praised for giving strength to him? She shivered, but felt his warmth.

The boy slept in her arms…and she wondered if the man thought of her and of where his hands had been, and if he would remember her.

He sat on a bench with the stars for company, and the moon's light. A man had come to the bench an hour before, had sat with him for less than two minutes, had gone. The man had come to the bench, past the hour of midnight. Would have come on each of three previous evenings. There had been relief on his face that the rendezvous was successful. He had been asked if it had gone well — he had shrugged, replied that the morning would give the answer. He had thought the man was perplexed that he displayed no enthusiasm…He had given the man the video-cassette, had seen it pocketed, had been promised that it would be moved on at speed. The man had kissed his cheek and left him. Muhammad Ajaq had shown no enthusiasm because he felt none…His work was elsewhere, and those he had been with had slipped from his mind — were worthless.

In front of him was the sea. He heard the rumble of the waves against the pillars of a pier, and beyond the quay was the harbour into which the ferry would sail. Ajaq dreamed because he felt himself free, already beyond reach.

Beside him, Naylor did not speak.

They were on big roads, empty freeways, and Hegner sat easily.

Near to the end — near enough for him to have rung far away Riyadh, to have roused Cindy from her bed, to have heard her voice, first drowsy, then alert, to have asked her to make the reservation for him to return the next evening. And she'd asked him, was it going well? 'Just fine,' he'd said, and had not cared that Naylor heard him. They went south. There was a phrase impregnated in his mind from childhood. It was his grandfather's, used in the smithy where the community's ironwork was repaired, and where the bellows heated a fire for the shoeing of horses. He'd been a kid then, still near to Big Porcupine Creek, and had not yet gone to the high school at Forsyth, and his grandfather had softened the iron of the shoes in the bright charcoal, and had used the phrase for a certain type of horse. A horse that was not for riding but for dragging a cart or a light harrow, that was not pretty and not loved, was a 'useful beast'. A 'useful beast' had a purpose, and was willing. The car took him at speed towards the Twentyman.

It was his good fortune — and when he was back with Cindy he would tell her — to have met up with a 'useful beast'.

It was better fortune than laying the woman in Naylor's office, good but not great…It was his best good fortune to have met up with a 'useful beast' and harnessed him.

The farmer lay on his back and snored, and his wife had turned away from him. The clock in the hallway below, a fine piece handed down by his grandfather, struck the, quarter-hour after midnight.

She allowed him to sleep because the evening's dispute was resolved. The stolen, burned bedding and towels would be replaced. Straight after breakfast he would do what he hated most and what she had coerced him into. They would take the Land Rover into town and go to the shopping centre; be there good and early, and would buy new sets at sale prices. Maybe she would beat him with the rod and make him try on new trousers.

Odd, what had happened, and no answer she could put to it.

The handler came off duty late.

The clock on the wall showed half past midnight. His dog was the only one allowed access to the canteen, and it sat expectantly by his chair and begged titbits.

A sergeant carried a tray to the table, sat, pulled a face. 'Reckon your Midge isn't the celebrity we thought.'

'What you mean?'

'Didn't you hear?'

'I didn't hear nothing.'

'Your joker — he walked.'

'Can't have.'.

'Did. The swabs off the joker's hands went to the forensics laboratory. First they came up positive…'

'Of course they did.. The dog was going bloody mad.'

'Second load of tests was done — came up negative.'

'That's not possible.'

'Heard it from the Branch office. The joker had no traces of explosive on his hands or on his clothes, so he walked. Your dog had it wrong.'

'What you telling me? You telling me my dog's no good? I won't have it. God, there's a year's training gone into Midge. The reaction didn't leave any room for it, not for a doubter. I can't credit it. That dog's alpha sharp. I'm not selling Midge short. If some smart-arse is telling me I don't know my job, that my dog gets explosives wrong, then I'm saying that something pretty damn bloody funny's abroad.'

'Maybe you're right, but I'm not expecting to hear what's funny.'

He lay stretched out on the settee.

He had been given a blanket, but Banks couldn't sleep.

The sounds from behind a thin wall reverberated round him.

He had been lied to but had not made a judgement. Nor did he make a judgement on the cries from beyond the wall or the squeak of the mattress. Served up to him on the same day: an untruth, a confession and a damned act of adultery — what the Delta guys called a bit of 'playing away', what his wife had done to him — but he thought of himself as too flawed to condemn…A man was shot in the chest, a man lay in the filth of a casualty clearing station, a man waited for the triage verdict, a man wrote in tiny halting script of the sniper who had shot him down: I cannot hate him…Perhaps he is a good man…I think of him as being as far from home as I am, a man's notebook diary, with one more page to be read. David Banks did not criticize his Principal, did not dare to.

They climaxed, the second time, noisier than the first.

Would they now, please, bloody well sleep?

He drifted…The weekend had arrived, tugged him towards Monday morning when he would be gone, forgotten and the loss of him unmourned…What stayed with him, tossed him awkward on the settee, was the charity for an enemy: I think of him as being as far from home as I am. Banks thought the charity of Cecil Darke showed true humility and courage, was that of a man who was brave and principled.

He knew he wouldn't sleep, would be exhausted — fit for nothing — when the new day dawned…and that was fine because he didn't have anything to be fit for.