‘I am on your side! That’s why I sent you and Edie in there – to watch over each other. That’s what the pair of you do. That’s what the two of you are so good at.’

I shook my head.

‘Edie didn’t need to be there. I could have done it alone. There were women dying in there.’

‘Don’t let your personal feelings get in the way of the job.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Whitestone stared at me.

‘I’m sorry about everything, Max. I’m sorry you think I put Edie in danger. But she’s a tough woman and it’s a dangerous job. This is what she signed up for.’

‘What about Lee Hill? What did that poor bastard sign up for? He was a bent lorry driver, but that’s all he was. He didn’t sign up for the risks we take, did he?’

‘I’m sorry about Lee Hill – he had earned some hard time but he didn’t deserve to die. And – please believe me, Max – I’m sorry about Billy.’

‘Billy was never a field man,’ I said. ‘That’s what was so wrong about sending him to that camp. It was insane. Troy saw right through Billy – and through Lee Hill, too. Troy was shrewd enough to know what side they were on and he was enough of a cop-hating psychopath to kill them.’ I flashed on Troy stamping on the face of the young black cop in the riot outside West End Central. Some of them do not worry about how big our gang is – they just want to bury us. ‘Yes, I’m sorry about Lee Hill, too. But Billy – that just breaks my heart. He was out of his depth and it killed him.’

‘Billy was never a canteen cowboy. How does anyone become a field man, Max? Not by sitting in West End Central. Billy was brave, tough, resourceful. I never dreamed he wouldn’t make it back.’

‘You asked too much of him.’

She nodded, all the defiance suddenly gone, her mouth flinching with some emotion that I couldn’t read.

‘And now I have to live with Billy’s death for the rest of my life,’ she said. ‘And it cuts me up, too – in a way that it will never cut up you or Edie. Because Billy’s death is my fault and I carry that weight to my grave. OK?’

And I felt that she was not asking for my understanding or forgiveness but just the recognition that she was the one who had to make the call, the one who had to make all the hard choices, and she had to do it again tomorrow and then try to sleep with all the damage done.

I nodded, giving her that, not envying her job, and some ice between us began to crack at last.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Here they come now.’