The Walking Dead

'I've never fired for real. No one I've worked with has ever fired for real. You have a microsecond to decide what to do, that's the training…but it's only training. If you shoot, your life will be destroyed, and I don't mean if you've taken the wrong option. I met an officer on an exercise, and he'd done it, had fired and slotted a gangster, and that gangster had a firearm in his hand and had already used it. Double tap and the gangster's down, dead, but it took two years for the process of investigation formally to clear the officer so he could go armed again. Two bloody years of his life and he was entirely justified in what he'd done. And if he hadn't been justified he would have faced a charge of murder. There's a post-shooting incident procedure, the inquest into what's happened, and the officer will get no sympathy, no support, from his seniors, and every moment of the confrontation leading up to the weapon discharge will be picked over, vultures at carrion, by Complaints and Discipline. Does that answer you?'

'Tells me what to expect.' Wright chuckled. 'Tells me to stay in bed tomorrow morning.'

'You'll be all right.' He pulled the wry look. 'It never happens. We pretend it's going to, and simulate it, but it doesn't.'

'Could you? It's not to disable, is it, it's to kill? Mr Banks, could you shoot?'

'When it happens I'll answer you — hasn't this gone far enough?'

'Am I keeping you? Come on. It can't just be training, it has to be in the mind. Wouldn't be in mine. Look into a man's face, over the sights, might be a pleasant face, or a scared face, even if he's a threat, then do judge and executioner. Not me. Don't have the certainty or the guts.'

'You're being trumpeted as the hero, Mr Wright.'

'Probably you didn't do Shakespeare's Othello at school. A very bizarre line, "I am not what I am," whatever it means. My question was, could you earn your corn, could you shoot to kill?'

'I don't know.'

'That's not a very good answer.'

'Try this one. There are some who say I couldn't,' Banks blurted. 'It's what was said. A team said it.'

No more mischief, and the sparkle was gone. A frown cut Wright's forehead. 'Is that the truth? Your own people said it? Said you couldn't shoot to kill? But that's your bloody job…means they think you're useless.'

'Why I'm here, why I drew this fucking straw, the short one.'

He stood up. Should have done so a quarter-hour before, and could have.

Banks said, 'My apologies if I've destroyed your confidence in me, Mr Wright. It's about someone I never met, never knew…about somewhere I've never been…It is why lam categorized as useless, and about why I could be spared from a state of alert in London — reckoned not able to do it — and be here with you. Goodnight.'

The notebook flapped in his pocket. He walked briskly — having made an idiot of epic proportions of himself — across the room. He passed a rubbish bin as he threw open the door. Should have, could have, dumped the notebook.