The Walking Dead

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Propped up on his bed, Banks's eyes lingered on the page of the notebook, and he reread again the last line. The dawn comes quickly, too fast. There were distant shouts as the garrison camp woke, as there would have been on Mosquito Hill when the officers roused their men. He had been awake for an hour and, against all better judgements, had started on the entry written by faint candlelight so long ago…He never skipped, and he resisted the temptation to find the last page, the last words written by his great-uncle. There was not the scream of the day's first artillery shell fired from a 155mm howitzer by German gunners or the nationalists, or the first howling low-level flight over the ridge of a Messerschmitt fighter, but a high-pitched jingle of tinny music.

He reached on to the bedside table in the barely furnished room of the camp's visitors' quarters, lifted his mobile and clicked 'receive'. Sharply he gave his name, then listened.

'But they're not there. They were moved out…What's the damage?'

He was told, and some more.

'But that's brilliant, Wally, picking up the lowlife…What should I do, and when?'

He shaved fast, dressed, then slipped on his suit jacket so that the pocket hung down over the pancake holster on his belt. He locked his door and went down the bright-lit corridor, heading for his Principal's room. By the staircase, half-way down the corridor where a uniformed constable lounged on a plastic chair, there were windows and he saw that darkness still cloaked the parade-ground. He knocked, said his name, heard an answering grumble, went inside and switched on the ceiling light. Wright was in bed and blinked up at him. Like any other policeman, he was familiar with the work of delivering bad, sad news, and had learned it should be done briskly, without emotion. His Principal might be a hero but he was not a friend.

He said, matter-of-fact, 'Sorry and all that, but I have to tell you your home was attacked an hour ago. Of course your wife and daughter were not there and are quite safe. A window was broken and a petrol bomb was thrown into your living room. The street was staked out, across the road and down it. The guys were in there pretty fast with extinguishers and most of the damage is smoke and scorching, not structural.'

Some would have wept, others would have let free a volley of oaths, obscenities. His Principal merely grimaced.

'Because we had the stake-out and were able to move so sharp, your neighbours won't have been affected other than by the drama. The homes on either side of yours are fine. Yours is now boarded up.'I suppose, when you went to the judge and told him of the approach made to you and turned in the money, that you realized there could be retaliation. People on high are singing your praises.'

The Protection Officer expected a platitude response. Something about 'duty' and something about 'ethics'. The Principal only shrugged…Peculiar.

He bored on: 'Actually, we've had a rather good result, and my boss is well chuffed with it. We have three arrests — a driver, the jerk who threw the petrol bottle, and the one who chucked the brick and broke your window for the petrol to go through. He's Benny Edwards and it's the first time, and not without trying, that he's been nicked in flagrante. He's a specialist in nobbling, but that's as far as I can go on him.'

No reaction, nothing. Banks had anticipated something…Bizarre.

'I'm not permitted to discuss it further because of any possible conclusions you might draw in relation to the case you're sitting on, Mr Wright. What's paramount is that nothing I have said to you prejudices your opinion on the trial. That is why you have not yet been asked for a statement on the approach made to you, why you have not been sat down with a book of photographs so's you can identify the people you met, and the circumstances under which you were given that sum of cash. It's all being kept till after the verdict you and the rest will reach. Does that make sense?'

His Principal could have said bloody something. He saw the roll of his eyes.