The Walking Dead

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.

Chapter 18

Saturday, Day 17

The sight was locked. The shape of the man's upper body, chest and head filled the telescopic lens. The finger was off the guard and on to the trigger bar. The squeeze started, with gentle pressure…The man had no face. At the base of the lens' view was a cardboard box. Perhaps the man paused for a moment to gather breath, perhaps had forgotten that the parapet of sandbags was lower there, that he was exposed. The sniper prepared himself for the recoil at his shoulder, and its bruising power. The man he would shoot had no face.

His mobile rang.

The sniper had been with him through the night. If he had slipped towards sleep, escaped from the marksman, the clock's chimes in the town had shaken him back to the image. On the settee, with the blanket nicked up and scarcely covering him, he had lived with the sniper in the darkness hours.

Reaching down, Banks fumbled for his mobile and found it underneath his trousers and the belt that held the pancake holster. He answered.

'Right, found you. Wally here. Banksy, where the hell are you?' He said the name of the town.

'Banksy, what's going on? I can't sleep, got an itch in my bum. I call the location, just a check and just doing my job — not intending to wake you. The location night-duty bugger tells me all's quiet, then adds you're not there, or the top Tango…What, in God's name, are you doing off camp with no clearance from me? I gave an OK for a few hours, not an overnight. What's going on? Am I asking something unreasonable? I don't think so.'