Wolf was silent for a beat, then flashed a glint of gold as a happy memory stirred a smile. ‘My first two-week summer leave after I joined up, I went off backpacking in Europe. Made my way down to Spain, a place called Aragón. Right in the heart of the Pyrenees, Catalonia to the east and Navarra, La Rioja and Castilla y León to the west. There’s this little village next to the Guadalaviar River, sitting there in the hills, prettiest place you ever could imagine. I met a girl there.’

There were some whistles and grins. ‘Now you’re talking,’ McVicar chuckled, and was about to crack some crude joke but Ben signalled to him to let Wolf go on.

‘Her name was Sofia,’ Wolf said. He smiled again at the memory, shook his head wistfully. ‘Sofia Moncayo. I still remember her. It was the sweetest time. I was sorry to have to leave her.’

‘I’ll bet you were,’ Boney Gallagher said, nudging him with an elbow.

‘I don’t suppose she still lives there,’ Wolf said. ‘Most of the younger folks leave in search of better prospects in the cities. But that’s where I’d go back in a heartbeat, if you gave me half a chance. Just to go walking in those hills again, where there’s nobody there but you, and the land, and the sky. If there’s a God, then that’s where you’re going to find him, I reckon.’

Packham let out a loud snort. ‘You’ve fuckin’ lost it, you have. Gone soft in the head.’

Wolf gave him a gentle smile and said, ‘No, Baz. You’re just not getting it.’

Wolf was probably right about that. Maybe none of the other troopers got it, either. But Ben had understood exactly the almost prayerful sense of serenity and untroubled stillness that Wolf’s experience had invoked in him.

He said, ‘I get it, Jaden.’

And standing here in the wreckage of Wolf’s flat all these years later, Ben was suddenly getting it once again. Nobody else but him and the surviving members of the SAS unit who’d sat and listened to Wolf’s story that day knew the secret.

Ben gazed a few moments longer at the picture on the bathroom wall, then reached up and lifted it from its hook. The frame was made out of some kind of dark wood, not a bad job if a little crude and artisan-like, now quite worn and scuffed with age. Ben flipped the picture around in his hands. The backing board had been covered in brown paper and taped around the edges to prevent dust and damp from penetrating inside. It was clear that the artist must have done the framing themselves, since their signature was scrawled in faded ink on the aged brown paper, together with the words Agosto ’99. August, 1999.