The Lieutenant Colonel’s wife had been waiting for him when he got home the night before. He hadn’t yet told her; one of the other army wives had done him that particular courtesy. A tense exchange had ensued. She couldn’t do it any more. She wanted to be able to put down roots. Make a home. She wanted to talk. He stood stiffly. Forty years of training, of learning always to be dispassionate, were difficult to shrug off. He had pointed out to her how things could be smoothed over. Asked her to lower her voice. Stop embarrassing him. The walls were paper-thin. Long silences. Scrappy words. He had told her that this was the best opportunity of his career. This was their ticket away from here, all she had to do was hang on. Hang on? Hang on was all she ever did. Hang around. Hang on. Hang on to what? The strictures and structures that had provided a scaffold for their lives were now squeezing her. Constricting the life from her. The straight lines of promotion hemming them in. And then she had quietened, her rounded shoulders and concave chest and ache for a life she had not lived. She had talked herself into silence. Heavy, damp and muted. Swollen-faced and still. He had asked her to give him a few days to sort this mess out and had resolved to take some, any kind of action.

The Lieutenant Colonel’s movements had been severely restricted. Not through regulations but through his own irritation and embarrassment. It was a small barracks and everyone would be speculating. Seeing the temporarily promoted Captain was a particular source of irritation. He stayed in his quarters and read the report over and over again. It was his dealing with the soldier that he was under investigation for. There was very little he could do to excuse the file he had faked, though he could say that it had been necessary for covering up the story about Prisoner B, and he was sure that the General would back him on that. But he was determined to disprove any connection to the soldier’s death. The soldier’s property had been confiscated and nothing of note was found there. No personal letters, and crucially, no indication that he was suffering from a mental illness. He wasn’t particularly liked, it transpired, but no one had a reason to hurt him.