He stopped to look in a charity shop window. Wondering why, even as he listlessly examined the items on offer. Insight came with an unbidden memory. Of talking to a uniformed skipper a few years before. A decent bloke, with a solid reputation. Chatting, as they shared a cigarette break before a royal event. Exchanged backgrounds, Job ritual along with “when’s your thirty up then?”. And the sergeant in question had proved to be an interesting case. An ex-RAF non-commissioned officer, he’d flown drones over the Middle East for three years. Before deciding to take his leave of the Air Force and do something less stressful instead. He’d laughed at Mickey’s look of incomprehension.

‘Less stressful than sitting in a portacabin in Lincolnshire, playing with model planes, you’re thinking. The thing about being a drone pilot is the sense of unreality. You look at the world below through a camera and a satellite feed. And you follow instructions from the spooks. Fly there. Film that. Drop a Hellfire on them.’

‘Hellfire?’

‘Anti-tank missile. Sounds nice and precise, doesn’t it. Except it isn’t.’ He saw Mickey’s lack of comprehension. ‘Fifty-metre lethal blast radius. Means you get collateral damage. That’s innocents dead and maimed, if we’re not doing the official language. They started using Brimstones after I punched out. Same missile, smaller warhead. Less risk of collateral. Made the Yanks ever so jealous. But in my day it was the Hellfire. With collateral unavoidable. A necessary evil.’

‘Ah.’

‘It affected everyone differently, of course. I knew people who walked away after their first kill. The RAF let them go, of course; they were no use behind a stick from that moment. But there was at least one guy who was completely unaffected. Nice enough bloke too. Just not bothered by the implications of what he was doing. He’s probably still doing it now.’

‘Essential work though.’

‘Yeah, I told myself that. Kept me going for another year. Wasn’t me who made the decision to leave in the end.’ Mickey looked at him questioningly. ‘The wife. She was supportive for as long as she could be. Problem was, every time I punched off a missile and took out a target, it hollowed me out just a little bit more. I could still function, but with every shot I took she said there was a bit less of me left. The real me, the man she married. So she gave me the ultimatum.’

‘And you walked.’

‘Fuck yes I walked. I worship the ground that woman walks on. And the thing is, I knew she was right. All the special duty pay in the world wasn’t any use when I came home like a zombie. Silent through dinner, asleep by twenty-one hundred. Ignoring the kids. Ignoring her. It took me a year to properly start getting over it.’