The Walking Dead

She heard a key turn in a lock and a draught hit the back of her neck. She smelt the breath of the man and heard the wheeze in his throat, then the door was locked again, but she could remember what she had seen: wires, sticks and the slim little detonators; the batteries, the soldering iron she had bought in the late-night hardware shop, the needle and thread and the waistcoat…and all for this young man. He seemed so frail. She fidgeted, as did the others in the crescent. She was not alone. Khalid, Syed and Jamal all shifted their weight and did not know whether to go forward to welcome him or hang back. The smile spread brighter, wider. When he half turned and faced the chair, his coat was thrown open and she saw. clearly the motif of the bird on his chest and thought it tried to make a show of protecting itself — but she knew that if a wing was broken it was helpless and would die. In her mind, she seemed to see the images from the videos, from Chechnya; Afghanistan and Iraq, of explosions and mutilations. Faria shivered. He had no fear. She saw none. He went to the chair, bent, kissed the cheeks offered to him.

She heard, 'I rejoice, my leader, that I have found you.'

'I welcome you, Ibrahim. You have my respect and you are honoured.'

What was she? What were Khalid and Syed, Jamal and Ramzi? They, she, were of lesser importance than grains of sand used to wipe a bottom after defecation, but he — Ibrahim, so slight and so threatened, walking with death — was respected. Love, she thought, shone in him. He went from the chair, from the sheikh, to the end of the crescent's line. As if he performed a ritual, Ibrahim took the hand of Khalid, held it and kissed the driver's cheeks. Khalid was rooted and could not respond. Then Syed, whose eyes blinked with uncertainty. Then Jamal…

He was — condemned. He had come to them, and his love for them was blazoned, and he smiled into their eyes, and their work was to help him successfully to destroy his body. When he was a pace from her, she closed her eyes and vomit rose in her throat. He bobbed his head at her, and edged past. She sensed it. The hand was taken, the fingers linked. The hand, the fingers, had come from the table where the bomb had been constructed. They handled the sticks and the detonators, they might have had on them the stains of the soldered fluids, now dry, that fastened the wires to the terminals. She heard, too, the gentleness of the kiss on the face of the man whose eyes pored over the intricacies of the device. The vomit climbed from her throat to her mouth.

Faria ran.

She went down the corridor, flung open the bathroom door and knelt over the bowl. It came from her stomach and her body shook. Which of them, if asked, would have done it? Would Khalid or Syed, Ramzi or Jamal — would she — have worn the waistcoat that was being made, with its load, in the locked room behind her? She was in the bathroom until her gut had emptied.

She — and Faria swore it as she retched — would not return the love that was given. Not ever.

* * *

He was stood down as were the others, divided from him, of the Delta team.

Time to kill. David Banks was on the far side of the canteen from them. Weekends in the police station had the character and life of a morgue, an empty, soulless place and so quiet. The mass of civilian staff was absent and a wedge of polished, cleaned tables separated him from his team. All would have known that he had been offered a route back to acceptance — a fulsome apology — and that he had thrown it back in the inspector's face. He sat in a distant corner, beyond the fruit machines, the chocolate and soft-drink dispensers, and was in shadow.

He was on overtime rates, double time. They should have been doing the escort of a Principal — a former home secretary, responsible for contentious legislation in the earlier days of the War on Terror — but at the last minute the man had pleaded a bout of influenza and cancelled his speech. The team was booked for the day, the overtime sheets had been issued, and the monies would be paid whether they were inside a draughty hail in Bethnal Green or idling in the canteen. In the rest of the Delta team, they were as decent men as was Banks;