‘It’s my impressions I want to record, rather than what you say.’
‘The opposite of a police interrogation,’ said Shepherd.
‘That’s one way of looking at it.’ She crossed her legs and rested the clipboard on her knee. ‘But I’m not trying to trap you or get you to admit anything that you don’t want to.’
‘Just a chat between friends?’
The psychologist chuckled.‘I’m here to help,Dan,’ she said. ‘I just want to get a feeling for how you’re handling the job. I talk to everyone on the unit at least once a year.’
But Shepherd knew her visit wasn’t just an annual service. Hargrove had asked her to talk to him, which meant the superintendent was concerned.
‘I couldn’t help noticing the scar on your shoulder when you answered the door.’
‘I stopped a bullet a while back. It was nothing.’
‘Before you joined the police?’
‘In my previous life.’
‘Do you mind talking about it?’
‘Being shot, or being in the SAS?’
Gift looked at him with a slight smile on her face. ‘Which do you feel most comfortable talking about?’
Shepherd folded his arms, then realised she might think his body language defensive. He put his hands on his knees but that felt too posed so he moved them to his lap. ‘That’s such a psychologist’s question,’ he said.
‘I didn’t mean it to be. I’m just interested.’
‘In what specifically?’
‘What it was like to be shot, I guess.’
Shepherd rubbed his chin. ‘It doesn’t hurt, if that’s what you mean. Not at first, anyway. It’s like been punched really hard. The endorphins kick in and you’re aware that you’re losing blood and you just go weak.’
‘Who shot you?’
‘He didn’t leave a card,’ said Shepherd.
‘You didn’t see him?’
‘He was over a rise. We weren’t in combat, he just took a shot.’
‘A sniper?’
‘Or a coward. One shot and he was off. It was in Afghanistan. Never found out if he was a soldier or just a villager with a gun.’
‘You were lucky.’
‘Everyone says that, but if I’d really been lucky I wouldn’t have been shot in the first place,’ said Shepherd.
‘I meant lucky you weren’t killed.’
‘It hit bone and went downwards, missed an artery by half an inch. I was in a four-man team and the medic did his stuff. I was helicoptered to hospital and a week later I was back in the UK.’ There were other details he didn’t want to tell her. Like the fact that he had been cradling a dying SAS captain who had lost a good-sized chunk of skull and brain when the sniper’s bullet had slammed into Shepherd’s shoulder.
‘You didn’t leave the SAS on medical grounds, though, did you?’ she asked.
‘That’s in my file, is it?’
She smiled reassuringly. ‘I’m not trying to trick you, Dan,’ she said. ‘Your file only says you spent six years in the regiment before leaving to join the police. It wasn’t a bad enough injury to have you RTUd?’
RTU. Returned to Unit. It was every SAS trooper’s worst nightmare: being told that the Regiment didn’t want or need them any more and they were to return to their original unit. Shepherd hadn’t been RTUd. He’d walked out for Sue.‘I heal quickly,’said Shepherd.
‘What’s it like, being in a firefight?’
‘It wasn’t a firefight, it was an ambush.’
‘But when you’re under fire, what’s that like?’
‘If you have to ask, you’ll never know,’ he said.
‘That’s an easy answer,’ she said.
‘It’s a difficult question. Unless you’ve had bad guys blasting away at you you’re never going to understand what it feels like.’
‘But you’re scared?’
Shepherd frowned as he tried to find words to explain. It wasn’t fear: he had fought alongside regular soldiers and he’d seen fear in their eyes when the bullets were flying but he’d never seen it in the eyes of SAS troopers. The men of the SAS relished combat: it was what they trained for, what they lived for. They had the same look when they prepared to jump from a Hercules two miles up. Excitement. Elation. Adrenaline pumping, heart pounding. ‘It’s like they say, you’re never so alive as when you’re close to death.’
‘They say, too, that time seems to slow down?’
Shepherd nodded. ‘It’s not that things go slowly, more that everything is clearer. Sounds are sharper, colours more vibrant.’
‘It sounds like a drug.’
‘I’ve never taken drugs so I wouldn’t know.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Not so much as a whiff of a cannabis. And even if I had I’d be pretty damn stupid to tell a police psychologist, wouldn’t I?’
She nodded slowly. ‘But combat is addictive, I suppose?’
Shepherd wondered where she was heading.
‘It enhances sensation,’she said.‘That’s what many drugs do. Even runners feel the same effect, don’t they? The chemicals released during a marathon run induce a feeling of euphoria.’
‘Have you ever run a marathon?’
‘Three times. Twice here in London and once in New York. I don’t run as much as I used to, but in my twenties you’d have been hard pushed to keep up with me.’
Shepherd took a quick look at her legs. She crossed them and when he looked back at her face she was smiling. ‘So, am I right?’ she asked. ‘Does combat give you a similar high?’
It was, Shepherd realised, another good question. But Kathy Gift was paid to ask searching questions and evaluate the answers she was given. ‘For some people, I suppose it is.’
‘It’s an interesting thought, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Most people would be scared witless if they were shot at. But for some maybe the excitement outweighs the fear. Wouldn’t they be the ones selected to join the SAS?’
Shepherd shook his head emphatically. ‘The selection process weeds out the thrill-seekers and the wannabe James Bonds. The ones who make it aren’t adrenaline junkies.’
‘So what sort of people do make it?’
‘You’ve got to be physically fit, but it’s mental toughness that gets you through.’
‘There’s a type, is there?’
‘I guess so. Most are working class, from pretty tough backgrounds, and they’re all driven.’
‘Driven?’
‘To show that they’re the best. That’s what keeps you going through selection. You reach a point where you’re physically exhausted. From then on it’s a matter of willpower.’
‘And having gone through all that, having shown that you’re among the best of the best, you walked away?’
‘I was a father.’
‘There are married men in the Regiment, aren’t there?’
‘Some. But it puts the marriage under strain. We’re off having adventures around the world and the wives sit at home changing nappies.’
‘Is that how you see life in the SAS, having adventures?’
Shepherd sat back and folded his arms, no longer caring about his body language. He could see where she was going. She wanted to show that he was hooked on the excitement of dangerous situations. ‘I think that’s how the wives see it,’ he said. ‘They think it’s all fun and games, and that’s partly our fault – we tend to downplay the dangerous aspects.’
