‘Look, mate, you’ve done your job not talking to the people who are avoiding the pain route. But we’re both switched on and we know how this works. You know what’s going to happen now, don’t you? We both know I have a job to do. We both know that I’m going to crack on with mine and there will be pain.’

Tom took a breath, checking that what he had been saying had sunk in. It had. ‘But I’m thinking I don’t have to do that. I’m thinking that there is another way.’

Tom leaned closer, his hands flat on the table. ‘Mate, we’re both from the same tribe. We’re soldiers – we have standards. And values, that bind people like you and me together, makes us special, better than all those pencil necks the other side of that door. You remember those values, Mick, you remember what we’re about? Courage, discipline, respect for others?’

Vestey kept his focus on the floor as Tom continued with the fundamentals, which every soldier knows and which have saved lives during a fight.

‘You remember integrity, loyalty, selfless commitment? I know you remember them. I know you once believed in them.’

Tom let Vestey stew a little. ‘I met Nurul’s mother yesterday. Did you ever meet her? She’s a nice lady, a GP. Spent her life serving the community. She’s wondering where she went wrong with her poor little boy.’

Vestey didn’t move. Neither did he tell Tom to shut the fuck up. So Tom kept talking. ‘Did you know Nurul was her only child? And now she’s got to live with the knowledge that her son is a notorious suicide bomber, the first returnee from Syria to blow himself up in the UK, and the one who’s pretty much split the country in half. Only we both know he didn’t do it, don’t we, Mick? Was it you who shot him? They’re still sifting through the wreckage. And eventually they’ll find the piece of him where the round entered.’

Tom refilled the mug. Vestey brought it up to his lips, then paused. ‘He wanted to die: it was his choice.’

Something – which was always better than nothing.

‘And you understood that, probably better than any-one. He must have trusted you, recognized a kindred spirit who, like him, loved guns but had seen too much war. Most people would have just written him off as a crazy jihadi. Probably Rolt would have, but you saw beyond that because you’d been there too – your mind full of those pictures you couldn’t stop. The dismembered kids in bomb craters, the families dead in their beds. I know those pictures. I’ve got them too: Kandahar, Kajaki, Basra, all those shit holes.’