As he ran, he tried to collect his thoughts, to work out what had happened. The policeman – he must have been cycling home down the road past the paddock; he must have seen Scannock from there prowling round the house. Mulrooney, then? Where had he been? Scannock slowed down involuntarily as he tried to marshal the suspicions that were jostling confusedly in his mind. Mulrooney – he must have seen the policeman coming; he must have hidden and then run for it. Why didn’t he whistle? – the lousy, rotten, filthy traitor, why didn’t he whistle? He wanted to get away, did he, without drawing attention to himself? Not a thought for his mate, eh?

When Scannock crawled under the barbed-wire fence at the back of the Fifth Battalion’s camp, he was close to doing murder. Betrayal; that to him was the vilest of crimes; betrayal; that and cowardice were things he could neither understand nor forgive.

He entered his hut quietly, without being intercepted. Everyone was asleep. He moved quietly across to his bed, undressed and slipped into his blankets. He lay for a while staring up at the ceiling. He felt shame, now that he was safe, at the useless and stupid way in which the affair had ended; no drink, no fight, no woman – and betrayal. He burned, frustrated, explosive. His thoughts, inchoate in the darkness, were a procession of obscenities. He lay awake for hours, staring at the door with glittering eyes. No one came.

No one came that night, nor was there much trouble the next day. The village policeman and Hodge, the farmer, came to the battalion’s first parade the next morning and walked along the ranks, helpless in front of the six hundred staring faces. They were both anxious to get it over. After all no harm had been done. The colonel said a few words to the battalion afterwards. The battalion had a good record, he said, and he asked them not to spoil it now. They had all got a bit keyed up in the last few days, he said, but this wasn’t the way to work it off. Save it for Jerry, he said. Some of the men laughed.

Private Scannock did not laugh. Nor did he save it for Jerry.

Two nights later the Fifth Battalion had its third casualty. Private Mulrooney was found in a ditch on the Wintersley road with his skull cracked and three ribs fractured. His face had been trampled until it was scarcely recognisable; his mouth was full of smashed teeth.

When he recovered consciousness in hospital he found a policeman waiting by his bedside with notebook and pencil. Private Mulrooney shook his head and closed his eyes again. A little while later he asked the doctor feebly, ‘Will I be goin’ back there?’

‘It’ll be a month or two before you’re fit, soldier,’ the doctor answered. ‘Lie back, now, and take it easy.’