1

‘No one thinks about death. Any that do are weeded out at selection. It’s a job. One that ends up with bodies lying about. But if you’re Special Forces material you don’t see a corpse, just an absence of threat. Mission accomplished. Someone has to do it. Move on.’

This conversation, the one and only that Major Leo Black had ever had with a psychiatrist, or anyone for that matter, on the subject of his attitude to mortality and killing, had taken place five years earlier. He had agreed to it under sufferance and at the insistence of his diminutive commanding officer, Colonel Freddy Towers, after Black’s announcement that following twenty-two years of active service he was leaving the Regiment.

‘What the hell brought this on?’ Towers had yelled across the desk in his inimitable voice that could rise from measured baritone to screaming soprano the instant he faced contradiction.

‘I couldn’t tell you, Freddy. It just seems like the right time.’

Towers’ jaw had hung slack as he looked at him with an expression that combined incomprehension with a sense of immeasurable betrayal. ‘You need your bloody head examined.’

The psych was a top man, a distinguished professor conducting his private practice from sleek modern rooms in Harley Street. He had apparently published a paper proposing that the psychological make-up, even the genetics and brain chemistry, of Special Forces personnel was different to that of the general population. Despite this, his questioning struck Black as touchingly naive.

‘When you say “bodies”, do you draw a distinction between those of enemy combatants and those, say, of women and children?’

‘A threat’s a threat. Collateral damage is regrettable but inevitable. That’s not to imply an absence of human feeling, but during operations different rules are in play. There is only the objective and the requirement not to be captured or killed. There is no room for emotion any more than there is in the operating theatre.’

‘Have you experienced flashbacks? Episodes of anxiety? Insomnia?’

‘No,’ Black answered truthfully. He had always slept well.

‘Was there a period of depression, low mood or lack of physical energy that preceded your decision to leave?’

Black thought carefully about his answer. There had been a change, but not of the debilitating kind the professor was suggesting. He was no doubt angling for a hint that Black had been carrying an invisible, ever-increasing burden that had finally broken him, yet the truth was quite different. ‘It was more a sense that there was nothing left in it for me, that I needed new purpose.’

‘I understand you want to go back to university. You intend to study for a PhD in military history?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘Because?’

‘The nature and purpose of war have always interested me.’

His inquisitor seemed suspicious. He stroked his immaculately tended beard. ‘Tell me about the feeling of there being “nothing left in it” for you.’

Black sensed the professor circling around to the same false assumption that had informed his entire line of questioning – that even for a man with his record combat somehow ate away at the soul like acid on tooth enamel, until the raw nerve was exposed. How to explain to him that there was no greater peace than that experienced in the heat of battle; that life reduced to the simple binary of kill or be killed was close to what he imagined a religious experience might be; that in the moment of gravest danger every contradiction of the human psyche harmonized into a single clear note? That combat was a beautiful thing, which, nevertheless, could eventually lose its lustre.

‘A number of months ago I was part of a detachment pursuing a target in eastern Pakistan. Unfortunately, our intelligence assets proved unreliable. We were ambushed. I was separated from my team and detained for a number of days by officers of the Pakistan security service, the ISS. I was tortured, beaten, deprived of sleep. They even cut off one of my fingers.’ He held up his left hand. The ring finger had been severed beneath the first knuckle. ‘But my abiding thought throughout was that compared with me, they were amateurs. If I were to detain you, a threat to cut off your finger would probably be sufficient to get you talking. A credible threat to do the same or worse to your wife would certainly be effective. But to make me talk, a professional, you’d have to start butchering far more sensitive parts of my anatomy. And with serious intent.’

‘May I ask how it ended?’

‘I wouldn’t like to spoil your lunch.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind. It may be relevant.’

‘Very well. I feigned a breakdown. My two interrogators released my handcuffs so that I could write a statement. I put their eyes out with a ballpoint pen, then ruptured both their windpipes before snapping their necks. One of them had a sidearm. I relieved him of it and there followed a lively period of confusion during which I managed to extract myself from what turned out to be a moderately well-fortified compound on the outskirts of Quetta.’

‘How many people did you kill, Leo?’

Black thought for a moment. ‘Thirty or so. To the best of my recollection.’

‘And you managed this alone?’

‘I received assistance from colleagues in due course. Thankfully they had been looking for me and weren’t far away.’

The professor nodded. A faint and nervous smile curled the corners of his mouth. ‘Forgive me, but this does all sound a little fantastical.’

‘Could you or I fly an airliner? Or play a violin concerto? Both are incomprehensible feats to the amateur.’ The professor fell silent and shifted in his seat. ‘You seem anxious. Are you worried I might lose my mind, leap up from my chair and kill you?’ Before he received an answer, Leo said, ‘Does the brain surgeon drill into the skull of his fellow commuters?’

‘No, but –’

‘There are no “buts”. If you’ll forgive me, that’s the whole point – it is just a job like any other. It requires aptitude and practice, but it is only a job, not an affliction.’ Black turned his gaze out of the window and felt the urge to be out in the clear autumn afternoon. ‘I’m forty-five years old. I’ve exhausted all the possibilities the army has to offer. Is it unreasonable for me to think there might be more to life than dodging bullets and killing people?’

‘No … indeed.’

‘Thank you.’

And there, their conversation ended.

Later that afternoon Leo Black had emailed his letter of resignation to Freddy Towers and sent another short message to Sergeant Ryan Finn, the man who for fifteen years had been closer to him than a brother. During operations across four continents they had survived more close calls and saved each other’s lives on more occasions than they cared to remember. Finn took three days to reply and did so with his customary abruptness: Best of luck, you bastard. See you around.

Time had passed and they never did arrange to meet. Busy lives and a mutual aversion to sentimental reunions had got in the way. Black had now made it to fifty with few regrets, but of those he had, neglecting his best friend and comrade was the one that troubled him the most. And as his guilt mounted so did the subconscious sense that circumstances would one day force them back together again.

What he couldn’t have guessed was that it was to happen in the worst possible way.