The Walking Dead

They unloaded their pistols, handed over the live magazines, pulled on waterproof trousers and oiled jackets, tugged their caps low on their foreheads and walked in the rain to what was called, at the range, Hogan's Alley. It was the time for simunition, plastic bullets fired from pistols with their tips holding fractional quantities of red and black paint. The bullets would spatter a marking of the hit point, but would not break a man's skin. New magazines and pairs of eye-protectors were handed out. The way the team formed up in a queue to go down the Alley, Banks was left at the end and would shoot last. In front of him he could see a tiny nick — sandwiched between a coat's collar and the side of a cap — on an earlobe…Too bloody obstinate to apologize, not that there was anything to apologize for. Shooting in the Alley did not count in the areas of 'pass' and 'fail', but doing badly would be noted by the instructors and go on his report.

The Alley was designed to beat the 'complacency syndrome'. It was an open-air corridor flanked by imitation house fronts built of plywood and paint-daubed, with doors and open windows. It was designed as nearly as possible to replicate the 'real thing'. Between the house fronts were beaten-up cars, most without tyres. The Alley was where a marksman, an Authorized Firearms Officer, tested his reactions; no one could order him when to fire — it was his decision and his responsibility if he fouled up and a mistake, in the 'big and nasty world out there', brought a charge of murder down on his shoulders. A senior instructor stood back and had a console in front of him under a clear plastic sheet that kept the rain off the switches; cables led from it across the grass and the mud to either side of the Alley. The way to avoid a mistake was not to fire, never to fire, unless his own life was threatened and not his Principal's, but the Alley showed up that lack of determination.

He waited his turn. Where he stood, at the tail of the queue, he could not see the shapes, human figures of cardboard, that would appear in windows, doorways and from behind the cars. Judges were walked up the Alley, and magistrates, and those sour-faced bastards from the Independent Police Complaints Commission who investigated every fatal shooting by a police officer. A few learned the difficulties of making the nano-second decision on whether to shoot or not, but most didn't…and that was why David Banks was there. His self-regard demanded it. It was what he did well, his purpose in life — until that morning when he'd shot like an idiot. Daft, but the ongoing shit with Mandy…their loathing of each other after the divorce was finalized, the word being passed to him that she was shagging a uniform sergeant from West End Central, the acrimony over the division of wedding presents and their old household's contents, his firm-held belief that the estate agent had colluded with her to mark down his split on the sale of the Wandsworth terraced house and her screaming denial. The shit with Mandy had never, in eight separate shooting assessments, caused him to fail.

Reading the diary had. Last night, lying on his unmade bed, with the plastic trays of the microwaved meal for one — vegetable curry, the only one left in the freezer, and pilau rice — on the carpet beside his pillow, he had been into combat on the fields of the Caso di Campo. He had heard machine-gun fire, artillery fire, tank fire and mortar fire, and he had learned that one-third — Cecil Darke's estimate — of the XIth International Brigade were dead or wounded when the dusk had mercifully covered the open ground. His great-uncle had come through the day, as had the friends who were his brothers. On the bed, Banks had lived it — the atrocity of the wounds, the agony of the deaths, the naked fear and the collapsed relief of those who were not hurt or dead on that foreign field. Bloody hell! What was a nicked earlobe when set against those casualties, dead and injured? The only soldiers he had met, men who were combat-trained, were those from Hereford — Special Forces guys — quiet as the grave, focused, trained and easy on their feet. But he did not know the man, without military experience, who had led him by the hand, through a notebook's pages, to the Caso di Campo and hell.

His turn, and the instructor waved him forward.

The Alley opened ahead of him.

No brothers beside him, no brigade around him, he started his walk and his hand was close to the pancake holster under his opened coat, and the rain slid down from the peak of his cap. OK, OK, a target was expected: he had the Glock out of the holster, and the sweat or the rain made his hand wet and his grip loose. His heart pounded. Anyone who'd said, 'Only an exercise, my old mucker, doesn't matter', was talking shit. He was a third of the way in and the silence surged. They would all be watching, their eyes needling into his back…Then–