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front of the house. My bomber jacket, the radio and Harry’s daysack were still where I’d left them, but he was no longer lying on the gravel driveway.
    I raised a hand above my eyes, palm outwards, so that I could focus more clearly. One of the big picture windows that looked out over the sundeck had imploded and its shutters hung off their hinges. I reckoned its twin was about to go too.
    A few shards of glass still clung to the frame as the fire raged inside. The dove-grey paint blistered on the clapboard. The canvas smouldered on the steamer chairs, and the decking beneath them was starting to crackle. I couldn’t see any sign of the Gucci hurricane lantern.
    I moved closer, until the heat on my bare skin let me know that enough was enough, and the charred body I could now see lying beneath the smashed pane confirmed what I’d already begun to suspect. Somehow Harry had managed to drag his broken body onto the deck, sparked up the nickel-plated lantern and launched it through the double glazing like a missile.
    I gathered up my bomber and the gear he’d left behind and legged it to the Merc. When the municipal fire brigade turned up, I didn’t want to be here to make them cups of tea.

11

Abergavenny, Monmouthshire
    Sunday, 14 June

15.30 hrs
    Father Martyn lived in a stone-built cottage on the Welsh border, between Hay-on-Wye and Abergavenny. The front of it was covered with flowery shit and his door was always open to the left-footers in the Regiment, plus one or two others who weren’t fully paid-up members of his club.
    Me and God had had a few close calls, but we still weren’t on first-name terms. That didn’t seem to matter to Father Mart. He’d always been part of the Regiment’s furniture, the secret sounding board for people who needed to get stuff off their chest. I’d gone to see him after Snakebite’s death in Baghdad, and I needed to see him again now.
    I’d been back from Sweden for more than a month, and I was still having difficulty shifting Harry’s image from the screen inside my head. It wasn’t as if it was the first time I’d seen a corpse, or what fire could do to a man’s skin. I’d witnessed more charred bodies on ops than I could count. Flashbacks were a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, but I didn’t do PTSD. I probably wasn’t smart enough. I just kept seeing the look on Harry’s face when he said there wouldn’t be any more missions.
    ‘Cut away’ was the advice I’d given him when he’d lost it with Koureh, because cutting away had been my answer to every problem as far back as I could remember. I’d done it after a mate of mine fell off a factory roof when we were playing soldiers on my seventh birthday. Maybe I’d even done it before that, when my stepfather lost it with my mum and she turned up at the breakfast table wearing sun-gigs.
    But cutting away didn’t always work.
    I told Father Mart as much as I needed him to know about Harry’s death over a brew at his kitchen table.
    He had his wise face on beneath the beard. ‘And?’
    ‘And I guess I feel responsible in some way. I’m not sure he would have come if I hadn’t persuaded him …’
    ‘Trevor and Harold were also close, weren’t they?’
    I nodded.
    ‘Does Trevor feel the same?’
    I hesitated for a moment. ‘Not sure. But he must feel something. He’s looking after Harry’s boy.’
    Father Mart sat and listened at times like this, maybe put a hand on your shoulder, looked you straight in the eye, said a few very simple words and somehow made you feel a whole lot better than you had done when you came into the room. Right now he leaned back and steepled his fingers. ‘It sounds to me as though Harold knew you’d beat yourself up. And this was his way of trying to tell you not to.
    ‘He knew the risks. He could have said no, when you asked him to come. But he didn’t, did he? And it was his own decision to sacrifice himself to keep you both safe.’
    He placed his palms flat