The Walking Dead

'Just hear me out. I'm surprised that an officer of your experience is unaware that codes of honour, omertà, silence, are not strictly the preserve of the criminal class. You've been snitched on, Banksy, grassed up. I had a call this afternoon from your former guv'nor, who was anxious to put the knife in and twist it. To say that I'm disappointed in you is my personal understatement of the year. You may think that what we're doing is second-rate, beneath your bloody dignity. You may wish you were poncing about in London in a fat cat's detail. You may hope that you can be shot of us soonest. Well, Banksy, think and wish and hope again. You're staying with me…I understand from your man that, back where you came from, they don't reckon you're up for it, that you're short of the necessary dedication, haven't the bottle for it. So, get it into your head that you're not wanted. It may have escaped you, but ordinary people worry a damn sight more about coming face to face, which is terrifying, with organized-crime barons waving guns — they will use guns — than about the remote possibility of being alongside a kid with a rucksack on his back. Ordinary people, sometimes, have the guts to stand up and be counted. Like my witness. Like Mr Julian Wright in there. Especially like Mr Julian Wright. So, come down from the clouds, get fucking stuck in and walk alongside those people. Forget about your own bloody importance. Got me?'

Winded, as if he'd been punched in the solar plexus, Banks nodded. Humiliated, he went to do the escort bit to the coach.

Chapter 15

Thursday, Day 15

He heard the screams, the shrieks, then the quiet.

They came from inside the Nissen hut, into the car, and Naylor flinched. Silence rang around him.

A dog-walker, a woman with two yellow Labradors, had come to within a half-mile of the hut, and the brick building. He had seen her through the steamed-up windscreen. She had paused by the pole that flew the red flag. Probably she walked there, wrapped in her waterproofs, shod in wellingtons, every day. He had thought the raised flag blocked a regular route, and she would have looked for the parked vehicles that proved live firing was expected. None of the usual Transits that brought police marksmen to the old airfield were there, but the flag had been flying and she had obeyed the disciplines it imposed.

The screams and shrieks were gone. He heard the rumble of his stomach, hunger. Darkness was coming. He grimaced, remembered what Xavier Boniface had told him when, years before — before the first pangs of rheumatism had settled into his hip — they had lain with Donald Clydesdale in a bandit-country hedge in County Armagh and had waited for a farm-boy to come out of a barn, to lift him and interrogate him…remembered: 'Mr Naylor, dogs are always a right nightmare when you're lying up. So bloody inquisitive. Best thing for them is pepper spray up the nose.'

The screams and shrieks had cut at him. Now the silence did.

He reflected: What would the woman have thought? What would have been her response if she had walked past the flag, had approached the building, and he had intercepted her? 'Of course you understand, madam, That those screams, shrieks, are from a prisoner currently undergoing procedures of extreme torture. In the interests of the greater good, to learn where a bomb will explode, we have torn up all that human-rights jargon and are inflicting extreme pain. If you'd like to, madam, you're very welcome to go in there and have a look at the wretch because — you see — it's all in your name…Your name, madam.' Would she have gone white, blanched at the gills, or fainted? Would she have shrugged, as if it was none of her concern? Would she have cared about the torture and pain suffered by a fellow citizen, or would she not? It was done in her name. And he reflected further, with the hunger pinching at his gut: it was easy enough to do torture and pain abroad, but not against an obesely muscled boy from an East Midlands comprehensive, 'home grown'. Before, there had always been a plane to get on to, and the debris left behind. But this was close, new.

He left his car, went to see what was done in the name of a woman who walked a pair of yellow Labradors. He strode through the rain, oblivious to it, and came to the building.

'That you, Dickie?'

'It's me, Joe.'