The Walking Dead

His father had been a tenant, and their farmhouse had been reclaimed by the landlord. His mother had moved into a bungalow near the town of Frome. Mother and son lived off a small annuity and from her wages as a counter-staff librarian. He had applied to join the Metropolitan Police the day after he had finished school, a modest achiever but dogged in carrying the academic workload. London was about as far as it was possible to get from the fields, hedgerows and wildlife around him where the heart-attack had taken his father.

'With respect, sir, you were not there. You are ignorant of what happened and why.' He spoke as if to a child who had strayed far from his remit. 'I suggest that the matter is best left alone, and that you go home.'

'At this precise moment you are outside the culture of the team. The team is united against you by a count of eleven to one, and the one is you. Don't interrupt me and don't come up with another stonewall of what I'm saying. If you want it in your face I'll put it there. You're looking at the edge of a precipice. I have negotiated—'

In shock that was genuine and not play-acted, he rasped, 'You've what, sir?'

'I have negotiated — hear me out — what seems to me to be the best solution to a difficulty that has now become unacceptable. I feel that I have been rewarded with a generous response from the rest, the majority, of the team, and they have given me categoric assurances on how the curtain can be brought down on this piece of silliness. It is silliness, Banksy, and I will not tolerate anything as daft as this affecting the work of the team, now or ever. I have their agreement.'

That experience, death brought close to a child, had left him with a legacy of remoteness. He had nurtured, as a uniformed constable in west London and then as a detective constable in the south-west of the capital, the ability not to share his inner thoughts. The investigation of burglaries and domestic violence was not adequate to hold his attention: he had applied for and been transferred into S019, the firearms unit. His heritage from his father was the ability to handle a gun: from the age of six he had walked the fields with a single-barrel .410 shotgun and his spaniel. He had thought to find in the unit something challenging, exciting, dramatic and worthwhile, and still sought the Grail.

'I'm pleased to hear that, sir.' He had narrowed his eyes, and respect for rank was lost in the night. There was a hitch of insolence in his voice.

'It's not going to take much. In private, to the members of Delta only, you will put this matter behind you with a straightforward general apology. Then, to the colleague you struck in an unlikely moment of temper, you will make a specific apology — and that's the end of it. You should do that in the morning and turn a new leaf. Not bad, eh? An end to it.'

His studied gesture of contradiction was a slow shake of the head. 'If I have nothing to apologize for then I cannot, with any sincerity, apologize.'

'That's not what I'm looking to hear, Banksy.' The palms were clapped together, better to make the point.

'It's me that's owed the apology.'

It was his habit, guarding the privacy of his thoughts, to remain on the fringe of any group, and it could not be hidden from those he worked with that he did not share their enthusiasm for the fellowship of belonging. If he socialized he seldom drank. If there were off-duty recreations — sea-angling, a trip in a cabin on the London Eye, a theatre visit with tickets courtesy of the show's management — he would decline. If he had no conversation to contribute, he did not speak…But David Banks was as good at his job as any in the team. That could not be gainsaid.

'Right, right…I won't have it said that I didn't try. I've busted my bollocks on this one. I told you that you were looking at the edge of a precipice, and I'm saying that the step back for you is an apology — actually two, one general and one specific.' The desk's papers were abruptly shuffled together, then dumped in a drawer: meeting concluded, evening wasted. Bitter…'So, for the record, are you going over that cliff face? Are you refusing to apologize?'

'When it's not my call just to keep the waters calm — I do not apologize.'

The chair was pushed back. A snarl tinged the voice. 'Your head, Banksy, not mine. You that's going into free-fall, not me. I've tried very hard to be reasonable and adult. It was just some damn notebook, wasn't it? A bit of larking around, what's the damage in that? But you're on your high horse because somebody picked up your notebook in fun, harmless fun. What's so special?'