And then, ten nights ago, he had sat in the car with his colleague for more than two hours, and he had cursed the player for not showing, and cared not to remember that it was the first time in a year that his player had not been on time for a meeting. His temper had been short because of his own fear. Sitting in his car, his weapon loaded and cocked, wondering as the minutes passed whether he and his colleague were compromised and not daring to wonder aloud whether the player was lost. A ghastly two hours until he had thrown in the towel and got the hell out. And all the drive back he had known in his gut the terrible fear that came from his feeling of responsibility for his player.

There were the fiery white flashes from the camera, startling in the coming dusk. The rain buffeted him. The photographer stepped back.

The body was half on the grass verge of the lane and half in the ditch.

The head of the body, hidden in the dustbin bag that was loosely tied at the throat with orange bale twine, was deep in the ditch and damming the flow of the rainwater. The body was naked to the waist. The trousers were sodden. There was more twine binding the ankles, and the bare feet on the road.

When he needed it, he could get a police or an army uniform. The morning after that failed meeting, he had been with a search party of troops that had raided the player's home. A small terraced house, full of bawling kids, on the edge of a barren housing estate. He had stood by as the lieutenant who led the search party had questioned the player's wife. He knew all about the woman. He knew what she had been given for her birthday, and what she was to have been given for Christmas.

He knew the names of all her children. He knew where the roof dripped, and which central heating radiator leaked. Where was her man now? When was he last at home? When was he coming back? Who had called by for him? Good woman, the wife of the player, a good woman because she thought she was married only to a volunteer in an active service unit of the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army, and there was no way that she was going to utter a single word to betray the Organisation.