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.