In Al-Adhamiya, the Sunni stronghold in Baghdad, close to the Tigris river, the Shia death squads dressed as policemen and set up false checkpoints to catch their Sunni neighbors. The Shias were supposed to be on our side, but nobody was really on our side. As far as he could tell, the only difference between the Sunnis and the Shias lay in the way that they killed. The Sunnis beheaded: one evening, he and a couple of the others had watched a beheading on a DVD given to them by their interpreter. They’d all wanted to see it, but he’d regretted asking as soon as it started. There was the man, cowering: not an American, because they didn’t want to watch one of their own die, but some poor bastard Shia who’d chosen the wrong turn, or stopped when he should have put the foot down and taken his chances with the bullets. What struck him was how matter-of-fact the executioner had been, how seemingly removed from the task at hand: the cutting had been methodical, grim, practical, like the ritualistic killing of an animal; an appalling death, but one without sadism beyond the actual act of killing itself. Afterward, they had all said the same thing: don’t let them take me. If there’s a chance of it, and you see it happening, kill me. Kill us all.

The Shias, meanwhile, tortured. They had a particular fondness for the electric drill: knees, elbows, groin, eyes. That was it: Sunnis behead, Shias torment, and they all worship the same god, except there was some dispute about who should have taken over the religion after the prophet Mohammed died, and that was why they were now hacking heads and drilling bones. It was all about qisas: revenge. It didn’t surprise him the first time the interpreter told him that, according to the Islamic calendar, it was still only the fifteenth century: 1424, or something like it, when he arrived in Iraq. That made a kind of sense to him, because these people were still behaving like it was the Middle Ages.

But now they were part of a modern war, a war fought with night-vision lenses and heavy weapons. They responded with RPGs, and mortars, and bombs hidden inside dead dogs. When they didn’t have those, they used stones and blades. They answered the new with the old; old weapons and old names: Nergal, and Ninazu, and the one whose name was lost. They set the trap, and waited for them to come.

25

The first to arrive at the Proctor place were two state troopers out of Skowhegan. I’d never met them before, but one of them knew my name. After some cursory questioning, they let me sit in the Lexus while we waited for the detectives to arrive. The cops made small talk among themselves but left me alone until, after about an hour, the detectives showed up. By then, the sun was setting, and they broke out the flashlights for the examination.

As it turned out, I’d met one of them before. His name was Gordon Walsh, and he looked like a real bruiser as he stepped from his car, his big sunglasses giving the impression that a large bug had evolved to the point that it could wear a suit. He was a former college football player, and he’d kept in shape. He had four or five inches on me, and a good forty pounds. A scar ran across his chin where someone had had the temerity to slash him with a bottle when he was still a trooper. I hated to think of what might have happened to the assailant. They were probably still trying to extract the bottle surgically from wherever Walsh had stuck it.

Beside him was a smaller, younger detective whom I didn’t recognize. He had that rookie look to him, a veneer of severity that couldn’t quite disguise his uncertainty, like a young colt trying to keep up with the stallion that had sired it. Walsh glanced up at me but said nothing, then followed one of the troopers down to the room in which Proctor’s body lay. Before he entered, he smeared some Vicks VapoRub under his nose, but he still didn’t stay in there for long, and he took some deep breaths when he emerged. Then he and his partner went up to the cabin and spent some time poking around inside. After that, they examined the truck, all the while studiously ignoring me. Walsh had obviously found the keys, and reached in to turn on the ignition. The truck started first time. He killed the engine, then said something to his partner before both of them at last decided to pass the time of day with me.

Walsh sucked on one arm of his shades and tut-tutted as he approached me.

‘Charlie Parker,’ he said. ‘As soon as I heard your name, I knew my day was about to get more entertaining.’

‘Detective Walsh,’ I replied. ‘I heard evildoers tremble, and knew that you were near. I see you’re still subsisting on raw meat.’

‘Mens sana, in corpore sano. And vice versa. That’s Latin. Benefits of a Catholic education. This is my partner, Detective Soames.’

Soames nodded, but didn’t say anything. His mouth was rigid, and his jaw jutted in a Dudley Do-Right manner. I bet he ground his teeth at night.

‘Did you kill him?’ asked Walsh.

‘No, I didn’t kill him.’

‘Damn, I was hoping we could get this thing all tied up by midnight if you confessed. I’d probably be given a medal for putting you behind bars at last.’

‘And I thought you liked me, detective.’

‘I do like you. Imagine what the ones who don’t like you say about you. So, if you’re not prepared to break down and confess, you want to tell me something useful?’ said Walsh.

‘His name is Harold Proctor, or I assume that’s who he is, or was,’ I said. ‘I’ve never met him, so I can’t say for sure.’

‘What brings you to his neck of the woods?’

‘I’m looking into the suicide of a young man down in Portland, a former soldier.’

‘Who for?’

‘The boy’s father.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘The father’s name is Bennett Patchett. He owns the Downs Diner in Scarborough.’

‘Where did Proctor fit in?’

‘Damien Patchett, the son, might have met him at some point. Proctor attended Patchett’s funeral. I thought he might have some insights into Damien’s frame of mind before he took his own life.’

‘Insights, huh? You do talk nice, I’ll give you that. Any doubts about how this Patchett boy died?’

‘None that I can tell. He shot himself out in the woods near Cape Elizabeth.’

‘So how come his father is paying you good money to investigate his death?’

‘He wants to know what made his son kill himself. Is that so difficult to understand?’

Behind us, the forensics unit appeared, picking its way up the trail. Walsh tapped his partner on the arm.

‘Elliot, go give them a heads-up, point them in the right direction.’

Soames did as he was told, but not before a slight crease of unhappiness furrowed his otherwise unlined brow at being shooed away while the grown-ups talked. Maybe he wasn’t as wet as he appeared.

‘New boy?’ I said.

‘He’s good. Ambitious. Wants to solve crimes.’

‘You remember when you were young like that?’

‘I was never good, and if I was ambitious I’d be somewhere else by now. Still like to solve crimes, though. Gives me a sense of purpose. Otherwise, I don’t feel like I’m earning my wage, and a man should earn his wage. Kind of brings us back to this Patchett thing.’ He took a look over his shoulder to where Soames was talking to a man who was pulling on a white protective suit. ‘My partner likes things to be official,’ he said. ‘He types reports as he goes along. Neatly.’ He turned back to me. ‘I, on the other hand, type like one of Bob Newhart’s monkeys, and I prefer to write my report at the end, not the beginning. So it seems to me, unofficially, that you’re looking into the suicide of a veteran, and it brings you out here where you find another veteran who also appears to be the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, except before he killed himself he managed to loose off most of a mag at someone outside before popping one more into his own skull. Am I reading this right?’