EDIE WREN CALLING, it said.

‘It’s Abu Din,’ Edie said. ‘Guess what? Somebody just slotted the bastard.’

Saturday afternoon at the Imperial War Museum.

The museum was crowded but down in Carol’s small basement office the sound of the crowds seemed far away, like an old soldier’s memory of war. Carol expertly spun her wheelchair in a circle as she closed the door behind us. The BBC news was playing on her iMac.

‘Do you have anything on Special Operations in Afghanistan?’ I asked.

‘Some,’ she said, and hesitated. ‘You know those servicemen – the ones who were killed, the Sangin Six – were regular army. They weren’t Special Ops.’

‘I know.’

‘And there’s restricted viewing on anything to do with Special Ops, Max.’

I nodded. We stared at each other for a bit. Then she sighed.

‘You can’t take anything away,’ she said.

And so Carol placed a fat green file marked UKSF on the desk and then made us two mugs of builder’s tea – they don’t do triple espresso in the Imperial War Museum – deftly if noisily manoeuvring her wheelchair in the cramped office as she got the kettle on.

I waded through pictures of Special Operation Forces in Afghanistan. There were endless images of heavily armed fighting men on what looked like the surface of the moon, all of them with their faces obscured. There were pixelated faces, blacked-out faces and smudged faces, and the men wore civilian clothing, camouflage gear and fleeces on rocky terrain that looked as though it was either searing hot or freezing cold, with nothing in between.

It looked like the harshest place on the planet, but the men seemed as happy as larks, posing proudly with their assault rifles on land where it looked as though nothing good could ever grow.

Many of them had beards but a few were cleanly shaven and as I sipped my strong sweet tea I found him, posing in profile in a T-shirt and cargo trousers that were stuffed with kit, his weapon held at a 45-degree angle.

I read, ‘The relevance of this photo is simply the weapon – an M249 SAW featuring the collapsible Para stock and a 200-round plastic assault pack. This operator wears civilian clothing.’

The top half of the operator’s head was blacked out but you could still see his smiling mouth.

The gap-toothed grin of my oldest friend was unmistakable.

‘Have you seen this?’ Carol said.

She was looking at the screen of her iMac. Blue lights swept a drab street in Wembley. The police tape was going up.

BBC BREAKING NEWS: HATE CLERIC FOUND MURDERED

Carol swivelled in her chair to look at me.

‘Is it true?’ she said. ‘Somebody just killed this bastard?’

‘Apparently,’ I said.

‘Did they hang him?’

I closed the thin green file.

‘Shot him,’ I said, sipping my tea. ‘One in the head and one in the heart.’

Author’s Note

Author’s Note