After walking away from the situation that day, he had ordered his patrol to continue straight back to base. He didn’t report the fight between the ANP commander and the woman’s husband, because any account of this would have to include his failure to intervene. Why hadn’t he stepped in to protect the husband? The heat? His reluctance to make a bad situation worse? No explanation satisfied his conscience. Chris wasn’t sure what the right course of action would have been, but he was certain that he had not taken it. When Robbo asked him what had held him up, Chris told him only that a woman had been knocked down and he had been unsure whether or not to attempt to help her.

‘Bloody burqas, they’re always getting hit,’ Robbo had said, with the air of one long since inured to this kind of thing. ‘No peripheral vision, see? And there’s fuck all we can do about it, they’re tainted goods once we’ve touched them. You just have to leave them to it. Honest, boss, you did the right thing.’

His one chance so far to display some integrity and he had, unequivocally, failed.

Showal Kalay was busy this afternoon. They had teamed up with another multiple for this patrol; as well as their usual reassurance duties, they were detailed to search several compounds for weapons and drugs following intelligence received from some locals. One of these compounds was here in Showal. The search team were clearing the compound now, while Chris and the Afghans patrolled in the market place. The old vendor he’d spoken to last time was sitting in exactly the same spot as before. Chris watched him from a distance. He was selling poultry: the filthy live birds were crammed into small cages stacked on top of one another, while the merchant himself sat cross-legged on a mat next to this rustling, squawking pile. He was currently re-stocking the small heap of freshly butchered chicken in a Tupperware container on his right. On his left, a chicken’s arse pointed directly upwards, its head in the dust nearby and its body wedged into a hollow breezeblock like an egg cup, neatly containing its last convulsive shudders and directing the squirts of blood downwards. The stink of blood and chicken shit had a nasty edge that cut through the background smells of dust, diesel, sun-ripened groceries and litter. Chris moved away, feeling slightly nauseous. In his memory he kept hearing the sound of the woman being hit: that aborted scream, the force of the thud. He didn’t know why he was so shaken by it. Worse happened here every day; it was ridiculous to be this squeamish over a road accident.