‘He looks like all the rest,’ the lieutenant said. It was obscure, but you could read into the smudgy photograph a well-shaved, well-powdered jowl much too developed for his age. The good things of life had come to him too early – the respect of his contemporaries, a safe livelihood. The trite religious word upon the tongue, the joke to ease the way, the ready acceptance of other people’s homage . . . a happy man. A natural hatred as between dog and dog stirred in the lieutenant’s bowels. ‘We’ve shot him half a dozen times,’ he said.
