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Tears? She asked him a few questions, but he barely took them in.
    Then he’d got the key to the killing room and gone outside.
    The killing room was a single locked room attached to the outbuildings. It was fitted out as a cramped living room. There were three dummies dressed in castoff clothes—they represented hostages. Reeve’s weekend soldiers, operating in teams of two, would have to storm the room and rescue the hostages by overpowering their captors—played by two more weekend soldiers. The hostages were to come to no harm.
    Reeve had unlocked the killing room and switched on the light, then sat down on the sofa. He looked around him at the dummies, two seated, one propped upright. He remembered the living room of his parents’ home, the night he’d left—all too willingly!—to join the army. He’d known he would miss Jim, his older brother by a year and a half. He would not miss his parents.
    From early on, Mother and Father had led their own lives and had expected Jim and Gordon to do the same. The brothers had been close in those days. As they grew, it became clear that Gordon was the “physical” one, while Jim lived in a world of his own—writing poetry, scribbling stories. Gordon went to judo classes; Jim was headed to university. Neither brother had ever really understood the other.
    Reeve had stood up and faced the standing dummy. Then he punched it across the room and walked outside.
    His bag packed, he’d got into the Land Rover. Joan had already called Grigor Mackenzie who, hearing the circumstances, had agreed to put his ferry to the mainland at Gordon’s disposal, though it was hours past the last sailing.
    Reeve drove through the night, remembering the telephone call and trying to push past it to the brother he had once known. Jim had left university after a year to join an evening paper in Glasgow. Gordon had never known him as a serious drinker until he became a journalist. By that time, Gordon was busy himself: two tours of duty in Ulster, training in Germany and Scandinavia… and then the SAS.
    When he saw Jim again, one Christmas when their father had just died and their mother was failing, they got into a fight about war and the role of the armed forces. It wasn’t a physical fight, just words. Jim had been good with words.
    The following year, he’d moved to a London paper, bought a flat in Crouch End. Gordon had visited it only once, two years ago. By then Jim’s wife had walked out, and the flat was a shambles. Nobody had been invited to the wedding. It had been a ten-minute ceremony and a three-month marriage.
    After which, in his career as in his life, Jim had gone freelance.
    All the way to the final act of putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger.
    Reeve had pressed the San Diego detective for that detail. He didn’t know why it was important to him. Almost more than the news of Jim’s death, or the fact that he had killed himself, he had been affected by the means. Anti-conflict, anti-army, Jim had used a gun.
    Other than stopping for diesel, Gordon Reeve drove straight to Heathrow. He found a long-term parking lot and took the courtesy bus from there to the terminal building. He’d called Joan from a service station, and she’d told him he was booked on a flight to Los Angeles, where he could catch a connecting flight to San Diego.
    Sitting in Departures, Gordon Reeve tried to feel something other than numb. He’d sometimes found an article written by Jim in one of the newspapers—but not often. They’d never kept in touch, except for a New Year’s phone call. Jim had been good with Allan, though, sending him the occasional surprise.
    He bought a newspaper and a magazine and walked through duty-free without buying anything. It was Monday morning, which meant he’d no business to take care of at home, nothing pressing until Friday and the new intake. He knew he should be thinking of other things, but it was so hard. He was first in line when boarding time