“He’d check for signs of life in a moment. For now though, he just sat. As the floodwaters of adrenalin subsided, the familiar sense of wretchedness was once again exposed. His pain had carved a neat parabola through time. At first he had recognised only a sense of disquiet after every job. As the months and years passed, so disquiet had steepened into self-loathing and despair. But the levels of anguish he experienced weren’t sustainable, and as his subconscious took control and began to shut down his ability to feel, so the curve had flattened out and begun its descent. Soon he feared he would become nothing more than numb, dumb, flesh and bone, the unfeeling, unquestioning, efficient killer he had been recruited to be so long ago when he was too young and too stupid to know any better.”

Extract from ‘The Cossack’ – included in the showcase