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feels a desultory randomness about it all, a sense of fragmentation that bodes badly for those charged with putting it all together, for those whose job is supposed to be to shape it into meaning.
    One of the policemen stumbles and a file is spilt to the ground. There is a communal gasp as if they are watching an urn spill its ashes and, as the first pages flutter into the air, rushing hands grasp for the escaping paper. One evades the frantic clutches and mischievously scampers momentarily above head height before wallowing slowly to earth and grateful capture. ‘Gentlemen, careful please!’ Matteo’s authoritative voice rings out as he steps forward with his arms outstretched, shepherding the deliveries to the door. Stanfield silently congratulates him – it’s always good to see someone exercise authority and he believes that it’s what marks the led from the leader. There are always those who despite their abilities don’t have what it takes when the testing moment comes, who, in the mysterious vocabulary of the young, don’t have ‘bottle’. He commends himself for the leadership he has already shown in demanding, upon the entirely genuine threat of resignation, that all files and case notes be removed from their diverse locations and centrally stored under the Commission’s independent protection. After a third file mysteriously, and no doubt conveniently for those charged with its protection, went missing, it was obvious that immediate action had to be taken. Faced with the full welter of reluctance and obstruction from the local apparatchiks, he led the entire team of commissioners to the Prime Minister’s door and, with the prospect of an international embarrassment, the demand was finally granted.
    So now on a grey Belfast morning they are gathered in, brought to this place in guarded convoy from secret prearranged rendezvous.
All of them, dating from over three decades, even including those whose families have declined to take part in the process.
Over a quarter fall into this category, some because they have already buried the past and choose not to relive it, some because
they prefer not to have made public aspects of their particular case, and inevitably others from both sides who denounce it
as a whitewash, a conspiracy. He has even met a few individuals already who have clearly become emotionally dependent on their
grief, who have jerry-built a kind of lop-sided, self-pitying life out of it and are unwilling to risk having even that taken
from them, in exchange for their day in the sun. Good on them, he thinks, because he has no wish to extend his tenure any
further than necessary.
    He looks at the faces of those standing outside the drawing office. The wind has whipped their cheeks so that they look as
if they bear thin tribal incisions cut in their flesh. And after all, what was it really, except some rather pathetic and
primitive tribal war where only the replacement of traditional weapons by Semtex and the rest succeeded in bringing it to
temporary attention on a bigger stage? Now the world doesn’t care any more because there are bigger wars and better terrors
and all that remains is this final tidying up, this drawing a line, this putting to bed – the euphemisms he has had to endure
are potentially endless – but as he takes one final look at the sealed tightness of the sky and then tells Beckett to drive
him to the office, there is only one image that he nurtures and it’s of an old manged, flea-infested dog returning to inspect its own sick.

    â€˜Everything go OK?’ Laura asks him as he removes his coat.
    â€˜Everything went fine apart from one of the files being dropped and almost blowing into the Lough.’ She isn’t sure whether
it’s appropriate to laugh until she sees him smiling. ‘Matteo’s keeping a good watch on things. Another hour or so and everything
should be in place. Any chance of a