Andy McNab - Crossfire

'It's OK. What do I do with this?' I held up my invoice.

She took the sheet of A4. 'I will try and get a cheque for you today.'

I followed her to the lift. She was embarrassed. She was seventeen or eighteen, just starting out in life. She was getting the hang of it and wasn't quite sure how to act, and I was fed up with it. We didn't say any more to each other. I was fine about it and so was she.

The lift doors opened and three of the smokers rushed in to join us. The reek of nicotine breath filled the metal box.

The doors opened again into a large, open-plan office. Again, it could have been Vauxhall Cross if it hadn't been for the trendy water-bottle dispensers and coffee machines. People were on the phone or hunched over their PCs. Worktops were littered with piles of magazines and newspapers. At the far end the newsreaders' desks were in plain view so we could see how hard-working they were. That particular section, however, was cut off by soundproof glass so the newsreaders could shout at each other and call each other dickheads without it going on air.

Glass-walled offices lined the left side of the big open space. My very quiet new mate led me to a fanatically tidy desk. A woman I assumed was Moira sat behind it.

She wasn't what I'd been expecting. For starters, I wouldn't have predicted the inch-thick layer of makeup. She was maybe mid-fifties, and didn't show a wedding ring. Maybe she was trying hard to compete with the likes of Kate. A far-too-thin blouse revealed her bra, and the look continued with a mini-skirt and knee-high boots. Her hair was jet black. Her eyelashes were so long they looked like spiders' legs. Either everyone was too scared to tell her, or they disliked her so much they couldn't be bothered.

'Come in, Nick.'

Her accent was as Irish as Bertie's Pole, and her arrogance levels twice as high. She glanced at my friend. 'Coffee.'

I turned to Kate. 'No, I'm fine.' I'd always hated the girl-go-get-coffee thing. I'd had enough of it myself when I was a young squaddy, getting pushed around from pillar to post. I didn't wish it on others, especially if the order came from someone like Moira.

I sat down where she pointed. 'I'm sorry to have to let you go.' She settled back behind her desk. 'If it was up to me, I'd have kept you on. But the MD took the view he'd paid for close protection and not got it. Did you bring the invoice?'

'Got nothing else to do, have I?'

She leant forward, hoping her expression of deeply sincere concern would help us move on from the sacking. 'How's the arm, Nick?'

'Fine. I had it cleaned up this morning in Harley Street.'

She took a breath but I beat her to it. 'Don't worry, I'm not billing. Look, I've been calling Dom but still can't get an answer. You heard anything?'

Her face fell. 'I was hoping you might have. That wife of his – you've met her?'

'No.'

There seemed to be no love lost there.

'Well, she says he's taken a break. You know, clearing his fucking head or something. She won't say where he is, when he's coming back.' She raised her hands in frustration. 'I'm trying to run a news organization here.'

'Has he done this before?'

They dropped back on to the table. 'No – but, then, he hasn't had a cameraman killed before either. That bloody wife of his, she knows where he is.'

'Did he say anything about filming in the city before we left?'

'He's my war correspondent. He doesn't do new one-way systems. That was just the fucking cameraman trying to get some expenses out of me. Old habits die hard.'

She sat back, her hands stretched out on the desk. The spiders' legs flashed up and down. 'Perhaps we could arrange some extra work? Here in the studio? We've got a great story, all this great footage, but no one to follow it up. We could get massive exposure on this. All the outlets have been clamouring.'

She looked at my arm. 'You're a film star now, Nick. What about you giving an interview, just talking to camera, nothing hard, telling us what happened? You could talk us through it. They're hungry out there, Nick. People want to know the pain you've gone through. It would be a lasting tribute to Dom's cameraman.'

Moira couldn't have pulled off concerned if there'd been a gun to her head.

I stood up and so did she. She was waspish. 'You're wasting an opportunity to tell the world what happened. If you don't do it, there are others who will.'

I had to put her right there and then, before she barged her way into their lives and fucked them up even more. 'Do not go near Pete's family. They've had enough shit already. If you do I'll go to the BBC – in fact, any fucker – and do the interview with them.'

Her face went red with anger, which was quite an achievement, given the thickness of her makeup. 'Then your invoice will take a fucking long time coming through, that's all I can say.'

I walked out.

Kate had been hovering outside. She followed me to the lift. As the doors closed, she jumped in.

'Mr Stone, I knew she wouldn't pay you if you said no, so here… I prepared.' Out of her bag came a wad of euros and a receipt for me to sign.

'You'll burn in hell for this, Kate. Thank you.'

She smiled, then got embarrassed and looked down. 'She's already asked Peter's family.'

'What did they say?'

'They said no. I think that is good thing.'

'So do I, Kate. So do I.'

We shook hands by the steel waterfall and I headed for the door.

'There is one more thing, Mr Stone.'

I turned.

'She really didn't believe Peter's invoice. But he had been filming in St Stephen's Green. You wouldn't believe how tight she is. She wouldn't reimburse Dom for his donation to the refuge either.'

'The one in their documentary?'

She nodded. 'It's very close to his heart.'

'Herbert Park in Ballsbridge.'

The cab edged out into traffic.

'One of the embassies, sir?'

'Nah, just an old mate who's moved there. Smart area, is it?'

He chuckled. 'On the Dublin Monopoly board, the roads in Ballsbridge are the fockin' big bucks squares.' He threw a newspaper to me. 'Here, have a read of that. We're going to be stuck in the rush-hour for a while.'

He wasn't wrong. We were surrounded by commuters with their heads down and telephones to their ears as they made their way home.

The street-lights glowed on the paper through the rain-stained windows. I opened it up on a big spread about extraordinary rendition. A cleaning woman had boarded a supposedly empty American plane to find a prisoner handcuffed, hooded and wearing an adult nappy. The Irish government were hugely embarrassed: they'd given public assurances that war-on-terror 'rendered' prisoners didn't come anywhere near the place on their way to Guantanamo Bay or the CIA's secret prisons in Afghanistan, Pakistan or wherever their interrogators had been able to set up shop. The piece said: The practice has grown sharply since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and now includes a form in which suspects are illegally arrested, sometimes straight off the street, and delivered to a third-party state. There, the suspects are tortured by many means, including 'waterboarding'…

We used to do it out of this very city, only it wasn't called rendition in those days. They were just lifted. It got me wondering if Special Branch had ever used waterboarding. We never hung around at the castle long enough to see what went on. Better not to know, and have a clean pair of hands.

I checked the property pages but there was nothing for sale in the whole suburb of Ballsbridge, let alone Herbert Park.

'What do the houses go for round here?'

'Put it this way, last time you were here you could have picked up one of these little beauties for fifty thousand punts. Last one I saw advertised went for well over seven million euros. We're nearly there. Which end?'