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she scurried up the street. Full plastic bag weighing down one arm.
    Almost as if a scent was in the air, the woman sensed something was wrong. Something that needed investigating. It had started innocuously enough: a quick burst of radio traffic, Someone get this woman away from here. Then the panic. A spotter from the Iraqi Army had seen her reaching under her veil; judged this to be a threatening posture, or so the inquiry afterwards had been told. There had been a surge of Arabic yammering on the radio. Back and forth. Louder and louder. Then came the translation. Shifty was now shouting in English at the top of his voice. She’s not a damned female. More desperation and confusion . . . Shifty panicking now, She’s JAM in a veil . . . Unsettled, the British commander made a thoughtful errrrr sound on the radio that seemed to take for ever to end. On my life, she’s a bomber , promised Shifty. Silence on the comms. Now, now, now , he shrieked. You must. You must. Then one very clear order from the officer in charge, as the veiled woman took a step into the shadows at the back of the surveillance post: Go lethal. Combatant.
    So. Ferret had taken his shot. From just over three hundred yards. Compensating for crosswind and bullet drop, he drilled his shot through the civilian’s skull. Just as he had been trained to do. Watched the faintest spray of brain fluid and blood in the tinted lens of his sight, and the whiplash jerk of the head and the tipping forward, followed by the graceless collapse. Readied himself for the next shot.

    It had been a woman. Ferret had known that almost as soon as the round slugged into her, wrenching her head around and towards him. Unmistakably a woman. He had seen the dark eyelashes of a woman. Wide open. Fluttering in alarm and shock.
    Moments later, racing around a corner had scooted a seven-year-old boy. Unkempt. A little toughie. Clothes covered in dust. Trying to catch up, looking for Mum.
    Mum?
    With his scope, like the trained professional he was, Ferret had tracked the boy as he tugged hopefully on the hem of the veil. Mum? He was wearing a football strip made by Umbro, the last one sponsored by Sharp: home colours for the seasons 1998–2000. White collar, black zip-up and Umbro diamonds marked out in white and black against the red of the sleeves. Manchester United. His team.
    And Ferret felt his face flush with shame. That it had come to this.
    The unforgiving heat notched up yet more degrees of suffering. Remorseless. He could feel the spidery touch of cramp across the inside of his thighs. And that light. That blinding light. Even when you closed your eyes it was still there. Drilling down through your skull, sawing into the vertebrae. Like the world’s tightest neck brace.
    Just at that point beyond all pain, there was Shifty again. Screaming in Ferret’s earpiece. Babbling in Arabic, then barking in English, trying to insert himself into the chain of command: Take down the boy , he was bellowing. You pussies, kill the boy.
    And that was when his life started to spin out of control . . . landing up in the here and now.
    Ferret turned back to face Tristie. He put his hand in hers. Gently. Only later did she realise he was perhaps feeling to see whether she was wearing a wedding band. ‘You boxed a man once in the ring.’

    ‘A very small man. More like a boy really.’
    ‘But you beat him.’
    Small laugh. ‘He was an idiot. And I was seriously pissed off. No great skill to beating idiots.’
    Ferret’s voice was insistent. ‘But he was a male.’
    Like that would have made a difference. A flicker of memory stirs within Tristie; the standard army boxing ring: twenty-three foot by twenty-three in a cold, draughty gym in the middle of February. It was one of the hoops everybody had to jump through, to get into the Det. All the instructors were on one side looking up through the ropes at the recruits. The test wasn’t so much to find the best boxer. That was largely about